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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Tragic Muse, by Henry James
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Tragic Muse
+
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 10, 2006  [eBook #20085]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRAGIC MUSE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Chuck Greif, R. Cedron, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team Europe (http://dp.rastko.net/)
+
+
+
+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 perception
+that ended by becoming frequent with him--that of the perfect presence
+of mind, unconfused, unhurried by emotion, that any artistic performance
+requires and that all, whatever the instrument, require in exactly the
+same degree: the application, in other words, clear and calculated,
+crystal-firm as it were, of the idea conceived in the glow of
+experience, of suffering, of joy. He was afterwards often to talk of
+this with Miriam, who, however, was never to be able to present him with
+a neat theory of the subject. She had no knowledge that it was publicly
+discussed; she only ranged herself in practice on the side of those who
+hold that at the moment of production the artist can't too much have his
+wits about him. When Peter named to her the opinion of those maintaining
+that at such a crisis the office of attention ceases to be filled she
+stared with surprise and then broke out: "Ah the poor idiots!" She
+eventually became, in her judgements, in impatience and the expression
+of contempt, very free and absolutely irreverent.
+
+"What a splendid scolding!" the new visitor exclaimed when, on the
+entrance of the Pope's legate, her companion closed the book on the
+scene. Peter pressed his lips to Madame Carré's finger-tips; the old
+actress got up and held out her arms to Miriam. The girl never took her
+eyes off Sherringham while she passed into that lady's embrace and
+remained there. They were full of their usual sombre fire, and it was
+always the case that they expressed too much anything they could express
+at all; but they were not defiant nor even triumphant now--they were
+only deeply explicative. They seemed to say, "That's the sort of thing
+I meant; that's what I had in mind when I asked you to try to do
+something for me." Madame Carré folded her pupil to her bosom, holding
+her there as the old marquise in a _comédie de moeurs_ might in the last
+scene have held her god-daughter the _ingénue_.
+
+"Have you got me an engagement?"--the young woman then appealed eagerly
+to her friend. "Yes, he has done something splendid for me," she went on
+to Madame Carré, resting her hand caressingly on one of the actress's
+while the old woman discoursed with Mr. Dashwood, who was telling her in
+very pretty French that he was tremendously excited about Miss Rooth.
+Madame Carré looked at him as if she wondered how he appeared when he
+was calm and how, as a dramatic artist, he expressed that condition.
+
+"Yes, yes, something splendid, for a beginning," Peter answered
+radiantly, recklessly; feeling now only that he would say anything and
+do anything to please her. He spent on the spot, in imagination, his
+last penny.
+
+"It's such a pity you couldn't follow it; you'd have liked it so much
+better," Mr. Dashwood observed to their hostess.
+
+"Couldn't follow it? Do you take me for _une sotte_?" the celebrated
+artist cried. "I suspect I followed it _de plus près que vous,
+monsieur_!"
+
+"Ah you see the language is so awfully fine," Basil Dashwood replied,
+looking at his shoes.
+
+"The language? Why she rails like a fish-wife. Is that what you call
+language? Ours is another business."
+
+"If you understood, if you understood, you'd see all the greatness of
+it," Miriam declared. And then in another tone: "Such delicious
+expressions!"
+
+"_On dit que c'est très-fort_. But who can tell if you really say it?"
+Madame Carré demanded.
+
+"Ah, _par exemple_, I can!" Sherringham answered.
+
+"Oh you--you're a Frenchman."
+
+"Couldn't he make it out if he weren't?" asked Basil Dashwood.
+
+The old woman shrugged her shoulders. "He wouldn't know."
+
+"That's flattering to me."
+
+"Oh you--don't you pretend to complain," Madame Carré said. "I prefer
+_our_ imprecations--those of Camille," she went on. "They have the
+beauty _des plus belles choses_."
+
+"I can say them too," Miriam broke in.
+
+"_Insolente_!" smiled Madame Carré. "Camille doesn't squat down on the
+floor in the middle of them.
+
+    "For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.
+    To me and to the state of my great grief
+    Let kings assemble,"
+
+Miriam quickly declaimed. "Ah if you don't feel the way she makes a
+throne of it!"
+
+"It's really tremendously fine, _chère madame_," Sherringham said.
+"There's nothing like it."
+
+"_Vous êtes insupportables_," the old woman answered. "Stay with us.
+I'll teach you Phèdre."
+
+"Ah Phædra, Phædra!" Basil Dashwood vaguely ejaculated, looking more
+gentlemanly than ever.
+
+"You've learned all I've taught you, but where the devil have you
+learned what I haven't?" Madame Carré went on.
+
+"I've worked--I have; you'd call it work--all through the bright, late
+summer, all through the hot, dull, empty days. I've battered down the
+door--I did hear it crash one day. But I'm not so very good yet. I'm
+only in the right direction."
+
+"_Malicieuse_!" growled Madame Carré.
+
+"Oh I can beat that," the girl went on.
+
+"Did you wake up one morning and find you had grown a pair of wings?"
+Peter asked. "Because that's what the difference amounts to--you really
+soar. Moreover, you're an angel," he added, charmed with her
+unexpectedness, the good nature of her forbearance to reproach him for
+not having written to her. And it seemed to him privately that she _was_
+angelic when in answer to this she said ever so blandly:
+
+"You know you read _King John_ with me before you went away. I thought
+over immensely what you said. I didn't understand it much at the time--I
+was so stupid. But it all came to me later."
+
+"I wish you could see yourself," Peter returned.
+
+"My dear fellow, I do. What sort of a dunce do you take me for? I didn't
+miss a vibration of my voice, a fold of my robe."
+
+"Well, I didn't see you troubling about it," Peter handsomely insisted.
+
+"No one ever will. Do you think I'd ever show it?"
+
+"_Ars celare artem_," Basil Dashwood jocosely dropped.
+
+"You must first have the art to hide," said Sherringham, wondering a
+little why Miriam didn't introduce her young friend to him. She was,
+however, both then and later perfectly neglectful of such cares, never
+thinking, never minding how other people got on together. When she found
+they didn't get on she jeered at them: that was the nearest she came to
+arranging for them. Our young man noted in her from the moment she felt
+her strength an immense increase of this good-humoured inattention to
+detail--all detail save that of her work, to which she was ready to
+sacrifice holocausts of feelings when the feelings were other people's.
+This conferred on her a large profanity, an absence of ceremony as to
+her social relations, which was both amusing because it suggested that
+she would take what she gave, and formidable because it was inconvenient
+and you mightn't care to give what she would take.
+
+"If you haven't any art it's not quite the same as if you didn't hide
+it, is it?" Basil Dashwood ingeniously threw out.
+
+"That's right--say one of your clever things!" Miriam sweetly responded.
+
+"You're always acting," he declared in English and with a simple-minded
+laugh, while Sherringham remained struck with his expressing just what
+he himself had felt weeks before.
+
+"And when you've shown them your fish-wife, to your public _de là-bas_,
+what will you do next?" asked Madame Carré.
+
+"I'll do Juliet--I'll do Cleopatra."
+
+"Rather a big bill, isn't it?" Mr. Dashwood volunteered to Sherringham
+in a friendly but discriminating manner.
+
+"Constance and Juliet--take care you don't mix them," said Sherringham.
+
+"I want to be various. You once told me I had a hundred characters,"
+Miriam returned.
+
+"Ah, _vous en êtes là_?" cried the old actress. "You may have a hundred
+characters, but you've only three plays. I'm told that's all there are
+in English."
+
+Miriam, admirably indifferent to this charge, appealed to Peter. "What
+arrangements have you made? What do the people want?"
+
+"The people at the theatre?"
+
+"I'm afraid they don't want _King John_, and I don't believe they hunger
+for _Antony and Cleopatra_," Basil Dashwood suggested. "Ships and sieges
+and armies and pyramids, you know: we mustn't be too heavy."
+
+"Oh I hate scenery!" the girl sighed.
+
+"_Elle est superbe_," said Madame Carré. "You must put those pieces on
+the stage: how will you do it?"
+
+"Oh we know how to get up a play in London, Madame Carré"--Mr. Dashwood
+was all geniality. "They put money on it, you know."
+
+"On it? But what do they put _in_ it? Who'll interpret them? Who'll
+manage a style like that--the style of which the rhapsodies she has just
+repeated are a specimen? Whom have you got that one has ever heard of?"
+
+"Oh you'll hear of a good deal when once she gets started," Dashwood
+cheerfully contended.
+
+Madame Carré looked at him a moment; then, "I feel that you'll become
+very bad," she said to Miriam. "I'm glad I shan't see it."
+
+"People will do things for me--I'll make them," the girl declared. "I'll
+stir them up so that they'll have ideas."
+
+"What people, pray?"
+
+"Ah terrible woman!" Peter theatrically groaned.
+
+"We translate your pieces--there will be plenty of parts," Basil
+Dashwood said.
+
+"Why then go out of the door to come in at the window?--especially if
+you smash it! An English arrangement of a French piece is a pretty woman
+with her back turned."
+
+"Do you really want to keep her?" Sherringham asked of Madame
+Carré--quite as if thinking for a moment that this after all might be
+possible.
+
+She bent her strange eyes on him. "No, you're all too queer together. We
+couldn't be bothered with you and you're not worth it."
+
+"I'm glad it's 'together' that we're queer then--we can console each
+other."
+
+"If you only would; but you don't seem to! In short I don't understand
+you--I give you up. But it doesn't matter," said the old woman wearily,
+"for the theatre's dead and even you, _ma toute-belle_, won't bring it
+to life. Everything's going from bad to worse, and I don't care what
+becomes of you. You wouldn't understand us here and they won't
+understand you there, and everything's impossible, and no one's a whit
+the wiser, and it's not of the least consequence. Only when you raise
+your arms lift them just a little higher," Madame Carré added.
+
+"My mother will be happier _chez nous_" said Miriam, throwing her arms
+straight up and giving them a noble tragic movement.
+
+"You won't be in the least in the right path till your mother's in
+despair."
+
+"Well, perhaps we can bring that about even in London," Sherringham
+patiently laughed.
+
+"Dear Mrs. Rooth--she's great fun," Mr. Dashwood as imperturbably
+dropped.
+
+Miriam transferred the dark weight of her gaze to him as if she were
+practising. "_You_ won't upset her, at any rate." Then she stood with
+her beautiful and fatal mask before her hostess. "I want to do the
+modern too. I want to do _le drame_, with intense realistic effects."
+
+"And do you want to look like the portico of the Madeleine when it's
+draped for a funeral?" her instructress mocked. "Never, never. I don't
+believe you're various: that's not the way I see you. You're pure
+tragedy, with _de grands éclats de voix_ in the great style, or you're
+nothing."
+
+"Be beautiful--be only that," Peter urged with high interest. "Be only
+what you can be so well--something that one may turn to for a glimpse of
+perfection, to lift one out of all the vulgarities of the day."
+
+Thus apostrophised the girl broke out with one of the speeches of
+Racine's Phædra, hushing her companions on the instant. "You'll be the
+English Rachel," said Basil Dashwood when she stopped.
+
+"Acting in French!" Madame Carré amended. "I don't believe in an English
+Rachel."
+
+"I shall have to work it out, what I shall be," Miriam concluded with a
+rich pensive effect.
+
+"You're in wonderfully good form to-day," Sherringham said to her; his
+appreciation revealing a personal subjection he was unable to conceal
+from his companions, much as he wished it.
+
+"I really mean to do everything."
+
+"Very well; after all Garrick did."
+
+"Then I shall be the Garrick of my sex."
+
+"There's a very clever author doing something for me; I should like you
+to see it," said Basil Dashwood, addressing himself equally to Miriam
+and to her diplomatic friend.
+
+"Ah if you've very clever authors----!" And Madame Carré spun the sound
+to the finest satiric thread.
+
+"I shall be very happy to see it," Peter returned.
+
+This response was so benevolent that Basil Dashwood presently began:
+"May I ask you at what theatre you've made arrangements?"
+
+Sherringham looked at him a moment. "Come and see me at the embassy and
+I'll tell you." Then he added: "I know your sister, Mrs. Lovick."
+
+"So I supposed: that's why I took the liberty of asking such a
+question."
+
+"It's no liberty, but Mr. Sherringham doesn't appear to be able to tell
+you," said Miriam.
+
+"Well, you know, it's a very curious world, all those theatrical people
+over there," Peter conceded.
+
+"Ah don't say anything against them when I'm one of them," Basil
+Dashwood laughed.
+
+"I might plead the absence of information," Peter returned, "as Miss
+Rooth has neglected to make us acquainted."
+
+Miriam vaguely smiled. "I know you both so little." But she presented
+them with a great stately air to each other, and the two men shook hands
+while Madame Carré observed them.
+
+"_Tiens_! you gentlemen meet here for the first time? You do right to
+become friends--that's the best thing. Live together in peace and mutual
+confidence. _C'est de beaucoup le plus sage_."
+
+"Certainly, for yoke-fellows," said Sherringham.
+
+He began the next moment to repeat to his new acquaintance some of the
+things he had been told in London; but their hostess stopped him off,
+waving the talk away with charming overdone stage horror and the young
+hands of the heroines of Marivaux. "Ah wait till you go--for that! Do
+you suppose I care for news of your mountebanks' booths?"
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+As many people know, there are not, in the famous Théâtre Français, more
+than a dozen good seats accessible to ladies.[*] The stalls are
+forbidden them, the boxes are a quarter of a mile from the stage and the
+balcony is a delusion save for a few chairs at either end of its vast
+horseshoe. But there are two excellent _baignoires d'avant-scène_, which
+indeed are by no means always to be had. It was, however, into one of
+them that, immediately after his return to Paris, Sherringham ushered
+Mrs. Rooth and her daughter, with the further escort of Basil Dashwood.
+He had chosen the evening of the reappearance of the celebrated
+Mademoiselle Voisin--she had been enjoying a _congé_ of three months--an
+actress whom Miriam had seen several times before and for whose method
+she professed a high though somewhat critical esteem. It was only for
+the return of this charming performer that Peter had been waiting to
+respond to Miriam's most ardent wish--that of spending an hour in the
+_foyer des artistes_ of the great theatre. She was the person whom he
+knew best in the house of Molière; he could count on her to do them the
+honours some night when she was in the "bill," and to make the occasion
+sociable. Miriam had been impatient for it--she was so convinced that
+her eyes would be opened in the holy of holies; but wishing as
+particularly as he did to participate in her impression he had made her
+promise she wouldn't taste of this experience without him--not let
+Madame Carré, for instance, take her in his absence. There were
+questions the girl wished to put to Mademoiselle Voisin--questions
+which, having admired her from the balcony, she felt she was exactly the
+person to answer. She was more "in it" now, after all, than Madame
+Carré, in spite of her slenderer talent: she was younger, fresher, more
+modern and--Miriam found the word--less academic. She was in fine less
+"_vieux jeu_." Peter perfectly foresaw the day when his young friend
+would make indulgent allowances for poor Madame Carré, patronising her
+as an old woman of good intentions.
+
+[*: 1890]
+
+The play to-night was six months old, a large, serious, successful
+comedy by the most distinguished of authors, with a thesis, a chorus
+embodied in one character, a _scène à faire_ and a part full of
+opportunities for Mademoiselle Voisin. There were things to be said
+about this artist, strictures to be dropped as to the general quality of
+her art, and Miriam leaned back now, making her comments as if they cost
+her less, but the actress had knowledge and distinction and pathos, and
+our young lady repeated several times: "How quiet she is, how
+wonderfully quiet! Scarcely anything moves but her face and her voice.
+_Le geste rare_, but really expressive when it comes. I like that
+economy; it's the only way to make the gesture significant."
+
+"I don't admire the way she holds her arms," Basil Dash wood said: "like
+a _demoiselle de magasin_ trying on a jacket."
+
+"Well, she holds them at any rate. I daresay it's more than you do with
+yours."
+
+"Oh yes, she holds them; there's no mistake about that. 'I hold them, I
+hope, _hein_?' she seems to say to all the house." The young English
+professional laughed good-humouredly, and Sherringham was struck with
+the pleasant familiarity he had established with their brave companion.
+He was knowing and ready and he said in the first _entr'acte_--they were
+waiting for the second to go behind--amusing perceptive things. "They
+teach them to be ladylike and Voisin's always trying to show that. 'See
+how I walk, see how I sit, see how quiet I am and how I have _le geste
+rare_. Now can you say I ain't a lady?' She does it all as if she had a
+class."
+
+"Well, to-night I'm her class," said Miriam.
+
+"Oh I don't mean of actresses, but of _femmes du monde_. She shows them
+how to act in society."
+
+"You had better take a few lessons," Miriam retorted.
+
+"Ah you should see Voisin in society," Peter interposed.
+
+"Does she go into it?" Mrs. Rooth demanded with interest.
+
+Her friend hesitated. "She receives a great many people."
+
+"Why shouldn't they when they're nice?" Mrs. Rooth frankly wanted to
+know.
+
+"When the people are nice?" Miriam asked.
+
+"Now don't tell me she's not what one would wish," said Mrs. Rooth to
+Sherringham.
+
+"It depends on what that is," he darkly smiled.
+
+"What I should wish if she were my daughter," the old woman rejoined
+blandly.
+
+"Ah wish your daughter to act as well as that and you'll do the handsome
+thing for her!"
+
+"Well, she _seems_ to feel what she says," Mrs. Rooth piously risked.
+
+"She has some stiff things to say. I mean about her past," Basil
+Dashwood remarked. "The past--the dreadful past--on the stage!"
+
+"Wait till the end, to see how she comes out. We must all be merciful!"
+sighed Mrs. Rooth.
+
+"We've seen it before; you know what happens," Miriam observed to her
+mother.
+
+"I've seen so many I get them mixed."
+
+"Yes, they're all in queer predicaments. Poor old mother--what we show
+you!" laughed the girl.
+
+"Ah it will be what _you_ show me--something noble and wise!"
+
+"I want to do this; it's a magnificent part," said Miriam.
+
+"You couldn't put it on in London--they wouldn't swallow it," Basil
+Dashwood declared.
+
+"Aren't there things they do there to get over the difficulties?" the
+girl inquired.
+
+"You can't get over what _she did_!"--her companion had a rueful
+grimace.
+
+"Yes, we must pay, we must expiate!" Mrs. Rooth moaned as the curtain
+rose again.
+
+When the second act was over our friends passed out of their _baignoire_
+into those corridors of tribulation where the bristling _ouvreuse_, like
+a pawnbroker driving a roaring trade, mounts guard upon piles of
+heterogeneous clothing, and, gaining the top of the fine staircase which
+forms the state entrance and connects the statued vestibule of the
+basement with the grand tier of boxes, opened an ambiguous door composed
+of little mirrors and found themselves in the society of the initiated.
+The janitors were courteous folk who greeted Sherringham as an
+acquaintance, and he had no difficulty in marshalling his little troop
+toward the foyer. They traversed a low, curving lobby, hung with
+pictures and furnished with velvet-covered benches where several
+unrecognised persons of both sexes looked at them without hostility, and
+arrived at an opening, on the right, from which, by a short flight of
+steps, there was a descent to one of the wings of the stage. Here
+Miriam paused, in silent excitement, like a young warrior arrested by a
+glimpse of the battle-field. Her vision was carried off through a lane
+of light to the point of vantage from which the actor held the house;
+but there was a hushed guard over the place and curiosity could only
+glance and pass.
+
+Then she came with her companions to a sort of parlour with a polished
+floor, not large and rather vacant, where her attention flew delightedly
+to a coat-tree, in a corner, from which three or four dresses were
+suspended--dresses she immediately perceived to be costumes in that
+night's play--accompanied by a saucer of something and a much-worn
+powder-puff casually left on a sofa. This was a familiar note in the
+general impression of high decorum which had begun at the threshold--a
+sense of majesty in the place. Miriam rushed at the powder-puff--there
+was no one in the room--snatched it up and gazed at it with droll
+veneration, then stood rapt a moment before the charming petticoats
+("That's Dunoyer's first underskirt," she said to her mother) while
+Sherringham explained that in this apartment an actress traditionally
+changed her gown when the transaction was simple enough to save the long
+ascent to her _loge_. He felt himself a cicerone showing a church to a
+party of provincials; and indeed there was a grave hospitality in the
+air, mingled with something academic and important, the tone of an
+institution, a temple, which made them all, out of respect and delicacy,
+hold their breath a little and tread the shining floors with discretion.
+
+These precautions increased--Mrs. Rooth crept about like a friendly but
+undomesticated cat--after they entered the foyer itself, a square,
+spacious saloon covered with pictures and relics and draped in official
+green velvet, where the _genius loci_ holds a reception every night in
+the year. The effect was freshly charming to Peter; he was fond of the
+place, always saw it again with pleasure, enjoyed its honourable look
+and the way, among the portraits and scrolls, the records of a splendid
+history, the green velvet and the waxed floors, the _genius loci_ seemed
+to be "at home" in the quiet lamplight. At the end of the room, in an
+ample chimney, blazed a fire of logs. Miriam said nothing; they looked
+about, noting that most of the portraits and pictures were
+"old-fashioned," and Basil Dashwood expressed disappointment at the
+absence of all the people they wanted most to see. Three or four
+gentlemen in evening dress circulated slowly, looking, like themselves,
+at the pictures, and another gentleman stood before a lady, with whom he
+was in conversation, seated against the wall. The foyer resembled in
+these conditions a ball-room, cleared for the dance, before the guests
+or the music had arrived.
+
+"Oh it's enough to see _this_; it makes my heart beat," said Miriam.
+"It's full of the vanished past, it makes me cry. I feel them here, all,
+the great artists I shall never see. Think of Rachel--look at her grand
+portrait there!--and how she stood on these very boards and trailed over
+them the robes of Hermione and Phèdre." The girl broke out theatrically,
+as on the spot was right, not a bit afraid of her voice as soon as it
+rolled through the room; appealing to her companions as they stood under
+the chandelier and making the other persons present, who had already
+given her some attention, turn round to stare at so unusual a specimen
+of the English miss. She laughed, musically, when she noticed this, and
+her mother, scandalised, begged her to lower her tone. "It's all right.
+I produce an effect," said Miriam: "it shan't be said that I too haven't
+had my little success in the maison de Molière." And Sherringham
+repeated that it was all right--the place was familiar with mirth and
+passion, there was often wonderful talk there, and it was only the
+setting that was still and solemn. It happened that this evening--there
+was no knowing in advance--the scene was not characteristically
+brilliant; but to confirm his assertion, at the moment he spoke,
+Mademoiselle Dunoyer, who was also in the play, came into the room
+attended by a pair of gentlemen.
+
+She was the celebrated, the perpetual, the necessary _ingénue_, who with
+all her talent couldn't have represented a woman of her actual age. She
+had the gliding, hopping movement of a small bird, the same air of
+having nothing to do with time, and the clear, sure, piercing note, a
+miracle of exact vocalisation. She chaffed her companions, she chaffed
+the room; she might have been a very clever little girl trying to
+personate a more innocent big one. She scattered her amiability
+about--showing Miriam how the children of Molière took their ease--and
+it quickly placed her in the friendliest communication with Peter
+Sherringham, who already enjoyed her acquaintance and who now extended
+it to his companions, and in particular to the young lady _sur le point
+d'entrer au théâtre._
+
+"You deserve a happier lot," said the actress, looking up at Miriam
+brightly, as if to a great height, and taking her in; upon which
+Sherringham left them together a little and led Mrs. Rooth and young
+Dashwood to consider further some of the pictures.
+
+"Most delightful, most curious," the old woman murmured about
+everything; while Basil Dashwood exclaimed in the presence of most of
+the portraits: "But their ugliness--their ugliness: did you ever see
+such a collection of hideous people? And those who were supposed to be
+good-looking--the beauties of the past--they're worse than the others.
+Ah you may say what you will, _nous sommes mieux que ça_!" Sherringham
+suspected him of irritation, of not liking the theatre of the great
+rival nation to be thrust down his throat. They returned to Miriam and
+Mademoiselle Dunoyer, and Peter asked the actress a question about one
+of the portraits to which there was no name attached. She replied, like
+a child who had only played about the room, that she was _toute
+honteuse_ not to be able to tell him the original: she had forgotten,
+she had never asked--"_Vous allez me trouver bien légère_!" She appealed
+to the other persons present, who formed a gallery for her, and laughed
+in delightful ripples at their suggestions, which she covered with
+ridicule. She bestirred herself; she declared she would ascertain, she
+shouldn't be happy till she did, and swam out of the room, with the
+prettiest paddles, to obtain the information, leaving behind her a
+perfume of delicate kindness and gaiety. She seemed above all things
+obliging, and Peter pronounced her almost as natural off the stage as
+on. She didn't come back.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Whether he had prearranged it is more than I can say, but Mademoiselle
+Voisin delayed so long to show herself that Mrs. Rooth, who wished to
+see the rest of the play, though she had sat it out on another occasion,
+expressed a returning relish for her corner of the _baignoire_ and gave
+her conductor the best pretext he could have desired for asking Basil
+Dashwood to be so good as to escort her back. When the young actor, of
+whose personal preference Peter was quite aware, had led Mrs. Rooth away
+with an absence of moroseness which showed that his striking resemblance
+to a gentleman was not kept for the footlights, the two others sat on a
+divan in the part of the room furthest from the entrance, so that it
+gave them a degree of privacy, and Miriam watched the coming and going
+of their fellow-visitors and the indefinite people, attached to the
+theatre, hanging about, while her companion gave a name to some of the
+figures, Parisian celebrities.
+
+"Fancy poor Dashwood cooped up there with mamma!" the girl exclaimed
+whimsically.
+
+"You're awfully cruel to him; but that's of course," said Sherringham.
+
+"It seems to me I'm as kind as you; you sent him off."
+
+"That was for your mother; she was tired."
+
+"Oh gammon! And why, if I _were_ cruel, should it be of course?"
+
+"Because you must destroy and torment and wear out--that's your nature.
+But you can't help your type, can you?"
+
+"My type?" she echoed.
+
+"It's bad, perverse, dangerous. It's essentially insolent."
+
+"And pray what's yours when you talk like that? Would you say such
+things if you didn't know the depths of my good nature?"
+
+"Your good nature all comes back to that," said Sherringham. "It's an
+abyss of ruin--for others. You've no respect. I'm speaking of the
+artistic character--in the direction and in the plentitude in which you
+have it. It's unscrupulous, nervous, capricious, wanton."
+
+"I don't know about respect. One can be good," Miriam mused and
+reasoned.
+
+"It doesn't matter so long as one's powerful," he returned. "We can't
+have everything, and surely we ought to understand that we must pay for
+things. A splendid organisation for a special end, like yours, is so
+rare and rich and fine that we oughtn't to grudge it its conditions."
+
+"What do you call its conditions?" Miriam asked as she turned and looked
+at him.
+
+"Oh the need to take its ease, to take up space, to make itself at home
+in the world, to square its elbows and knock, others about. That's large
+and free; it's the good nature you speak of. You must forage and ravage
+and leave a track behind you; you must live upon the country you
+traverse. And you give such delight that, after all, you're
+welcome--you're infinitely welcome!"
+
+"I don't know what you mean. I only care for the idea," the girl said.
+
+"That's exactly what I pretend--and we must all help you to it. You use
+us, you push us about, you break us up. We're your tables and chair, the
+simple furniture of your life."
+
+"Whom do you mean by 'we'?"
+
+Peter gave an ironic laugh. "Oh don't be afraid--there will be plenty of
+others!"
+
+She made no return to this, but after a moment broke out again. "Poor
+Dashwood immured with mamma--he's like a lame chair that one has put
+into the corner."
+
+"Don't break him up before he has served. I really believe something
+will come out of him," her companion went on. "However, you'll break me
+up first," he added, "and him probably never at all."
+
+"And why shall I honour you so much more?"
+
+"Because I'm a better article and you'll feel that."
+
+"You've the superiority of modesty--I see."
+
+"I'm better than a young mountebank--I've vanity enough to say that."
+
+She turned on him with a flush in her cheek and a splendid dramatic
+face. "How you hate us! Yes, at bottom, below your little cold taste,
+you _hate_ us!" she repeated.
+
+He coloured too, met her eyes, looked into them a minute, seemed to
+accept the imputation and then said quickly: "Give it up: come away with
+me."
+
+"Come away with you?"
+
+"Leave this place. Give it up."
+
+"You brought me here, you insisted it should be only you, and now you
+must stay," she declared with a head-shake and a high manner. "You
+should know what you want, dear Mr. Sherringham."
+
+"I do--I know now. Come away before you see her."
+
+"Before----?" she seemed to wonder.
+
+"She's success, this wonderful Voisin, she's triumph, she's full
+accomplishment: the hard, brilliant realisation of what I want to avert
+for you." Miriam looked at him in silence, the cold light still in her
+face, and he repeated: "Give it up--give it up."
+
+Her eyes softened after a little; she smiled and then said: "Yes, you're
+better than poor Dashwood."
+
+"Give it up and we'll live for ourselves, in ourselves, in something
+that can have a sanctity."
+
+"All the same you do hate us," the girl went on.
+
+"I don't want to be conceited, but I mean that I'm sufficiently fine and
+complicated to tempt you. I'm an expensive modern watch with a wonderful
+escapement--therefore you'll smash me if you can."
+
+"Never--never!" she said as she got up. "You tell me the hour too well."
+She quitted her companion and stood looking at Gérôme's fine portrait of
+the pale Rachel invested with the antique attributes of tragedy. The
+rise of the curtain had drawn away most of the company. Peter, from his
+bench, watched his friend a little, turning his eyes from her to the
+vivid image of the dead actress and thinking how little she suffered by
+the juxtaposition. Presently he came over and joined her again and she
+resumed: "I wonder if that's what your cousin had in his mind."
+
+"My cousin----?"
+
+"What was his name? Mr. Dormer; that first day at Madame Carré's. He
+offered to paint my portrait."
+
+"I remember. I put him up to it."
+
+"Was he thinking of this?"
+
+"I doubt if he has ever seen it. I daresay I was."
+
+"Well, when we go to London he must do it," said Miriam.
+
+"Oh there's no hurry," Peter was moved to reply.
+
+"Don't you want my picture?" asked the girl with one of her successful
+touches.
+
+"I'm not sure I want it from _him_. I don't know quite what he'd make of
+you."
+
+"He looked so clever--I liked him. I saw him again at your party."
+
+"He's a jolly good fellow; but what's one to say," Peter put to her, "of
+a painter who goes for his inspiration to the House of Commons?"
+
+"To the House of Commons?" she echoed.
+
+"He has lately got himself elected."
+
+"Dear me, what a pity! I wanted to sit for him. But perhaps he won't
+have me--as I'm not a member of Parliament."
+
+"It's my sister, rather, who has got him in."
+
+"Your sister who was at your house that day? What has she to do with
+it?" Miriam asked.
+
+"Why she's his cousin just as I am. And in addition," Sherringham went
+on, "she's to be married to him."
+
+"Married--really?" She had a pause, but she continued. "So he paints
+_her_, I suppose?"
+
+"Not much, probably. His talent in that line isn't what she esteems in
+him most."
+
+"It isn't great, then?"
+
+"I haven't the least idea."
+
+"And in the political line?" the girl persisted.
+
+"I scarcely can tell. He's very clever."
+
+"He does paint decently, then?"
+
+"I daresay."
+
+Miriam looked once more at Gérôme's picture. "Fancy his going into the
+House of Commons! And your sister put him there?"
+
+"She worked, she canvassed."
+
+"Ah you're a queer family!" she sighed, turning round at the sound of a
+step.
+
+"We're lost--here's Mademoiselle Voisin," said Sherringham.
+
+This celebrity presented herself smiling and addressing Miriam. "I acted
+for _you_ to-night--I did my best."
+
+"What a pleasure to speak to you, to thank you!" the girl murmured
+admiringly. She was startled and dazzled.
+
+"I couldn't come to you before, but now I've got a rest--for half an
+hour," the actress went on. Gracious and passive, as if a little spent,
+she let Sherringham, without looking at him, take her hand and raise it
+to his lips. "I'm sorry I make you lose the others--they're so good in
+this act," she added.
+
+"We've seen them before and there's nothing so good as you," Miriam
+promptly returned.
+
+"I like my part," said Mademoiselle Voisin gently, smiling still at our
+young lady with clear, charming eyes. "One's always better in that
+case."
+
+"She's so bad sometimes, you know!" Peter jested to Miriam; leading the
+actress thus to glance at him, kindly and vaguely, in a short silence
+which you couldn't call on her part embarrassment, but which was still
+less affectation.
+
+"And it's so interesting to be here--so interesting!" Miriam protested.
+
+"Ah you like our old house? Yes, we're very proud of it." And
+Mademoiselle Voisin smiled again at Sherringham all good-humouredly, but
+as if to say: "Well, here I am, and what do you want of me? Don't ask me
+to invent it myself, but if you'll tell me I'll do it." Miriam admired
+the note of discreet interrogation in her voice--the slight suggestion
+of surprise at their "old house" being liked. This performer was an
+astonishment from her seeming still more perfect on a nearer view--which
+was not, the girl had an idea, what performers usually did. This was
+very encouraging to her--it widened the programme of a young lady about
+to embrace the scenic career. To have so much to show before the
+footlights and yet to have so much left when you came off--that was
+really wonderful. Mademoiselle Voisin's eyes, as one looked into them,
+were still more agreeable than the distant spectator would have
+supposed; and there was in her appearance an extreme finish which
+instantly suggested to Miriam that she herself, in comparison, was big
+and rough and coarse.
+
+"You're lovely to-night--you're particularly lovely," Sherringham said
+very frankly, translating Miriam's own impression and at the same time
+giving her an illustration of the way that, in Paris at least, gentlemen
+expressed themselves to the stars of the drama. She thought she knew her
+companion very well and had been witness of the degree to which, in such
+general conditions, his familiarity could increase; but his address to
+the slim, distinguished, harmonious woman before them had a different
+quality, the note of a special usage. If Miriam had had an apprehension
+that such directness might be taken as excessive it was removed by the
+manner in which Mademoiselle Voisin returned:
+
+"Oh one's always well enough when one's made up; one's always exactly
+the same." That served as an example of the good taste with which a star
+of the drama could receive homage that was wanting in originality.
+Miriam determined on the spot that this should be the way _she_ would
+ever receive it. The grace of her new acquaintance was the greater as
+the becoming bloom to which she alluded as artificial was the result of
+a science so consummate that it had none of the grossness of a mask. The
+perception of all this was exciting to our young aspirant, and her
+excitement relieved itself in the inquiry, which struck her as rude as
+soon as she had uttered it:
+
+"You acted for 'me'? How did you know? What am I to you?"
+
+"Monsieur Sherringham has told me about you. He says we're nothing
+beside you--that you're to be the great star of the future. I'm proud
+that you've seen me."
+
+"That of course is what I tell every one," Peter acknowledged a trifle
+awkwardly to Miriam.
+
+"I can believe it when I see you. _Je vous ai bien observée_," the
+actress continued in her sweet conciliatory tone.
+
+Miriam looked from one of her interlocutors to the other as if there
+were joy for her in this report of Sherringham's remarks--joy
+accompanied and partly mitigated, however, by a quicker vision of what
+might have passed between a secretary of embassy and a creature so
+exquisite as Mademoiselle Voisin. "Ah you're wonderful people--a most
+interesting impression!" she yearningly sighed.
+
+"I was looking for you; he had prepared me. We're such old friends!"
+said the actress in a tone courteously exempt from intention: upon which
+Sherringham, again taking her hand, raised it to his lips with a
+tenderness which her whole appearance seemed to bespeak for her, a sort
+of practical consideration and carefulness of touch, as if she were an
+object precious and frail, an instrument for producing rare sounds, to
+be handled, like a legendary violin, with a recognition of its value.
+
+"Your dressing-room is so pretty--show her your dressing-room," he went
+on.
+
+"Willingly, if she'll come up. _Vous savez que c'est une montée."_
+
+"It's a shame to inflict it on _you_," Miriam objected.
+
+"_Comment donc?_ If it will interest you in the least!" They exchanged
+civilities, almost caresses, trying which could have the nicest manner
+to the other. It was the actress's manner that struck Miriam most; it
+denoted such a training, so much taste, expressed such a ripe conception
+of urbanity.
+
+"No wonder she acts well when she has that tact--feels, perceives, is so
+remarkable, _mon Dieu, mon Dieu!"_ the girl said to herself as they
+followed their conductress into another corridor and up a wide, plain
+staircase. The staircase was spacious and long and this part of the
+establishment sombre and still, with the gravity of a college or a
+convent. They reached another passage lined with little doors, on each
+of which the name of a comedian was painted, and here the aspect became
+still more monastic, like that of a row of solitary cells. Mademoiselle
+Voisin led the way to her own door all obligingly and as if wishing to
+be hospitable; she dropped little subdued, friendly attempts at
+explanation on the way. At her threshold the monasticism stopped--Miriam
+found herself in a wonderfully upholstered nook, a nest of lamplight and
+delicate cretonne. Save for its pair of long glasses it might have been
+a tiny boudoir, with a water-colour drawing of value in each of its
+panels of stretched stuff, with its crackling fire and its charming
+order. It was intensely bright and extremely hot, singularly pretty and
+exempt from litter. Nothing lay about, but a small draped doorway led
+into an inner sanctuary. To Miriam it seemed royal; it immediately made
+the art of the comedian the most distinguished thing in the world. It
+was just such a place as they _should_ have for their intervals if they
+were expected to be great artists. It was a result of the same evolution
+as Mademoiselle Voisin herself--not that our young lady found this
+particular term at hand to express her idea. But her mind was flooded
+with an impression of style, of refinement, of the long continuity of a
+tradition. The actress said, _"Voilà, c'est tout!"_ as if it were little
+enough and there were even something clumsy in her having brought them
+so far for nothing, and in their all sitting there waiting and looking
+at each other till it was time for her to change her dress. But to
+Miriam it was occupation enough to note what she did and said: these
+things and her whole person and carriage struck our young woman as
+exquisite in their adaptation to the particular occasion. She had had an
+idea that foreign actresses were rather of the _cabotin_ order, but her
+hostess suggested to her much more a princess than a _cabotine_. She
+would do things as she liked and do them straight off: Miriam couldn't
+fancy her in the gropings and humiliations of rehearsal. Everything in
+her had been sifted and formed, her tone was perfect, her amiability
+complete, and she might have been the charming young wife of a secretary
+of state receiving a pair of strangers of distinction. The girl observed
+all her movements. And then, as Sherringham had said, she was
+particularly lovely. But she suddenly told this gentleman that she must
+put him _à la porte_--she wanted to change her dress. He retired and
+returned to the foyer, where Miriam was to rejoin him after remaining
+the few minutes more with Mademoiselle Voisin and coming down with her.
+He waited for his companion, walking up and down and making up his mind;
+and when she presently came in he said to her:
+
+"Please don't go back for the rest of the play. Stay here." They now had
+the foyer virtually to themselves.
+
+"I want to stay here. I like it better," She moved back to the
+chimney-piece, from above which the cold portrait of Rachel looked down,
+and as he accompanied her he went on:
+
+"I meant what I said just now."
+
+"What you said to Voisin?"
+
+"No, no; to you. Give it up and live with _me."_
+
+"Give it up?" She turned her stage face on him.
+
+"Give it up and I'll marry you to-morrow."
+
+"This is a happy time to ask it!" she said with superior amusement. "And
+this is a good place!"
+
+"Very good indeed, and that's why I speak: it's a place to make one
+choose--it puts it all before one."
+
+"To make _you_ choose, you mean. I'm much obliged, but that's not my
+choice," laughed Miriam.
+
+"You shall be anything you like except this."
+
+"Except what I most want to be? I _am_ much obliged."
+
+"Don't you care for me? Haven't you any gratitude?" Sherringham
+insisted.
+
+"Gratitude for kindly removing the blest cup from my lips? I want to be
+what _she_ is--I want it more than ever."
+
+"Ah what she is--!" He took it impatiently.
+
+"Do you mean I can't? Well see if I can't. Tell me more about her--tell
+me everything."
+
+"Haven't you seen for yourself and, knowing things as you do, can't you
+judge?"
+
+"She's strange, she's mysterious," Miriam allowed, looking at the fire.
+"She showed us nothing--nothing of her real self."
+
+"So much the better, all things considered."
+
+"Are there all sorts of other things in her life? That's what I
+believe," the girl went on, raising her eyes to him.
+
+"I can't tell you what there is in the life of such a woman."
+
+"Imagine--when she's so perfect!" she exclaimed thoughtfully. "Ah she
+kept me off--she kept me off! Her charming manner is in itself a kind
+of contempt. It's an abyss--it's the wall of China. She has a hard
+polish, an inimitable surface, like some wonderful porcelain that costs
+more than you'd think."
+
+"Do you want to become like that?" Sherringham asked.
+
+"If I could I should be enchanted. One can always try."
+
+"You must act better than she," he went on.
+
+"Better? I thought you wanted me to give it up."
+
+"Ah I don't know what I want," he cried, "and you torment me and turn me
+inside out! What I want is you yourself."
+
+"Oh don't worry," said Miriam--now all kindly. Then she added that
+Mademoiselle Voisin had invited her to "call"; to which Sherringham
+replied with a certain dryness that she would probably not find that
+necessary. This made the girl stare and she asked: "Do you mean it won't
+do on account of mamma's prejudices?"
+
+"Say this time on account of mine."
+
+"Do you mean because she has lovers?"
+
+"Her lovers are none of our business."
+
+"None of mine, I see. So you've been one of them?"
+
+"No such luck!"
+
+"What a pity!" she richly wailed. "I should have liked to see that. One
+must see everything--to be able to do everything." And as he pressed for
+what in particular she had wished to see she replied: "The way a woman
+like that receives one of the old ones."
+
+Peter gave a groan at this, which was at the same time partly a laugh,
+and, turning away to drop on a bench, ejaculated: "You'll do--you'll
+do!"
+
+He sat there some minutes with his elbows on his knees and his face in
+his hands. His friend remained looking at the portrait of Rachel, after
+which she put to him: "Doesn't such a woman as that receive--receive
+every one?"
+
+"Every one who goes to see her, no doubt."
+
+"And who goes?"
+
+"Lots of men--clever men, eminent men."
+
+"Ah what a charming life! Then doesn't she go out?"
+
+"Not what we Philistines mean by that--not into society, never. She
+never enters a lady's drawing-room."
+
+"How strange, when one's as distinguished as that; except that she must
+escape a lot of stupidities and _corvées_. Then where does she learn
+such manners?"
+
+"She teaches manners, _à ses heures_: she doesn't need to learn them."
+
+"Oh she has given me ideas! But in London actresses go into society,"
+Miriam continued.
+
+"Oh into ours, such as it is. In London _nous mêlons les genres_."
+
+"And shan't I go--I mean if I want?"
+
+"You'll have every facility to bore yourself. Don't doubt it."
+
+"And doesn't she feel excluded?" Miriam asked.
+
+"Excluded from what? She has the fullest life."
+
+"The fullest?"
+
+"An intense artistic life. The cleverest men in Paris talk over her work
+with her; the principal authors of plays discuss with her subjects and
+characters and questions of treatment. She lives in the world of art."
+
+"Ah the world of art--how I envy her! And you offer me Dashwood!"
+
+Sherringham rose in his emotion. "I 'offer' you--?"
+
+Miriam burst out laughing. "You look so droll! You offer me yourself,
+then, instead of all these things."
+
+"My dear child, I also am a very clever man," he said, trying to sink
+his consciousness of having for a moment stood gaping.
+
+"You are--you are; I delight in you. No ladies at all--no _femmes comme
+il faut?"_ she began again.
+
+"Ah what do _they_ matter? Your business is the artistic life!" he broke
+out with inconsequence, irritated, moreover, at hearing her sound that
+trivial note again.
+
+"You're a dear--your charming good sense comes back to you! What do you
+want of me, then?"
+
+"I want you for myself--not for others; and now, in time, before
+anything's done."
+
+"Why, then, did you bring me here? Everything's done--I feel it
+to-night."
+
+"I know the way you should look at it--if you do look at it at all,"
+Sherringham conceded.
+
+"That's so easy! I thought you liked the stage so," Miriam artfully
+added.
+
+"Don't you want me to be a great swell?"
+
+"And don't you want _me_ to be?"
+
+"You _will_ be--you'll share my glory."
+
+"So will you share mine."
+
+"The husband of an actress? Yes, I see myself that!" Peter cried with a
+frank ring of disgust.
+
+"It's a silly position, no doubt. But if you're too good for it why talk
+about it? Don't you think I'm important?" she demanded. Her companion
+met her eyes and she suddenly said in a different tone: "Ah why should
+we quarrel when you've been so kind, so generous? Can't we always be
+friends--the truest friends?"
+
+Her voice sank to the sweetest cadence and her eyes were grateful and
+good as they rested on him. She sometimes said things with such
+perfection that they seemed dishonest, but in this case he was stirred
+to an expressive response. Just as he was making it, however, he was
+moved to utter other words: "Take care, here's Dashwood!" Mrs. Rooth's
+tried attendant was in the doorway. He had come back to say that they
+really must relieve him.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK FIFTH
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+Mrs. Dallow came up to London soon after the meeting of Parliament; she
+made no secret of the fact that she was fond of "town" and that in
+present conditions it would of course not have become less attractive to
+her. But she prepared to retreat again for the Easter vacation, not to
+go back to Harsh, but to pay a couple of country visits. She did not,
+however, depart with the crowd--she never did anything with the
+crowd--but waited till the Monday after Parliament rose; facing with
+composure, in Great Stanhope Street, the horrors, as she had been taught
+to consider them, of a Sunday out of the session. She had done what she
+could to mitigate them by asking a handful of "stray men" to dine with
+her that evening. Several members of this disconsolate class sought
+comfort in Great Stanhope Street in the afternoon, and them for the most
+part she also invited to return at eight o'clock. There were accordingly
+almost too many people at dinner; there were even a couple of wives.
+Nick Dormer was then present, though he had not been in the afternoon.
+Each of the other persons had said on coming in, "So you've not
+gone--I'm awfully glad." Mrs. Dallow had replied, "No, I've not gone,"
+but she had in no case added that she was glad, nor had she offered an
+explanation. She never offered explanations; she always assumed that no
+one could invent them so well as those who had the florid taste to
+desire them.
+
+And in this case she was right, since it is probable that few of her
+visitors failed to say to themselves that her not having gone would have
+had something to do with Dormer. That could pass for an explanation with
+many of Mrs. Dallow's friends, who as a general thing were not morbidly
+analytic; especially with those who met Nick as a matter of course at
+dinner. His figuring at this lady's entertainments, being in her house
+whenever a candle was lighted, was taken as a sign that there was
+something rather particular between them. Nick had said to her more than
+once that people would wonder why they didn't marry; but he was wrong in
+this, inasmuch as there were many of their friends to whom it wouldn't
+have occurred that his position could be improved. That they were
+cousins was a fact not so evident to others as to themselves, in
+consequence of which they appeared remarkably intimate. The person
+seeing clearest in the matter was Mrs. Gresham, who lived so much in the
+world that being left now and then to one's own company had become her
+idea of true sociability. She knew very well that if she had been
+privately engaged to a young man as amiable as Nick Dormer she would
+have managed that publicity shouldn't play such a part in their
+intercourse; and she had her secret scorn for the stupidity of people
+whose conception of Nick's relation to Julia rested on the fact that he
+was always included in her parties. "If he never was there they might
+talk," she said to herself. But Mrs. Gresham was supersubtle. To her it
+would have appeared natural that her friend should celebrate the
+parliamentary recess by going down to Harsh and securing the young man's
+presence there for a fortnight; she recognised Mrs. Dallow's actual plan
+as a comparatively poor substitute--the project of spending the
+holidays in other people's houses, to which Nick had also promised to
+come. Mrs. Gresham was romantic; she wondered what was the good of mere
+snippets and snatches, the chances that any one might have, when large,
+still days _à deux_ were open to you--chances of which half the sanctity
+was in what they excluded. However, there were more unsettled matters
+between Mrs. Dallow and her queer kinsman than even Mrs. Gresham's fine
+insight could embrace. She was not on the Sunday evening before Easter
+among the guests in Great Stanhope Street; but if she had been Julia's
+singular indifference to observation would have stopped short of
+encouraging her to remain in the drawing-room, along with Nick, after
+the others had gone. I may add that Mrs. Gresham's extreme curiosity
+would have emboldened her as little to do so. She would have taken for
+granted that the pair wished to be alone together, though she would have
+regarded this only as a snippet. The company had at all events stayed
+late, and it was nearly twelve o'clock when the last of them, standing
+before the fire in the room they had quitted, broke out to his
+companion:
+
+"See here, Julia, how long do you really expect me to endure this kind
+of thing?" Julia made him no answer; she only leaned back in her chair
+with her eyes upon his. He met her gaze a moment; then he turned round
+to the fire and for another moment looked into it. After this he faced
+his hostess again with the exclamation: "It's so foolish--it's so
+damnably foolish!"
+
+She still said nothing, but at the end of a minute she spoke without
+answering him. "I shall expect you on Tuesday, and I hope you'll come by
+a decent train."
+
+"What do you mean by a decent train?"
+
+"I mean I hope you'll not leave it till the last thing before dinner, so
+that we can have a little walk or something."
+
+"What's a little walk or something? Why, if you make such a point of my
+coming to Griffin, do you want me to come at all?"
+
+She hesitated an instant; then she returned; "I knew you hated it!"
+
+"You provoke me so," said Nick. "You try to, I think."
+
+"And Severals is still worse. You'll get out of that if you can," Mrs.
+Dallow went on.
+
+"If I can? What's to prevent me?"
+
+"You promised Lady Whiteroy. But of course that's nothing."
+
+"I don't care a straw for Lady Whiteroy."
+
+"And you promised me. But that's less still."
+
+"It _is_ foolish--it's quite idiotic," said Nick with his hands in his
+pockets and his eyes on the ceiling.
+
+There was another silence, at the end of which Julia remarked: "You
+might have answered Mr. Macgeorge when he spoke to you."
+
+"Mr. Macgeorge--what has he to do with it?"
+
+"He has to do with your getting on a little. If you think that's the
+way--!"
+
+Nick broke into a laugh. "I like lessons in getting on--in other words I
+suppose you mean in urbanity--from you, Julia!"
+
+"Why not from me?"
+
+"Because you can do nothing base. You're incapable of putting on a
+flattering manner to get something by it: therefore why should you
+expect me to? You're unflattering--that is, you're austere--in
+proportion as there may be something to be got."
+
+She sprang from her chair, coming toward him. "There's only one thing I
+want in the world--you know very well."
+
+"Yes, you want it so much that you won't even take it when it's pressed
+on you. How long do you seriously expect me to bear it?" Nick repeated.
+
+"I never asked you to do anything base," she said as she stood in front
+of him. "If I'm not clever about throwing myself into things it's all
+the more reason you should be."
+
+"If you're not clever, my dear Julia--?" Nick, close to her, placed his
+hands on her shoulders and shook her with a mixture of tenderness and
+passion. "You're clever enough to make me furious, sometimes!"
+
+She opened and closed her fan looking down at it while she submitted to
+his mild violence. "All I want is that when a man like Mr. Macgeorge
+talks to you you shouldn't appear bored to death. You used to be so
+charming under those inflictions. Now you appear to take no interest in
+anything. At dinner to-night you scarcely opened your lips; you treated
+them all as if you only wished they'd go."
+
+"I did wish they'd go. Haven't I told you a hundred times what I think
+of your salon?"
+
+"How then do you want me to live?" she asked. "Am I not to have a
+creature in the house?"
+
+"As many creatures as you like. Your freedom's complete and, as far as
+I'm concerned, always will be. Only when you challenge me and overhaul
+me--not justly, I think--I must confess the simple truth, that there are
+many of your friends I don't delight in."
+
+"Oh _your_ idea of pleasant people!" Julia lamented. "I should like once
+for all to know what it really is."
+
+"I can tell you what it really isn't: it isn't Mr. Macgeorge. He's a
+being almost grotesquely limited."
+
+"He'll be where you'll never be--unless you change."
+
+"To be where Mr. Macgeorge is not would be very much my desire.
+Therefore why should I change?" Nick demanded. "However, I hadn't the
+least intention of being rude to him, and I don't think I was," he went
+on. "To the best of my ability I assume a virtue if I haven't it; but
+apparently I'm not enough of a comedian."
+
+"If you haven't it?" she echoed. "It's when you say things like that
+that you're so dreadfully tiresome. As if there were anything that you
+haven't or mightn't have!"
+
+Nick turned away from her; he took a few impatient steps in the room,
+looking at the carpet, his hands always in his pockets. Then he came
+back to the fire with the observation: "It's rather hard to be found so
+wanting when one has tried to play one's part so beautifully." He paused
+with his eyes on her own and then went on with a vibration in his voice:
+"I've imperilled my immortal soul, or at least bemuddled my
+intelligence, by all the things I don't care for that I've tried to do,
+and all the things I detest that I've tried to be, and all the things I
+never can be that I've tried to look as if I were--all the appearances
+and imitations, the pretences and hypocrisies in which I've steeped
+myself to the eyes; and at the end of it (it serves me right!) my reward
+is simply to learn that I'm still not half humbug enough!"
+
+Julia looked away from him as soon as he had spoken these words; she
+attached her eyes to the clock behind him and observed irrelevantly:
+"I'm very sorry, but I think you had better go. I don't like you to stay
+after midnight."
+
+"Ah what you like and what you don't like, and where one begins and the
+other ends--all that's an impenetrable mystery!" the young man
+declared. But he took no further notice of her allusion to his
+departure, adding in a different tone: "'A man like Mr. Macgeorge'! When
+you say a thing of that sort in a certain, particular way I should
+rather like to suffer you to perish."
+
+Mrs. Dallow stared; it might have seemed for an instant that she was
+trying to look stupid. "How can I help it if a few years hence he's
+certain to be at the head of any Liberal Government?"
+
+"We can't help it of course, but we can help talking about it," Nick
+smiled. "If we don't mention it it mayn't be noticed."
+
+"You're trying to make me angry. You're in one of your vicious moods,"
+she returned, blowing out on the chimney-piece a guttering candle.
+
+"That I'm exasperated I've already had the honour very positively to
+inform you. All the same I maintain that I was irreproachable at dinner.
+I don't want you to think I shall always be as good as that."
+
+"You looked so out of it; you were as gloomy as if every earthly hope
+had left you, and you didn't make a single contribution to any
+discussion that took place. Don't you think I observe you?" she asked
+with an irony tempered by a tenderness unsuccessfully concealed.
+
+"Ah my darling, what you observe--!" Nick cried with a certain
+bitterness of amusement. But he added the next moment more seriously, as
+if his tone had been disrespectful: "You probe me to the bottom, no
+doubt."
+
+"You needn't come either to Griffin or to Severals if you don't want
+to."
+
+"Give them up yourself; stay here with me!"
+
+She coloured quickly as he said this, and broke out: "Lord, how you hate
+political houses!"
+
+"How can you say that when from February to August I spend every blessed
+night in one?"
+
+"Yes, and hate that worst of all."
+
+"So do half the people who are in it. You, my dear, must have so many
+things, so many people, so much _mise-en-scène_ and such a perpetual
+spectacle to live," Nick went on. "Perpetual motion, perpetual visits,
+perpetual crowds! If you go into the country you'll see forty people
+every day and be mixed up with them all day. The idea of a quiet
+fortnight in town, when by a happy if idiotic superstition everybody
+goes out of it, disconcerts and frightens you. It's the very time, it's
+the very place, to do a little work and possess one's soul."
+
+This vehement allocution found her evidently somewhat unprepared; but
+she was sagacious enough, instead of attempting for the moment a general
+rejoinder, to seize on a single phrase and say: "Work? What work can you
+do in London at such a moment as this?"
+
+Nick considered. "I might tell you I want to get up a lot of subjects,
+to sit at home and read blue-books; but that wouldn't be quite what I
+mean."
+
+"Do you mean you want to paint?"
+
+"Yes, that's it, since you gouge it out of me."
+
+"Why do you make such a mystery about it? You're at perfect liberty,"
+Julia said.
+
+She put out her hand to rest it on the mantel-shelf, but her companion
+took it on the way and held it in both his own. "You're delightful,
+Julia, when you speak in that tone--then I know why it is I love you.
+But I can't do anything if I go to Griffin, if I go to Severals."
+
+"I see--I see," she answered thoughtfully and kindly.
+
+"I've scarcely been inside of my studio for months, and I feel quite
+homesick for it. The idea of putting in a few quiet days there has taken
+hold of me: I rather cling to it."
+
+"It seems so odd your having a studio!" Julia dropped, speaking so
+quickly that the words were almost incomprehensible.
+
+"Doesn't it sound absurd, for all the good it does me, or I do _in_ it?
+Of course one can produce nothing but rubbish on such terms--without
+continuity or persistence, with just a few days here and there. I ought
+to be ashamed of myself, no doubt; but even my rubbish interests me.
+'_Guenille si l'on veut, ma guenille m'est chère_.' But I'll go down to
+Harsh with you in a moment, Julia," Nick pursued: "that would do as well
+if we could be quiet there, without people, without a creature; and I
+should really be perfectly content. You'd beautifully sit for me; it
+would be the occasion we've so often wanted and never found."
+
+She shook her head slowly and with a smile that had a meaning for him.
+"Thank you, my dear; nothing would induce me to go to Harsh with you."
+
+He looked at her hard. "What's the matter whenever it's a question of
+anything of that sort? Are you afraid of me?" She pulled her hand from
+him quickly, turning away; but he went on: "Stay with me here then, when
+everything's so right for it. We shall do beautifully--have the whole
+place, have the whole day, to ourselves. Hang your engagements!
+Telegraph you won't come. We'll live at the studio--you'll sit to me
+every day. Now or never's our chance--when shall we have so good a one?
+Think how charming it will be! I'll make you wish awfully that I may do
+something."
+
+"I can't get out of Griffin--it's impossible," Julia said, moving
+further away and with her back presented to him.
+
+"Then you _are_ afraid of me--simply!"
+
+She turned straight round, very pale. "Of course I am. You're welcome to
+know it."
+
+He went toward her, and for a moment she seemed to make another slight
+movement of retreat. This, however, was scarcely perceptible, and there
+was nothing to alarm in the tone of reasonable entreaty in which he
+spoke as he stood there. "Put an end, Julia, to our absurd situation--it
+really can't go on. You've no right to expect a man to be happy or
+comfortable in so false a position. We're spoken of odiously--of that we
+may be sure; and yet what good have we of it?"
+
+"Spoken of? Do I care for that?"
+
+"Do you mean you're indifferent because there are no grounds? That's
+just why I hate it."
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about!" she returned with sharp
+disdain.
+
+"Be my wife to-morrow--be my wife next week. Let us have done with this
+fantastic probation and be happy."
+
+"Leave me now--come back to-morrow. I'll write to you." She had the air
+of pleading with him at present, pleading as he pleaded.
+
+"You can't resign yourself to the idea of one's looking 'out of it'!"
+Nick laughed.
+
+"Come to-morrow, before lunch," she went on.
+
+"To be told I must wait six months more and then be sent about my
+business? Ah, Julia, Julia!" the young man groaned.
+
+Something in this simple lament--it sounded natural and perfectly
+unstudied--seemed straightway to make a great impression on her. "You
+shall wait no longer," she said after a short silence.
+
+"What do you mean by no longer?"
+
+"Give me about five weeks--say till the Whitsuntide recess."
+
+"Five weeks are a great deal," smiled Nick.
+
+"There are things to be done--you ought to understand."
+
+"I only understand how I love you."
+
+She let herself go--"Dearest Nick!"--and he caught her and kept her in
+his arms.
+
+"I've your promise then for five weeks hence to a day?" he demanded as
+she at last released herself.
+
+"We'll settle that--the exact day; there are things to consider and to
+arrange. Come to luncheon to-morrow."
+
+"I'll come early--I'll come at one," he said; and for a moment they
+stood all deeply and intimately taking each other in.
+
+"Do you think I _want_ to wait, any more than you?" she asked in
+congruity with this.
+
+"I don't feel so much out of it now!" he declared by way of answer.
+"You'll stay of course now--you'll give up your visits?"
+
+She had hold of the lappet of his coat; she had kept it in her hand even
+while she detached herself from his embrace. There was a white flower in
+his buttonhole that she looked at and played with a moment before she
+said; "I've a better idea--you needn't come to Griffin. Stay in your
+studio--do as you like--paint dozens of pictures."
+
+"Dozens? Barbarian!" Nick wailed.
+
+The epithet apparently had an endearing suggestion for her; it at any
+rate led her to let him possess himself of her head and, so holding it,
+kiss her--led her to say: "What on earth do I want but that you should
+do absolutely as you please and be as happy as you can?"
+
+He kissed her in another place at this; but he put it to her; "What
+dreadful proposition is coming now?"
+
+"I'll go off and do up my visits and come back."
+
+"And leave me alone?"
+
+"Don't be affected! You know you'll work much better without me. You'll
+live in your studio--I shall be well out of the way."
+
+"That's not what one wants of a sitter. How can I paint you?"
+
+"You can paint me all the rest of your life. I shall be a perpetual
+sitter."
+
+"I believe I could paint you without looking at you"--and his lighted
+face shone down on her. "You do excuse me then from those dreary
+places?"
+
+"How can I insist after what you said about the pleasure of keeping
+these days?" she admirably--it was so all sincerely--asked.
+
+"You're the best woman on earth--though it does seem odd you should rush
+away as soon as our little business is settled."
+
+"We shall make it up. I know what I'm about. And now go!" She ended by
+almost pushing him out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+It was certainly singular, in the light of other matters, that on
+sitting down in his studio after she had left town Nick should not, as
+regards the effort to project plastically some beautiful form, have felt
+more chilled by the absence of a friend who was such an embodiment of
+beauty. She was away and he missed her and longed for her, and yet
+without her the place was more filled with what he wanted to find in it.
+He turned into it with confused feelings, the strongest of which was a
+sense of release and recreation. It looked blighted and lonely and
+dusty, and his old studies, as he rummaged them out, struck him even as
+less inspired than the last time he had ventured to face them. But amid
+this neglected litter, in the colourless and obstructed light of a high
+north window which needed washing, he came nearer tasting the
+possibility of positive happiness: it appeared to him that, as he had
+said to Julia, he was more in possession of his soul. It was frivolity
+and folly, it was puerility, to spend valuable hours pottering over the
+vain implements of an art he had relinquished; and a certain shame that
+he had felt in presenting his plea to Julia that Sunday night arose from
+the sense not of what he clung to, but of what he had given up. He had
+turned his back on serious work, so that pottering was now all he could
+aspire to. It couldn't be fruitful, it couldn't be anything but
+ridiculous, almost ignoble; but it soothed his nerves, it was in the
+nature of a secret dissipation. He had never suspected he should some
+day have nerves on his own part to count with; but this possibility had
+been revealed to him on the day it became clear that he was letting
+something precious go. He was glad he had not to justify himself to the
+critical, for this might have been a delicate business. The critical
+were mostly absent; and besides, shut up all day in his studio, how
+should he ever meet them? It was the place in the world where he felt
+furthest away from his constituents. That was a part of the
+pleasure--the consciousness that for the hour the coast was clear and
+his mind independent. His mother and his sister had gone to Broadwood:
+Lady Agnes--the phrase sounds brutal but represents his state of
+mind--was well out of the way. He had written to her as soon as Julia
+left town--he had apprised her of the fact that his wedding-day was
+fixed: a relief for poor Lady Agnes to a period of intolerable
+mystification, of dark, dumb wondering and watching. She had said her
+say the day of the poll at Harsh; she was too proud to ask and too
+discreet to "nag"; so she could only wait for something that didn't
+come. The unconditioned loan of Broadwood had of course been something
+of a bribe to patience: she had at first felt that on the day she should
+take possession of that capital house Julia would indeed seem to have
+entered the family. But the gift had confirmed expectations just enough
+to make disappointment more bitter; and the discomfort was greater in
+proportion as she failed to discover what was the matter. Her daughter
+Grace was much occupied with this question, and brought it up for
+discussion in a manner irritating to her ladyship, who had a high theory
+of being silent about it, but who, however, in the long run, was more
+unhappy when, in consequence of a reprimand, the girl suggested no
+reasons at all than when she suggested stupid ones. It eased Lady Agnes
+a little to advert to the mystery when she could have the air of not
+having begun.
+
+The letter Nick received from her the first day of Passion Week in reply
+to his important communication was the only one he read at that moment;
+not counting of course the several notes Mrs. Dallow addressed to him
+from Griffin. There were letters piled up, as he knew, in Calcutta
+Gardens, which his servant had strict orders not to bring to the studio.
+Nick slept now in the bedroom attached to this retreat; got things, as
+he wanted them, from Calcutta Gardens; and dined at his club, where a
+stray surviving friend or two, seeing him prowl about the library in the
+evening, was free to impute to such eccentricity some subtly political
+basis. When he thought of his neglected letters he remembered Mr.
+Carteret's convictions on the subject of not "getting behind"; they made
+him laugh, in the slightly sonorous painting-room, as he bent over one
+of the old canvases that he had ventured to turn to the light. He was
+fully determined, however, to master his correspondence before going
+down, the last thing before Parliament should reassemble, to spend
+another day at Beauclere. Mastering his correspondence meant, in Nick's
+mind, breaking open envelopes; writing answers was scarcely involved in
+the idea. But Mr. Carteret would never guess that. Nick was not moved
+even to write to him that the affair with Julia was on the point of
+taking the form he had been so good as to desire: he reserved the
+pleasure of this announcement for a personal interview.
+
+The day before Good Friday, in the morning, his stillness was broken by
+a rat-tat-tat on the outer door of his studio, administered apparently
+by the knob of a walking-stick. His servant was out and he went to the
+door, wondering who his visitor could be at such a time, especially of
+the rather presuming class. The class was indicated by the visitor's
+failure to look for the bell--since there _was_ a bell, though it
+required a little research. In a moment the mystery was solved: the
+gentleman who stood smiling at him from the threshold could only be
+Gabriel Nash. Nick had not seen this whimsical personage for several
+months, and had had no news of him beyond a general intimation that he
+was following his fancy in foreign parts. His old friend had
+sufficiently prepared him, at the time of their reunion in Paris, for
+the idea of the fitful in intercourse; and he had not been ignorant, on
+his return from Paris, that he should have had an opportunity to miss
+him if he had not been too busy to take advantage of it. In London,
+after the episode at Harsh, Gabriel had not reappeared: he had redeemed
+none of the pledges given the night they walked together to Notre Dame
+and conversed on important matters. He was to have interposed in Nick's
+destiny, but he had not interposed; he was to have pulled him hard and
+in the opposite sense from Julia, but there had been no pulling; he was
+to have saved him, as he called it, and yet Nick was lost. This
+circumstance indeed formed his excuse: the member for Harsh had rushed
+so wantonly to perdition. Nick had for the hour seriously wished to keep
+hold of him: he valued him as a salutary influence. Yet on coming to his
+senses after his election our young man had recognised that Nash might
+very well have reflected on the thanklessness of such a slippery
+subject--might have held himself released from his vows. Of course it
+had been particularly in the event of a Liberal triumph that he had
+threatened to make himself felt; the effect of a brand plucked from the
+burning would be so much greater if the flames were already high. Yet
+Nick had not kept him to the letter of this pledge, and had so fully
+admitted the right of a thorough connoisseur, let alone a faithful
+friend, to lose patience with him that he was now far from greeting his
+visitor with a reproach. He felt much more thrown on his defence.
+
+Gabriel, however, forbore at first to attack him. He brought in only
+blandness and benevolence and a great content at having obeyed the
+mystic voice--it was really a remarkable case of second sight--which had
+whispered him that the recreant comrade of his prime was in town. He had
+just come back from Sicily after a southern winter, according to a
+custom frequent with him, and had been moved by a miraculous prescience,
+unfavourable as the moment might seem, to go and ask for Nick in
+Calcutta Gardens, where he had extracted from his friend's servant an
+address not known to all the world. He showed Nick what a mistake it had
+been to fear a dull arraignment, and how he habitually ignored all
+lapses and kept up the standard only by taking a hundred fine things for
+granted. He also abounded more than ever in his own sense, reminding his
+relieved listener how no recollection of him, no evocation of him in
+absence, could ever do him justice. You couldn't recall him without
+seeming to exaggerate him, and then acknowledged, when you saw him, that
+your exaggeration had fallen short. He emerged out of vagueness--his
+Sicily might have been the Sicily of _A Winter's Tale_--and would
+evidently be reabsorbed in it; but his presence was positive and
+pervasive enough. He was duly "intense" while he lasted. His connexions
+were with beauty, urbanity and conversation, as usual, but they made up
+a circle you couldn't find in the Court Guide. Nick had a sense that he
+knew "a lot of esthetic people," but he dealt in ideas much more than
+in names and addresses. He was genial and jocose, sunburnt and
+romantically allusive. It was to be gathered that he had been living for
+many days in a Saracenic tower where his principal occupation was to
+watch for the flushing of the west. He had retained all the serenity of
+his opinions and made light, with a candour of which the only defect was
+apparently that it was not quite enough a conscious virtue, of many of
+the objects of common esteem. When Nick asked him what he had been doing
+he replied, "Oh living, you know"; and the tone of the words offered
+them as the story of a great deed. He made a long visit, staying to
+luncheon and after luncheon, so that the little studio heard all at once
+a greater quantity of brave talk than in the several previous years of
+its history. With much of our tale left to tell it is a pity that so
+little of this colloquy may be reported here; since, as affairs took
+their course, it marked really--if the question be of noting the exact
+point--a turn of the tide in Nick Dormer's personal situation. He was
+destined to remember the accent with which Nash exclaimed, on his
+drawing forth sundry specimens of amateurish earnestness:
+
+"I say--I say--I say!"
+
+He glanced round with a heightened colour. "They're pretty bad, eh?"
+
+"Oh you're a deep one," Nash went on.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Do you call your conduct that of a man of honour?"
+
+"Scarcely perhaps. But when no one has seen them--!"
+
+"That's your villainy. _C'est de l'exquis, du pur exquis_. Come, my dear
+fellow, this is very serious--it's a bad business," said Gabriel Nash.
+Then he added almost with austerity: "You'll be so good as to place
+before me every patch of paint, every sketch and scrap, that this room
+contains."
+
+Nick complied in great good humour. He turned out his boxes and drawers,
+shovelled forth the contents of bulging portfolios, mounted on chairs to
+unhook old canvases that had been severely "skied." He was modest and
+docile and patient and amused, above all he was quite thrilled--thrilled
+with the idea of eliciting a note of appreciation so late in the day. It
+was the oddest thing how he at present in fact found himself imputing
+value to his visitor--attributing to him, among attributions more
+confused, the dignity of judgement, the authority of knowledge. Nash was
+an ambiguous character but an excellent touchstone. The two said very
+little for a while, and they had almost half an hour's silence, during
+which, after our young man had hastily improvised an exhibition, there
+was only a puffing of cigarettes. Gabriel walked about, looking at this
+and that, taking up rough studies and laying them down, asking a
+question of fact, fishing with his umbrella, on the floor, amid a pile
+of unarranged sketches. Nick accepted jocosely the attitude of suspense,
+but there was even more of it in his heart than in his face. So few
+people had seen his young work--almost no one who really counted. He had
+been ashamed of it, never showing it to bring on a conclusion, since a
+conclusion was precisely what he feared. He whistled now while he let
+his companion take time. He rubbed old panels with his sleeve and dabbed
+wet sponges on surfaces that had sunk. It was a long time since he had
+felt so gay, strange as such an assertion sounds in regard to a young
+man whose bridal-day had at his urgent solicitation lately been fixed.
+He had stayed in town to be alone with his imagination, and suddenly,
+paradoxically, the sense of that result had arrived with poor Nash.
+
+"Nicholas Dormer," this personage remarked at last, "for grossness of
+immorality I think I've never seen your equal."
+
+"That sounds so well," Nick returned, "that I hesitate to risk spoiling
+it by wishing it explained."
+
+"Don't you recognise in _any_ degree the grand idea of duty?"
+
+"If I don't grasp it with a certain firmness I'm a deadly failure, for I
+was quite brought up on it," Nick said.
+
+"Then you're indeed the wretchedest failure I know. Life is ugly, after
+all."
+
+"Do I gather that you yourself recognise obligations of the order you
+allude to?"
+
+"Do you 'gather'?" Nash stared. "Why, aren't they the very flame of my
+faith, the burden of my song?"
+
+"My dear fellow, duty is doing, and I've inferred that you think rather
+poorly of doing--that it spoils one's style."
+
+"Doing wrong, assuredly."
+
+"But what do you call right? What's your canon of certainty there?" Nick
+asked.
+
+"The conscience that's in us--that charming, conversible, infinite
+thing, the intensest thing we know. But you must treat the oracle
+civilly if you wish to make it speak. You mustn't stride into the temple
+in muddy jack-boots and with your hat on your head, as the Puritan
+troopers tramped into the dear old abbeys. One must do one's best to
+find out the right, and your criminality appears to be that you've not
+taken the commonest trouble."
+
+"I hadn't you to ask," smiled Nick. "But duty strikes me as doing
+something in particular. If you're too afraid it may be the wrong thing
+you may let everything go."
+
+"Being is doing, and if doing is duty being is duty. Do you follow?"
+
+"At a very great distance."
+
+"To be what one _may_ be, really and efficaciously," Nash went on, "to
+feel it and understand it, to accept it, adopt it, embrace it--that's
+conduct, that's life."
+
+"And suppose one's a brute or an ass, where's the efficacy?"
+
+"In one's very want of intelligence. In such cases one's out of it--the
+question doesn't exist; one simply becomes a part of the duty of others.
+The brute, the ass," Nick's visitor developed, "neither feels nor
+understands, nor accepts nor adopts. Those fine processes in themselves
+classify us. They educate, they exalt, they preserve; so that to profit
+by them we must be as perceptive as we can. We must recognise our
+particular form, the instrument that each of us--each of us who carries
+anything--carries in his being. Mastering this instrument, learning to
+play it in perfection--that's what I call duty, what I call conduct,
+what I call success."
+
+Nick listened with friendly attention and the air of general assent was
+in his face as he said: "Every one has it then, this individual pipe?"
+
+"'Every one,' my dear fellow, is too much to say, for the world's full
+of the crudest _remplissage_. The book of life's padded, ah but
+padded--a deplorable want of editing! I speak of every one who's any
+one. Of course there are pipes and pipes--little quavering flutes for
+the concerted movements and big _cornets-à-piston_ for the great solos."
+
+"I see, I see. And what might your instrument be?"
+
+Nash hesitated not a moment; his answer was radiantly there. "To speak
+to people just as I'm speaking to you. To prevent for instance a great
+wrong being done."
+
+"A great wrong--?"
+
+"Yes--to the human race. I talk--I talk; I say the things other people
+don't, the things they can't the things they won't," Gabriel went on
+with his inimitable candour.
+
+"If it's a question of mastery and perfection you certainly have them,"
+his companion replied.
+
+"And you haven't, alas; that's the pity of it, that's the scandal.
+That's the wrong I want to set right before it becomes too public a
+shame. If I called you just now grossly immoral it's on account of the
+spectacle you present--a spectacle to be hidden from the eye of
+ingenuous youth: that of a man neglecting his own fiddle to blunder away
+on that of one of his fellows. We can't afford such mistakes, we can't
+tolerate such licence."
+
+"You think then I _have_ a fiddle?"--and our young man, in spite of
+himself, attached to the question a quaver of suspense finer, doubtless,
+than any that had ever passed his lips.
+
+"A regular Stradivarius! All these things you've shown me are remarkably
+interesting. You've a talent of a wonderfully pure strain."
+
+"I say--I say--I say!" Nick exclaimed, hovering there with his hands in
+his pockets and a blush on his lighted face, while he repeated with a
+change of accent Nash's exclamation of half an hour before.
+
+"I like it, your talent; I measure it, I appreciate it, I insist upon
+it," that critic went on between the whiffs of his cigarette. "I have to
+be awfully wise and good to do so, but fortunately I am. In such a case
+that's my duty. I shall make you my business for a while. Therefore," he
+added piously; "don't say I'm unconscious of the moral law."
+
+"A Stradivarius?" said Nick interrogatively and with his eyes wide open.
+The thought in his mind was of how different this seemed from his having
+gone to Griffin.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+His counsellor had plenty of further opportunity to develop this and
+other figurative remarks, for he not only spent several of the middle
+hours of the day at the studio, but came back in the evening--the pair
+had dined together at a little foreign pothouse in Soho, revealed to
+Nick on this occasion--and discussed the great question far into the
+night. The great question was whether, on the showing of those examples
+of his ability with which the scene of their discourse was now densely
+bestrewn, Nick Dormer would be justified in "really going in" for the
+practice of pictorial art. This may strike many readers of his history
+as a limited and even trivial inquiry, with little of the heroic or the
+romantic in it; but it was none the less carried to the finest point by
+our impassioned young men. Nick suspected Nash of exaggerating his
+encouragement in order to play a malign trick on the political world at
+whose expense it was his fond fancy to divert himself--without indeed
+making that organisation perceptibly totter--and reminded him that his
+present accusation of immorality was strangely inconsistent with the
+wanton hope expressed by him in Paris, the hope that the Liberal
+candidate at Harsh would be returned. Nash replied, first, "Oh I hadn't
+been in this place then!" but he defended himself later and more
+effectually by saying that it was not of Nick's having got elected he
+complained: it was of his visible hesitancy to throw up his seat. Nick
+begged that he wouldn't mention this, and his gallantry failed to render
+him incapable of saying: "The fact is I haven't the nerve for it." They
+talked then for a while of what he _could_ do, not of what he couldn't;
+of the mysteries and miracles of reproduction and representation; of the
+strong, sane joys of the artistic life. Nick made afresh, with more
+fulness, his great confession, that his private ideal of happiness was
+the life of a great painter of portraits. He uttered his thought on that
+head so copiously and lucidly that Nash's own abundance was stilled and
+he listened almost as if he had been listening to something
+new--difficult as it was to conceive a point of view for such a matter
+with which he was unacquainted.
+
+"There it is," said Nick at last--"there's the naked, preposterous
+truth: that if I were to do exactly as I liked I should spend my years
+reproducing the more or less vacuous countenances of my fellow-mortals.
+I should find peace and pleasure and wisdom and worth, I should find
+fascination and a measure of success in it--out of the din and the dust
+and the scramble, the world of party labels, party cries, party bargains
+and party treacheries: of humbuggery, hypocrisy and cant. The cleanness
+and quietness of it, the independent effort to do something, to leave
+something which shall give joy to man long after the howling has died
+away to the last ghost of an echo--such a vision solicits me in the
+watches of night with an almost irresistible force."
+
+As he dropped these remarks he lolled on a big divan with one of his
+long legs folded up, while his visitor stopped in front of him after
+moving about the room vaguely and softly, almost on tiptoe, so as not to
+interrupt him. "You speak," Nash said, "with the special and dreadful
+eloquence that rises to a man's lips when he has practically, whatever
+his theory may be, renounced the right and dropped hideously into the
+wrong. Then his regret for the right, a certain exquisite appreciation
+of it, puts on an accent I know well how to recognise."
+
+Nick looked up at him a moment. "You've hit it if you mean by that that
+I haven't resigned my seat and that I don't intend to."
+
+"I thought you took it only to give it up. Don't you remember our talk
+in Paris?"
+
+"I like to be a part of the spectacle that amuses you," Nick returned,
+"but I could scarcely have taken so much trouble as that for it."
+
+"Isn't it then an absurd comedy, the life you lead?"
+
+"Comedy or tragedy--I don't know which; whatever it is I appear to be
+capable of it to please two or three people."
+
+"Then you _can_ take trouble?" said Nash.
+
+"Yes, for the woman I'm to marry."
+
+"Oh you're to marry?"
+
+"That's what has come on since we met in Paris," Nick explained, "and it
+makes just the difference."
+
+"Ah my poor friend," smiled Gabriel, much arrested, "no wonder you've an
+eloquence, an accent!"
+
+"It's a pity I have them in the wrong place. I'm expected to have them
+in the House of Commons."
+
+"You will when you make your farewell speech there--to announce that you
+chuck it up. And may I venture to ask who's to be your wife?" the
+visitor pursued.
+
+"Mrs. Dallow has kindly consented to accept that yoke. I think you saw
+her in Paris."
+
+"Ah yes: you spoke of her to me, and I remember asking you even then if
+you were in love with her."
+
+"I wasn't then," said Nick.
+
+Nash had a grave pause. "And are you now?"
+
+"Oh dear, yes."
+
+"That would be better--if it wasn't worse."
+
+"Nothing could be better," Nick declared. "It's the best thing that can
+happen to me."
+
+"Well," his friend continued, "you must let me very respectfully
+approach this lady. You must let me bring her round."
+
+"Bring her round to what?"
+
+"To everything. Talk her over."
+
+"Talk her under!" Nick laughed--but making his joke a little as to gain
+time. He remembered the effect this adviser had produced on Julia--an
+effect that scantly ministered to the idea of another meeting. Julia had
+had no occasion to allude again to Nick's imperturbable friend; he had
+passed out of her life at once and for ever; but there flickered up a
+quick memory of the contempt he had led her to express, together with a
+sense of how odd she would think it her intended should have thrown over
+two pleasant visits to cultivate such company.
+
+"Over to a proper pride in what you may do," Nash returned--"what you
+may do above all if she'll help you."
+
+"I scarcely see how she can help me," said Nick with an air of thinking.
+
+"She's extremely handsome as I remember her. You could do great things
+with _her_."
+
+"Ah, there's the rub," Nick went on. "I wanted her to sit for me this
+week, but she wouldn't hear of it."
+
+"_Elle a bien tort_. You should attack some fine strong type. Is Mrs.
+Dallow in London?" Nash inquired.
+
+"For what do you take her? She's paying visits."
+
+"Then I've a model for you."
+
+"Then _you_ have--?" Nick stared. "What has that to do with Mrs.
+Dallow's being away?"
+
+"Doesn't it give you more time?"
+
+"Oh the time flies!" sighed Nick with a spontaneity that made his
+companion again laugh out--a demonstration in which for a moment he
+himself rather ruefully joined.
+
+"Does she like you to paint?" that personage asked with one of his
+candid intonations.
+
+"So she says."
+
+"Well, do something fine to show her."
+
+"I'd rather show it to you," Nick confessed.
+
+"My dear fellow, I see it from here--if you do your duty. Do you
+remember the Tragic Muse?" Nash added for explanation.
+
+"The Tragic Muse?"
+
+"That girl in Paris, whom we heard at the old actress's and afterwards
+met at the charming entertainment given by your cousin--isn't he?--the
+secretary of embassy."
+
+"Oh Peter's girl! Of course I remember her."
+
+"Don't call her Peter's; call her rather mine," Nash said with easy
+rectification. "I invented her. I introduced her. I revealed her."
+
+"I thought you on the contrary ridiculed and repudiated her."
+
+"As a fine, handsome young woman surely not--I seem to myself to have
+been all the while rendering her services. I said I disliked tea-party
+ranters, and so I do; but if my estimate of her powers was below the
+mark she has more than punished me."
+
+"What has she done?" Nick asked.
+
+"She has become interesting, as I suppose you know."
+
+"How should I know?"
+
+"Well, you must see her, you must paint her," Nash returned. "She tells
+me something was said about it that day at Madame Carré's."
+
+"Oh I remember--said by Peter."
+
+"Then it will please Mr. Sherringham--you'll be glad to do that. I
+suppose you know all he has done for Miriam?" Gabriel pursued.
+
+"Not a bit, I know nothing about Peter's affairs," Nick said, "unless it
+be in general that he goes in for mountebanks and mimes and that it
+occurs to me I've heard one of my sisters mention--the rumour had come
+to her--that he has been backing Miss Rooth."
+
+"Miss Rooth delights to talk of his kindness; she's charming when she
+speaks of it. It's to his good offices that she owes her appearance
+here."
+
+"Here?" Nick's interest rose. "Is she in London?"
+
+"_D'où tombez-vous_? I thought you people read the papers."
+
+"What should I read, when I sit--sometimes--through the stuff they put
+into them?"
+
+"Of course I see that--that your engagement at your own variety-show,
+with its interminable 'turns,' keeps you from going to the others. Learn
+then," said Gabriel Nash, "that you've a great competitor and that
+you're distinctly not, much as you may suppose it, _the_ rising
+comedian. The Tragic Muse is the great modern personage. Haven't you
+heard people speak of her, haven't you been taken to see her?"
+
+Nick bethought himself. "I daresay I've heard of her, but with a good
+many other things on my mind I had forgotten it."
+
+"Certainly I can imagine what has been on your mind. She remembers you
+at any rate; she repays neglect with sympathy. She wants," said Nash,
+"to come and see you."
+
+"'See' me?" It was all for Nick now a wonder.
+
+"To be seen by you--it comes to the same thing. She's really worth
+seeing; you must let me bring her; you'll find her very suggestive. That
+idea that you should paint her--she appears to consider it a sort of
+bargain."
+
+"A bargain?" Our young man entered, as he believed, into the humour of
+the thing. "What will she give me?"
+
+"A splendid model. She _is_ splendid."
+
+"Oh then bring her," said Nick.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Nash brought her, the great modern personage, as he had described her,
+the very next day, and it took his friend no long time to test his
+assurance that Miriam Rooth was now splendid. She had made an impression
+on him ten months before, but it had haunted him only a day, soon
+overlaid as it had been with other images. Yet after Nash had talked of
+her a while he recalled her better; some of her attitudes, some of her
+looks and tones began to hover before him. He was charmed in advance
+with the notion of painting her. When she stood there in fact, however,
+it seemed to him he had remembered her wrong; the brave, free, rather
+grand creature who instantly filled his studio with such an unexampled
+presence had so shaken off her clumsiness, the rudeness and crudeness
+that had made him pity her, a whole provincial and "second-rate" side.
+Miss Rooth was light and bright and direct to-day--direct without being
+stiff and bright without being garish. To Nick's perhaps inadequately
+sophisticated mind the model, the actress were figures of a vulgar
+setting; but it would have been impossible to show that taint less than
+this extremely natural yet extremely distinguished aspirant to
+distinction. She was more natural even than Gabriel Nash--"nature" was
+still Nick's formula for his amusing old friend--and beside her he
+appeared almost commonplace.
+
+Nash recognised her superiority with a frankness honourable to both of
+them--testifying in this manner to his sense that they were all three
+serious beings, worthy to deal with fine realities. She attracted crowds
+to her theatre, but to his appreciation of such a fact as that,
+important doubtless in its way, there were the limits he had already
+expressed. What he now felt bound in all integrity to register was his
+perception that she had, in general and quite apart from the question of
+the box-office, a remarkable, a very remarkable, artistic nature. He
+allowed that she had surprised him here; knowing of her in other days
+mainly that she was hungry to adopt an overrated profession he had not
+imputed to her the normal measure of intelligence. Now he saw--he had
+had some talks with her--that she was capable almost of a violent play
+of mind; so much so that he was sorry for the embarrassment it would be
+to her. Nick could imagine the discomfort of having anything in the
+nature of a mind to arrange for in such conditions. "She's a woman of
+the best intentions, really of the best," Nash explained kindly and
+lucidly, almost paternally, "and the quite rare head you can see for
+yourself."
+
+Miriam, smiling as she sat on an old Venetian chair, held aloft, with
+the noblest effect, that quarter of her person to which this patronage
+was extended, remarking to her host that, strange as it might appear,
+she had got quite to like poor Mr. Nash: she could make him go about
+with her--it was a relief to her mother.
+
+"When I take him she has perfect peace," the girl said; "then she can
+stay at home and see the interviewers. She delights in that and I hate
+it, so our friend here is a great comfort. Of course a _femme de
+théâtre_ is supposed to be able to go out alone, but there's a kind of
+'smartness,' an added _chic_, in having some one. People think he's my
+'companion '; I'm sure they fancy I pay him. I'd pay him, if he'd take
+it--and perhaps he will yet!--rather than give him up, for it doesn't
+matter that he's not a lady. He _is_ one in tact and sympathy, as you
+see. And base as he thinks the sort of thing I do he can't keep away
+from the theatre. When you're celebrated people will look at you who
+could never before find out for themselves why they should."
+
+"When you're celebrated you grow handsomer; at least that's what has
+happened to you, though you were pretty too of old," Gabriel placidly
+argued. "I go to the theatre to look at your head; it gives me the
+greatest pleasure. I take up anything of that sort as soon as I find it.
+One never knows how long it may last."
+
+"Are you attributing that uncertainty to my appearance?" Miriam
+beautifully asked.
+
+"Dear no, to my own pleasure, the first precious bloom of it," Nash went
+on. "Dormer at least, let me tell you in justice to him, hasn't waited
+till you were celebrated to want to see you again--he stands there
+open-eyed--for the simple reason that he hadn't the least idea of your
+renown. I had to announce it to him."
+
+"Haven't you seen me act?" Miriam put, without reproach, to her host.
+
+"I'll go to-night," he handsomely declared.
+
+"You have your terrible House, haven't you? What do they call it--the
+demands of public life?" Miriam continued: in answer to which Gabriel
+explained that he had the demands of private life as well, inasmuch as
+he was in love--he was on the point of being married. She listened to
+this with participation; then she said: "Ah then do bring your--what do
+they call her in English? I'm always afraid of saying something
+improper--your _future_. I'll send you a box, under the circumstances;
+you'll like that better." She added that if he were to paint her he
+would have to see her often on the stage, wouldn't he? to profit by the
+_optique de la scène_--what did they call _that_ in English?--studying
+her and fixing his impression. But before he had time to meet this
+proposition she asked him if it disgusted him to hear her speak like
+that, as if she were always posing and thinking about herself, living
+only to be looked at, thrusting forward her person. She already often
+got sick of doing so, but _à la guerre comme à la guerre_.
+
+"That's the fine artistic nature, you see--a sort of divine disgust
+breaking out in her," Nash expounded.
+
+"If you want to paint me 'at all at all' of course. I'm struck with the
+way I'm taking that for granted," the girl decently continued. "When Mr.
+Nash spoke of it to me I jumped at the idea. I remembered our meeting in
+Paris and the kind things you said to me. But no doubt one oughtn't to
+jump at ideas when they represent serious sacrifices on the part of
+others."
+
+"Doesn't she speak well?" Nash demanded of Nick. "Oh she'll go far!"
+
+"It's a great privilege to me to paint you: what title in the world have
+I to pretend to such a model?" Nick replied to Miriam. "The sacrifice is
+yours--a sacrifice of time and good nature and credulity. You come, in
+your bright beauty and your genius, to this shabby place where I've
+nothing worth speaking of to show, not a guarantee to offer you; and I
+wonder what I've done to deserve such a gift of the gods."
+
+"Doesn't _he_ speak well?"--and Nash appealed with radiance to their
+companion.
+
+She took no notice of him, only repeating to Nick that she hadn't
+forgotten his friendly attitude in Paris; and when he answered that he
+surely had done very little she broke out, first resting her eyes on
+him with a deep, reasonable smile and then springing up quickly; "Ah
+well, if I must justify myself I liked you!"
+
+"Fancy my appearing to challenge you!" laughed Nick in deprecation. "To
+see you again is to want tremendously to try something. But you must
+have an infinite patience, because I'm an awful duffer."
+
+She looked round the walls. "I see what you've done--_bien des choses_."
+
+"She understands--she understands," Gabriel dropped. And he added to
+their visitor: "Imagine, when he might do something, his choosing a life
+of shams! At bottom he's like you--a wonderful artistic nature."
+
+"I'll have patience," said the girl, smiling at Nick.
+
+"Then, my children, I leave you--the peace of the Lord be with you."
+With which words Nash took his departure.
+
+The others chose a position for the young woman's sitting after she had
+placed herself in many different attitudes and different lights; but an
+hour had elapsed before Nick got to work--began, on a large canvas, to
+"knock her in," as he called it. He was hindered even by the fine
+element of agitation, the emotion of finding himself, out of a clear
+sky, confronted with such a subject and launched in such a task. What
+could the situation be but incongruous just after he had formally
+renounced all manner of "art"?--the renunciation taking effect not a bit
+the less from the whim he had all consciously treated himself to _as_ a
+whim (the last he should ever descend to!) the freak of a fortnight's
+relapse into a fingering of old sketches for the purpose, as he might
+have said, of burning them up, of clearing out his studio and
+terminating his lease. There were both embarrassment and inspiration in
+the strange chance of snatching back for an hour a relinquished joy: the
+jump with which he found he could still rise to such an occasion took
+away his breath a little, at the same time that the idea--the idea of
+what one might make of such material--touched him with an irresistible
+wand. On the spot, to his inner vision, Miriam became a rich result,
+drawing a hundred formative forces out of their troubled sleep, defying
+him where he privately felt strongest and imposing herself triumphantly
+in her own strength. He had the good fortune, without striking matches,
+to see her, as a subject, in a vivid light, and his quick attempt was as
+exciting as a sudden gallop--he might have been astride, in a boundless
+field, of a runaway horse.
+
+She was in her way so fine that he could only think how to "do" her:
+that hard calculation soon flattened out the consciousness, lively in
+him at first, that she was a beautiful woman who had sought him out of
+his retirement. At the end of their first sitting her having done so
+appeared the most natural thing in the world: he had a perfect right to
+entertain her there--explanations and complications were engulfed in the
+productive mood. The business of "knocking her in" held up a lamp to her
+beauty, showed him how much there was of it and that she was infinitely
+interesting. He didn't want to fall in love with her--that _would_ be a
+sell, he said to himself--and she promptly became much too interesting
+for it. Nick might have reflected, for simplification's sake, as his
+cousin Peter had done, but with more validity, that he was engaged with
+Miss Rooth in an undertaking which didn't in the least refer to
+themselves, that they were working together seriously and that decent
+work quite gainsaid sensibility--the humbugging sorts alone had to help
+themselves out with it. But after her first sitting--she came, poor
+girl, but twice--the need of such exorcisms passed from his spirit: he
+had so thoroughly, so practically taken her up. As to whether his
+visitor had the same bright and still sense of co-operation to a
+definite end, the sense of the distinctively technical nature of the
+answer to every question to which the occasion might give birth, that
+mystery would be lighted only were it open to us to regard this young
+lady through some other medium than the mind of her friends. We have
+chosen, as it happens, for some of the great advantages it carries with
+it, the indirect vision; and it fails as yet to tell us--what Nick of
+course wondered about before he ceased to care, as indeed he intimated
+to her--why a budding celebrity should have dreamed of there being
+something for her in so blighted a spot. She should have gone to one of
+the regular people, the great people: they would have welcomed her with
+open arms. When Nick asked her if some of the R.A.'s hadn't expressed a
+wish for a crack at her she replied: "Oh dear no, only the tiresome
+photographers; and fancy _them_ in the future. If mamma could only do
+_that_ for me!" And she added with the charming fellowship for which she
+was conspicuous at these hours: "You know I don't think any one yet has
+been quite so much struck with me as you."
+
+"Not even Peter Sherringham?" her host jested while he stepped back to
+judge of the effect of a line.
+
+"Oh Mr. Sherringham's different. You're an artist."
+
+"For pity's sake don't say that!" he cried. "And as regards _your_ art I
+thought Peter knew more than any one."
+
+"Ah you're severe," said Miriam.
+
+"Severe--?"
+
+"Because that's what the poor dear thinks. But he does know a lot--he
+has been a providence to me."
+
+"Then why hasn't he come over to see you act?"
+
+She had a pause. "How do you know he hasn't come?"
+
+"Because I take for granted he'd have called on me if he had."
+
+"Does he like you very much?" the girl asked.
+
+"I don't know. I like _him_."
+
+"He's a gentleman--_pour cela_," she said.
+
+"Oh yes, for that!" Nick went on absently, labouring hard.
+
+"But he's afraid of me--afraid to see me."
+
+"Doesn't he think you good enough?"
+
+"On the contrary--he believes I shall carry him away and he's in a
+terror of my doing it."
+
+"He ought to like that," said Nick with conscious folly.
+
+"That's what I mean when I say he's not an artist. However, he declares
+he does like it, only it appears to be not the right thing for him. Oh
+the right thing--he's ravenous for that. But it's not for me to blame
+him, since I am too. He's coming some night, however. Then," she added
+almost grimly, "he shall have a dose."
+
+"Poor Peter!" Nick returned with a compassion none the less real because
+it was mirthful: the girl's tone was so expressive of easy unscrupulous
+power.
+
+"He's such a curious mixture," she luxuriously went on; "sometimes I
+quite lose patience with him. It isn't exactly trying to serve both God
+and Mammon, but it's muddling up the stage and the world. The world be
+hanged! The stage, or anything of that sort--I mean one's artistic
+conscience, one's true faith--comes first."
+
+"Brava, brava! you do me good," Nick murmured, still amused, beguiled,
+and at work. "But it's very kind of you, when I was in this absurd state
+of ignorance, to impute to me the honour of having been more struck with
+you than any one else," he continued after a moment.
+
+"Yes, I confess I don't quite see--when the shops were full of my
+photographs."
+
+"Oh I'm so poor--I don't go into shops," he explained.
+
+"Are you very poor?"
+
+"I live on alms."
+
+"And don't they pay you--the government, the ministry?"
+
+"Dear young lady, for what?--for shutting myself up with beautiful
+women?"
+
+"Ah you've others then?" she extravagantly groaned.
+
+"They're not so kind as you, I confess."
+
+"I'll buy it from you--what you're doing: I'll pay you well when it's
+done," said the girl. "I've got money now. I make it, you know--a good
+lot of it. It's too delightful after scraping and starving. Try it and
+you'll see. Give up the base, bad world."
+
+"But isn't it supposed to be the base, bad world that pays?"
+
+"Precisely; make it pay without mercy--knock it silly, squeeze it dry.
+That's what it's meant for--to pay for art. Ah if it wasn't for that!
+I'll bring you a quantity of photographs to-morrow--you must let me come
+back to-morrow: it's so amusing to have them, by the hundred, all for
+nothing, to give away. That's what takes mamma most: she can't get over
+it. That's luxury and glory; even at Castle Nugent they didn't do that.
+People used to sketch me, but not so much as mamma _veut bien le dire_;
+and in all my life I never had but one poor little carte-de-visite, when
+I was sixteen, in a plaid frock, with the banks of a river, at three
+francs the dozen."
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+It was success, the member for Harsh felt, that had made her finer--the
+full possession of her talent and the sense of the recognition of it.
+There was an intimation in her presence (if he had given his mind to it)
+that for him too the same cause would produce the same effect--that is
+would show him how being launched in the practice of an art makes
+strange and prompt revelations. Nick felt clumsy beside a person who
+manifestly, now, had such an extraordinary familiarity with the esthetic
+point of view. He remembered too the clumsiness that had been in his
+visitor--something silly and shabby, pert rather than proper, and of
+quite another value than her actual smartness, as London people would
+call it, her well-appointedness and her evident command of more than one
+manner. Handsome as she had been the year before, she had suggested
+sordid lodgings, bread and butter, heavy tragedy and tears; and if then
+she was an ill-dressed girl with thick hair who wanted to be an actress,
+she was already in these few weeks a performer who could even produce an
+impression of not performing. She showed what a light hand she could
+have, forbore to startle and looked as well, for unprofessional life, as
+Julia: which was only the perfection of her professional character.
+
+This function came out much in her talk, for there were many little
+bursts of confidence as well as many familiar pauses as she sat there;
+and she was ready to tell Nick the whole history of her _début_--the
+chance that had suddenly turned up and that she had caught, with a
+fierce leap, as it passed. He missed some of the details in his
+attention to his own task, and some of them he failed to understand,
+attached as they were to the name of Mr. Basil Dashwood, which he heard
+for the first time. It was through Mr. Dashwood's extraordinary
+exertions that a hearing--a morning performance at a London theatre--had
+been obtained for her. That had been the great step, for it had led to
+the putting on at night of the play, at the same theatre, in place of a
+wretched thing they were trying (it was no use) to keep on its feet, and
+to her engagement for the principal part. She had made a hit in it--she
+couldn't pretend not to know that; but she was already tired of it,
+there were so many other things she wanted to do; and when she thought
+it would probably run a month or two more she fell to cursing the odious
+conditions of artistic production in such an age. The play was a more or
+less idiotised version of a new French piece, a thing that had taken in
+Paris at a third-rate theatre and was now proving itself in London good
+enough for houses mainly made up of ten-shilling stalls. It was Dashwood
+who had said it would go if they could get the rights and a fellow to
+make some changes: he had discovered it at a nasty little place she had
+never been to, over the Seine. They had got the rights, and the fellow
+who had made the changes was practically Dashwood himself; there was
+another man in London, Mr. Gushmore--Miriam didn't know if Nick had
+heard of him (Nick hadn't) who had done some of it. It had been awfully
+chopped down, to a mere bone, with the meat all gone; but that was what
+people in London seemed to like. They were very innocent--thousands of
+little dogs amusing themselves with a bone. At any rate she had made
+something, she had made a figure, of the woman--a dreadful stick, with
+what Dashwood had muddled her into; and Miriam added in the complacency
+of her young expansion: "Oh give me fifty words any time and the ghost
+of a situation, and I'll set you up somebody. Besides, I mustn't abuse
+poor Yolande--she has saved us," she said.
+
+"'Yolande'--?"
+
+"Our ridiculous play. That's the name of the impossible woman. She has
+put bread into our mouths and she's a loaf on the shelf for the future.
+The rights are mine."
+
+"You're lucky to have them," said Nick a little vaguely, troubled about
+his sitter's nose, which was somehow Jewish without the convex arch.
+
+"Indeed I am. He gave them to me. Wasn't it charming?"
+
+"'He' gave them--Mr. Dashwood?"
+
+"Dear me, no--where should poor Dashwood have got them? He hasn't a
+penny in the world. Besides, if he had got them he'd have kept them. I
+mean your blessed cousin."
+
+"I see--they're a present from Peter."
+
+"Like many other things. Isn't he a dear? If it hadn't been for him the
+shelf would have remained bare. He bought the play for this country and
+America for four hundred pounds, and on the chance: fancy! There was no
+rush for it, and how could he tell? And then he gracefully pressed it on
+me. So I've my little capital. Isn't he a duck? You've nice cousins."
+
+Nick assented to the proposition, only inserting an amendment to the
+effect that surely Peter had nice cousins too, and making, as he went on
+with his work, a tacit, preoccupied reflexion or two; such as that it
+must be pleasant to render little services like that to youth, beauty
+and genius--he rather wondered how Peter could afford them--and that,
+"duck" as he was, Miss Rooth's benefactor was rather taken for granted.
+_Sic vos non vobis_ softly sounded in his brain. This community of
+interests, or at least of relations, quickened the flight of time, so
+that he was still fresh when the sitting came to an end. It was settled
+Miriam should come back on the morrow, to enable her artist to make the
+most of the few days of the parliamentary recess; and just before she
+left him she asked:
+
+"Then you _will_ come to-night?"
+
+"Without fail. I hate to lose an hour of you."
+
+"Then I'll place you. It will be my affair."
+
+"You're very kind"--he quite rose to it. "Isn't it a simple matter for
+me to take a stall? This week I suppose they're to be had."
+
+"I'll send you a box," said Miriam. "You shall do it well. There are
+plenty now."
+
+"Why should I be lost, all alone, in the grandeur of a box?"
+
+"Can't you bring your friend?"
+
+"My friend?"
+
+"The lady you're engaged to."
+
+"Unfortunately she's out of town."
+
+Miriam looked at him in the grand manner. "Does she leave you alone like
+that?"
+
+"She thought I should like it--I should be more free to paint. You see I
+am."
+
+"Yes, perhaps it's good for _me_. Have you got her portrait?" Miriam
+asked.
+
+"She doesn't like me to paint her."
+
+"Really? Perhaps then she won't like you to paint me."
+
+"That's why I want to be quick!" laughed Nick.
+
+"Before she knows it?"
+
+"Shell know it to-morrow. I shall write to her."
+
+The girl faced him again portentously. "I see you're afraid of her." But
+she added: "Mention my name; they'll give you the box at the office."
+
+Whether or no Nick were afraid of Mrs. Dallow he still waved away this
+bounty, protesting that he would rather take a stall according to his
+wont and pay for it. Which led his guest to declare with a sudden
+flicker of passion that if he didn't do as she wished she would never
+sit to him again.
+
+"Ah then you have me," he had to reply. "Only I _don't_ see why you
+should give me so many things."
+
+"What in the world have I given you?"
+
+"Why an idea." And Nick looked at his picture rather ruefully. "I don't
+mean to say though that I haven't let it fall and smashed it."
+
+"Ah an idea--that _is_ a great thing for people in our line. But you'll
+see me much better from the box and I'll send you Gabriel Nash." She got
+into the hansom her host's servant had fetched for her, and as Nick
+turned back into his studio after watching her drive away he laughed at
+the conception that they were in the same "line."
+
+He did share, in the event, his box at the theatre with Nash, who talked
+during the _entr'actes_ not in the least about the performance or the
+performer, but about the possible greatness of the art of the
+portraitist--its reach, its range, its fascination, the magnificent
+examples it had left us in the past: windows open into history, into
+psychology, things that were among the most precious possessions of the
+human race. He insisted above all on the interest, the importance of
+this great peculiarity of it, that unlike most other forms it was a
+revelation of two realities, the man whom it was the artist's conscious
+effort to reveal and the man--the interpreter--expressed in the very
+quality and temper of that effort. It offered a double vision, the
+strongest dose of life that art could give, the strongest dose of art
+that life could give. Nick Dormer had already become aware of having two
+states of mind when listening to this philosopher; one in which he
+laughed, doubted, sometimes even reprobated, failed to follow or accept,
+and another in which his old friend seemed to take the words out of his
+mouth, to utter for him, better and more completely, the very things he
+was on the point of saying. Gabriel's saying them at such moments
+appeared to make them true, to set them up in the world, and to-night he
+said a good many, especially as to the happiness of cultivating one's
+own garden, growing there, in stillness and freedom, certain strong,
+pure flowers that would bloom for ever, bloom long after the rank weeds
+of the hour were withered and blown away.
+
+It was to keep Miriam Rooth in his eye for his current work that Nick
+had come to the play; and she dwelt there all the evening, being
+constantly on the stage. He was so occupied in watching her face--for he
+now saw pretty clearly what he should attempt to make of it--that he was
+conscious only in a secondary degree of the story she illustrated, and
+had in regard to her acting a surprised sense that she was
+extraordinarily quiet. He remembered her loudness, her violence in
+Paris, at Peter Sherringham's, her wild wails, the first time, at Madame
+Carré's; compared with which her present manner was eminently temperate
+and modern. Nick Dormer was not critical at the theatre; he believed
+what he saw and had a pleasant sense of the inevitable; therefore he
+wouldn't have guessed what Gabriel Nash had to tell him--that for this
+young woman, with her tragic cast and her peculiar attributes, her
+present performance, full of actuality, of light fine indications and at
+moments of pointed touches of comedy, was a rare _tour de force_. It
+went on altogether in a register he hadn't supposed her to possess and
+in which, as he said, she didn't touch her capital, doing it all with
+her wonderful little savings. It conveyed to him that she was capable of
+almost anything.
+
+In one of the intervals they went round to see her; but for Nick this
+purpose was partly defeated by the extravagant transports, as they
+struck him, of Mrs. Rooth, whom they found sitting with her daughter and
+who attacked him with a hundred questions about his dear mother and his
+charming sisters. She had volumes to say about the day in Paris when
+they had shown her the kindness she should never forget. She abounded
+also in admiration of the portrait he had so cleverly begun, declaring
+she was so eager to see it, however little he might as yet have
+accomplished, that she should do herself the honour to wait upon him in
+the morning when Miriam came to sit.
+
+"I'm acting for you to-night," the girl more effectively said before he
+returned to his place.
+
+"No, that's exactly what you're not doing," Nash interposed with one of
+his happy sagacities. "You've stopped acting, you've reduced it to the
+least that will do, you simply are--you're just the visible image, the
+picture on the wall. It keeps you wonderfully in focus. I've never seen
+you so beautiful."
+
+Miriam stared at this; then it could be seen that she coloured. "What a
+luxury in life to have everything explained! He's the great explainer,"
+she herself explained to Nick.
+
+He shook hands with her for good-night. "Well then, we must give him
+lots to do."
+
+She came to his studio in the morning, but unaccompanied by her mother,
+in allusion to whom she simply said, "Mamma wished to come but I
+wouldn't let her." They proceeded promptly to business. The girl
+divested herself of her hat and coat, taking the position already
+determined. After they had worked more than an hour with much less talk
+than the day before, Nick being extremely absorbed and Miriam wearing in
+silence an air of noble compunction for the burden imposed on him, at
+the end of this period of patience, pervaded by a holy calm, our young
+lady suddenly got up and exclaimed, "I say, I must see it!"--with which,
+quickly, she stepped down from her place and came round to the canvas.
+She had at Nick's request not looked at his work the day before. He fell
+back, glad to rest, and put down his palette and brushes.
+
+"_Ah bien, c'est tapé_!" she cried as she stood before the easel. Nick
+was pleased with her ejaculation, he was even pleased with what he had
+done; he had had a long, happy spurt and felt excited and sanctioned.
+Miriam, retreating also a little, sank into a high-backed, old-fashioned
+chair that stood two or three yards from the picture and reclined in it,
+her head on one side, looking at the rough resemblance. She made a
+remark or two about it, to which Nick replied, standing behind her and
+after a moment leaning on the top of the chair. He was away from his
+work and his eyes searched it with a shy fondness of hope. They rose,
+however, as he presently became conscious that the door of the large
+room opposite him had opened without making a sound and that some one
+stood upon the threshold. The person on the threshold was Julia Dallow.
+
+As soon as he was aware Nick wished he had posted a letter to her the
+night before. He had written only that morning. There was nevertheless
+genuine joy in the words with which he bounded toward her--"Ah my dear
+Julia, what a jolly surprise!"--for her unannounced descent spoke to
+him above all of an irresistible desire to see him again sooner than
+they had arranged. She had taken a step forward, but she had done no
+more, stopping short at the sight of the strange woman, so divested of
+visiting-gear that she looked half-undressed, who lounged familiarly in
+the middle of the room and over whom Nick had been still more familiarly
+hanging. Julia's eyes rested on this embodied unexpectedness, and as
+they did so she grew pale--so pale that Nick, observing it,
+instinctively looked back to see what Miriam had done to produce such an
+effect. She had done nothing at all, which was precisely what was
+embarrassing; she only stared at the intruder, motionless and superb.
+She seemed somehow in easy possession of the place, and even at that
+instant Nick noted how handsome she looked; so that he said to himself
+inaudibly, in some deeper depth of consciousness, "How I should like to
+paint her that way!" Mrs. Dallow's eyes moved for a single moment to her
+friend's; then they turned away--away from Miriam, ranging over the
+room.
+
+"I've got a sitter, but you mustn't mind that; we're taking a rest. I'm
+delighted to see you"--he was all cordiality. He closed the door of the
+studio behind her; his servant was still at the outer door, which was
+open and through which he saw Julia's carriage drawn up. This made her
+advance a little further, but still she said nothing; she dropped no
+answer even when Nick went on with a sense of awkwardness: "When did you
+come back? I hope nothing has gone wrong. You come at a very interesting
+moment," he continued, aware as soon as he had spoken of something in
+his words that might have made her laugh. She was far from laughing,
+however; she only managed to look neither at him nor at Miriam and to
+say, after a little, when he had repeated his question about her
+return:
+
+"I came back this morning--I came straight here."
+
+"And nothing's wrong, I hope?"
+
+"Oh no--everything's all right," she returned very quickly and without
+expression. She vouchsafed no explanation of her premature descent and
+took no notice of the seat Nick offered her; neither did she appear to
+hear him when he begged her not to look yet at the work on the easel--it
+was in such a dreadful state. He was conscious, as he phrased it, that
+this request gave to Miriam's position, directly in front of his canvas,
+an air of privilege which her neglect to recognise in any way Mrs.
+Dallow's entrance or her importance did nothing to correct. But that
+mattered less if the appeal failed to reach Julia's intelligence, as he
+judged, seeing presently how deeply she was agitated. Nothing mattered
+in face of the sense of danger taking possession of him after she had
+been in the room a few moments. He wanted to say, "What's the
+difficulty? Has anything happened?" but he felt how little she would
+like him to utter words so intimate in presence of the person she had
+been rudely startled to find between them. He pronounced Miriam's name
+to her and her own to Miriam, but Julia's recognition of the ceremony
+was so slight as to be scarcely perceptible. Miriam had the air of
+waiting for something more before she herself made a sign; and as
+nothing more came she continued to say nothing and not to budge. Nick
+added a remark to the effect that Julia would remember to have had the
+pleasure of meeting her the year before--in Paris, that day at old
+Peter's; to which Mrs. Dallow made answer, "Ah yes," without any
+qualification, while she looked down at some rather rusty studies on
+panels ranged along the floor and resting against the base of the wall.
+Her discomposure was a clear pain to herself; she had had a shock of
+extreme violence, and Nick saw that as Miriam showed no symptom of
+offering to give up her sitting her stay would be of the briefest. He
+wished that young woman would do something--say she would go, get up,
+move about; as it was she had the appearance of watching from her point
+of vantage the other's upset. He made a series of inquiries about
+Julia's doings in the country, to two or three of which she gave answers
+monosyllabic and scarcely comprehensible, only turning her eyes round
+and round the room as in search of something she couldn't find--of an
+escape, of something that was not Miriam. At last she said--it was at
+the end of a very few minutes:
+
+"I didn't come to stay--when you're so busy. I only looked in to see if
+you were here. Good-bye."
+
+"It's charming of you to have come. I'm so glad you've seen for yourself
+how well I'm occupied," Nick replied, not unconscious of how red he was.
+This made Mrs. Dallow look at him while Miriam considered them both.
+Julia's eyes had a strange light he had never seen before--a flash of
+fear by which he was himself frightened. "Of course I'll see you later,"
+he added in awkward, in really misplaced gaiety while she reached the
+door, which she opened herself, getting out with no further attention to
+Miriam. "I wrote to you this morning--you've missed my letter," he
+repeated behind her, having already given her this information. The door
+of the studio was very near that of the house, but before she had
+reached the street the visitors' bell was set ringing. The passage was
+narrow and she kept in advance of Nick, anticipating his motion to open
+the street-door. The bell was tinkling still when, by the action of her
+own hand, a gentleman on the step stood revealed.
+
+"Ah my dear, don't go!" Nick heard pronounced in quick, soft dissuasion
+and in the now familiar accents of Gabriel Nash. The rectification
+followed more quickly still, if that were a rectification which so
+little improved the matter: "I beg a thousand pardons--I thought you
+were Miriam."
+
+Gabriel gave way and Julia the more sharply pursued her retreat. Her
+carriage, a victoria with a pair of precious heated horses, had taken a
+turn up the street, but the coachman had already seen his mistress and
+was rapidly coming back. He drew near; not so fast, however, but that
+Gabriel Nash had time to accompany Mrs. Dallow to the edge of the
+pavement with an apology for the freedom into which he had blundered.
+Nick was at her other hand, waiting to put her into the carriage and
+freshly disconcerted by the encounter with Nash, who somehow, as he
+stood making Julia an explanation that she didn't listen to, looked less
+eminent than usual, though not more conscious of difficulties. Our young
+man coloured deeper and watched the footman spring down as the victoria
+drove up; he heard Nash say something about the honour of having met
+Mrs. Dallow in Paris. Nick wanted him to go into the house; he damned
+inwardly his lack of delicacy. He desired a word with Julia alone--as
+much alone as the two annoying servants would allow. But Nash was not
+too much discouraged to say: "You came for a glimpse of the great model?
+Doesn't she sit? That's what I wanted too, this morning--just a look,
+for a blessing on the day. Ah but you, madam--"
+
+Julia had sprung into her corner while he was still speaking and had
+flashed out to the coachman a "Home!" which of itself set the horses in
+motion. The carriage went a few yards, but while Gabriel, with an
+undiscouraged bow, turned away, Nick Dormer, his hand on the edge of
+the hood, moved with it.
+
+"You don't like it, but I'll explain," he tried to say for its occupant
+alone.
+
+"Explain what?" she asked, still very pale and grave, but in a voice
+that showed nothing. She was thinking of the servants--she could think
+of them even then.
+
+"Oh it's all right. I'll come in at five," Nick returned, gallantly
+jocular, while she was whirled away.
+
+Gabriel had gone into the studio and Nick found him standing in
+admiration before Miriam, who had resumed the position in which she was
+sitting. "Lord, she's good to-day! Isn't she good to-day?" he broke out,
+seizing their host by the arm to give him a particular view. Miriam
+looked indeed still handsomer than before, and she had taken up her
+attitude again with a splendid, sphinx-like air of being capable of
+keeping it for ever. Nick said nothing, but went back to work with a
+tingle of confusion, which began to act after he had resumed his palette
+as a sharp, a delightful stimulus. Miriam spoke never a word, but she
+was doubly grand, and for more than an hour, till Nick, exhausted,
+declared he must stop, the industrious silence was broken only by the
+desultory discourse of their friend.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+Nick went to Great Stanhope Street at five o'clock and learned, rather
+to his surprise, that Julia was not at home--to his surprise because he
+had told her he would come at that hour, and he attributed to her, with
+a certain simplicity, an eager state of mind in regard to his
+explanation. Apparently she was not eager; the eagerness was his own--he
+was eager to explain. He recognised, not without a certain consciousness
+of magnanimity in doing so, that there had been some reason for her
+quick withdrawal from his studio or at any rate for her extreme
+discomposure there. He had a few days before put in a plea for a snatch
+of worship in that sanctuary and she had accepted and approved it; but
+the worship, when the curtain happened to blow back, showed for that of
+a magnificent young woman, an actress with disordered hair, who wore in
+a singular degree the appearance of a person settled for many hours. The
+explanation was easy: it dwelt in the simple truth that when one was
+painting, even very badly and only for a moment, one had to have models.
+Nick was impatient to give it with frank, affectionate lips and a full,
+pleasant admission that it was natural Julia should have been startled;
+and he was the more impatient that, though he would not in the least
+have expected her to like finding a strange woman intimately installed
+with him, she had disliked it even more than would have seemed probable
+or natural. That was because, not having heard from him about the
+matter, the impression was for the moment irresistible with her that a
+trick had been played her. But three minutes with him alone would make
+the difference.
+
+They would indeed have a considerable difference to make, Nick
+reflected, as minutes much more numerous elapsed without bringing Mrs.
+Dallow home. For he had said to the butler that he would come in and
+wait--though it was odd she should not have left a message for him: she
+would doubtless return from one moment to the other. He had of course
+full licence to wait anywhere he preferred; and he was ushered into
+Julia's particular sitting-room and supplied with tea and the evening
+papers. After a quarter of an hour, however, he gave little attention to
+these beguilements, thanks to his feeling still more acutely that since
+she definitely knew he was coming she might have taken the trouble to be
+at home. He walked up and down and looked out of the window, took up her
+books and dropped them again, and then, as half an hour had elapsed,
+became aware he was really sore. What could she be about when, with
+London a thankless void, she was of course not paying visits? A footman
+came in to attend to the fire, whereupon Nick questioned him as to the
+manner in which she was possibly engaged. The man disclosed the fact
+that his mistress had gone out but a quarter of an hour before Nick's
+arrival, and, as if appreciating the opportunity for a little decorous
+conversation, gave him still more information than he invited. From this
+it appeared that, as Nick knew, or could surmise, she had the evening
+before, from the country, wired for the victoria to meet her in the
+morning at Paddington and then gone straight from the station to the
+studio, while her maid, with her luggage, proceeded in a cab to Great
+Stanhope Street. On leaving the studio, however, she had not come
+directly home; she had chosen this unusual season for an hour's drive in
+the Park. She had finally re-entered her house, but had remained
+upstairs all day, seeing no one and not coming down to luncheon. At four
+o'clock she had ordered the brougham for four forty-five, and had got
+into it punctually, saying, "To the Park!" as she did so.
+
+Nick, after the footman had left him, made what he could of Julia's
+sudden passion for the banks of the Serpentine, forsaken and foggy now,
+inasmuch as the afternoon had come on grey and the light was waning. She
+usually hated the Park and hated a closed carriage. He had a gruesome
+vision of her, shrunken into a corner of her brougham and veiled as if
+in consequence of tears, revolving round the solitude of the Drive. She
+had of course been deeply displeased and was not herself; the motion of
+the carriage soothed her, had an effect on her nerves. Nick remembered
+that in the morning, at his door, she had appeared to be going home; so
+she had plunged into the drearier resort on second thoughts and as she
+noted herself near it. He lingered another half-hour, walked up and down
+the room many times and thought of many things. Had she misunderstood
+him when he said he would come at five? Couldn't she be sure, even if
+she had, that he would come early rather than late, and mightn't she
+have left a message for him on the chance? Going out that way a few
+minutes before he was to come had even a little the air of a thing done
+on purpose to offend him; as if she had been so displeased that she had
+taken the nearest occasion of giving him a sign she meant to break with
+him. But were these the things Julia did and was that the way she did
+them--his fine, proud, delicate, generous Julia?
+
+When six o'clock came poor Nick felt distinctly resentful; but he stayed
+ten minutes longer on the possibility that she would in the morning have
+understood him to mention that hour. The April dusk began to gather and
+the unsociability of her behaviour, especially if she were still
+rumbling round the Park, became absurd. Anecdotes came back to him,
+vaguely remembered, heard he couldn't have said when or where, of poor
+artists for whom life had been rendered difficult by wives who wouldn't
+allow them the use of the living female model and who made scenes if
+they encountered on the staircase such sources of inspiration. These
+ladies struck him as vulgar and odious persons, with whom it seemed
+grotesque that Julia should have anything in common. Of course she was
+not his wife yet, and of course if she were he should have washed his
+hands of every form of activity requiring the services of the sitter;
+but even these qualifications left him with a power to wince at the way
+in which the woman he was so sure he loved just escaped ranking herself
+with the Philistines.
+
+At a quarter past six he rang a bell and told the servant who answered
+it that he was going and that Mrs. Dallow was to be informed as soon as
+she came in that he had expected to find her and had waited an hour and
+a quarter. But he had just reached the doorstep of departure when her
+brougham, emerging from the evening mist, stopped in front of the house.
+Nick stood there hanging back till she got out, allowing the servants
+only to help her. She saw him--she was less veiled than his mental
+vision of her; but this didn't prevent her pausing to give an order to
+the coachman, a matter apparently requiring some discussion. When she
+came to the door her visitor remarked that he had been waiting an
+eternity; to which she replied that he must make no grievance of
+that--she was too unwell to do him justice. He immediately professed
+regret and sympathy, adding, however, that in that case she had much
+better not have gone out. She made no answer to this--there were three
+servants in the hall who looked as if they might understand at least
+what was not said to them; only when he followed her in she asked if his
+idea had been to stay longer.
+
+"Certainly, if you're not too ill to see me."
+
+"Come in then," Julia said, turning back after having gone to the foot
+of the stairs.
+
+This struck him immediately as a further restriction of his visit: she
+wouldn't readmit him to the drawing-room or to her boudoir; she would
+receive him in the impersonal apartment downstairs where she saw people
+on business. What did she want to do to him? He was prepared by this
+time for a scene of jealousy, since he was sure he had learned to read
+her character justly in feeling that if she had the appearance of a cold
+woman a forked flame in her was liable on occasion to break out. She was
+very still, but from time to time she would fire off a pistol. As soon
+as he had closed the door she said without sitting down:
+
+"I daresay you saw I didn't like that at all."
+
+"My having a sitter in that professional way? I was very much annoyed at
+it myself," Nick answered.
+
+"Why were _you_ annoyed? She's very handsome," Mrs. Dallow perversely
+said.
+
+"I didn't know you had looked at her!" Nick laughed.
+
+Julia had a pause. "Was I very rude?"
+
+"Oh it was all right; it was only awkward for me because you didn't
+know," he replied.
+
+"I did know; that's why I came."
+
+"How do you mean? My letter couldn't have reached you."
+
+"I don't know anything about your letter," Julia cast about her for a
+chair and then seated herself on the edge of a sofa with her eyes on the
+floor.
+
+"She sat to me yesterday; she was there all the morning; but I didn't
+write to tell you. I went at her with great energy and, absurd as it may
+seem to you, found myself very tired afterwards. Besides, in the evening
+I went to see her act."
+
+"Does she act?" asked Mrs. Dallow.
+
+"She's an actress: it's her profession. Don't you remember her that day
+at Peter's in Paris? She's already a celebrity; she has great talent;
+she's engaged at a theatre here and is making a sensation. As I tell
+you, I saw her last night."
+
+"You needn't tell me," Julia returned, looking up at him with a face of
+which the intense, the tragic sadness startled him.
+
+He had been standing before her, but at this he instantly sat down
+close, taking her passive hand. "I want to, please; otherwise it must
+seem so odd to you. I knew she was coming when I wrote to you the day
+before yesterday. But I didn't tell you then because I didn't know how
+it would turn out, and I didn't want to exult in advance over a poor
+little attempt that might come to nothing. Moreover, it was no use
+speaking of the matter at all unless I told you exactly how it had come
+about," Nick went on, explaining kindly and copiously. "It was the
+result of a visit unexpectedly paid me by Gabriel Nash."
+
+"That man--the man who spoke to me?" Her memory of him shuddered into
+life.
+
+"He did what he thought would please you, but I daresay it didn't. You
+met him in Paris and didn't like him; so I judged best to hold my tongue
+about him."
+
+"Do _you_ like him?"
+
+"Very much."
+
+"Great heaven!" Julia ejaculated, almost under her breath.
+
+"The reason I was annoyed was because, somehow, when you came in, I
+suddenly had the air of having got out of those visits and shut myself
+up in town to do something that I had kept from you. And I have been
+very unhappy till I could explain."
+
+"You don't explain--you can't explain," Mrs Dallow declared, turning on
+her companion eyes which, in spite of her studied stillness, expressed
+deep excitement. "I knew it--I knew everything; that's why I came."
+
+"It was a sort of second-sight--what they call a brainwave," Nick
+smiled.
+
+"I felt uneasy, I felt a kind of call; it came suddenly, yesterday. It
+was irresistible; nothing could have kept me this morning."
+
+"That's very serious, but it's still more delightful. You mustn't go
+away again," said Nick. "We must stick together--forever and ever."
+
+He put his arm round her, but she detached herself as soon as she felt
+its pressure. She rose quickly, moving away, while, mystified, he sat
+looking up at her as she had looked a few moments before at him. "I've
+thought it all over; I've been thinking of it all day," she began.
+"That's why I didn't come in."
+
+"Don't think of it too much; it isn't worth it."
+
+"You like it more than anything else. You do--you can't deny it," she
+went on.
+
+"My dear child, what are you talking about?" Nick asked, gently...
+
+"That's what you like--doing what you were this morning; with women
+lolling, with their things off, to be painted, and people like that
+man."
+
+Nick slowly got up, hesitating. "My dear Julia, apart from the surprise
+this morning, do you object to the living model?"
+
+"Not a bit, for you."
+
+"What's the inconvenience then, since in my studio they're only for me?"
+
+"You love it, you revel in it; that's what you want--the only thing you
+want!" Julia broke out.
+
+"To have models, lolling undressed women, do you mean?"
+
+"That's what I felt, what I knew," she went on--"what came over me and
+haunted me yesterday so that I couldn't throw it off. It seemed to me
+that if I could see it with my eyes and have the perfect proof I should
+feel better, I should be quiet. And now I _am_ quiet--after a struggle
+of some hours, I confess. I _have_ seen; the whole thing's before me and
+I'm satisfied."
+
+"I'm not--to me neither the whole thing nor half of it is before me.
+What exactly are you talking about?" Nick demanded.
+
+"About what you were doing this morning. That's your innermost
+preference, that's your secret passion."
+
+"A feeble scratch at something serious? Yes, it was almost serious," he
+said. "But it was an accident, this morning and yesterday: I got on less
+wretchedly than I intended."
+
+"I'm sure you've immense talent," Julia returned with a dreariness that
+was almost droll.
+
+"No, no, I might have had. I've plucked it up: it's too late for it to
+flower. My dear Julia, I'm perfectly incompetent and perfectly
+resigned."
+
+"Yes, you looked so this morning, when you hung over her. Oh she'll
+bring back your talent!"
+
+"She's an obliging and even an intelligent creature, and I've no doubt
+she would if she could," Nick conceded. "But I've received from you all
+the help any woman's destined to give me. No one can do for me again
+what you've done."
+
+"I shouldn't try it again; I acted in ignorance. Oh I've thought it all
+out!" Julia declared. And then with a strange face of anguish resting on
+his own: "Before it's too late--before it's too late!"
+
+"Too late for what?"
+
+"For you to be free--for you to be free. And for me--for me to be free
+too. You hate everything I like!" she flashed out. "Don't pretend, don't
+pretend!" she went on as a sound of protest broke from him.
+
+"I thought you so awfully _wanted_ me to paint," he gasped, flushed and
+staring.
+
+"I do--I do. That's why you must be free, why we must part?"
+
+"Why we must part--?"
+
+"Oh I've turned it well over. I've faced the hard truth. It wouldn't do
+at all!" Julia rang out.
+
+"I like the way you talk of it--as if it were a trimming for your
+dress!" Nick retorted with bitterness. "Won't it do for you to be loved
+and cherished as well as any woman in England?"
+
+She turned away from him, closing her eyes as not to see something
+dangerous. "You mustn't give anything up for me. I should feel it all
+the while and I should hate it. I'm not afraid of the truth, but you
+are."
+
+"The truth, dear Julia? I only want to know it," Nick insisted. "It
+seems to me in fact just what I've got hold of. When two persons are
+united by the tenderest affection and are sane and generous and just, no
+difficulties that occur in the union their life makes for them are
+insurmountable, no problems are insoluble."
+
+She appeared for a moment to reflect upon this: it was spoken in a tone
+that might have touched her. Yet at the end of the moment, lifting her
+eyes, she brought out: "I hate art, as you call it. I thought I did, I
+knew I did; but till this morning I didn't know how much."
+
+"Bless your dear soul, _that_ wasn't art," Nick pleaded. "The real thing
+will be a thousand miles away from us; it will never come into the
+house, _soyez tranquille_. It knows where to look in and where to flee
+shrieking. Why then should you worry?"
+
+"Because I want to understand, I want to know what I'm doing. You're an
+artist: you are, you are!" Julia cried, accusing him passionately.
+
+"My poor Julia, it isn't so easy as that, nor a character one can take
+on from one day to the other. There are all sorts of things; one must be
+caught young and put through the mill--one must see things as they are.
+There are very few professions that goes with. There would be sacrifices
+I never can make."
+
+"Well then, there are sacrifices for both of us, and I can't make them
+either. I daresay it's all right for you, but for me it would be a
+terrible mistake. When I think I'm doing a certain thing I mustn't do
+just the opposite," she kept on as for true lucidity. "There are things
+I've thought of, the things I like best; and they're not what you mean.
+It would be a great deception, and it's not the way I see my life, and
+it would be misery if we don't understand."
+
+He looked at her with eyes not lighted by her words. "If we don't
+understand what?"
+
+"That we're utterly different--that you're doing it all for _me_."
+
+"And is that an objection to me--what I do for you?" he asked.
+
+"You do too much. You're awfully good, you're generous, you're a dear,
+oh yes--a dear. But that doesn't make me believe in it. I didn't at
+bottom, from the first--that's why I made you wait, why I gave you your
+freedom. Oh I've suspected you," Julia continued, "I had my ideas. It's
+all right for you, but it won't do for me: I'm different altogether. Why
+should it always be put upon me when I hate it? What have I done? I was
+drenched with it before." These last words, as they broke forth, were
+attended with a quick blush; so that Nick could as quickly discern in
+them the uncalculated betrayal of an old irritation, an old shame
+almost--her late husband's flat, inglorious taste for pretty things, his
+indifference to every chance to play a public part. This had been the
+humiliation of her youth, and it was indeed a perversity of fate that a
+new alliance should contain for her even an oblique demand for the same
+spirit of accommodation, impose on her the secret bitterness of the same
+concessions. As Nick stood there before her, struggling sincerely with
+the force that he now felt to be strong in her, the intense resolution
+to break with him, a force matured in a few hours, he read a riddle that
+hitherto had baffled him, saw a great mystery become simple. A personal
+passion for him had all but thrown her into his arms (the sort of thing
+that even a vain man--and Nick was not especially vain--might hesitate
+to recognise the strength of); held in check at moments, with a strain
+of the cord that he could still feel vibrate, by her deep, her rare
+ambition, and arrested at the last only just in time to save her
+calculations. His present glimpse of the immense extent of these
+calculations didn't make him think her cold or poor; there was in fact a
+positive strange heat in them and they struck him rather as grand and
+high. The fact that she could drop him even while she longed for
+him--drop him because it was now fixed in her mind that he wouldn't
+after all serve her resolve to be associated, so far as a woman could,
+with great affairs; that she could postpone, and postpone to an
+uncertainty, the satisfaction of an aching tenderness and plan for the
+long run--this exhibition of will and courage, of the larger scheme that
+possessed her, commanded his admiration on the spot. He paid the heavy
+price of the man of imagination; he was capable of far excursions of the
+spirit, disloyalties to habit and even to faith, he was open to rare
+communications. He ached, on his side, for the moment, to convince her
+that he would achieve what he wouldn't, for the vision of his future she
+had tried to entertain shone before him as a bribe and a challenge. It
+struck him there was nothing he couldn't work for enough with her to be
+so worked with by her. Presently he said:
+
+"You want to be sure the man you marry will be prime minister of
+England. But how can you be really sure with any one?"
+
+"I can be really sure some men won't!" Julia returned.
+
+"The only safe thing perhaps would be to-marry Mr. Macgeorge," he
+suggested.
+
+"Possibly not even him."
+
+"You're a prime minister yourself," Nick made answer. "To hold fast to
+you as I hold, to be determined to be of your party--isn't that
+political enough, since you're the incarnation of politics?"
+
+"Ah how you hate them!" she wailed again. "I saw that when I saw you
+this morning. The whole place reeked of your aversion."
+
+"My dear child, the greatest statesmen have had their distractions. What
+do you make of my hereditary talent? That's a tremendous force."
+
+"It wouldn't carry you far." Then she terribly added, "You must be a
+great artist." He tossed his head at the involuntary contempt of this,
+but she went on: "It's beautiful of you to want to give up anything, and
+I like you for it. I shall always like you. We shall be friends, and I
+shall always take an interest--!"
+
+But he stopped her there, made a movement which interrupted her phrase,
+and she suffered him to hold her hand as if she were not afraid of him
+now. "It isn't only for you," he argued gently; "you're a great deal,
+but you're not everything. Innumerable vows and pledges repose upon my
+head. I'm inextricably committed and dedicated. I was brought up in the
+temple like an infant Samuel; my father was a high-priest and I'm a
+child of the Lord. And then the life itself--when _you_ speak of it I
+feel stirred to my depths; it's like a herald's trumpet. Fight _with_
+me, Julia--not against me! Be on my side and we shall do everything. It
+is uplifting to be a great man before the people--to be loved by them,
+to be followed by them. An artist isn't--never, never. Why _should_ he
+be? Don't forget how clever I am."
+
+"Oh if it wasn't for that!" she panted, pale with the effort to resist
+his tone. Then she put it to him: "Do you pretend that if I were to die
+to-morrow you'd stay in the House?"
+
+"If you were to die? God knows! But you do singularly little justice to
+my incentives," he pursued. "My political career's everything to my
+mother."
+
+This but made her say after a moment: "Are you afraid of your mother?"
+
+"Yes, immensely; for she represents ever so many possibilities of
+disappointment and distress. She represents all my father's as well as
+all her own, and in them my father tragically lives again. On the other
+hand I see him in bliss, as I see my mother, over our marriage and our
+life of common aspirations--though of course that's not a consideration
+that I can expect to have power with you."
+
+She shook her head slowly, even smiling with her recovered calmness and
+lucidity. "You'll never hold high office."
+
+"But why not take me as I am?"
+
+"Because I'm abominably keen about that sort of thing--I must recognise
+my keenness. I must face the ugly truth. I've been through the worst;
+it's all settled."
+
+"The worst, I suppose, was when you found me this morning."
+
+"Oh that was all right--for you."
+
+"You're magnanimous, Julia; but evidently what's good enough for me
+isn't good enough for you." Nick spoke with bitterness.
+
+"I don't like you enough--that's the obstacle," she held herself in hand
+to say.
+
+"You did a year ago; you confessed to it."
+
+"Well, a year ago was a year ago. Things are changed to-day."
+
+"You're very fortunate--to be able to throw away a real devotion," Nick
+returned.
+
+She had her pocket-handkerchief in her hand, and at this she quickly
+pressed it to her lips as to check an exclamation. Then for an instant
+she appeared to be listening to some sound from outside. He interpreted
+her movement as an honourable impulse to repress the "Do you mean the
+devotion I was witness of this morning?" But immediately afterwards she
+said something very different: "I thought I heard a ring. I've
+telegraphed for Mrs. Gresham."
+
+He wondered. "Why did you do that?"
+
+"Oh I want her."
+
+He walked to the window, where the curtains had not been drawn, and saw
+in the dusk a cab at the door. When he turned back he went on: "Why
+won't you trust me to make you like me, as you call it, better? If I
+make you like me as well as I like you it will be about enough, I
+think."
+
+"Oh I like you enough for _your_ happiness. And I don't throw away a
+devotion," Mrs. Dallow continued. "I shall be constantly kind to you. I
+shall be beautiful to you."
+
+"You'll make me lose a fortune," Nick after a moment said.
+
+It brought a slight convulsion, instantly repressed, into her face. "Ah
+you may have all the money you want!"
+
+"I don't mean yours," he answered with plenty of expression of his own.
+He had determined on the instant, since it might serve, to tell her what
+he had never breathed to her before. "Mr. Carteret last year promised me
+a pot of money on the day we should be man and wife. He has thoroughly
+set his heart on it."
+
+"I'm sorry to disappoint Mr. Carteret," said Julia. "I'll go and see
+him. I'll make it all right," she went on. "Then your work, you know,
+will bring you an income. The great men get a thousand just for a head."
+
+"I'm only joking," Nick returned with sombre eyes that contradicted this
+profession. "But what things you deserve I should do!"
+
+"Do you mean striking likenesses?"
+
+He watched her a moment. "You do hate it! Pushed to that point, it's
+curious," he audibly mused.
+
+"Do you mean you're joking about Mr. Carteret's promise?"
+
+"No--the promise is real, but I don't seriously offer it as a reason."
+
+"I shall go to Beauclere," Julia said. "You're an hour late," she added
+in a different tone; for at that moment the door of the room was thrown
+open and Mrs. Gresham, the butler pronouncing her name, ushered in.
+
+"Ah don't impugn my punctuality--it's my character!" the useful lady
+protested, putting a sixpence from the cabman into her purse. Nick went
+off at this with a simplified farewell--went off foreseeing exactly what
+he found the next day, that the useful lady would have received orders
+not to budge from her hostess's side. He called on the morrow, late in
+the afternoon, and Julia saw him liberally, in the spirit of her
+assurance that she would be "beautiful" to him, that she had not thrown
+away his devotion; but Mrs. Gresham remained, with whatever delicacies
+of deprecation, a spectator of her liberality. Julia looked at him
+kindly, but her companion was more benignant still; so that what Nick
+did with his own eyes was not to appeal to her to see him a moment
+alone, but to solicit, in the name of this luxury, the second occupant
+of the drawing-room. Mrs. Gresham seemed to say, while Julia said so
+little, "I understand, my poor friend, I know everything--she has told
+me only _her_ side, but I'm so competent that I know yours too--and I
+enter into the whole thing deeply. But it would be as much as my place
+is worth to accommodate you." Still, she didn't go so far as to give him
+an inkling of what he learned on the third day and what he had not gone
+so far as to suspect--that the two ladies had made rapid arrangements
+for a scheme of foreign travel. These arrangements had already been
+carried out when, at the door of the house in Great Stanhope Street, the
+announcement was made him that the subtle creatures had started that
+morning for Paris.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+They spent on their way to Florence several days in Paris, where Peter
+Sherringham had as much free talk with his sister as it often befell one
+member of their family to have with another. He enjoyed, that is, on two
+different occasions, half an hour's gossip with her in her sitting-room
+at the hotel. On one of these he took the liberty of asking her whether
+or no, decidedly, she meant to marry Nick Dormer. Julia expressed to him
+that she appreciated his curiosity, but that Nick and she were nothing
+more than relations and good friends. "He tremendously wants it," Peter
+none the less observed; to which she simply made answer, "Well then, he
+may want!"
+
+After this, for a while, they sat as silent as if the subject had been
+quite threshed out between them. Peter felt no impulse to penetrate
+further, for it was not a habit of the Sherringhams to talk with each
+other of their love-affairs; and he was conscious of the particular
+deterrent that he and Julia entertained in general such different
+sentiments that they could never go far together in discussion. He liked
+her and was sorry for her, thought her life lonely and wondered she
+didn't make a "great" marriage. Moreover he pitied her for being without
+the interests and consolations he himself had found substantial: those
+of the intellectual, the studious order he considered these to be, not
+knowing how much she supposed she reflected and studied and what an
+education she had found in her political aspirations, viewed by him as
+scarce more a personal part of her than the livery of her servants or
+the jewels George Dallow's money had bought. Her relations with Nick
+struck him as queer, but were fortunately none of his business. No
+business of Julia's was sufficiently his to justify him in an attempt to
+understand it. That there should have been a question of her marrying
+Nick was the funny thing rather than that the question should have been
+dropped. He liked his clever cousin very well as he was--enough for a
+vague sense that he might be spoiled by alteration to a brother-in-law.
+Moreover, though not perhaps distinctly conscious of this, Peter pressed
+lightly on Julia's doings from a tacit understanding that in this case
+she would let him off as easily. He couldn't have said exactly what it
+was he judged it pertinent to be let off from: perhaps from irritating
+inquiry as to whether he had given any more tea-parties for gross young
+women connected with the theatre.
+
+Peter's forbearance, however, brought him not quite all the security he
+prefigured. After an interval he indeed went so far as to ask Julia if
+Nick had been wanting in respect to her; but this was an appeal intended
+for sympathy, not for other intervention. She answered: "Dear no--though
+he's very provoking." Thus Peter guessed that they had had a quarrel in
+which it didn't concern him to meddle: he added her epithet and her
+flight from England together, and they made up to his perception one of
+the little magnified embroilments which do duty for the real in
+superficial lives. It was worse to provoke Julia than not, and Peter
+thought Nick's doing so not particularly characteristic of his
+versatility for good. He might wonder why she didn't marry the member
+for Harsh if the subject had pressingly come up between them; but he
+wondered still more why Nick didn't marry that gentleman's great backer.
+Julia said nothing again, as if to give him a chance to address her some
+challenge that would save her from gushing; but as his impulse appeared
+to be to change the subject, and as he changed it only by silence, she
+was reduced to resuming presently:
+
+"I should have thought you'd have come over to see your friend the
+actress."
+
+"Which of my friends? I know so many actresses," Peter pleaded.
+
+"The woman you inflicted on us in this place a year ago--the one who's
+in London now."
+
+"Oh Miriam Rooth? I should have liked to come over, but I've been tied
+fast. Have you seen her there?"
+
+"Yes, I've seen her."
+
+"Do you like her?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"She has a lovely voice," Peter hazarded after a moment.
+
+"I don't know anything about her voice--I haven't heard it."
+
+"But she doesn't act in pantomime, does she?"
+
+"I don't know anything about her acting. I saw her in private--at Nick
+Dormer's studio."
+
+"At Nick's--?" He was interested now.
+
+"What was she doing there?"
+
+"She was sprawling over the room and--rather insolently--staring at me."
+
+If Mrs. Dallow had wished to "draw" her brother she must at this point
+have suspected she succeeded, in spite of his care to divest his tone of
+all emotion. "Why, does he know her so well? I didn't know."
+
+"She's sitting to him for her portrait--at least she was then."
+
+"Oh yes, I remember--I put him up to that. I'm greatly interested. Is
+the portrait good?"
+
+"I haven't the least idea--I didn't look at it. I daresay it's like,"
+Julia threw off.
+
+"But how in the world"--and Peter's interest grew franker--"does Nick
+find time to paint?"
+
+"I don't know. That horrid man brought her."
+
+"Which horrid man?"--he spoke as if they had their choice.
+
+"The one Nick thinks so clever--the vulgar little man who was at your
+place that day and tried to talk to me. I remember he abused theatrical
+people to me--as if I cared anything about them. But he has apparently
+something to do with your girl."
+
+"Oh I recollect him--I had a discussion with him," Peter patiently said.
+
+"How could you? I must go and dress," his sister went on more
+importantly.
+
+"He _was_ clever, remarkably. Miss Rooth and her mother were old friends
+of his, and he was the first person to speak of them to me."
+
+"What a distinction! I thought him disgusting!" cried Julia, who was
+pressed for time and who had now got up.
+
+"Oh you're severe," said Peter, still bland; but when they separated she
+had given him something to think of.
+
+That Nick was painting a beautiful actress was no doubt in part at least
+the reason why he was provoking and why his most intimate female friend
+had come abroad. The fact didn't render him provoking to his kinsman:
+Peter had on the contrary been quite sincere when he qualified it as
+interesting. It became indeed on reflexion so interesting that it had
+perhaps almost as much to do with Sherringham's now prompt rush over to
+London as it had to do with Julia's coming away. Reflexion taught him
+further that the matter was altogether a delicate one and suggested that
+it was odd he should be mixed up with it in fact when, as Julia's own
+affair, he had but wished to keep out of it. It might after all be his
+affair a little as well--there was somehow a still more pointed
+implication of that in his sister's saying to him the next day that she
+wished immensely he would take a fancy to Biddy Dormer. She said more:
+she said there had been a time when she believed he _had_ done
+so--believed too that the poor child herself had believed the same.
+Biddy was far away the nicest girl she knew--the dearest, sweetest,
+cleverest, _best_, and one of the prettiest creatures in England, which
+never spoiled anything. She would make as charming a wife as ever a man
+had, suited to any position, however high, and--Julia didn't mind
+mentioning it, since her brother would believe it whether she mentioned
+it or no--was so predisposed in his favour that he would have no trouble
+at all. In short she herself would see him through--she'd answer for it
+that he'd have but to speak. Biddy's life at home was horrid; she was
+very sorry for her--the child was worthy of a better fate. Peter
+wondered what constituted the horridness of Biddy's life, and gathered
+that it mainly arose from the fact of Julia's disliking Lady Agnes and
+Grace and of her profiting comfortably by that freedom to do so which
+was a fruit of her having given them a house she had perhaps not felt
+the want of till they were in possession of it. He knew she had always
+liked Biddy, but he asked himself--this was the rest of his wonder--why
+she had taken to liking her so extraordinarily just now. He liked her
+himself--he even liked to be talked to about her and could believe
+everything Julia said: the only thing that had mystified him was her
+motive for suddenly saying it. He had assured her he was perfectly
+sensible of her goodness in so plotting out his future, but was also
+sorry if he had put it into any one's head--most of all into the girl's
+own--that he had ever looked at Biddy with a covetous eye. He wasn't in
+the least sure she would make a good wife, but liked her quite too much
+to wish to put any such mystery to the test. She was certainly not
+offered them for cruel experiments. As it happened, really, he wasn't
+thinking of marrying any one--he had ever so many grounds for neglecting
+that. Of course one was never safe against accidents, but one could at
+least take precautions, and he didn't mind telling her that there were
+several he had taken.
+
+"I don't know what you mean, but it seems to me quite the best
+precaution would be to care for a charming, steady girl like Biddy. Then
+you'd be quite in shelter, you'd know the worst that can happen to you,
+and it wouldn't be bad." The objection he had made to this plea is not
+important, especially as it was not quite candid; it need only be
+mentioned that before the pair parted Julia said to him, still in
+reference to their young friend: "Do go and see her and be nice to her;
+she'll save you disappointments."
+
+These last words reverberated for him--there was a shade of the
+portentous in them and they seemed to proceed from a larger knowledge of
+the subject than he himself as yet possessed. They were not absent from
+his memory when, in the beginning of May, availing himself, to save
+time, of the night-service, he crossed from Paris to London. He arrived
+before the breakfast-hour and went to his sister's house in Great
+Stanhope Street, where he always found quarters, were she in town or
+not. When at home she welcomed him, and in her absence the relaxed
+servants hailed him for the chance he gave them to recover their "form."
+In either case his allowance of space was large and his independence
+complete. He had obtained permission this year to take in scattered
+snatches rather than as a single draught the quantum of holiday to which
+he was entitled; and there was, moreover, a question of his being
+transferred to another capital--in which event he believed he might
+count on a month or two in England before proceeding to his new post.
+
+He waited, after breakfast, but a very few minutes before jumping into a
+hansom and rattling away to the north. A part of his waiting indeed
+consisted of a fidgety walk up Bond Street, during which he looked at
+his watch three or four times while he paused at shop windows for fear
+of being a little early. In the cab, as he rolled along, after having
+given an address--Balaklava Place, Saint John's Wood--the fear he might
+be too early took curiously at moments the form of a fear that he should
+be too late: a symbol of the inconsistencies of which his spirit at
+present was full. Peter Sherringham was nervously formed, too nervously
+for a diplomatist, and haunted with inclinations and indeed with designs
+which contradicted each other. He wanted to be out of it and yet dreaded
+not to be in it, and on this particular occasion the sense of exclusion
+was an ache. At the same time he was not unconscious of the impulse to
+stop his cab and make it turn round and drive due south. He saw himself
+launched in the breezy fact while morally speaking he was hauled up on
+the hot sand of the principle, and he could easily note how little these
+two faces of the same idea had in common. However, as the consciousness
+of going helped him to reflect, a principle was a poor affair if it
+merely became a fact. Yet from the hour it did turn to action the action
+_had_ to be the particular one in which he was engaged; so that he was
+in the absurd position of thinking his conduct wiser for the reason
+that it was directly opposed to his intentions.
+
+He had kept away from London ever since Miriam Rooth came over;
+resisting curiosity, sympathy, importunate haunting passion, and
+considering that his resistance, founded, to be salutary, on a general
+scheme of life, was the greatest success he had yet achieved. He was
+deeply occupied with plucking up the feeling that attached him to her,
+and he had already, by various little ingenuities, loosened some of its
+roots. He had suffered her to make her first appearance on any stage
+without the comfort of his voice or the applause of his hand; saying to
+himself that the man who could do the more could do the less and that
+such an act of fortitude was a proof he should keep straight. It was not
+exactly keeping straight to run over to London three months later and,
+the hour he arrived, scramble off to Balaklava Place; but after all he
+pretended only to be human and aimed in behaviour only at the heroic,
+never at the monstrous. The highest heroism was obviously three parts
+tact. He had not written to his young friend that he was coming to
+England and would call upon her at eleven o'clock in the morning,
+because it was his secret pride that he had ceased to correspond with
+her. Sherringham took his prudence where he could find it, and in doing
+so was rather like a drunkard who should flatter himself he had forsworn
+liquor since he didn't touch lemonade.
+
+It is a sign of how far he was drawn in different directions at once
+that when, on reaching Balaklava Place and alighting at the door of a
+small detached villa of the type of the "retreat," he learned that Miss
+Rooth had but a quarter of an hour before quitted the spot with her
+mother--they had gone to the theatre, to rehearsal, said the maid who
+answered the bell he had set tinkling behind a stuccoed garden-wall:
+when at the end of his pilgrimage he was greeted by a disappointment he
+suddenly found himself relieved and for the moment even saved.
+Providence was after all taking care of him and he submitted to
+Providence. He would still be watched over doubtless, even should he
+follow the two ladies to the theatre, send in his card and obtain
+admission to the scene of their experiments. All his keen taste for
+these matters flamed up again, and he wondered what the girl was
+studying, was rehearsing, what she was to do next. He got back into his
+hansom and drove down the Edgware Road. By the time he reached the
+Marble Arch he had changed his mind again, had determined to let Miriam
+alone for that day. It would be over at eight in the evening--he hardly
+played fair--and then he should consider himself free. Instead of
+pursuing his friends he directed himself upon a shop in Bond Street to
+take a place for their performance. On first coming out he had tried, at
+one of those establishments strangely denominated "libraries," to get a
+stall, but the people to whom he applied were unable to accommodate
+him--they hadn't a single seat left. His actual attempt, at another
+library, was more successful: there was no question of obtaining a
+stall, but he might by a miracle still have a box. There was a
+wantonness in paying for a box at a play on which he had already
+expended four hundred pounds; but while he was mentally measuring this
+abyss an idea came into his head which flushed the extravagance with the
+hue of persuasion.
+
+Peter came out of the shop with the voucher for the box in his pocket,
+turned into Piccadilly, noted that the day was growing warm and fine,
+felt glad that this time he had no other strict business than to leave a
+card or two on official people, and asked himself where he should go if
+he didn't go after Miriam. Then it was that he found himself attaching
+a lively desire and imputing a high importance to the possible view of
+Nick Dormer's portrait of her. He wondered which would be the natural
+place at that hour of the day to look for the artist. The House of
+Commons was perhaps the nearest one, but Nick, inconsequent and
+incalculable though so many of his steps, probably didn't keep the
+picture there; and, moreover, it was not generally characteristic of him
+to be in the natural place. The end of Peter's debate was that he again
+entered a hansom and drove to Calcutta Gardens. The hour was early for
+calling, but cousins with whom one's intercourse was mainly a
+conversational scuffle would accept it as a practical illustration of
+that method. And if Julia wanted him to be nice to Biddy--which was
+exactly, even if with a different view, what he wanted himself--how
+could he better testify than by a visit to Lady Agnes--he would have in
+decency to go to see her some time--at a friendly, fraternising hour
+when they would all be likely to be at home?
+
+Unfortunately, as it turned out, they were none of them at home, so that
+he had to fall back on neutrality and the butler, who was, however, more
+luckily, an old friend. Her ladyship and Miss Dormer were absent from
+town, paying a visit; and Mr. Dormer was also away, or was on the point
+of going away for the day. Miss Bridget was in London, but was out;
+Peter's informant mentioned with earnest vagueness that he thought she
+had gone somewhere to take a lesson. On Peter's asking what sort of
+lesson he meant he replied: "Oh I think--a--the a-sculpture, you know,
+sir." Peter knew, but Biddy's lesson in "a-sculpture"--it sounded on the
+butler's lips like a fashionable new art--struck him a little as a
+mockery of the helpful spirit in which he had come to look her up. The
+man had an air of participating respectfully in his disappointment and,
+to make up for it, added that he might perhaps find Mr. Dormer at his
+other address. He had gone out early and had directed his servant to
+come to Rosedale Road in an hour or two with a portmanteau: he was going
+down to Beauclere in the course of the day, Mr. Carteret being
+ill--perhaps Mr. Sherringham didn't know it. Perhaps too Mr. Sherringham
+would catch him in Rosedale Road before he took his train--he was to
+have been busy there for an hour. This was worth trying, and Peter
+immediately drove to Rosedale Road; where in answer to his ring the door
+was opened to him by Biddy Dormer.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+When that young woman saw him her cheek exhibited the prettiest,
+pleased, surprised red he had ever observed there, though far from
+unacquainted with its living tides, and she stood smiling at him with
+the outer dazzle in her eyes, still making him no motion to enter. She
+only said, "Oh Peter!" and then, "I'm all alone."
+
+"So much the better, dear Biddy. Is that any reason I shouldn't come
+in?"
+
+"Dear no--do come in. You've just missed Nick; he has gone to the
+country--half an hour ago." She had on a large apron and in her hand
+carried a small stick, besmeared, as his quick eye saw, with
+modelling-clay. She dropped the door and fled back before him into the
+studio, where, when he followed her, she was in the act of flinging a
+damp cloth over a rough head, in clay, which, in the middle of the room,
+was supported on a high wooden stand. The effort to hide what she had
+been doing before he caught a glimpse of it made her redder still and
+led to her smiling more, to her laughing with a confusion of shyness and
+gladness that charmed him. She rubbed her hands on her apron, she pulled
+it off, she looked delightfully awkward, not meeting Peter's eye, and
+she said: "I'm just scraping here a little--you mustn't mind me. What I
+do is awful, you know. _Please_, Peter, don't look, I've been coming
+here lately to make my little mess, because mamma doesn't particularly
+like it at home. I've had a lesson or two from a lady who exhibits, but
+you wouldn't suppose it to see what I do. Nick's so kind; he lets me
+come here; he uses the studio so little; I do what I want, or rather
+what I can. What a pity he's gone--he'd have been so glad. I'm really
+alone--I hope you don't mind. Peter, _please_ don't look."
+
+Peter was not bent on looking; his eyes had occupation enough in Biddy's
+own agreeable aspect, which was full of a rare element of domestication
+and responsibility. Though she had, stretching her bravery, taken
+possession of her brother's quarters, she struck her visitor as more at
+home and more herself than he had ever seen her. It was the first time
+she had been, to his notice, so separate from her mother and sister. She
+seemed to know this herself and to be a little frightened by it--just
+enough to make him wish to be reassuring. At the same time Peter also,
+on this occasion, found himself touched with diffidence, especially
+after he had gone back and closed the door and settled down to a regular
+call; for he became acutely conscious of what Julia had said to him in
+Paris and was unable to rid himself of the suspicion that it had been
+said with Biddy's knowledge. It wasn't that he supposed his sister had
+told the girl she meant to do what she could to make him propose to her:
+that would have been cruel to her--if she liked him enough to
+consent--in Julia's perfect uncertainty. But Biddy participated by
+imagination, by divination, by a clever girl's secret, tremulous
+instincts, in her good friend's views about her, and this probability
+constituted for Sherringham a sort of embarrassing publicity. He had
+impressions, possibly gross and unjust, in regard to the way women move
+constantly together amid such considerations and subtly
+intercommunicate, when they don't still more subtly dissemble, the hopes
+or fears of which persons of the opposite sex form the subject.
+Therefore poor Biddy would know that if she failed to strike him in the
+right light it wouldn't be for want of an attention definitely called to
+her claims. She would have been tacitly rejected, virtually condemned.
+He couldn't without an impulse of fatuity endeavour to make up for this
+to her by consoling kindness; he was aware that if any one knew it a man
+would be ridiculous who should take so much as that for granted. But no
+one would know it: he oddly enough in this calculation of security left
+Biddy herself out. It didn't occur to him that she might have a secret,
+small irony to spare for his ingenious and magnanimous effort to show
+her how much he liked her in reparation to her for not liking her more.
+This high charity coloured at any rate the whole of his visit to
+Rosedale Road, the whole of the pleasant, prolonged chat that kept him
+there more than an hour. He begged the girl to go on with her work, not
+to let him interrupt it; and she obliged him at last, taking the cloth
+off the lump of clay and giving him a chance to be delightful by
+guessing that the shapeless mass was intended, or would be intended
+after a while, for Nick. He saw she was more comfortable when she began
+again to smooth it and scrape it with her little stick, to manipulate it
+with an ineffectual air of knowing how; for this gave her something to
+do, relieved her nervousness and permitted her to turn away from him
+when she talked.
+
+He walked about the room and sat down; got up and looked at Nick's
+things; watched her at moments in silence--which made her always say in
+a minute that he was not to pass judgement or she could do nothing;
+observed how her position before her high stand, her lifted arms, her
+turns of the head, considering her work this way and that, all helped
+her to be pretty. She repeated again and again that it was an immense
+pity about Nick, till he was obliged to say he didn't care a straw for
+Nick and was perfectly content with the company he found. This was not
+the sort of tone he thought it right, given the conditions, to take; but
+then even the circumstances didn't require him to pretend he liked her
+less than he did. After all she was his cousin; she would cease to be so
+if she should become his wife; but one advantage of her not entering
+into that relation was precisely that she would remain his cousin. It
+was very pleasant to find a young, bright, slim, rose-coloured kinswoman
+all ready to recognise consanguinity when one came back from cousinless
+foreign lands. Peter talked about family matters; he didn't know, in his
+exile, where no one took an interest in them, what a fund of latent
+curiosity about them he treasured. It drew him on to gossip accordingly
+and to feel how he had with Biddy indefeasible properties in
+common--ever so many things as to which they'd always understand each
+other _à demi-mot_. He smoked a cigarette because she begged him--people
+always smoked in studios and it made her feel so much more an artist.
+She apologised for the badness of her work on the ground that Nick was
+so busy he could scarcely ever give her a sitting; so that she had to do
+the head from photographs and occasional glimpses. They had hoped to be
+able to put in an hour that morning, but news had suddenly come that Mr.
+Carteret was worse, and Nick had hurried down to Beauclere. Mr. Carteret
+was very ill, poor old dear, and Nick and he were immense friends. Nick
+had always been charming to him. Peter and Biddy took the concerns of
+the houses of Dormer and Sherringham in order, and the young man felt
+after a little as if they were as wise as a French _conseil de famille_
+and settling what was best for every one. He heard all about Lady Agnes;
+he showed an interest in the detail of her existence that he had not
+supposed himself to possess, though indeed Biddy threw out intimations
+which excited his curiosity, presenting her mother in a light that might
+call on his sympathy.
+
+"I don't think she has been very happy or very pleased of late," the
+girl said. "I think she has had some disappointments, poor dear mamma;
+and Grace has made her go out of town for three or four days in the hope
+of a little change. They've gone down to see an old lady, Lady St.
+Dunstans, who never comes to London now and who, you know--she's
+tremendously old--was papa's godmother. It's not very lively for Grace,
+but Grace is such a dear she'll do anything for mamma. Mamma will go
+anywhere, no matter at what risk of discomfort, to see people she can
+talk with about papa."
+
+Biddy added in reply to a further question that what her mother was
+disappointed about was--well, themselves, her children and all their
+affairs; and she explained that Lady Agnes wanted all kinds of things
+for them that didn't come, that they didn't get or seem likely to get,
+so that their life appeared altogether a failure. She wanted a great
+deal, Biddy admitted; she really wanted everything, for she had thought
+in her happier days that everything was to be hers. She loved them all
+so much and was so proud too: she couldn't get over the thought of their
+not being successful. Peter was unwilling to press at this point, for he
+suspected one of the things Lady Agnes wanted; but Biddy relieved him a
+little by describing her as eager above all that Grace should get
+married.
+
+"That's too unselfish of her," he pronounced, not caring at all for
+Grace. "Cousin Agnes ought to keep her near her always, if Grace is so
+obliging and devoted."
+
+"Oh mamma would give up anything of that sort for our good; she wouldn't
+sacrifice us that way!" Biddy protested. "Besides, I'm the one to stay
+with mamma; not that I can manage and look after her and do everything
+so well as Grace. But, you know, I _want_ to," said Biddy with a liquid
+note in her voice--and giving her lump of clay a little stab for
+mendacious emphasis.
+
+"But doesn't your mother want the rest of you to get married--Percival
+and Nick and you?" Peter asked.
+
+"Oh she has given up Percy. I don't suppose she thinks it would do. Dear
+Nick of course--that's just what she does want."
+
+He had a pause. "And you, Biddy?"
+
+"Oh I daresay. But that doesn't signify--I never shall."
+
+Peter got up at this; the tone of it set him in motion and he took a
+turn round the room. He threw off something cheap about her being too
+proud; to which she replied that that was the only thing for a girl to
+be to get on.
+
+"What do you mean by getting on?"--and he stopped with his hands in his
+pockets on the other side of the studio.
+
+"I mean crying one's eyes out!" Biddy unexpectedly exclaimed; but she
+drowned the effect of this pathetic paradox in a laugh of clear
+irrelevance and in the quick declaration: "Of course it's about Nick
+that she's really broken-hearted."
+
+"What's the matter with Nick?" he went on with all his diplomacy.
+
+"Oh Peter, what's the matter with Julia?" Biddy quavered softly back to
+him, her eyes suddenly frank and mournful. "I daresay you know what we
+all hoped, what we all supposed from what they told us. And now they
+won't!" said the girl.
+
+"Yes, Biddy, I know. I had the brightest prospect of becoming your
+brother-in-law: wouldn't that have been it--or something like that? But
+it's indeed visibly clouded. What's the matter with them? May I have
+another cigarette?" Peter came back to the wide, cushioned bench where
+he had previously lounged: this was the way they took up the subject he
+wanted most to look into. "Don't they know how to love?" he speculated
+as he seated himself again.
+
+"It seems a kind of fatality!" Biddy sighed.
+
+He said nothing for some moments, at the end of which he asked if his
+companion were to be quite alone during her mother's absence. She
+replied that this parent was very droll about that: would never leave
+her alone and always thought something dreadful would happen to her. She
+had therefore arranged that Florence Tressilian should come and stay in
+Calcutta Gardens for the next few days--to look after her and see she
+did no wrong. Peter inquired with fulness into Florence Tressilian's
+identity: he greatly hoped that for the success of Lady Agnes's
+precautions she wasn't a flighty young genius like Biddy. She was
+described to him as tremendously nice and tremendously clever, but also
+tremendously old and tremendously safe; with the addition that Biddy was
+tremendously fond of her and that while she remained in Calcutta Gardens
+they expected to enjoy themselves tremendously. She was to come that
+afternoon before dinner.
+
+"And are you to dine at home?" said Peter.
+
+"Certainly; where else?"
+
+"And just you two alone? Do you call that enjoying yourselves
+tremendously?"
+
+"It will do for me. No doubt I oughtn't in modesty to speak for poor
+Florence."
+
+"It isn't fair to her; you ought to invite some one to meet her."
+
+"Do you mean you, Peter?" the girl asked, turning to him quickly and
+with a look that vanished the instant he caught it.
+
+"Try me. I'll come like a shot."
+
+"That's kind," said Biddy, dropping her hands and now resting her eyes
+on him gratefully. She remained in this position as if under a charm;
+then she jerked herself back to her work with the remark: "Florence will
+like that immensely."
+
+"I'm delighted to please Florence--your description of her's so
+attractive!" Sherringham laughed. And when his companion asked him if he
+minded there not being a great feast, because when her mother went away
+she allowed her a fixed amount for that sort of thing and, as he might
+imagine, it wasn't millions--when Biddy, with the frankness of their
+pleasant kinship, touched anxiously on this economic point
+(illustrating, as Peter saw, the lucidity with which Lady Agnes had had
+in her old age to learn to recognise the occasions when she could be
+conveniently frugal) he answered that the shortest dinners were the
+best, especially when one was going to the theatre. That was his case
+to-night, and did Biddy think he might look to Miss Tressilian to go
+with them? They'd have to dine early--he wanted not to miss a moment.
+
+"The theatre--Miss Tressilian?" she stared, interrupted and in suspense
+again.
+
+"Would it incommode you very much to dine say at 7.15 and accept a place
+in my box? The finger of Providence was in it when I took a box an hour
+ago. I particularly like your being free to go--if you are free."
+
+She began almost to rave with pleasure. "Dear Peter, how good you are!
+They'll have it at any hour. Florence will be so glad."
+
+"And has Florence seen Miss Rooth?"
+
+"Miss Rooth?" the girl repeated, redder than before. He felt on the spot
+that she had heard of the expenditure of his time and attention on that
+young lady. It was as if she were conscious of how conscious he would
+himself be in speaking of her, and there was a sweetness in her
+allowance for him on that score. But Biddy was more confused for him
+than he was for himself. He guessed in a moment how much she had thought
+over what she had heard; this was indicated by her saying vaguely, "No,
+no, I've not seen her." Then she knew she was answering a question he
+hadn't asked her, and she went on: "We shall be too delighted. I saw
+her--perhaps you remember--in your rooms in Paris. I thought her so
+wonderful then! Every one's talking of her here. But we don't go to the
+theatre much, you know: we don't have boxes offered us except when _you_
+come. Poor Nick's too much taken up in the evening. I've wanted awfully
+to see her. They say she's magnificent."
+
+"I don't know," Peter was glad to be able honestly to answer. "I haven't
+seen her."
+
+"You haven't seen her?"
+
+"Never, Biddy. I mean on the stage. In private often--yes," he
+conscientiously added.
+
+"Oh!" Biddy exclaimed, bending her face on Nick's bust again. She asked
+him no question about the new star, and he offered her no further
+information. There were things in his mind pulling him different ways,
+so that for some minutes silence was the result of the conflict. At last
+he said, after an hesitation caused by the possibility that she was
+ignorant of the fact he had lately elicited from Julia, though it was
+more probable she might have learned it from the same source:
+
+"Am I perhaps indiscreet in alluding to the circumstance that Nick has
+been painting Miss Rooth's portrait?"
+
+"You're not indiscreet in alluding to it to me, because I know it."
+
+"Then there's no secret nor mystery about it?"
+
+Biddy just considered. "I don't think mamma knows it."
+
+"You mean you've been keeping it from her because she wouldn't like it?"
+
+"We're afraid she may think papa wouldn't have liked it."
+
+This was said with an absence of humour at which Peter could but show
+amusement, though he quickly recovered himself, repenting of any
+apparent failure of respect to the high memory of his late celebrated
+relative. He threw off rather vaguely: "Ah yes, I remember that great
+man's ideas," and then went on: "May I ask if you know it, the fact
+we're talking of, through Julia or through Nick?"
+
+"I know it from both of them."
+
+"Then if you're in their confidence may I further ask if this
+undertaking of Nick's is the reason why things seem to be at an end
+between them?"
+
+"Oh I don't think she likes it," Biddy had to say.
+
+"Isn't it good?"
+
+"Oh I don't mean the picture--she hasn't seen it. But his having done
+it."
+
+"Does she dislike it so much that that's why she won't marry him?"
+
+Biddy gave up her work, moving away from it to look at it. She came and
+sat down on the long bench on which Sherringham had placed himself. Then
+she broke out: "Oh Peter, it's a great trouble--it's a very great
+trouble; and I can't tell you, for I don't understand it."
+
+"If I ask you," he said, "it's not to pry into what doesn't concern me;
+but Julia's my sister, and I can't after all help taking some interest
+in her life. She tells me herself so little. She doesn't think me
+worthy."
+
+"Ah poor Julia!" Biddy wailed defensively. Her tone recalled to him that
+Julia had at least thought him worthy to unite himself to Bridget
+Dormer, and inevitably betrayed that the girl was thinking of that also.
+While they both thought of it they sat looking into each other's eyes.
+
+"Nick, I'm sure, doesn't treat _you_ that way; I'm sure he confides in
+you; he talks to you about his occupations, his ambitions," Peter
+continued. "And you understand him, you enter into them, you're nice to
+him, you help him."
+
+"Oh Nick's life--it's very dear to me," Biddy granted.
+
+"That must be jolly for him."
+
+"It makes _me_ very happy."
+
+Peter uttered a low, ambiguous groan; then he cried with irritation;
+"What the deuce is the matter with them then? Why can't they hit it off
+together and be quiet and rational and do what every one wants them to?"
+
+"Oh Peter, it's awfully complicated!" the girl sighed with sagacity.
+
+"Do you mean that Nick's in love with her?"
+
+"In love with Julia?"
+
+"No, no, with Miriam Rooth."
+
+She shook her head slowly, then with a smile which struck him as one of
+the sweetest things he had ever seen--it conveyed, at the expense of her
+own prospects, such a shy, generous little mercy of reassurance--"He
+isn't, Peter," she brought out. "Julia thinks it trifling--all that
+sort of thing," she added "She wants him to go in for different
+honours."
+
+"Julia's the oddest woman. I mean I thought she loved him," Peter
+explained. "And when you love a person--!" He continued to make it out,
+leaving his sentence impatiently unfinished, while Biddy, with lowered
+eyes, sat waiting--it so interested her--to learn what you did when you
+loved a person. "I can't conceive her giving him up. He has great
+ability, besides being such a good fellow."
+
+"It's for his happiness, Peter--that's the way she reasons," Biddy set
+forth. "She does it for an idea; she has told me a great deal about it,
+and I see the way she feels."
+
+"You try to, Biddy, because you're such a dear good-natured girl, but I
+don't believe you do in the least," he took the liberty of replying.
+"It's too little the way you yourself would feel. Julia's idea, as you
+call it, must be curious."
+
+"Well, it is, Peter," Biddy mournfully admitted. "She won't risk not
+coming out at the top."
+
+"At the top of what?"
+
+"Oh of everything." Her tone showed a trace of awe of such high views.
+
+"Surely one's at the top of everything when one's in love."
+
+"I don't know," said the girl.
+
+"Do you doubt it?" Peter asked.
+
+"I've never been in love and I never shall be."
+
+"You're as perverse, in your way, as Julia," he returned to this. "But I
+confess I don't understand Nick's attitude any better. He seems to me,
+if I may say so, neither fish nor flesh."
+
+"Oh his attitude's very noble, Peter; his state of mind's wonderfully
+interesting," Biddy pleaded. "Surely _you_ must be in favour of art,"
+she beautifully said.
+
+It made him look at her a moment. "Dear Biddy, your little digs are as
+soft as zephyrs."
+
+She coloured, but she protested. "My little digs? What do you mean?
+Aren't you in favour of art?"
+
+"The question's delightfully simple. I don't know what you're talking
+about. Everything has its place. A parliamentary life," he opined,
+"scarce seems to me the situation for portrait-painting."
+
+"That's just what Nick says."
+
+"You talk of it together a great deal?"
+
+"Yes, Nick's very good to me."
+
+"Clever Nick! And what do you advise him?"
+
+"Oh to _do_ something."
+
+"That's valuable," Peter laughed. "Not to give up his sweetheart for the
+sake of a paint-pot, I hope?"
+
+"Never, never, Peter! It's not a question of his giving up," Biddy
+pursued, "for Julia has herself shaken free. I think she never really
+felt safe--she loved him, but was afraid of him. Now she's only
+afraid--she has lost the confidence she tried to have. Nick has tried to
+hold her, but she has wrested herself away. Do you know what she said to
+me? She said, 'My confidence has gone for ever.'"
+
+"I didn't know she was such a prig!" Julia's brother commented. "They're
+queer people, verily, with water in their veins instead of blood. You
+and I wouldn't be like that, should we?--though you _have_ taken up such
+a discouraging position about caring for a fellow."
+
+"I care for art," poor Biddy returned.
+
+"You do, to some purpose"--and Peter glanced at the bust.
+
+"To that of making you laugh at me."
+
+But this he didn't heed. "Would you give a good man up for 'art'?"
+
+"A good man? What man?"
+
+"Well, say me--if I wanted to marry you."
+
+She had the briefest of pauses. "Of course I would--in a moment. At any
+rate I'd give up the House of Commons," she amended. "That's what Nick's
+going to do now--only you mustn't tell any one."
+
+Peter wondered. "He's going to chuck up his seat?"
+
+"I think his mind is made up to it. He has talked me over--we've had
+some deep discussions. Yes, I'm on the side of art!" she ardently said.
+
+"Do you mean in order to paint--to paint that girl?" Peter went on.
+
+"To paint every one--that's what he wants. By keeping his seat he hasn't
+kept Julia, and she was the thing he cared for most in public life. When
+he has got out of the whole thing his attitude, as he says, will be at
+least clear. He's tremendously interesting about it, Peter," Biddy
+declared; "has talked to me wonderfully--has won me over. Mamma's
+heart-broken; telling _her_ will be the hardest part."
+
+"If she doesn't know," he asked, "why then is she heart-broken?"
+
+"Oh at the hitch about their marriage--she knows that. Their marriage
+has been so what she wanted. She thought it perfection. She blames Nick
+fearfully. She thinks he held the whole thing in his hand and that he
+has thrown away a magnificent opportunity."
+
+"And what does Nick say to her?"
+
+"He says, 'Dear old mummy!'"
+
+"That's good," Peter pronounced.
+
+"I don't know what will become of her when this other blow arrives,"
+Biddy went on. "Poor Nick wants to please her--he does, he does. But, as
+he says, you can't please every one and you must before you die please
+yourself a little."
+
+Nick's kinsman, whose brother-in-law he was to have been, sat looking
+at the floor; the colour had risen to his face while he listened. Then
+he sprang up and took another turn about the room. His companion's
+artless but vivid recital had set his blood in motion. He had taken
+Nick's political prospects very much for granted, thought of them as
+definite and almost dazzling. To learn there was something for which he
+was ready to renounce such honours, and to recognise the nature of that
+bribe, affected our young man powerfully and strangely. He felt as if he
+had heard the sudden blare of a trumpet, yet felt at the same time as if
+he had received a sudden slap in the face. Nick's bribe was "art"--the
+strange temptress with whom he himself had been wrestling and over whom
+he had finally ventured to believe that wisdom and training had won a
+victory. There was something in the conduct of his old friend and
+playfellow that made all his reasonings small. So unexpected, so
+courageous a choice moved him as a reproach and a challenge. He felt
+ashamed of having placed himself so unromantically on his guard, and
+rapidly said to himself that if Nick could afford to allow so much for
+"art" he might surely exhibit some of the same confidence. There had
+never been the least avowed competition between the cousins--their lines
+lay too far apart for that; but they nevertheless rode their course in
+sight of each other, and Peter had now the impression of suddenly seeing
+Nick Dormer give his horse the spur, bound forward and fly over a wall.
+He was put on his mettle and hadn't to look long to spy an obstacle he
+too might ride at. High rose his curiosity to see what warrant his
+kinsman might have for such risks--how he was mounted for such exploits.
+He really knew little about Nick's talent--so little as to feel no right
+to exclaim "What an ass!" when Biddy mentioned the fact which the
+existence of real talent alone could redeem from absurdity. All his
+eagerness to see what Nick had been able to make of such a subject as
+Miriam Rooth came back to him: though it was what mainly had brought him
+to Rosedale Road he had forgotten it in the happy accident of his
+encounter with the girl. He was conscious that if the surprise of a
+revelation of power were in store for him Nick would be justified more
+than he himself would feel reinstated in self-respect; since the courage
+of renouncing the forum for the studio hovered before him as greater
+than the courage of marrying an actress whom one was in love with: the
+reward was in the latter case so much more immediate. Peter at any rate
+asked Biddy what Nick had done with his portrait of Miriam. He hadn't
+seen it anywhere in rummaging about the room.
+
+"I think it's here somewhere, but I don't know," she replied, getting up
+to look vaguely round her.
+
+"Haven't you seen it? Hasn't he shown it to you?"
+
+She rested her eyes on him strangely a moment, then turned them away
+with a mechanical air of still searching. "I think it's in the room, put
+away with its face to the wall."
+
+"One of those dozen canvases with their backs to us?"
+
+"One of those perhaps."
+
+"Haven't you tried to see?"
+
+"I haven't touched them"--and Biddy had a colour.
+
+"Hasn't Nick had it out to show you?"
+
+"He says it's in too bad a state--it isn't finished--it won't do."
+
+"And haven't you had the curiosity to turn it round for yourself?"
+
+The embarrassed look in her face deepened under his insistence and it
+seemed to him that her eyes pleaded with him a moment almost to tears.
+"I've had an idea he wouldn't like it."
+
+Her visitor's own desire, however, had become too sharp for easy
+forbearance. He laid his hand on two or three canvases which proved, as
+he extricated them, to be either blank or covered with rudimentary
+forms. "Dear Biddy, have you such intense delicacy?" he asked, pulling
+out something else.
+
+The inquiry was meant in familiar kindness, for Peter was struck even to
+admiration with her having a sense of honour that all girls haven't. She
+must in this particular case have longed for a sight of Nick's work--the
+work that had brought about such a crisis in his life. But she had
+passed hours in his studio alone without permitting herself a stolen
+peep; she was capable of that if she believed it would please him. Peter
+liked a charming girl's being capable of that--he had known charming
+girls who wouldn't in the least have been--and his question was really a
+form of homage. Biddy, however, apparently discovered some light mockery
+in it, and she broke out incongruously:
+
+"I haven't wanted so much to see it! I don't care for her so much as
+that!"
+
+"So much as what?" He couldn't but wonder.
+
+"I don't care for his actress--for that vulgar creature. I don't like
+her!" said Biddy almost startlingly.
+
+Peter stared. "I thought you hadn't seen her."
+
+"I saw her in Paris--twice. She was wonderfully clever, but she didn't
+charm me."
+
+He quickly considered, saying then all kindly: "I won't inflict the
+thing on you in that case--we'll leave it alone for the present." Biddy
+made no reply to this at first, but after a moment went straight over
+to the row of stacked canvases and exposed several of them to the light.
+"Why did you say you wished to go to the theatre to-night?" her
+companion continued.
+
+Still she was silent; after which, with her back turned to him and a
+little tremor in her voice while she drew forth successively her
+brother's studies, she made answer: "For the sake of your company,
+Peter! Here it is, I think," she added, moving a large canvas with some
+effort. "No, no, I'll hold it for you. Is that the light?"
+
+She wouldn't let him take it; she bade him stand off and allow her to
+place it in the right position. In this position she carefully presented
+it, supporting it at the proper angle from behind and showing her head
+and shoulders above it. From the moment his eyes rested on the picture
+Peter accepted this service without protest. Unfinished, simplified and
+in some portions merely suggested, it was strong, vivid and assured, it
+had already the look of life and the promise of power. Peter felt all
+this and was startled, was strangely affected--he had no idea Nick moved
+with that stride. Miriam, seated, was represented in three-quarters,
+almost to her feet. She leaned forward with one of her legs crossed over
+the other, her arms extended and foreshortened, her hands locked
+together round her knee. Her beautiful head was bent a little,
+broodingly, and her splendid face seemed to look down at life. She had a
+grand appearance of being raised aloft, with a wide regard, a survey
+from a height of intelligence, for the great field of the artist, all
+the figures and passions he may represent. Peter asked himself where his
+kinsman had learned to paint like that. He almost gasped at the
+composition of the thing and at the drawing of the difficult arms. Biddy
+abstained from looking round the corner of the canvas as she held it;
+she only watched, in Peter's eyes, for this gentleman's impression of
+it. That she easily caught, and he measured her impression--her
+impression of _his_ impression--when he went after a few minutes to
+relieve her. She let him lift the thing out of her grasp; he moved it
+and rested it, so that they could still see it, against the high back of
+a chair. "It's tremendously good," he then handsomely pronounced.
+
+"Dear, dear Nick," Biddy murmured, looking at it now.
+
+"Poor, poor Julia!" Peter was prompted to exclaim in a different tone.
+His companion made no rejoinder to this, and they stood another minute
+or two side by side and in silence, gazing at the portrait. At last he
+took up his hat--he had no more time, he must go. "Will you come
+to-night all the same?" he asked with a laugh that was somewhat awkward
+and an offer of a hand-shake.
+
+"All the same?" Biddy seemed to wonder.
+
+"Why you say she's a terrible creature," Peter completed with his eyes
+on the painted face.
+
+"Oh anything for art!" Biddy smiled.
+
+"Well, at seven o'clock then." And Sherringham departed, leaving the
+girl alone with the Tragic Muse and feeling with a quickened rush the
+beauty of that young woman as well as, all freshly, the peculiar
+possibilities of Nick.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+It was not till after the noon of the next day that he was to see Miriam
+Rooth. He wrote her a note that evening, to be delivered to her at the
+theatre, and during the performance she sent round to him a card with
+"All right, come to luncheon to-morrow" scrawled on it in pencil.
+
+When he presented himself at Balaklava Place he learned that the two
+ladies had not come in--they had gone again early to rehearsal; but they
+had left word that he was to be pleased to wait, they would appear from
+one moment to the other. It was further mentioned to him, as he was
+ushered into the drawing-room, that Mr. Dashwood was in possession of
+that ground. This circumstance, however, Peter barely noted: he had been
+soaring so high for the past twelve hours that he had almost lost
+consciousness of the minor differences of earthly things. He had taken
+Biddy Dormer and her friend Miss Tressilian home from the play and after
+leaving them had walked about the streets, had roamed back to his
+sister's house, in a state of exaltation the intenser from his having
+for the previous time contained himself, thinking it more decorous and
+considerate, less invidious and less blatant, not to "rave." Sitting
+there in the shade of the box with his companions he had watched Miriam
+in attentive but inexpressive silence, glowing and vibrating inwardly,
+yet for these fine, deep reasons not committing himself to the spoken
+rapture. Delicacy, it appeared to him, should rule the hour; and indeed
+he had never had a pleasure less alloyed than this little period of
+still observation and repressed ecstasy. Miriam's art lost nothing by
+it, and Biddy's mild nearness only gained. This young lady was virtually
+mute as well--wonderingly, dauntedly, as if she too associated with the
+performer various other questions than that of her mastery of her art.
+To this mastery Biddy's attitude was a candid and liberal tribute: the
+poor girl sat quenched and pale, as if in the blinding light of a
+comparison by which it would be presumptuous even to be annihilated. Her
+subjection, however, was a gratified, a charmed subjection: there was
+beneficence in such beauty--the beauty of the figure that moved before
+the footlights and spoke in music--even if it deprived one of hope.
+Peter didn't say to her in vulgar elation and in reference to her
+whimsical profession of dislike at the studio, "Well, do you find our
+friend so disagreeable now?" and she was grateful to him for his
+forbearance, for the tacit kindness of which the idea seemed to be: "My
+poor child, I'd prefer you if I could; but--judge for yourself--how can
+I? Expect of me only the possible. Expect that certainly, but only
+that." In the same degree Peter liked Biddy's sweet, hushed air of
+judging for herself, of recognising his discretion and letting him off
+while she was lost in the illusion, in the convincing picture of the
+stage. Miss Tressilian did most of the criticism: she broke out
+cheerfully and sonorously from time to time, in reference to the
+actress, "Most striking certainly," or "She _is_ clever, isn't she?" She
+uttered a series of propositions to which her companions found it
+impossible to respond. Miss Tressilian was disappointed in nothing but
+their enjoyment: they didn't seem to think the exhibition as amusing as
+she.
+
+Walking away through the ordered void of Lady Agnes's quarter, with the
+four acts of the play glowing again before him in the smokeless London
+night, Peter found the liveliest thing in his impression the certitude
+that if he had never seen Miriam before and she had had for him none of
+the advantages of association, he would still have recognised in her
+performance the richest interest the theatre had ever offered him. He
+floated in the felicity of it, in the general encouragement of a sense
+of the perfectly _done_, in the almost aggressive bravery of still
+larger claims for an art which could so triumphantly, so exquisitely
+render life. "Render it?" he said to himself. "Create it and reveal it,
+rather; give us something new and large and of the first order!" He had
+_seen_ Miriam now; he had never seen her before; he had never seen her
+till he saw her in her conditions. Oh her conditions--there were many
+things to be said about them; they were paltry enough as yet, inferior,
+inadequate, obstructive, as compared with the right, full, finished
+setting of such a talent; but the essence of them was now, irremovably,
+in our young man's eyes, the vision of how the uplifted stage and the
+listening house transformed her. That idea of her having no character of
+her own came back to him with a force that made him laugh in the empty
+street: this was a disadvantage she reduced so to nothing that obviously
+he hadn't known her till to-night. Her character was simply to hold you
+by the particular spell; any other--the good nature of home, the
+relation to her mother, her friends, her lovers, her debts, the practice
+of virtues or industries or vices--was not worth speaking of. These
+things were the fictions and shadows; the representation was the deep
+substance.
+
+Peter had as he went an intense vision--he had often had it before--of
+the conditions still absent, the great and complete ones, those which
+would give the girl's talent a superior, a discussable stage. More than
+ever he desired them, mentally invoked them, filled them out in
+imagination, cheated himself with the idea that they were possible. He
+saw them in a momentary illusion and confusion: a great academic,
+artistic theatre, subsidised and unburdened with money-getting, rich in
+its repertory, rich in the high quality and the wide array of its
+servants, rich above all in the authority of an impossible
+administrator--a manager personally disinterested, not an actor with an
+eye to the main chance; pouring forth a continuity of tradition,
+striving for perfection, laying a splendid literature under
+contribution. He saw the heroine of a hundred "situations," variously
+dramatic and vividly real; he saw comedy and drama and passion and
+character and English life; he saw all humanity and history and poetry,
+and then perpetually, in the midst of them, shining out in the high
+relief of some great moment, an image as fresh as an unveiled statue. He
+was not unconscious that he was taking all sorts of impossibilities and
+miracles for granted; but he was under the conviction, for the time,
+that the woman he had been watching three hours, the incarnation of the
+serious drama, would be a new and vivifying force. The world was just
+then so bright to him that even Basil Dashwood struck him at first as a
+conceivable agent of his dream.
+
+It must be added that before Miriam arrived the breeze that filled
+Sherringham's sail began to sink a little. He passed out of the
+eminently "let" drawing-room, where twenty large photographs of the
+young actress bloomed in the desert; he went into the garden by a glass
+door that stood open, and found Mr. Dashwood lolling on a bench and
+smoking cigarettes. This young man's conversation was a different
+music--it took him down, as he felt; showed him, very sensibly and
+intelligibly, it must be confessed, the actual theatre, the one they
+were all concerned with, the one they would have to make the miserable
+best of. It was fortunate that he kept his intoxication mainly to
+himself: the Englishman's habit of not being effusive still prevailed
+with him after his years of exposure to the foreign infection. Nothing
+could have been less exclamatory than the meeting of the two men, with
+its question or two, its remark or two, about the new visitor's arrival
+in London; its off-hand "I noticed you last night, I was glad you turned
+up at last" on one side and its attenuated "Oh yes, it was the first
+time; I was very much interested" on the other. Basil Dashwood played a
+part in Yolande and Peter had not failed to take with some comfort the
+measure of his aptitude. He judged it to be of the small order, as
+indeed the part, which was neither that of the virtuous nor that of the
+villainous hero, restricted him to two or three inconspicuous effects
+and three or four changes of dress. He represented an ardent but
+respectful young lover whom the distracted heroine found time to pity a
+little and even to rail at; but it was impressed upon his critic that he
+scarcely represented young love. He looked very well, but Peter had
+heard him already in a hundred contemporary pieces; he never got out of
+rehearsal. He uttered sentiments and breathed vows with a nice voice,
+with a shy, boyish tremor, but as if he were afraid of being chaffed for
+it afterwards; giving the spectator in the stalls the sense of holding
+the prompt-book and listening to a recitation. He made one think of
+country-houses and lawn-tennis and private theatricals; than which there
+couldn't be, to Peter's mind, a range of association more disconnected
+from the actor's art.
+
+Dashwood knew all about the new thing, the piece in rehearsal; he knew
+all about everything--receipts and salaries and expenses and newspaper
+articles, and what old Baskerville said and what Mrs. Ruffler thought:
+matters of superficial concern to his fellow-guest, who wondered, before
+they had sight of Miriam, if she talked with her "walking-gentleman"
+about them by the hour, deep in them and finding them not vulgar and
+boring but the natural air of her life and the essence of her
+profession. Of course she did--she naturally would; it was all in the
+day's work and he might feel sure she wouldn't turn up her nose at the
+shop. He had to remind himself that he didn't care if she didn't, that
+he would really think worse of her if she should. She certainly was in
+deep with her bland playmate, talking shop by the hour: he could see
+this from the fellow's ease of attitude, the air of a man at home and
+doing the honours. He divined a great intimacy between the two young
+artists, but asked himself at the same time what he, Peter Sherringham,
+had to say about it. He didn't pretend to control Miriam's intimacies,
+it was to be supposed; and if he had encouraged her to adopt a
+profession rich in opportunities for comradeship it was not for him to
+cry out because she had taken to it kindly. He had already descried a
+fund of utility in Mrs. Lovick's light brother; but it irritated him,
+all the same, after a while, to hear the youth represent himself as
+almost indispensable. He was practical--there was no doubt of that; and
+this idea added to Peter's paradoxical sense that as regards the matters
+actually in question he himself had not this virtue. Dashwood had got
+Mrs. Rooth the house; it happened by a lucky chance that Laura Lumley,
+to whom it belonged--Sherringham would know Laura Lumley?--wanted to get
+rid, for a mere song, of the remainder of the lease. She was going to
+Australia with a troupe of her own. They just stepped into it; it was
+good air--the best sort of London air to live in, to sleep in, for
+people of their trade. Peter came back to his wonder at what Miriam's
+personal relations with this deucedly knowing gentleman might be, and
+was again able to assure himself that they might be anything in the
+world she liked, for any stake he, the familiar of the Foreign Office,
+had in them. Dashwood told him of all the smart people who had tried to
+take up the new star--the way the London world had already held out its
+hand; and perhaps it was Sherringham's irritation, the crushed sentiment
+I just mentioned, that gave a little heave in the exclamation, "Oh
+that--that's all rubbish: the less of that the better!" At this Mr.
+Dashwood sniffed a little, rather resentful; he had expected Peter to be
+pleased with the names of the eager ladies who had "called"--which
+proved how low a view he took of his art. Our friend explained--it is to
+be hoped not pedantically--that this art was serious work and that
+society was humbug and imbecility; also that of old the great comedians
+wouldn't have known such people. Garrick had essentially his own circle.
+
+"No, I suppose they didn't 'call' in the old narrow-minded time," said
+Basil Dashwood.
+
+"Your profession didn't call. They had better company--that of the
+romantic gallant characters they represented. They lived with _them_, so
+it was better all round." And Peter asked himself--for that clearly
+struck the young man as a dreary period--if _he_ only, for Miriam, in
+her new life and among the futilities of those who tried to lionise her,
+expressed the artistic idea. This at least, Sherringham reflected, was
+a situation that could be improved.
+
+He learned from his companion that the new play, the thing they were
+rehearsing, was an old play, a romantic drama of thirty years before,
+very frequently revived and threadbare with honourable service. Dashwood
+had a part in it, but there was an act in which he didn't appear, and
+this was the act they were doing that morning. Yolande had done all
+Yolande could do; the visitor was mistaken if he supposed Yolande such a
+tremendous hit. It had done very well, it had run three months, but they
+were by no means coining money with it. It wouldn't take them to the end
+of the season; they had seen for a month past that they would have to
+put on something else. Miss Rooth, moreover, wanted a new part; she was
+above all impatient to show her big range. She had grand ideas; she
+thought herself very good-natured to repeat the same stuff for three
+months. The young man lighted another cigarette and described to his
+listener some of Miss Rooth's ideas. He abounded in information about
+her--about her character, her temper, her peculiarities, her little
+ways, her manner of producing some of her effects. He spoke with
+familiarity and confidence, as if knowing more about her than any one
+else--as if he had invented or discovered her, were in a sense her
+proprietor or guarantor. It was the talk of the shop, both with a native
+sharpness and a touching young candour; the expansion of the commercial
+spirit when it relaxes and generalises, is conscious of safety with
+another member of the guild.
+
+Peter at any rate couldn't help protesting against the lame old
+war-horse it was proposed to bring into action, who had been ridden to
+death and had saved a thousand desperate fields; and he exclaimed on
+the strange passion of the good British public for sitting again and
+again through expected situations, watching for speeches they had heard
+and surprises that struck the hour. Dashwood defended the taste of
+London, praised it as loyal, constant, faithful; to which his
+interlocutor retorted with some vivacity that it was faithful to sad
+trash. He justified this sally by declaring the play in rehearsal sad
+trash, clumsy mediocrity with all its convenience gone, and that the
+fault was the want of life in the critical sense of the public, which
+was ignobly docile, opening its mouth for its dose like the pupils of
+Dotheboys Hall; not insisting on something different, on a fresh brew
+altogether. Dashwood asked him if he then wished their friend to go on
+playing for ever a part she had repeated more than eighty nights on end:
+he thought the modern "run" was just what he had heard him denounce in
+Paris as the disease the theatre was dying of. This imputation Peter
+quite denied, wanting to know if she couldn't change to something less
+stale than the greatest staleness of all. Dashwood opined that Miss
+Rooth must have a strong part and that there happened to be one for her
+in the before-mentioned venerable novelty. She had to take what she
+could get--she wasn't a person to cry for the moon. This was a
+stop-gap--she would try other things later; she would have to look round
+her; you couldn't have a new piece, one that would do, left at your door
+every day with the milk. On one point Sherringham's mind might be at
+rest: Miss Rooth was a woman who would do every blessed thing there was
+to do. Give her time and she would walk straight through the repertory.
+She was a woman who would do this--she was a woman who would do that:
+her spokesman employed this phrase so often that Peter, nervous, got up
+and threw an unsmoked cigarette away. Of course she was a woman; there
+was no need of his saying it a hundred times.
+
+As for the repertory, the young man went on, the most beautiful girl in
+the world could give but what she had. He explained, after their visitor
+sat down again, that the noise made by Miss Rooth was not exactly what
+this admirer appeared to suppose. Sherringham had seen the house the
+night before and would recognise that, though good, it was very far from
+great. She had done very well, it was all right, but she had never gone
+above a point which Dashwood expressed in pounds sterling, to the
+edification of his companion, who vaguely thought the figure high. Peter
+remembered that he had been unable to get a stall, but Dashwood insisted
+that "Miriam" had not leaped into commanding fame: that was a thing that
+never happened in fact--it happened only in grotesque works of fiction.
+She had attracted notice, unusual notice for a woman whose name, the day
+before, had never been heard of: she was recognised as having, for a
+novice, extraordinary cleverness and confidence--in addition to her
+looks, of course, which were the thing that had really fetched the
+crowd. But she hadn't been the talk of London; she had only been the
+talk of Gabriel Nash. He wasn't London, more was the pity. He knew the
+esthetic people--the worldly, semi-smart ones, not the frumpy, sickly
+lot who wore dirty drapery; and the esthetic people had run after her.
+Mr. Dashwood sketchily instructed the pilgrim from Paris as to the
+different sects in the great religion of beauty, and was able to give
+him the particular "note" of the critical clique to which Miriam had
+begun so quickly to owe it that she had a vogue. The information made
+our friend feel very ignorant of the world, very uninitiated and buried
+in his little professional hole. Dashwood warned him that it would be a
+long time before the general public would wake up to Miss Rooth, even
+after she had waked up to herself; she would have to do some really big
+thing first. _They_ knew it was in her, the big thing--Peter and he and
+even poor Nash--because they had seen her as no one else had; but London
+never took any one on trust--it had to be cash down. It would take their
+young lady two or three years to pay out her cash and get her
+equivalent. But of course the equivalent would be simply a gold-mine.
+Within its limits, however, certainly, the mark she had made was already
+quite a fairy-tale: there was magic in the way she had concealed from
+the first her want of experience. She absolutely made you think she had
+a lot of it, more than any one else. Mr. Dashwood repeated several times
+that she was a cool hand--a deucedly cool hand, and that he watched her
+himself, saw ideas come to her, saw her have different notions, and more
+or less put them to the test, on different nights. She was always
+alive--she liked it herself. She gave him ideas, long as he had been on
+the stage. Naturally she had a great deal to learn, no end even of quite
+basic things; a cosmopolite like Sherringham would understand that a
+girl of that age, who had never had a friend but her mother--her mother
+was greater fun than ever now--naturally _would_ have. Sherringham
+winced at being dubbed a "cosmopolite" by his young entertainer, just as
+he had winced a moment before at hearing himself lumped in esoteric
+knowledge with Dashwood and Gabriel Nash; but the former of these
+gentlemen took no account of his sensibility while he enumerated a few
+of the elements of the "basic." He was a mixture of acuteness and
+innocent fatuity; and Peter had to recognise in him a rudiment or two of
+criticism when he said that the wonderful thing in the girl was that she
+learned so fast--learned something every night, learned from the same
+old piece a lot more than any one else would have learned from twenty.
+"That's what it is to be a genius," Peter concurred. "Genius is only the
+art of getting your experience fast, of stealing it, as it were; and in
+this sense Miss Rooth's a regular brigand." Dashwood condoned the
+subtlety and added less analytically, "Oh she'll do!" It was exactly in
+these simple words, addressed to her, that her other admirer had phrased
+the same truth; yet he didn't enjoy hearing them on his neighbour's
+lips: they had a profane, patronising sound and suggested displeasing
+equalities.
+
+The two men sat in silence for some minutes, watching a fat robin hop
+about on the little seedy lawn; at the end of which they heard a vehicle
+stop on the other side of the garden-wall and the voices of occupants
+alighting. "Here they come, the dear creatures," said Basil Dashwood
+without moving; and from where they sat Peter saw the small door in the
+wall pushed open. The dear creatures were three in number, for a
+gentleman had added himself to Mrs. Rooth and her daughter. As soon as
+Miriam's eyes took in her Parisian friend she fell into a large, droll,
+theatrical attitude and, seizing her mother's arm, exclaimed
+passionately: "Look where he sits, the author of all my woes--cold,
+cynical, cruel!" She was evidently in the highest spirits; of which Mrs.
+Rooth partook as she cried indulgently, giving her a slap, "Oh get
+along, you gypsy!"
+
+"She's always up to something," Dashwood laughed as Miriam, radiant and
+with a conscious stage tread, glided toward Sherringham as if she were
+coming to the footlights. He rose slowly from his seat, looking at her
+and struck with her beauty: he had been impatient to see her, yet in the
+act his impatience had had a disconcerting check.
+
+He had had time to note that the man who had come in with her was
+Gabriel Nash, and this recognition brought a low sigh to his lips as he
+held out his hand to her--a sigh expressive of the sudden sense that his
+interest in her now could only be a gross community. Of course that
+didn't matter, since he had set it, at the most, such rigid limits; but
+he none the less felt vividly reminded that it would be public and
+notorious, that inferior people would be inveterately mixed up with it,
+that she had crossed the line and sold herself to the vulgar, making him
+indeed only one of an equalised multitude. The way Nash turned up there
+just when he didn't want to see him proved how complicated a thing it
+was to have a friendship with a young woman so clearly booked for
+renown. He quite forgot that the intruder had had this object of
+interest long before his own first view of it and had been present at
+that passage, which he had in a measure brought about. Had Sherringham
+not been so cut out to make trouble of this particular joy he might have
+found some adequate assurance that their young hostess distinguished him
+in the way in which, taking his hand in both of hers, she looked up at
+him and murmured, "Dear old master!" Then as if this were not
+acknowledgment enough she raised her head still higher and, whimsically,
+gratefully, charmingly, almost nobly, kissed him on the lips before the
+other men, before the good mother whose "Oh you honest creature!" made
+everything regular.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+If he was ruffled by some of her conditions there was thus comfort and
+consolation to be drawn from others, beside the essential
+fascination--so small the doubt of that now--of the young lady's own
+society. He spent the afternoon, they all spent the afternoon, and the
+occasion reminded him of pages in _Wilhelm Meister_. He himself could
+pass for Wilhelm, and if Mrs. Rooth had little resemblance to Mignon,
+Miriam was remarkably like Philina. The movable feast awaiting
+them--luncheon, tea, dinner?--was delayed two or three hours; but the
+interval was a source of gaiety, for they all smoked cigarettes in the
+garden and Miriam gave striking illustrations of the parts she was
+studying. Peter was in the state of a man whose toothache has suddenly
+stopped--he was exhilarated by the cessation of pain. The pain had been
+the effort to remain in Paris after the creature in the world in whom he
+was most interested had gone to London, and the balm of seeing her now
+was the measure of the previous soreness.
+
+Gabriel Nash had, as usual, plenty to say, and he talked of Nick's
+picture so long that Peter wondered if he did it on purpose to vex him.
+They went in and out of the house; they made excursions to see what form
+the vague meal was taking; and Sherringham got half an hour alone, or
+virtually alone, with the mistress of his unsanctioned passion--drawing
+her publicly away from the others and making her sit with him in the
+most sequestered part of the little gravelled grounds. There was summer
+enough for the trees to shut out the adjacent villas, and Basil Dashwood
+and Gabriel Nash lounged together at a convenient distance while Nick's
+whimsical friend dropped polished pebbles, sometimes audibly splashing,
+into the deep well of the histrionic simplicity. Miriam confessed that
+like all comedians they ate at queer hours; she sent Dashwood in for
+biscuits and sherry--she proposed sending him round to the grocer's in
+the Circus Road for superior wine. Peter judged him the factotum of the
+little household: he knew where the biscuits were kept and the state of
+the grocer's account. When he himself congratulated her on having so
+useful an inmate she said genially, but as if the words disposed of him,
+"Oh he's awfully handy." To this she added, "You're not, you know";
+resting the kindest, most pitying eyes on him. The sensation they gave
+him was as sweet as if she had stroked his cheek, and her manner was
+responsive even to tenderness. She called him "Dear master" again and
+again, and still often "_Cher maître_," and appeared to express
+gratitude and reverence by every intonation.
+
+"You're doing the humble dependent now," he said: "you do it
+beautifully, as you do everything." She replied that she didn't make it
+humble enough--she couldn't; she was too proud, too insolent in her
+triumph. She liked that, the triumph, too much, and she didn't mind
+telling him she was perfectly happy. Of course as yet the triumph was
+very limited; but success was success, whatever its quantity; the dish
+was a small one but had the right taste. Her imagination had already
+bounded beyond the first phase unexpectedly great as this had been: her
+position struck her as modest compared with the probably future now
+vivid to her. Peter had never seen her so soft and sympathetic; she had
+insisted in Paris that her personal character was that of the good
+girl--she used the term in a fine loose way--and it was impossible to be
+a better girl than she showed herself this pleasant afternoon. She was
+full of gossip and anecdote and drollery; she had exactly the air he
+would have wished her to have--that of thinking of no end of things to
+tell him. It was as if she had just returned from a long journey and had
+had strange adventures and made wonderful discoveries. She began to
+speak of this and that, then broke off to speak of something else; she
+talked of the theatre, of the "critics," and above all of London, of the
+people she had met and the extraordinary things they said to her, of the
+parts she was going to take up, of lots of new ideas that had come to
+her about the art of comedy. She wanted to do comedy now--to do the
+comedy of London life. She was delighted to find that seeing more of the
+world suggested things to her; they came straight from the fact, from
+nature, if you could call it nature; she was thus convinced more than
+ever that the artist ought to _live_ so as to get on with his business,
+gathering ideas and lights from experience--ought to welcome any
+experience that would give him lights. But work of course _was_
+experience, and everything in one's life that was good was work. That
+was the jolly thing in the actor's trade--it made up for other elements
+that were odious: if you only kept your eyes open nothing could happen
+to you that wouldn't be food for observation and grist to your mill,
+showing you how people looked and moved and spoke, cried and grimaced,
+writhed and dissimulated, in given situations. She saw all round her
+things she wanted to "do"--London bristled with them if you had eyes to
+see. She was fierce to know why people didn't take them up, put them
+into plays and parts, give one a chance with them; she expressed her
+sharp impatience of the general literary _bétise_. She had never been
+chary of this particular displeasure, and there were moments--it was an
+old story and a subject of frank raillery to Sherringham--when to hear
+her you might have thought there was no cleverness anywhere but in her
+own splendid impatience. She wanted tremendous things done that she
+might use them, but she didn't pretend to say exactly what they were to
+be, nor even approximately how they were to be handled: her ground was
+rather that if _she_ only had a pen--it was exasperating to have to
+explain! She mainly contented herself with the view that nothing had
+really been touched: she felt that more and more as she saw more of
+people's goings-on.
+
+Peter went to her theatre again that evening and indeed made no scruple
+of going every night for a week. Rather perhaps I should say he made a
+scruple, but a high part of the pleasure of his life during these
+arbitrary days was to overcome it. The only way to prove he could
+overcome it was to go; and he was satisfied, after he had been seven
+times, not only with the spectacle on the stage but with his perfect
+independence. He knew no satiety, however, with the spectacle on the
+stage, which induced for him but a further curiosity. Miriam's
+performance was a thing alive, with a power to change, to grow, to
+develop, to beget new forms of the same life. Peter contributed to it in
+his amateurish way and watched with solicitude the effect of his care
+and the fortune of his hints. He talked it over in Balaklava Place,
+suggested modifications and variations worth trying. She professed
+herself thankful for any refreshment that could be administered to her
+interest in _Yolande_, and with an energy that showed large resource
+touched up her part and drew several new airs from it. Peter's
+liberties bore on her way of uttering certain speeches, the intonations
+that would have more beauty or make the words mean more. She had her
+ideas, or rather she had her instincts, which she defended and
+illustrated, with a vividness superior to argument, by a happy pictorial
+phrase or a snatch of mimicry; but she was always for trying; she liked
+experiments and caught at them, and she was especially thankful when
+some one gave her a showy reason, a plausible formula, in a case where
+she only stood on an intuition. She pretended to despise reasons and to
+like and dislike at her sovereign pleasure; but she always honoured the
+exotic gift, so that Sherringham was amused with the liberal way she
+produced it, as if she had been a naked islander rejoicing in a present
+of crimson cloth.
+
+Day after day he spent most of his time in her society, and Miss Laura
+Lumley's recent habitation became the place in London to which his
+thoughts and his steps were most attached. He was highly conscious of
+his not now carrying out that principle of abstention he had brought to
+such maturity before leaving Paris; but he contented himself with a much
+cruder justification of this lapse than he would have thought adequate
+in advance. It consisted simply in the idea that to be identified with
+the first fresh exploits of a young genius was a delightful experience.
+What was the harm of it when the genius was real? His main security was
+thus that his relations with Miriam had been placed under the protection
+of that idea of approved extravagance. In this department they made a
+very creditable figure and required much less watching and pruning than
+when it had been his effort to adjust them to a worldly plan. He had in
+fine a sense of real wisdom when he pronounced it surely enough that
+this momentary intellectual participation in the girl's dawning fame was
+a charming thing. Charming things were not frequent enough in a busy
+man's life to be kicked out of the way. Balaklava Place, looked at in
+this philosophic way, became almost idyllic: it gave Peter the
+pleasantest impression he had ever had of London.
+
+The season happened to be remarkably fine; the temperature was high, but
+not so high as to keep people from the theatre. Miriam's "business"
+visibly increased, so that the question of putting on the second play
+underwent some revision. The girl persisted, showing in her persistence
+a temper of which Peter had already caught some sharp gleams. It was
+plain that through her career she would expect to carry things with a
+high hand. Her managers and agents wouldn't find her an easy victim or a
+calculable force; but the public would adore her, surround her with the
+popularity that attaches to a good-natured and free-spoken princess, and
+her comrades would have a kindness for her because she wouldn't be
+selfish. They too would, besides representing her body-guard, form in a
+manner a portion of her affectionate public. This was the way her friend
+read the signs, liking her whimsical tolerance of some of her vulgar
+playfellows almost well enough to forgive their presence in Balaklava
+Place, where they were a sore trial to her mother, who wanted her to
+multiply her points of contact only with the higher orders. There were
+hours when Peter seemed to make out that her principal relation to the
+proper world would be to have within two or three years a grand battle
+with it resulting in its taking her, should she let it have her at all,
+absolutely on her own terms: a picture which led our young man to ask
+himself with a helplessness that was not exempt, as he perfectly knew,
+from absurdity, what part _he_ should find himself playing in such a
+contest and if it would be reserved to him to be the more ridiculous as
+a peacemaker or as a heavy backer.
+
+"She might know any one she would, and the only person she appears to
+take any pleasure in is that dreadful Miss Rover," Mrs. Rooth whimpered
+to him more than once--leading him thus to recognise in the young lady
+so designated the principal complication of Balaklava Place. Miss Rover
+was a little actress who played at Miriam's theatre, combining with an
+unusual aptitude for delicate comedy a less exceptional absence of
+rigour in private life. She was pretty and quick and brave, and had a
+fineness that Miriam professed herself already in a position to estimate
+as rare. She had no control of her inclinations, yet sometimes they were
+wholly laudable, like the devotion she had formed for her beautiful
+colleague, whom she admired not only as an ornament of the profession
+but as a being altogether of a more fortunate essence. She had had an
+idea that real ladies were "nasty," but Miriam was not nasty, and who
+could gainsay that Miriam was a real lady? The girl justified herself to
+her patron from Paris, who had found no fault with her; she knew how
+much her mother feared the proper world wouldn't come in if they knew
+that the improper, in the person of pretty Miss Rover, was on the
+ground. What did she care who came and who didn't, and what was to be
+gained by receiving half the snobs in London? People would have to take
+her exactly as they found her--that they would have to learn; and they
+would be much mistaken if they thought her capable of turning snob too
+for the sake of their sweet company. She didn't pretend to be anything
+but what she meant to be, the best general actress of her time; and what
+had that to do with her seeing or not seeing a poor ignorant girl who
+had loved--well, she needn't say what Fanny had done. They had met in
+the way of business; she didn't say she would have run after her. She
+had liked her because she wasn't a slick, and when Fanny Rover had asked
+her quite wistfully if she mightn't come and see her and like her she
+hadn't bristled with scandalised virtue. Miss Rover wasn't a bit more
+stupid or more ill-natured than any one else; it would be time enough to
+shut the door when she should become so.
+
+Peter commended even to extravagance the liberality of such comradeship;
+said that of course a woman didn't go into that profession to see how
+little she could swallow. She was right to live with the others so long
+as they were at all possible, and it was for her and only for her to
+judge how long that might be. This was rather heroic on his part, for
+his assumed detachment from the girl's personal life still left him a
+margin for some forms of uneasiness. It would have made in his spirit a
+great difference for the worse that the woman he loved, and for whom he
+wished no baser lover than himself, should have embraced the prospect of
+consorting only with the cheaper kind. It was all very well, but Fanny
+Rover was simply a rank _cabotine_, and that sort of association was an
+odd training for a young woman who was to have been good enough--he
+couldn't forget that, but kept remembering it as if it might still have
+a future use--to be his admired wife. Certainly he ought to have thought
+of such things before he permitted himself to become so interested in a
+theatrical nature. His heroism did him service, however, for the hour;
+it helped him by the end of the week to feel quite broken in to Miriam's
+little circle. What helped him most indeed was to reflect that she would
+get tired of a good many of its members herself in time; for if it was
+not that they were shocking--very few of them shone with that intense
+light--they could yet be thoroughly trusted in the long run to bore
+you.
+
+There was a lovely Sunday in particular, spent by him almost all in
+Balaklava Place--he arrived so early--when, in the afternoon, every sort
+of odd person dropped in. Miriam held a reception in the little garden
+and insisted on all the company's staying to supper. Her mother shed
+tears to Peter, in the desecrated house, because they had accepted,
+Miriam and she, an invitation--and in Cromwell Road too--for the
+evening. Miriam had now decreed they shouldn't go--they would have so
+much better fun with their good friends at home. She was sending off a
+message--it was a terrible distance--by a cabman, and Peter had the
+privilege of paying the messenger. Basil Dashwood, in another vehicle,
+proceeded to an hotel known to him, a mile away, for supplementary
+provisions, and came back with a cold ham and a dozen of champagne. It
+was all very Bohemian and dishevelled and delightful, very supposedly
+droll and enviable to outsiders; and Miriam told anecdotes and gave
+imitations of the people she would have met if she had gone out, so that
+no one had a sense of loss--the two occasions were fantastically united.
+Mrs. Rooth drank champagne for consolation, though the consolation was
+imperfect when she remembered she might have drunk it, though not quite
+so much perhaps, in Cromwell Road.
+
+Taken in connection with the evening before, the day formed for our
+friend the most complete exhibition of his young woman he had yet
+enjoyed. He had been at the theatre, to which the Saturday night
+happened to have brought the very fullest house she had played to, and
+he came early to Balaklava Place, to tell her once again--he had told
+her half-a-dozen times the evening before--that with the excitement of
+her biggest audience she had surpassed herself, acted with remarkable
+intensity. It pleased her to hear this, and the spirit with which she
+interpreted the signs of the future and, during an hour he spent alone
+with her, Mrs. Rooth being upstairs and Basil Dashwood luckily absent,
+treated him to twenty specimens of feigned passion and character, was
+beyond any natural abundance he had yet seen in a woman. The impression
+could scarcely have been other if she had been playing wild snatches to
+him at the piano: the bright up-darting flame of her talk rose and fell
+like an improvisation on the keys. Later, the rest of the day, he could
+as little miss the good grace with which she fraternised with her
+visitors, finding always the fair word for each--the key to a common
+ease, the right turn to keep vanity quiet and make humility brave. It
+was a wonderful expenditure of generous, nervous life. But what he read
+in it above all was the sense of success in youth, with the future loose
+and big, and the action of that charm on the faculties. Miriam's limited
+past had yet pinched her enough to make emancipation sweet, and the
+emancipation had come at last in an hour. She had stepped into her magic
+shoes, divined and appropriated everything they could help her to,
+become in a day a really original contemporary. He was of course not
+less conscious of that than Nick Dormer had been when in the cold light
+of his studio this more detached observer saw too how she had altered.
+
+But the great thing to his mind, and during these first days the
+irresistible seduction of the theatre, was that she was a rare
+revelation of beauty. Beauty was the principle of everything she did and
+of the way she unerringly did it--an exquisite harmony of line and
+motion and attitude and tone, what was at once most general and most
+special in her performance. Accidents and instincts played together to
+this end and constituted something that was independent of her talent
+or of her merit in a given case, and which as a value to Peter's
+imagination was far superior to any merit and any talent. He could but
+call it a felicity and an importance incalculable, and but know that it
+connected itself with universal values. To see this force in operation,
+to sit within its radius and feel it shift and revolve and change and
+never fail, was a corrective to the depression, the humiliation, the
+bewilderment of life. It transported our troubled friend from the vulgar
+hour and the ugly fact; drew him to something that had no warrant but
+its sweetness, no name nor place save as the pure, the remote, the
+antique. It was what most made him say to himself "Oh hang it, what does
+it matter?" when he reflected that an _homme sérieux_, as they said in
+Paris, rather gave himself away, as they said in America, by going every
+night to the same sordid stall at which all the world might stare. It
+was what kept him from doing anything but hover round Miriam--kept him
+from paying any other visits, from attending to any business, from going
+back to Calcutta Gardens. It was a spell he shrank intensely from
+breaking and the cause of a hundred postponements, confusions, and
+absurdities. It put him in a false position altogether, but it made of
+the crooked little stucco villa in Saint John's Wood a place in the
+upper air, commanding the prospect; a nest of winged liberties and
+ironies far aloft above the huddled town. One should live at altitudes
+when one could--they braced and simplified; and for a happy interval he
+never touched the earth.
+
+It was not that there were no influences tending at moments to drag him
+down--an abasement from which he escaped only because he was up so high.
+We have seen that Basil Dashwood could affect him at times as a chunk of
+wood tied to his ankle--this through the circumstance that he made
+Miriam's famous conditions, those of the public exhibition of her
+genius, seem small and prosaic; so that Peter had to remind himself how
+much this smallness was perhaps involved in their being at all. She
+carried his imagination off into infinite spaces, whereas she carried
+Dashwood's only into the box-office and the revival of plays that were
+barbarously bad. The worst was its being so open to him to see that a
+sharp young man really in the business might know better than he.
+Another vessel of superior knowledge--he talked, that is, as if he knew
+better than any one--was Gabriel Nash, who lacked no leisure for
+hatefully haunting Balaklava Place, or in other words appeared to enjoy
+the same command of his time as Peter Sherringham. The pilgrim from
+Paris regarded him with mingled feelings, for he had not forgotten the
+contentious character of their first meeting or the degree to which he
+had been moved to urge upon Nick Dormer's consideration that his
+talkative friend was probably one of the most eminent of asses. This
+personage turned up now as an admirer of the charming creature he had
+scoffed at, and there was much to exasperate in the smooth gloss of his
+inconsistency, at which he never cast an embarrassed glance. He
+practised indeed such loose license of regard to every question that it
+was difficult, in vulgar parlance, to "have" him; his sympathies hummed
+about like bees in a garden, with no visible plan, no economy in their
+flight. He thought meanly of the modern theatre and yet had discovered a
+fund of satisfaction in the most promising of its exponents; and Peter
+could more than once but say to him that he should really, to keep his
+opinions at all in hand, attach more value to the stage or less to the
+interesting a tress. Miriam took her perfect ease at his expense and
+treated him as the most abject of her slaves: all of which was worth
+seeing as an exhibition, on Nash's part, of the beautifully
+imperturbable. When Peter all too grossly pronounced him "damned"
+impudent he always felt guilty later on of an injustice--Nash had so
+little the air of a man with something to gain. He was aware
+nevertheless of a certain itching in his boot-toe when his
+fellow-visitor brought out, and for the most part to Miriam herself, in
+answer to any charge of tergiversation, "Oh it's all right; it's the
+voice, you know--the enchanting voice!" Nash meant by this, as indeed he
+more fully set forth, that he came to the theatre or to the villa simply
+to treat his ear to the sound--the richest then to be heard on earth, as
+he maintained--issuing from Miriam's lips. Its richness was quite
+independent of the words she might pronounce or the poor fable they
+might subserve, and if the pleasure of hearing her in public was the
+greater by reason of the larger volume of her utterance it was still
+highly agreeable to see her at home, for it was there the strictly
+mimetic gift he freely conceded to her came out most. He spoke as if she
+had been formed by the bounty of nature to be his particular recreation,
+and as if, being an expert in innocent joys, he took his pleasure
+wherever he found it.
+
+He was perpetually in the field, sociable, amiable, communicative,
+inveterately contradicted but never confounded, ready to talk to any one
+about anything and making disagreement--of which he left the
+responsibility wholly to others--a basis of harmony. Every one knew what
+he thought of the theatrical profession, and yet who could say he didn't
+regard, its members as embodiments of comedy when he touched with such a
+hand the spring of their foibles?--touched it with an art that made even
+Peter laugh, notwithstanding his attitude of reserve where this
+interloper was concerned. At any rate, though he had committed himself
+as to their general fatuity he put up with their company, for the sake
+of Miriam's vocal vibrations, with a practical philosophy that was all
+his own. And she frankly took him for her supreme, her incorrigible
+adorer, masquerading as a critic to save his vanity and tolerated for
+his secret constancy in spite of being a bore. He was meanwhile really
+not a bore to Peter, who failed of the luxury of being able to regard
+him as one. He had seen too many strange countries and curious things,
+observed and explored too much, to be void of illustration. Peter had a
+sense that if he himself was in the _grandes espaces_ Gabriel had
+probably, as a finer critic, a still wider range. If among Miriam's
+associates Mr. Dashwood dragged him down, the other main sharer of his
+privilege challenged him rather to higher and more fantastic flights. If
+he saw the girl in larger relations than the young actor, who mainly saw
+her in ill-written parts, Nash went a step further and regarded her,
+irresponsibly and sublimely, as a priestess of harmony, a figure with
+which the vulgar ideas of success and failure had nothing to do. He
+laughed at her "parts," holding that without them she would still be
+great. Peter envied him his power to content himself with the pleasures
+he could get; Peter had a shrewd impression that contentment wouldn't be
+the final sweetener of his own repast.
+
+Above all Nash held his attention by a constant element of easy
+reference to Nick Dormer, who, as we know, had suddenly become much more
+interesting to his kinsman. Peter found food for observation, and in
+some measure for perplexity, in the relations of all these clever people
+with each other. He knew why his sister, who had a personal impatience
+of unapplied ideas, had not been agreeably affected by Miriam's prime
+patron and had not felt happy about the attribution of value to "such
+people" by the man she was to marry. This was a side on which he had no
+desire to resemble Julia, for he needed no teaching to divine that Nash
+must have found her accessible to no light--none even about himself. He,
+Peter, would have been sorry to have to confess he couldn't more or less
+understand him. He understood furthermore that Miriam, in Nick's studio,
+might very well have appeared to Julia a formidable force. She was
+younger and would have "seen nothing," but she had quite as much her own
+resources and was beautiful enough to have made Nick compare her with
+the lady of Harsh even if he had been in love with that benefactress--a
+pretension as to which her brother, as we know, entertained doubts.
+
+Peter at all events saw for many days nothing of his cousin, though it
+might have been said that Nick participated by implication at least in
+the life of Balaklava Place. Had he given Julia tangible grounds and was
+his unexpectedly fine rendering of Miriam an act of virtual infidelity?
+In that case to what degree was the girl to be regarded as an accomplice
+in his defection, and what was the real nature of Miriam's esteem for
+her new and (as he might be called) distinguished ally? These questions
+would have given Peter still more to think about had he not flattered
+himself he had made up his mind that they concerned Nick and his sitter
+herself infinitely more than they concerned any one else. That young
+lady meanwhile was personally before him, so that he had no need to
+consult for his pleasure his fresh recollection of the portrait. But he
+thought of this striking production each time he thought of his so
+good-looking kinsman's variety of range. And that happened often, for in
+his hearing Miriam often discussed the happy artist and his
+possibilities with Gabriel Nash, and Nash broke out about them to all
+who might hear. Her own tone on the subject was uniform: she kept it on
+record to a degree slightly irritating that Mr. Dormer had been
+unforgettably--Peter particularly noted "unforgettably"--kind to her.
+She never mentioned Julia's irruption to Julia's brother; she only
+referred to the portrait, with inscrutable amenity, as a direct
+consequence of this gentleman's fortunate suggestion that first day at
+Madame Carré's. Nash showed, however, such a disposition to dwell
+sociably and luminously on the peculiarly interesting character of what
+he called Dormer's predicament and on the fine suspense it was fitted to
+kindle in the breast of the truly discerning, that Peter wondered, as I
+have already hinted, if this insistence were not a subtle perversity, a
+devilish little invention to torment a man whose jealousy was
+presumable. Yet his fellow-pilgrim struck him as on the whole but
+scantly devilish and as still less occupied with the prefigurement of so
+plain a man's emotions. Indeed he threw a glamour of romance over Nick;
+tossed off toward him such illuminating yet mystifying references that
+they operated quite as a bait to curiosity, invested with amusement the
+view of the possible, any wish to follow out the chain of events. He
+learned from Gabriel that Nick was still away, and he then felt he could
+almost submit to instruction, to initiation. The loose charm of these
+days was troubled, however--it ceased to be idyllic--when late on the
+evening of the second Sunday he walked away with Nash southward from
+Saint John's Wood. For then something came out.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SIX
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+It mattered not so much what the doctors thought--and Sir Matthew Hope,
+the greatest of them all, had been down twice in one week--as that Mr.
+Chayter, the omniscient butler, declared with all the authority of his
+position and his experience that Mr. Carteret was very bad indeed. Nick
+Dormer had a long talk with him--it lasted six minutes--the day he
+hurried to Beauclere in response to a telegram. It was Mr. Chayter who
+had taken upon himself to telegraph in spite of the presence in the
+house of Mr. Carteret's nearest relation and only surviving sister, Mrs.
+Lendon. This lady, a large, mild, healthy woman with a heavy tread, a
+person who preferred early breakfasts, uncomfortable chairs and the
+advertisement-sheet of the _Times_, had arrived the week before and was
+awaiting the turn of events. She was a widow and occupied in Cornwall a
+house nine miles from a station, which had, to make up for this
+inconvenience as she had once told Nick, a fine old herbaceous garden.
+She was extremely fond of an herbaceous garden--her main consciousness
+was of herbaceous possibilities. Nick had often seen her--she had always
+come to Beauclere once or twice a year. Her sojourn there made no great
+difference; she was only an "Urania dear" for Mr. Carteret to look
+across the table at when, on the close of dinner, it was time for her to
+retire. She went out of the room always as if it were after some one
+else; and on the gentlemen's "joining" her later--the junction was not
+very close--she received them with an air of gratified surprise.
+
+Chayter honoured Nick with a regard which approached, though not
+improperly competing with it, the affection his master had placed on the
+same young head, and Chayter knew a good many things. Among them he knew
+his place; but it was wonderful how little that knowledge had rendered
+him inaccessible to other kinds. He took upon himself to send for Nick
+without speaking to Mrs. Lendon, whose influence was now a good deal
+like that of some large occasional piece of furniture introduced on a
+contingency. She was one of the solid conveniences that a comfortable
+house would have, but you couldn't talk with a mahogany sofa or a
+folding screen. Chayter knew how much she had "had" from her brother,
+and how much her two daughters had each received on marriage; and he was
+of the opinion that it was quite enough, especially considering the
+society in which they--you could scarcely call it--moved. He knew beyond
+this that they would all have more, and that was why he hesitated little
+about communicating with Nick. If Mrs. Lendon should be ruffled at the
+intrusion of a young man who neither was the child of a cousin nor had
+been formally adopted, Chayter was parliamentary enough to see that the
+forms of debate were observed. He had indeed a slightly compassionate
+sense that Mrs. Lendon was not easily ruffled. She was always down an
+extraordinary time before breakfast--Chayter refused to take it as in
+the least admonitory--but usually went straight into the garden as if to
+see that none of the plants had been stolen in the night, and had in the
+end to be looked for by the footman in some out-of-the-way spot behind
+the shrubbery, where, plumped upon the ground, she was mostly doing
+something "rum" to a flower.
+
+Mr. Carteret himself had expressed no wishes. He slept most of the
+time--his failure at the last had been sudden, but he was rheumatic and
+seventy-seven--and the situation was in Chayter's hands. Sir Matthew
+Hope had opined even on a second visit that he would rally and go on, in
+rudimentary comfort, some time longer; but Chayter took a different and
+a still more intimate view. Nick was embarrassed: he scarcely knew what
+he was there for from the moment he could give his good old friend no
+conscious satisfaction. The doctors, the nurses, the servants, Mrs.
+Lendon, and above all the settled equilibrium of the square thick house,
+where an immutable order appeared to slant through the polished windows
+and tinkle in the quieter bells, all these things represented best the
+kind of supreme solace to which the master was most accessible.
+
+It was judged best that for the first day Nick should not be introduced
+into the darkened room. This was the decision of the two decorous
+nurses, of whom the visitor had had a glimpse and who, with their black
+uniforms and fresh faces of business, suggested the barmaid emulating
+the nun. He was depressed and restless, felt himself in a false
+position, and thought it lucky Mrs. Lendon had powers of placid
+acceptance. They were old acquaintances: she treated him formally,
+anxiously, but it was not the rigour of mistrust. It was much more an
+expression of remote Cornish respect for young abilities and
+distinguished connexions, inasmuch as she asked him rather yearningly
+about Lady Agnes and about Lady Flora and Lady Elizabeth. He knew she
+was kind and ungrudging, and his main regret was for his meagre
+knowledge and poor responses in regard to his large blank aunts. He sat
+in the garden with newspapers and looked at the lowered blinds in Mr.
+Carteret's windows; he wandered round the abbey with cigarettes and
+lightened his tread and felt grave, wishing everything might be over. He
+would have liked much to see Mr. Carteret again, but had no desire that
+Mr. Carteret should see him. In the evening he dined with Mrs. Lendon,
+and she talked to him at his request and as much as she could about her
+brother's early years, his beginnings of life. She was so much younger
+that they appeared to have been rather a tradition of her own youth; but
+her talk made Nick feel how tremendously different Mr. Carteret had been
+at that period from what he, Nick, was to-day. He had published at the
+age of thirty a little volume, thought at the time wonderfully clever,
+called _The Incidence of Rates_; but Nick had not yet collected the
+material for any such treatise. After dinner Mrs. Lendon, who was in
+merciless full dress, retired to the drawing-room, where at the end of
+ten minutes she was followed by Nick, who had remained behind only
+because he thought Chayter would expect it. Mrs. Lendon almost shook
+hands with him again and then Chayter brought in coffee. Almost in no
+time afterwards he brought in tea, and the occupants of the drawing-room
+sat for a slow half-hour, during which the lady looked round at the
+apartment with a sigh and said: "Don't you think poor Charles had
+exquisite taste?"
+
+Fortunately the "local man" was at this moment ushered in. He had been
+upstairs and he smiled himself in with the remark: "It's quite
+wonderful, quite wonderful." What was wonderful was a marked improvement
+in the breathing, a distinct indication of revival. The doctor had some
+tea and chatted for a quarter of an hour in a way that showed what a
+"good" manner and how large an experience a local man could have. When
+he retired Nick walked out with him. The doctor's house was near by and
+he had come on foot. He left the visitor with the assurance that in all
+probability Mr. Carteret, who was certainly picking up, would be able to
+see him on the morrow. Our young man turned his steps again to the abbey
+and took a stroll about it in the starlight. It never looked so huge as
+when it reared itself into the night, and Nick had never felt more fond
+of it than on this occasion, more comforted and confirmed by its beauty.
+When he came back he was readmitted by Chayter, who surveyed him in
+respectful deprecation of the frivolity which had led him to attempt to
+help himself through such an evening in such a way.
+
+He went to bed early and slept badly, which was unusual with him; but it
+was a pleasure to him to be told almost as soon as he appeared that Mr.
+Carteret had asked for him. He went in to see him and was struck with
+the change in his appearance. He had, however, spent a day with him just
+after the New Year and another at the beginning of March, and had then
+noted in him the menace of the final weakness. A week after Julia
+Dallow's departure for the Continent he had again devoted several hours
+to the place and to the intention of telling his old friend how the
+happy event had been brought to naught--the advantage he had been so
+good as to desire for him and to make the condition of a splendid gift.
+Before this, for a few days, he had been keeping back, to announce it
+personally, the good news that Julia had at last set their situation in
+order: he wanted to enjoy the old man's pleasure--so sore a trial had
+her arbitrary behaviour been for a year. If she had offered Mr. Carteret
+a conciliatory visit before Christmas, had come down from London one day
+to lunch with him, this had but contributed to make him subsequently
+exhibit to poor Nick, as the victim of her elegant perversity, a great
+deal of earnest commiseration in a jocose form. Upon his honour, as he
+said, she was as clever and "specious" a woman--this was his odd
+expression--as he had ever seen in his life. The merit of her behaviour
+on that occasion, as Nick knew, was that she had not been specious at
+her lover's expense: she had breathed no doubt of his public purpose and
+had had the strange grace to say that in truth she was older than he, so
+that it was only fair to give his affections time to mature. But when
+Nick saw their hopeful host after the rupture at which we have been
+present he found him in no state to deal with worries: he was seriously
+ailing, it was the beginning of worse things and not a time to put his
+attention to the stretch. After this excursion Nick had gone back to
+town saddened by his patient's now unmistakably settled decline, but
+rather relieved that he had had himself to make no confession. It had
+even occurred to him that the need for making one at all might never
+come up. Certainly it wouldn't if the ebb of Mr. Carteret's strength
+should continue unchecked. He might pass away in the persuasion that
+everything would happen as he wished it, though indeed without enriching
+Nick on his wedding-day to the tune he had promised. Very likely he had
+made legal arrangements in virtue of which his bounty would take effect
+in case of the right event and in that case alone. At present Nick had a
+bigger, an uglier truth to tell--the last three days had made the
+difference; but, oddly enough, though his responsibility had increased
+his reluctance to speak had vanished: he was positively eager to clear
+up a situation over which it was not consistent with his honour to leave
+a shade.
+
+The doctor had been right on coming in after dinner; it was clear in
+the morning that they had not seen the last of Mr. Carteret's power of
+picking up. Chayter, who had waited on him, refused austerely to change
+his opinion with every change in his master's temperature; but the
+nurses took the cheering view that it would do their charge good for Mr.
+Dormer to sit with him a little. One of them remained in the room in the
+deep window-seat, and Nick spent twenty minutes by the bedside. It was
+not a case for much conversation, but his helpless host seemed still to
+like to look at him. There was life in his kind old eyes, a stir of
+something that would express itself yet in some further wise provision.
+He laid his liberal hand on Nick's with a confidence that showed how
+little it was really disabled. He said very little, and the nurse had
+recommended that the visitor himself should not overflow in speech; but
+from time to time he murmured with a faint smile: "To-night's division,
+you know--you mustn't miss it." There was probably to be no division
+that night, as happened, but even Mr. Carteret's aberrations were
+parliamentary. Before Nick withdrew he had been able to assure him he
+was rapidly getting better and that such valuable hours, the young man's
+own, mustn't be wasted. "Come back on Friday if they come to the second
+reading." These were the words with which Nick was dismissed, and at
+noon the doctor said the invalid was doing very well, but that Nick had
+better leave him quiet for that day. Our young man accordingly
+determined to go up to town for the night, and even, should he receive
+no summons, for the next day. He arranged with Chayter that he should be
+telegraphed to if Mr. Carteret were either better or worse.
+
+"Oh he can't very well be worse, sir," Chayter replied inexorably; but
+he relaxed so far as to remark that of course it wouldn't do for Nick
+to neglect the House.
+
+"Oh the House!"--Nick was ambiguous and avoided the butler's eye. It
+would be easy enough to tell Mr. Carteret, but nothing would have
+sustained him in the effort to make a clean breast to Chayter.
+
+He might equivocate about the House, but he had the sense of things to
+be done awaiting him in London. He telegraphed to his servant and spent
+that night in Rosedale Road. The things to be done were apparently to be
+done in his studio: his servant met him there with a large bundle of
+letters. He failed that evening to stray within two miles of
+Westminster, and the legislature of his country reassembled without his
+support. The next morning he received a telegram from Chayter, to whom
+he had given Rosedale Road as an address. This missive simply informed
+him that Mr. Carteret wished to see him; it seemed a sign that he was
+better, though Chayter wouldn't say so. Nick again accordingly took his
+place in the train to Beauclere. He had been there very often, but it
+was present to him that now, after a little, he should go only once
+more--for a particular dismal occasion. All that was over, everything
+that belonged to it was over. He learned on his arrival--he saw Mrs.
+Lendon immediately--that his old friend had continued to pick up. He had
+expressed a strong and a perfectly rational desire to talk with his
+expected visitor, and the doctor had said that if it was about anything
+important they should forbear to oppose him. "He says it's about
+something very important," Mrs. Lendon remarked, resting shy eyes on him
+while she added that she herself was now sitting with her dear brother.
+She had sent those wonderful young ladies out to see the abbey. Nick
+paused with her outside Mr. Carteret's door. He wanted to say something
+rather intimate and all soothing to her in return for her homely
+charity--give her a hint, for which she was far from looking, that
+practically he had now no interest in her brother's estate. This was of
+course impossible; her lack of irony, of play of mind, gave him no
+pretext, and such a reference would be an insult to her simple
+discretion. She was either not thinking of his interest at all, or was
+thinking of it with the tolerance of a nature trained to a hundred
+decent submissions. Nick looked a little into her mild, uninvestigating
+eyes, and it came over him supremely that the goodness of these people
+was singularly pure: they were a part of what was cleanest and sanest
+and dullest in humanity. There had been just a little mocking inflexion
+in Mrs. Lendon's pleasant voice; but it was dedicated to the young
+ladies in the black uniforms--she could perhaps be humorous about
+_them_--and not to the theory of the "importance" of Nick's interview
+with her brother. His arrested desire to let her know he was not greedy
+translated itself into a vague friendliness and into the abrupt, rather
+bewildering words: "I can't tell you half the good I think of you." As
+he passed into Mr. Carteret's room it occurred to him that she would
+perhaps interpret this speech as an acknowledgment of obligation--of her
+good nature in not keeping him away from the rich old man.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+The rich old man was propped up on pillows, and in this attitude,
+beneath the high, spare canopy of his bed, presented himself to Nick's
+picture-seeking vision as a figure in a clever composition or a "story."
+He had gathered strength, though this strength was not much in his
+voice; it was mainly in his brighter eyes and his air of being pleased
+with himself. He put out his hand and said, "I daresay you know why I
+sent for you"; on which Nick sank into the seat he had occupied the day
+before, replying that he had been delighted to come, whatever the
+reason. Mr. Carteret said nothing more about the division or the second
+reading; he only murmured that they were keeping the newspapers for him.
+"I'm rather behind--I'm rather behind," he went on; "but two or three
+quiet mornings will make it all right. You can go back to-night, you
+know--you can easily go back." This was the only thing not quite
+straight that Nick found in him--his making light of his young friend's
+flying to and fro. The young friend sat looking at him with a sense that
+was half compunction and half the idea of the rare beauty of his face,
+to which, strangely, the waste of illness now seemed to have restored
+something of its youth. Mr. Carteret was evidently conscious that this
+morning he shouldn't be able to go on long, so that he must be
+practical and concise. "I daresay you know--you've only to remember," he
+continued.
+
+"I needn't tell you what a pleasure it is to me to see you--there can be
+no better reason than that," was what Nick could say.
+
+"Hasn't the year come round--the year of that foolish arrangement?"
+
+Nick thought a little, asking himself if it were really necessary to
+disturb his companion's earnest faith. Then the consciousness of the
+falsity of his own position surged over him again and he replied: "Do
+you mean the period for which Mrs. Dallow insisted on keeping me
+dangling? Oh _that's_ over!" he almost gaily brought out.
+
+"And are you married--has it come off?" the old man asked eagerly. "How
+long have I been ill?"
+
+"We're uncomfortable, unreasonable people, not deserving of your
+interest. We're not married," Nick said.
+
+"Then I haven't been ill so long?" his host quavered with vague relief.
+
+"Not very long--but things _are_ different," he went on.
+
+The old man's eyes rested on his--he noted how much larger they
+appeared. "You mean the arrangements are made--the day's at hand?"
+
+"There are no arrangements," Nick smiled. "But why should it trouble
+you?"
+
+"What then will you do--without arrangements?" The inquiry was plaintive
+and childlike.
+
+"We shall do nothing--there's nothing to be done. We're not to be
+married--it's all off," said poor Nick. Then he added: "Mrs. Dallow has
+gone abroad."
+
+The old man, motionless among his pillows, gave a long groan. "Ah I
+don't like that."
+
+"No more do I, sir."
+
+"What's the matter? It was so good--so good."
+
+"It wasn't good enough for Julia," Nick declared.
+
+"For Julia? Is Julia so great as that? She told me she had the greatest
+regard for you. You're good enough for the best, my dear boy," Mr.
+Carteret pursued.
+
+"You don't know me: I _am_ disappointing. She had, I believe, a great
+regard for me, but I've forfeited her good opinion."
+
+The old man stared at this cynical announcement: he searched his
+visitor's face for some attenuation of the words. But Nick apparently
+struck him as unashamed, and a faint colour coming into his withered
+cheek indicated his mystification and alarm. "Have you been unfaithful
+to her?" he still considerately asked.
+
+"She thinks so--it comes to the same thing. As I told you a year ago,
+she doesn't believe in me."
+
+"You ought to have made her--you ought to have made her," said Mr.
+Carteret. Nick was about to plead some reason when he continued: "Do you
+remember what I told you I'd give you if you did? Do you remember what I
+told you I'd give you on your wedding-day?"
+
+"You expressed the most generous intentions; and I remember them as much
+as a man may do who has no wish to remind you of them."
+
+"The money's there--I've put it aside."
+
+"I haven't earned it--I haven't earned a penny of it. Give it to those
+who deserve it more," said Nick.
+
+"I don't understand, I don't understand," Mr. Carteret whimpered, the
+tears of weakness in his eyes. His face flushed and he added: "I'm not
+good for much discussion; I'm very much disappointed."
+
+"I think I may say it's not my fault--I've done what I can," Nick
+declared.
+
+"But when people are in love they do more than that."
+
+"Oh it's all over!" said our young man; not caring much now, for the
+moment, how disconcerted his companion might be, so long as he disabused
+him of the idea that they were partners to a bargain. "We've tormented
+each other and we've tormented you--and that's all that has come of it."
+
+His companion's eyes seemed to stare at strange things. "Don't you care
+for what I'd have done for you--shouldn't you have liked it?"
+
+"Of course one likes kindness--one likes money. But it's all over," Nick
+repeated. Then he added: "I fatigue you, I knock you up, with telling
+you these troubles. I only do so because it seems to me right you should
+know. But don't be worried--everything's for the best."
+
+He patted the pale hand reassuringly, inclined himself affectionately,
+but Mr. Carteret was not easily soothed. He had practised lucidity all
+his life, had expected it of others and had never given his assent to an
+indistinct proposition. He was weak, yet not too weak to recognise that
+he had formed a calculation now vitiated by a wrong factor--put his name
+to a contract of which the other side had not been carried out. More
+than fifty years of conscious success pressed him to try to understand;
+he had never muddled his affairs and he couldn't muddle them now. At the
+same time he was aware of the necessity of economising his effort, and
+he would gather that inward force, patiently and almost cunningly, for
+the right question and the right induction. He was still able to make
+his agitation reflective, and it could still consort with his high hopes
+of Nick that he should find himself regarding mere vague, verbal
+comfort, words in the air, as an inadequate guarantee. So after he had
+attached his dim vision to his young friend's face a moment he brought
+out: "Have you done anything bad?"
+
+"Nothing worse than usual," Nick laughed.
+
+"Ah everything should have been better than usual."
+
+"Well, it hasn't been that--that I must say."
+
+"Do you sometimes think of your father?" Mr. Carteret continued.
+
+Nick had a decent pause. "_You_ make me think of him--you've always that
+pleasant effect."
+
+"His name would have lived--it mustn't be lost."
+
+"Yes, but the competition to-day is terrible," Nick returned.
+
+His host considered this as if he found a serious flaw in it; after
+which he began again: "I never supposed you a trifler."
+
+"I'm determined not to be."
+
+"I thought her charming. Don't you love Mrs. Dallow?" Mr. Carteret
+profoundly asked.
+
+"Don't put it to me so to-day, for I feel sore and injured. I don't
+think she has treated me well."
+
+"You should have held her--you shouldn't have let her go," the old man
+returned with unexpected fire.
+
+His visitor flushed at this, so strange was it to receive a lesson in
+energy from a dying octogenarian. Yet after an instant Nick answered
+with due modesty: "I haven't been clever enough, no doubt."
+
+"Don't say that, don't say that--!" Mr. Carteret shrunk from the
+thought. "Don't think I can allow you any easing-off of that sort. I
+know how well you've done. You're taking your place. Several gentlemen
+have told me. Hasn't she felt a scruple, knowing my settlement on you to
+depend----?" he pursued.
+
+"Oh she hasn't known--hasn't known anything about it."
+
+"I don't understand; though I think you explained somewhat a year
+ago"--the poor gentleman gave it up. "I think she wanted to speak to
+me--of any intentions I might have in regard to you--the day she was
+here. Very nicely, very properly she'd have done it, I'm sure. I think
+her idea was that I ought to make any settlement quite independent of
+your marrying her or not marrying her. But I tried to convey to her--I
+don't know whether she understood me--that I liked her too much for
+that, I wanted too much to make sure of her."
+
+"To make sure of me, you mean," said Nick. "And now after all you see
+you haven't."
+
+"Well, perhaps it was that," sighed the old man confusedly.
+
+"All this is very bad for you--we'll talk again," Nick urged.
+
+"No, no--let us finish it now. I like to know what I'm doing. I shall
+rest better when I do know. There are great things to be done; the
+future will be full--the future will be fine," Mr. Carteret wandered.
+
+"Let me be distinct about this for Julia: that if we hadn't been
+sundered her generosity to me would have been complete--she'd have put
+her great fortune absolutely at my disposal," Nick said after a moment.
+"Her consciousness of all that naturally carries her over any particular
+distress in regard to what won't come to me now from another source."
+
+"Ah don't lose it!" the old man painfully pleaded.
+
+"It's in your hands, sir," Nick returned.
+
+"I mean Mrs. Dallow's fortune. It will be of the highest utility. That
+was what your father missed."
+
+"I shall miss more than my father did," said Nick.
+
+"Shell come back to you--I can't look at you and doubt that."
+
+Nick smiled with a slow headshake. "Never, never, never! You look at me,
+my grand old friend, but you don't see me. I'm not what you think."
+
+"What is it--what is it? _Have_ you been bad?" Mr. Carteret panted.
+
+"No, no; I'm not bad. But I'm different."
+
+"Different----?"
+
+"Different from my father. Different from Mrs. Dallow. Different from
+you."
+
+"Ah why do you perplex me?" the old man moaned. "You've done something."
+
+"I don't want to perplex you, but I have done something," said Nick,
+getting up.
+
+He had heard the door open softly behind him and Mrs. Lendon come
+forward with precautions. "What has he done--what has he done?" quavered
+Mr. Carteret to his sister. She, however, after a glance at the patient,
+motioned their young friend away and, bending over the bed, replied, in
+a voice expressive at that moment of an ample provision of vital
+comfort:
+
+"He has only excited you, I'm afraid, a little more than is good for
+you. Isn't your dear old head a little too high?" Nick regarded himself
+as justly banished, and he quitted the room with a ready acquiescence in
+any power to carry on the scene of which Mrs. Lendon might find herself
+possessed. He felt distinctly brutal as he heard his host emit a weak
+exhalation of assent to some change of position. But he would have
+reproached himself more if he had wished less to guard against the
+acceptance of an equivalent for duties unperformed. Mr. Carteret had had
+in his mind, characteristically, the idea of a fine high contract, and
+there was something more to be said about that.
+
+Nick went out of the house and stayed away for two or three hours, quite
+ready to regard the place as quieter and safer without him. He haunted
+the abbey as usual and sat a long time in its simplifying stillness,
+turning over many things. He came back again at the luncheon-hour,
+through the garden, and heard, somewhat to his surprise and greatly to
+his relief, that his host had composed himself promptly enough after
+their agitating interview. Mrs. Lendon talked at luncheon much as if she
+expected her brother to be, as she said, really quite fit again. She
+asked Nick no awkward question; which was uncommonly good of her, he
+thought, considering that she might have said, "What in the world were
+you trying to get out of him?" She only reported to our young man that
+the invalid had every hope of a short interview about half-past seven, a
+_very_ short one: this gentle emphasis was Mrs. Lendon's single tribute
+to the critical spirit. Nick divined that Mr. Carteret's desire for
+further explanations was really strong and had been capable of
+sustaining him through a bad morning, capable even of helping him--it
+would have been a secret and wonderful momentary conquest of
+weakness--to pass it off for a good one. He wished he might make a
+sketch of him, from the life, as he had seen him after breakfast; he had
+a conviction he could make a strong one, which would be a precious
+memento. But he shrank from proposing this--the dear man might think it
+unparliamentary. The doctor had called while Nick was out, and he came
+again at five o'clock without that inmate's seeing him. The latter was
+busy in his room at that hour: he wrote a short letter which took him a
+long time. But apparently there had been no veto on a resumption of
+talk, for at half-past seven his friend sent for him. The nurse at the
+door said, "Only a moment, I hope, sir?" but took him in and then
+withdrew.
+
+The prolonged daylight was in the room and its occupant again
+established on his pile of pillows, but with his head a little lower.
+Nick sat down by him and expressed the hope of not having upset him in
+the morning; but the old man, with fixed, enlarged eyes, took up their
+conversation exactly where they had left it. "What have you done--what
+have you done? Have you associated yourself with some other woman?"
+
+"No, no; I don't think she can accuse me of that."
+
+"Well then she'll come back to you if you take the right way with her."
+
+It might have been droll to hear the poor gentleman, in his situation,
+give his views on the right way with women; but Nick was not moved to
+enjoy that diversion. "I've taken the wrong way. I've done something
+that must spoil my prospects in that direction for ever. I've written a
+letter," the visitor went on; but his companion had already interrupted
+him.
+
+"You've written a letter?"
+
+"To my constituents, informing them of my determination to resign my
+seat."
+
+"To resign your seat?"
+
+"I've made up my mind, after no end of reflexion, dear Mr. Carteret, to
+work on quite other lines. I've a plan of becoming a painter. So I've
+given up the idea of a political life."
+
+"A painter?" Mr. Carteret seemed to turn whiter. "I'm going in for the
+portrait in oils. It sounds absurd, I know, and I'm thus specific only
+to show you I don't in the least expect you to count on me." The invalid
+had continued to stare at first; then his eyes slowly closed and he lay
+motionless and blank. "Don't let it trouble you now; it's a long story
+and rather a poor one; when you get better I'll tell you all about it.
+Well talk it over amicably and I'll bring you to my view," Nick went on
+hypocritically. He had laid his hand again on the hand beside him; it
+felt cold, and as the old man remained silent he had a moment of
+exaggerated fear.
+
+"This is dreadful news"--and Mr. Carteret opened his eyes.
+
+"Certainly it must seem so to you, for I've always kept from you--I was
+ashamed, and my present confusion is a just chastisement--the great
+interest I have always taken in the----!" But Nick broke down with a
+gasp, to add presently, with an intention of the pleasant and a sense of
+the foolish: "In the pencil and the brush." He spoke of his current
+confusion, though his manner might have been thought to show it but
+little. He was himself surprised at his brazen assurance and had to
+recognise that at the point things had come to now he was profoundly
+obstinate and quiet.
+
+"The pencil--the brush? They're not the weapons of a gentleman," Mr.
+Carteret pronounced.
+
+"I was sure that would be your feeling. I repeat that I mention them
+only because you once said you intended to do something for me, as the
+phrase is, and I thought you oughtn't to do it in ignorance."
+
+"My ignorance was better. Such knowledge isn't good for me."
+
+"Forgive me, my dear old friend," Nick kept it bravely up. "When you're
+better you'll see it differently."
+
+"I shall never be better now."
+
+"Ah no," Nick insisted; "it will really do you good after a little.
+Think it over quietly and you'll be glad I've stopped humbugging."
+
+"I loved you--I loved you as my son," the old man wailed.
+
+He sank on his knee beside the bed and leaned over him tenderly. "Get
+better, get better, and I'll be your son for the rest of your life."
+
+"Poor Dormer--poor Dormer!" Mr. Carteret continued to lament.
+
+"I admit that if he had lived I probably shouldn't have done it," said
+Nick. "I daresay I should have deferred to his prejudices even though
+thinking them narrow."
+
+"Do you turn against your father?" his host asked, making, to disengage
+his arm from the young man's touch, an effort betraying the irritation
+of conscious weakness. Nick got up at this and stood a moment looking
+down at him while he went on: "Do you give up your name, do you give up
+your country?"
+
+"If I do something good my country may like it." Nick spoke as if he had
+thought that out.
+
+"Do you regard them as equal, the two glories?"
+
+"Here comes your nurse to blow me up and turn me out," said Nick.
+
+The nurse had come in, but Mr. Carteret directed to her an audible dry,
+courteous "Be so good as to wait till I send for you," which arrested
+her in the large room at some distance from the bed and then had the
+effect of making her turn on her heel with a professional laugh. She
+clearly judged that an old gentleman with the fine manner of his prime
+might still be trusted to take care of himself. When she had gone that
+personage addressed to his visitor the question for which his deep
+displeasure lent him strength. "Do you pretend there's a nobler life
+than a high political career?"
+
+"I think the noble life's doing one's work well. One can do it very ill
+and be very base and mean in what you call a high political career. I
+haven't been in the House so many months without finding that out. It
+contains some very small souls."
+
+"You should stand against them--you should expose them!" stammered Mr.
+Carteret.
+
+"Stand against them, against one's own party!"
+
+The old man contended a moment with this and then broke out: "God
+forgive you, are you a Tory, are you a Tory?"
+
+"How little you understand me!" laughed Nick with a ring of bitterness.
+
+"Little enough--little enough, my boy. Have you sent your electors your
+dreadful letter?"
+
+"Not yet; but it's all ready and I shan't change my mind."
+
+"You will--you will. You'll think better of it. You'll see your duty,"
+said the invalid almost coaxingly.
+
+"That seems very improbable, for my determination, crudely and abruptly
+as, to my great regret, it comes to you here, is the fruit of a long and
+painful struggle. The difficulty is that I see my duty just in this
+other effort."
+
+"An effort? Do you call it an effort to fall away, to sink far down, to
+give up every effort? What does your mother say, heaven help her?" Mr.
+Carteret went on before Nick could answer the other question.
+
+"I haven't told her yet."
+
+"You're ashamed, you're ashamed!" Nick only looked out of the west
+window now--he felt his ears turn hot. "Tell her it would have been
+sixty thousand. I had the money all ready."
+
+"I shan't tell her that," said Nick, redder still.
+
+"Poor woman--poor dear woman!" Mr. Carteret woefully cried.
+
+"Yes indeed--she won't like it."
+
+"Think it all over again; don't throw away a splendid future!" These
+words were uttered with a final flicker of passion--Nick had never heard
+such an accent on his old friend's lips. But he next began to murmur,
+"I'm tired--I'm very tired," and sank back with a groan and with closed
+lips. His guest gently assured him that he had but too much cause to be
+exhausted and that the worst was over now. He smoothed his pillows for
+him and said he must leave him, would send in the nurse. "Come back,
+come back," Mr. Carteret pleaded against that; "come back and tell me
+it's a horrible dream."
+
+Nick did go back very late that evening; his host had sent a message to
+his room. But one of the nurses was on the ground this time and made
+good her opposition watch in hand. The sick-room was shrouded and
+darkened; the shaded candle left the bed in gloom. Nick's interview with
+his venerable friend was the affair of but a moment; the nurse
+interposed, impatient and not understanding. She heard Nick say that he
+had posted his letter now and their companion flash out with an acerbity
+still savouring of the sordid associations of a world he had not done
+with: "Then of course my settlement doesn't take effect!"
+
+"Oh that's all right," Nick answered kindly; and he went off next
+morning by the early train--his injured host was still sleeping. Mrs.
+Lendon's habits made it easy for her to be present in matutinal bloom at
+the young man's hasty breakfast, and she sent a particular remembrance
+to Lady Agnes and (when he should see them) to the Ladies Flora and
+Elizabeth. Nick had a prevision of the spirit in which his mother at
+least would now receive hollow compliments from Beauclere.
+
+The night before, as soon as he had quitted Mr. Carteret, the old man
+said to the nurse that he wished Mr. Chayter instructed to go and fetch
+Mr. Mitton the first thing in the morning. Mr. Mitton was the leading
+solicitor at Beauclere.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+The really formidable thing for Nick had been to tell his mother: a
+truth of which he was so conscious that he had the matter out with her
+the very morning he returned from Beauclere. She and Grace had come back
+the afternoon before from their own enjoyment of rural hospitality, and,
+knowing this--she had written him her intention from the country--he
+drove straight from the station to Calcutta Gardens. There was a little
+room on the right of the house-door known as his own room; but in which
+of a morning, when he was not at home, Lady Agnes sometimes wrote her
+letters. These were always numerous, and when she heard our young man's
+cab she happened to be engaged with them at the big brass-mounted bureau
+that had belonged to his father, where, amid a margin of works of
+political reference, she seemed to herself to make public affairs feel
+the point of her elbow.
+
+She came into the hall to meet her son and to hear about their
+benefactor, and Nick went straight back into the room with her and
+closed the door. It would be in the evening paper and she would see it,
+and he had no right to allow her to wait for that. It proved indeed a
+terrible hour; and when ten minutes later Grace, who had learned
+upstairs her brother's return, went down for further news of him she
+heard from the hall a sound of voices that made her first pause and
+then retrace her steps on tiptoe. She mounted to the drawing-room and
+crept about there, palpitating, looking at moments into the dull street
+and wondering what on earth had taken place. She had no one to express
+her wonder to, for Florence Tressilian had departed and Biddy after
+breakfast betaken herself, in accordance with a custom now inveterate,
+to Rosedale Road. Her mother was unmistakably and passionately crying--a
+fact tremendous in its significance, for Lady Agnes had not often been
+brought so low. Nick had seen her cry, but this almost awful spectacle
+had seldom been offered to Grace, and it now convinced her that some
+dreadful thing had happened.
+
+That was of course in order, after Nick's mysterious quarrel with Julia,
+which had made his mother so ill and was at present followed up with new
+horrors. The row, as Grace mentally phrased it, had had something to do
+with the rupture of the lovers--some deeper depth of disappointment had
+begun to yawn. Grace asked herself if they were talking about Broadwood;
+if Nick had demanded that in the conditions so unpleasantly altered Lady
+Agnes should restore that awfully nice house to its owner. This was
+very possible, but why should he so suddenly have broken out about
+it? And, moreover, their mother, though sore to bleeding about
+the whole business--for Broadwood, in its fresh comfort, was too
+delightful--wouldn't have met this pretension with tears: hadn't she
+already so perversely declared that they couldn't decently continue to
+make use of the place? Julia had said that of course they must go on,
+but Lady Agnes was prepared with an effective rejoinder to that. It
+didn't consist of words--it was to be austerely practical, was to
+consist of letting Julia see, at the moment she should least expect it,
+that they quite wouldn't go on. Lady Agnes was ostensibly waiting for
+this moment--the moment when her renunciation would be most impressive.
+
+Grace was conscious of how she had for many days been moving with her
+mother in darkness, deeply stricken by Nick's culpable--oh he was
+culpable!--loss of his prize, but feeling an obscure element in the
+matter they didn't grasp, an undiscovered explanation that would perhaps
+make it still worse, though it might make _them_, poor things, a little
+better. He had explained nothing, he had simply said, "Dear mother, we
+don't hit it off, after all; it's an awful bore, but we don't"--as if
+that were in the dire conditions an adequate balm for two aching hearts.
+From Julia naturally no flood of light was to be looked for--Julia
+_never_ humoured curiosity--and, though she very often did the thing you
+wouldn't suppose, she was not unexpectedly apologetic in this case.
+Grace recognised that in such a position it would savour of apology for
+her to disclose to Lady Agnes her grounds for having let Nick off; and
+she wouldn't have liked to be the person to suggest to Julia that any
+one looked for anything from her. Neither of the disunited pair blamed
+the other or cast an aspersion, and it was all very magnanimous and
+superior and impenetrable and exasperating. With all this Grace had a
+suspicion that Biddy knew something more, that for Biddy the tormenting
+curtain had been lifted.
+
+Biddy had come and gone in these days with a perceptible air of
+detachment from the tribulations of home. It had made her, fortunately,
+very pretty--still prettier than usual: it sometimes happened that at
+moments when Grace was most angry she had a faint sweet smile which
+might have been drawn from some source of occult consolation. It was
+perhaps in some degree connected with Peter Sherringham's visit, as to
+which the girl had not been superstitiously silent. When Grace asked
+her if she had secret information and if it pointed to the idea that
+everything would be all right in the end, she pretended to know
+nothing--What should she know? she asked with the loveliest arch of
+eyebrows over an unblinking candour--and begged her sister not to let
+Lady Agnes believe her better off than themselves. She contributed
+nothing to their gropings save a much better patience, but she went with
+noticeable regularity, on the pretext of her foolish modelling, to
+Rosedale Road. She was frankly on Nick's side; not going so far as to
+say he had been right, but saying distinctly how sure she was that,
+whatever had happened, he couldn't have helped it, not a mite. This was
+striking, because, as Grace knew, the younger of the sisters had been
+much favoured by Julia and wouldn't have sacrificed her easily. It
+associated itself in the irritated mind of the elder with Biddy's
+frequent visits to the studio and made Miss Dormer ask herself if the
+crisis in Nick's and Julia's business had not somehow been linked to
+that unnatural spot.
+
+She had gone there two or three times while Biddy was working, gone to
+pick up any clue to the mystery that might peep out. But she had put her
+hand on nothing more--it wouldn't have occurred to her to say nothing
+less--than the so dreadfully pointed presence of Gabriel Nash. She once
+found that odd satellite, to her surprise, paying a visit to her
+sister--he had come for Nick, who was absent; she remembered how they
+had met in Paris and how little he had succeeded with them. When she had
+asked Biddy afterwards how she could receive him that way Biddy had
+replied that even she, Grace, would have some charity for him if she
+could hear how fond he was of poor Nick. He had talked to her only of
+Nick--of nothing else. Grace had observed how she spoke of Nick as
+injured, and had noted the implication that some one else, ceasing to be
+fond of him, was thereby condemned in Biddy's eyes. It seemed to Grace
+that some one else had at least a right not to like some of his friends.
+The studio struck her as mean and horrid; and so far from suggesting to
+her that it could have played a part in making Nick and Julia fall out
+she only felt how little its dusty want of consequence, could count, one
+way or the other, for Julia. Grace, who had no opinions on art, saw no
+merit whatever in those "impressions" on canvas from Nick's hand with
+which the place was bestrewn. She didn't at all wish her brother to have
+talent in that direction, yet it was secretly humiliating to her that he
+hadn't more.
+
+Nick meanwhile felt a pang of almost horrified penitence, in the little
+room on the right of the hall, the moment after he had made his mother
+really understand he had thrown up his scat and that it would probably
+be in the evening papers. That she would take this very ill was an idea
+that had pressed upon him hard enough, but she took it even worse than
+he had feared. He measured, in the look she gave him when the full truth
+loomed upon her, the mortal cruelty of her distress; her face was like
+that of a passenger on a ship who sees the huge bows of another vessel
+towering close out of the fog. There are visions of dismay before which
+the best conscience recoils, and though Nick had made his choice on all
+the grounds there were a few minutes in which he would gladly have
+admitted that his wisdom was a dark mistake. His heart was in his
+throat, he had gone too far; he had been ready to disappoint his
+mother--he had not been ready to destroy her.
+
+Lady Agnes, I hasten to add, was not destroyed; she made, after her
+first drowning gasp, a tremendous scene of opposition, in the face of
+which her son could only fall back on his intrenchments. She must know
+the worst, he had thought: so he told her everything, including the
+little story of the forfeiture of his "expectations" from Mr. Carteret.
+He showed her this time not only the face of the matter, but what lay
+below it; narrated briefly the incident in his studio which had led to
+Julia Dallow's deciding she couldn't after all put up with him. This was
+wholly new to Lady Agnes, she had had no clue to it, and he could
+instantly see how it made the event worse for her, adding a hideous
+positive to an abominable negative. He noted now that, distressed and
+distracted as she had been by his rupture with Julia, she had still held
+to the faith that their engagement would come on again; believing
+evidently that he had a personal empire over the mistress of Harsh which
+would bring her back. Lady Agnes was forced to recognise this empire as
+precarious, to forswear the hope of a blessed renewal from the moment
+the question was of base infatuations on his own part. Nick confessed to
+an infatuation, but did his best to show her it wasn't base; that it
+wasn't--since Julia had had faith in his loyalty--for the person of the
+young lady who had been discovered posturing to him and whom he had seen
+but half-a-dozen times in his life. He endeavoured to recall to his
+mother the identity of this young lady, he adverted to the occasion in
+Paris when they all had seen her together. But Lady Agnes's mind and
+memory were a blank on the subject of Miss Miriam Rooth and she wanted
+to hear nothing whatever about her: it was enough that she was the cause
+of their ruin and a part of his pitiless folly. She needed to know
+nothing of her to allude to her as if it were superfluous to give a
+definite name to the class to which she belonged.
+
+But she gave a name to the group in which Nick had now taken his place,
+and it made him feel after the lapse of years like a small, scolded,
+sorry boy again; for it was so far away he could scarcely remember
+it--besides there having been but a moment or two of that sort in his
+happy childhood--the time when this parent had slapped him and called
+him a little fool. He was a big fool now--hugely immeasurable; she
+repeated the term over and over with high-pitched passion. The most
+painful thing in this painful hour was perhaps his glimpse of the
+strange feminine cynicism that lurked in her fine sense of injury. Where
+there was such a complexity of revolt it would have been difficult to
+pick out particular wrongs; but Nick could see that, to his mother's
+imagination, he was most a fool for not having kept his relations with
+the actress, whatever they were, better from Julia's knowledge. He
+remained indeed freshly surprised at the ardour with which she had
+rested her hopes on Julia. Julia was certainly a combination--she was
+accomplished, she was a sort of leading woman and she was rich; but
+after all--putting aside what she might be to a man in love with
+her--she was not the keystone of the universe. Yet the form in which the
+consequences of his apostasy appeared most to come home to Lady Agnes
+was the loss for the Dormer family of the advantages attached to the
+possession of Mrs. Dallow. The larger mortification would round itself
+later; for the hour the damning thing was that Nick had made that lady
+the gift of an unforgivable grievance. He had clinched their separation
+by his letter to his electors--and that above all was the wickedness of
+the letter. Julia would have got over the other woman, but she would
+never get over his becoming a nobody.
+
+Lady Agnes challenged him upon this low prospect exactly as if he had
+embraced it with the malignant purpose of making the return of his late
+intended impossible. She contradicted her premises and lost her way in
+her wrath. What had made him suddenly turn round if he had been in good
+faith before? He had never been in good faith--never, never; he had had
+from his earliest childhood the nastiest hankerings after a vulgar
+little daubing, trash-talking life; they were not in him, the grander,
+nobler aspirations--they never had been--and he had been anything but
+honest to lead her on, to lead them all on, to think he would do
+something: the fall and the shame would have been less for them if they
+had come earlier. Moreover, what need under heaven had he to tell
+Charles Carteret of the cruel folly on his very death-bed?--as if he
+mightn't have let it all alone and accepted the benefit the old man was
+so delighted to confer. No wonder Mr. Carteret would keep his money for
+his heirs if that was the way Nick proposed to repay him; but where was
+the common sense, where was the common charity, where was the common
+decency of tormenting him with such vile news in his last hours? Was he
+trying what he could invent that would break her heart, that would send
+her in sorrow down to her grave? Weren't they all miserable enough and
+hadn't he a ray of pity for his wretched sisters?
+
+The relation of effect and cause, in regard to his sisters'
+wretchedness, was but dimly discernible to Nick, who, however, perceived
+his mother genuinely to consider that his action had disconnected them
+all, still more than she held they were already disconnected, from the
+good things of life. Julia was money, Mr. Carteret was money--everything
+else was the absence of it. If these precious people had been primarily
+money for Nick it after all flattered the distributive impulse in him to
+have taken for granted that for the rest of the family too the
+difference would have been so great. For days, for weeks and months to
+come, the little room on the right of the hall was to vibrate for our
+young man, as if the very walls and window-panes still suffered, with
+the odious trial of his true temper.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+That evening--the evening of his return from Beauclere--he was conscious
+of a keen desire to get away, to go abroad, to leave behind him the
+little chatter his resignation would be sure to produce in an age of
+publicity which never discriminated as to the quality of events. Then he
+felt it decidedly better to stay, to see the business through on the
+spot. Besides, he would have to meet his constituents--would a parcel of
+cheese-eating burgesses ever have been "met" on so queer an
+occasion?--and when that was over the incident would practically be
+closed. Nick had an idea he knew in advance how it would affect him to
+be pointed at as a person who had given up a considerable chance of
+eventual "office" to take likenesses at so much a head. He wouldn't
+attempt down at Harsh to touch on the question of motive; for, given the
+nature of the public mind of Harsh, that would be a strain on his
+faculty of exposition. But as regards the chaff of the political world
+and of society he had a hope he should find chaff enough for retorts. It
+was true that when his mother twitted him in her own effective way he
+had felt rather flattened out; but then one's mother might have a
+heavier hand than any one else. He had not thrown up the House of
+Commons to amuse himself; he had thrown it up to work, to sit quietly
+down and bend over his task. If he should go abroad his parent might
+think he had some weak-minded view of joining Julia and trying, with
+however little hope, to win her back--an illusion it would be singularly
+pernicious to encourage. His desire for Julia's society had succumbed
+for the present at any rate to a dire interruption--he had become more
+and more aware of their speaking a different language. Nick felt like a
+young man who has gone to the Rhineland to "get up" his German for an
+examination--committed to talk, to read, to dream only in the new idiom.
+Now that he had taken his jump everything was simplified, at the same
+time that everything was pitched in a higher and intenser key; and he
+wondered how in the absence of a common dialect he had conversed on the
+whole so happily with Mrs. Dallow. Then he had aftertastes of
+understandings tolerably independent of words. He was excited because
+every fresh responsibility is exciting, and there was no manner of doubt
+he had accepted one. No one knew what it was but himself--Gabriel Nash
+scarcely counted, his whole attitude on the question of responsibility
+being so fantastic--and he would have to ask his dearest friends to take
+him on trust. Rather indeed he would ask nothing of any one, but would
+cultivate independence, mulishness, and gaiety, and fix his thoughts on
+a bright if distant morrow. It was disagreeable to have to remember that
+his task would not be sweetened by a sense of heroism; for if it might
+be heroic to give up the muses for the strife of great affairs, no
+romantic glamour worth speaking of would ever gather round an Englishman
+who in the prime of his strength had given up great or even small
+affairs for the muses. Such an original might himself privately and
+perversely regard certain phases of this inferior commerce as a great
+affair; but who would give him the benefit of that sort of
+confidence--except indeed a faithful, clever, exalted little sister
+Biddy, if he should have the good luck to have one? Biddy was in fact
+all ready for heroic flights and eager to think she might fight the
+battle of the beautiful by her brother's side; so that he had really to
+moderate her and remind her how little his actual job was a crusade with
+bugles and banners and how much a grey, sedentary grind, the charm of
+which was all at the core. You might have an emotion about it, and an
+emotion that would be a help, but this was not the sort of thing you
+could show--the end in view would seem so disproportionately small. Nick
+put it to her that one really couldn't talk to people about the
+"responsibility" of what she would see him pottering at in his studio.
+
+He therefore didn't "run," as he would have said, to winged words any
+more than he was forced to, having, moreover, a sense that apologetic
+work (if apology it should be called to carry the war straight into the
+enemy's country) might be freely left to Gabriel Nash. He laid the
+weight of explanation on his commentators, meeting them all on the firm
+ground of his own amusement. He saw he should live for months in a thick
+cloud of irony, not the finest air of the season, and he adopted the
+weapon to which a person whose use of tobacco is only occasional resorts
+when every one else produces a cigar--he puffed the spasmodic, defensive
+cigarette. He accepted as to what he had done the postulate of the
+obscurely tortuous, abounding so in that sense that his critics were
+themselves bewildered. Some of them felt that they got, as the phrase
+is, little out of him--he rose in his good humour so much higher than
+the "rise" they had looked for--on his very first encounter with the
+world after his scrimmage with his mother. He went to a dinner-party--he
+had accepted the invitation many days before--having seen his
+resignation, in the form of a telegram from Harsh, announced in the
+evening papers. The people he found there had seen it as well, and the
+wittiest wanted to know what he was now going to do. Even the most
+embarrassed asked if it were true he had changed his politics. He gave
+different answers to different persons, but left most of them under the
+impression that he had strange scruples of conscience. This, however,
+was not a formidable occasion, for there had happened to be no one
+present he would have desired, on the old basis, especially to gratify.
+There were real good friends it would be less easy to meet--Nick was
+almost sorry for an hour that he had so many real good friends. If he
+had had more enemies the case would have been simpler, and he was fully
+aware that the hardest thing of all would be to be let off too easily.
+Then he would appear to himself to have been put, all round, on his
+generosity, and his deviation would thus wear its ugliest face.
+
+When he left the place at which he had been dining he betook himself to
+Rosedale Road: he saw no reason why he should go down to the House,
+though he knew he had not done with that yet. He had a dread of behaving
+as if he supposed he should be expected to make a farewell speech, and
+was thankful his eminence was not of a nature to create on such an
+occasion a demand for his oratory. He had in fact nothing whatever to
+say in public--not a vain word, not a sorry syllable. Though the hour
+was late he found Gabriel Nash established in his studio, drawn thither
+by the fine exhilaration of having seen an evening paper. Trying it
+late, on the chance, he had been told by Nick's servant that Nick would
+sleep there that night, and he had come in to wait, he was so eager to
+congratulate him. Nick submitted with a good grace to his society--he
+was tired enough to go to bed, but was restless too--in spite of noting
+now, oddly enough, that Nash's congratulations could add little to his
+fortitude. He had felt a good deal, before, as if he were in this
+philosopher's hands; but since making his final choice he had begun to
+strike himself as all in his own. Gabriel might have been the angel of
+that name, but no angel could assist him much henceforth.
+
+Nash indeed was as true as ever to his genius while he lolled on a divan
+and emitted a series of reflexions that were even more ingenious than
+opportune. Nick walked up and down the room, and it might have been
+supposed from his manner that he was impatient for his friend to
+withdraw. This idea would have been contradicted, however, by the fact
+that subsequently, after the latter had quitted him, he continued to
+perambulate. He had grown used to Gabriel and must now have been
+possessed of all he had to say. That was one's penalty with persons
+whose main gift was for talk, however inspiring; talk engendered a sense
+of sameness much sooner than action. The things a man did were
+necessarily more different from each other than the things he said, even
+if he went in for surprising you. Nick felt Nash could never surprise
+him any more save by mere plain perpetration.
+
+He talked of his host's future, talked of Miriam Rooth and of Peter
+Sherringham, whom he had seen at that young woman's and whom he
+described as in a predicament delightful to behold. Nick put a question
+about Peter's predicament and learned, rather to his disappointment,
+that it consisted only of the fact that he was in love with Miriam. He
+appealed to his visitor to do better than this, and Nash then added the
+touch that Sherringham wouldn't be able to have her. "Oh they've ideas!"
+he said when Nick asked him why.
+
+"What ideas? So has he, I suppose."
+
+"Yes, but they're not the same."
+
+"Well, they'll nevertheless arrange something," Nick opined.
+
+"You'll have to help them a bit. She's in love with another man," Nash
+went on.
+
+"Do you mean with you?"
+
+"Oh, I'm never another man--I'm always more the wrong one than the man
+himself. It's you she's after." And on his friend's asking him what he
+meant by this Nash added: "While you were engaged in transferring her
+image to the tablet of your genius you stamped your own on that of her
+heart."
+
+Nick stopped in his walk, staring. "Ah, what a bore!"
+
+"A bore? Don't you think her formed to please?"
+
+Nick wondered, but didn't conclude. "I wanted to go on with her--now I
+can't."
+
+Nash himself, however, jumped straight to what really mattered. "My dear
+fellow, it only makes her handsomer. I wondered what happy turn she had
+taken."
+
+"Oh, that's twaddle," said Nick, turning away. "Besides, has she told
+you?"
+
+"No, but her mother has."
+
+"Has she told her mother?"
+
+"Mrs. Rooth says not. But I've known Mrs. Rooth to say that which
+isn't."
+
+"Apply that rule then to the information you speak of."
+
+"Well, since you press me, I know more," Gabriel said. "Miriam knows
+you're engaged to a wonderful, rich lady; she told me as much, told me
+she had seen her here. That was enough to set her off--she likes
+forbidden fruit."
+
+"I'm not engaged to any lady whatever. I was," Nick handsomely
+conceded, "but we've altered our minds."
+
+"Ah, what a pity!" his friend wailed.
+
+"Mephistopheles!"--and he stopped again with the point of this.
+
+"Pray then whom do you call Margaret? May I ask if your failure of
+interest in the political situation is the cause of this change in your
+personal one?" Nash went on. Nick signified that he mightn't; whereupon
+he added: "I'm not in the least devilish--I only mean it's a pity you've
+altered your minds, since Miriam may in consequence alter hers. She goes
+from one thing to another. However, I won't tell her."
+
+"I will then!" Nick declared between jest and earnest.
+
+"Would that really be prudent?" his companion asked more completely in
+the frolic key.
+
+"At any rate," he resumed, "nothing would induce me to interfere with
+Peter Sherringham. That sounds fatuous, but to you I don't mind
+appearing an ass."
+
+"The thing would be to get Sherringham, out of spite," Nash threw off,
+"to entangle himself with another woman."
+
+"What good would that do?"
+
+"Ah, Miriam would then begin to think of him."
+
+"Spite surely isn't a conceivable motive--for a healthy man."
+
+The plea, however, found Gabriel ready. "Sherringham's just precisely
+not a healthy man. He's too much in love."
+
+"Then he won't care for another woman."
+
+"He would try to, and that would produce its effect--its effect on
+Miriam."
+
+"You talk like an American novel. Let him try, and God keep us all
+straight." Nick adverted in extreme silence to his poor little Biddy
+and greatly hoped--he would have to see to it a little--that Peter
+wouldn't "try" on _her_. He changed the subject and before Nash withdrew
+took occasion to remark--the occasion was offered by some new allusion
+of the visitor's to the sport he hoped to extract from seeing Nick carry
+out everything to which he stood committed--that the comedy of the
+matter would fall flat and the incident pass unnoticed.
+
+But Nash lost no heart. "Oh, if you'll simply do your part I'll take
+care of the rest."
+
+"If you mean by doing my part minding my business and working like a
+beaver I shall easily satisfy you," Nick replied.
+
+"Ah, you reprobate, you'll become another Sir Joshua, a mere P.R.A.!"
+his companion railed, getting up to go.
+
+When he had gone Nick threw himself back on the cushions of the divan
+and, with his hands locked above his head, sat a long time lost in
+thought. He had sent his servant to bed; he was unmolested. He gazed
+before him into the gloom produced by the unheeded burning-out of the
+last candle. The vague outer light came in through the tall studio
+window and the painted images, ranged about, looked confused in the
+dusk. If his mother had seen him she might have thought he was staring
+at his father's ghost.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+The night Peter Sherringham walked away from Balaklava Place with
+Gabriel Nash the talk of the two men directed itself, as was natural at
+the time, to the question of Miriam's future fame and the pace, as Nash
+called it, at which she would go. Critical spirits as they both were,
+and one of them as dissimulative in passion as the other was paradoxical
+in the absence of it, they yet took her career for granted as completely
+as the simple-minded, a pair of hot spectators in the pit, might have
+done, and exchanged observations on the assumption that the only
+uncertain element would be the pace. This was a proof of general
+subjugation. Peter wished not to show, yet wished to know, and in the
+restlessness of his anxiety was ready even to risk exposure, great as
+the sacrifice might be of the imperturbable, urbane scepticism most
+appropriate to a secretary of embassy. He couldn't rid himself of the
+sense that Nash had got up earlier than he, had had opportunities of
+contact in days already distant, the days of Mrs. Rooth's hungry foreign
+rambles. Something of authority and privilege stuck to him from this,
+and it made Sherringham still more uncomfortable when he was most
+conscious that, at the best, even the trained diplomatic mind would
+never get a grasp of Miriam as a whole. She was constructed to revolve
+like the terraqueous globe; some part or other of her was always out of
+sight or in shadow.
+
+Peter talked to conceal his feelings, and, like many a man practising
+that indirectness, rather lost himself in the wood. They agreed that,
+putting strange accidents aside, the girl would go further than any one
+had gone in England within the memory of man; and that it was a pity, as
+regards marking the comparison, that for so long no one had gone any
+distance worth speaking of. They further agreed that it would naturally
+seem absurd to any one who didn't know, their prophesying such big
+things on such small evidence; and they agreed lastly that the absurdity
+quite vanished as soon as the prophets knew as _they_ knew. Their
+knowledge--they quite recognised this--was simply confidence raised to a
+high point, the communication of their young friend's own confidence.
+The conditions were enormously to make, but it was of the very essence
+of Miriam's confidence that she would make them. The parts, the plays,
+the theatres, the "support," the audiences, the critics, the money were
+all to be found, but she cast a spell that prevented this from seeming a
+serious hitch. One mightn't see from one day to the other what she would
+do or how she would do it, but this wouldn't stay her steps--she would
+none the less go on. She would have to construct her own road, as it
+were, but at the worst there would only be delays in making it. These
+delays would depend on the hardness of the stones she had to break.
+
+As Peter had noted, you never knew where to "have" Gabriel Nash; a truth
+exemplified in his unexpected delight at the prospect of Miriam's
+drawing forth the modernness of the age. You might have thought he would
+loathe that modernness; but he had a joyous, amused, amusing vision of
+it--saw it as something huge and fantastically vulgar. Its vulgarity
+would rise to the grand style, like that of a London railway station,
+and the publicity achieved by their charming charge be as big as the
+globe itself. All the machinery was ready, the platform laid; the
+facilities, the wires and bells and trumpets, the roaring, deafening
+newspaperism of the period--its most distinctive sign--were waiting for
+her, their predestined mistress, to press her foot on the spring and set
+them all in motion. Gabriel brushed in a large, bright picture of her
+progress through the time and round the world, round it and round it
+again, from continent to continent and clime to clime; with populations
+and deputations, reporters and photographers, placards and interviews
+and banquets, steamers, railways, dollars, diamonds, speeches and
+artistic ruin all jumbled into her train. Regardless of expense the
+spectacle would be and thrilling, though somewhat monotonous, the
+drama--a drama more bustling than any she would put on the stage and a
+spectacle that would beat everything for scenery. In the end her divine
+voice would crack, screaming to foreign ears and antipodal barbarians,
+and her clever manner would lose all quality, simplified to a few
+unmistakable knock-down dodges. Then she would be at the fine climax of
+life and glory, still young and insatiate, but already coarse, hard, and
+raddled, with nothing left to do and nothing left to do it with, the
+remaining years all before her and the _raison d'être_ all behind. It
+would be splendid, dreadful, grotesque.
+
+"Oh, she'll have some good years--they'll be worth having," Peter
+insisted as they went. "Besides, you see her too much as a humbug and
+too little as a real producer. She has ideas--great ones; she loves the
+thing for itself. That may keep a woman serious."
+
+"Her greatest idea must always be to show herself, and fortunately she
+has a great quantity of that treasure to show. I think of her absolutely
+as a real producer, but as a producer whose production is her own
+person. No 'person,' even as fine a one as hers, will stand that for
+more than an hour, so that humbuggery has very soon to lend a hand.
+However," Nash continued, "if she's a fine humbug it will do as well, it
+will perfectly suit the time. We can all be saved by vulgarity; that's
+the solvent of all difficulties and the blessing of this delightful age.
+One doesn't die of it--save in soul and sense: one dies only of minding
+it. Therefore let no man despair--a new hope has dawned."
+
+"She'll do her work like any other worker, with the advantage over many
+that her talent's rare," Peter obliquely answered. "Compared with the
+life of many women that's security and sanity of the highest order. Then
+she can't help her beauty. You can't vulgarise that."
+
+"Oh, can't you?" Gabriel cried.
+
+"It will abide with her till the day of her death. It isn't a mere
+superficial freshness. She's very noble."
+
+"Yes, that's the pity of it," said Nash. "She's a big more or less
+directed force, and I quite admit that she'll do for a while a lot of
+good. She'll have brightened up the world for a great many people--have
+brought the ideal nearer to them and held it fast for an hour with its
+feet on earth and its great wings trembling. That's always something,
+for blest is he who has dropped even the smallest coin into the little
+iron box that contains the precious savings of mankind. Miriam will
+doubtless have dropped a big gold-piece. It will be found in the general
+scramble on the day the race goes bankrupt. And then for herself she'll
+have had a great go at life."
+
+"Oh yes, she'll have got out of her hole--she won't have vegetated,"
+Peter concurred. "That makes her touching to me--it adds to the many
+good reasons for which one may want to help her. She's tackling a big
+job, and tackling it by herself; throwing herself upon the world in good
+faith and dealing with it as she can; meeting alone, in her youth, her
+beauty, her generosity, all the embarrassments of notoriety and all the
+difficulties of a profession of which, if one half's what's called
+brilliant the other's frankly odious."
+
+"She has great courage, but you speak of her as solitary with such a lot
+of us all round her?" Nash candidly inquired.
+
+"She's a great thing for you and me, but we're a small thing for her."
+
+"Well, a good many small things, if they but stick together, may make up
+a mass," Gabriel said. "There must always be the man, you see. He's the
+indispensable element in such a life, and he'll be the last thing she'll
+ever lack."
+
+"What man are you talking about?" Peter asked with imperfect ease.
+
+"The man of the hour, whoever he is. She'll inspire innumerable
+devotions."
+
+"Of course she will, and they'll be precisely a part of the insufferable
+side of her life."
+
+"Insufferable to whom?" Nash demanded. "Don't forget that the
+insufferable side of her life will be just the side she'll thrive on.
+You can't eat your cake and have it, and you can't make omelettes
+without breaking eggs. You can't at once sit by the fire and parade
+about the world, and you can't take all chances without having some
+adventures. You can't be a great actress without the luxury of nerves.
+Without a plentiful supply--or without the right ones--you'll only be
+second fiddle. If you've all the tense strings you may take life for
+your fiddlestick. Your nerves and your adventures, your eggs and your
+cake, are part of the cost of the most expensive of professions. You
+play with human passions, with exaltations and ecstasies and terrors,
+and if you trade on the fury of the elements you must know how to ride
+the storm."
+
+Well, Peter thought it over. "Those are the fine old commonplaces about
+the artistic temperament, but I usually find the artist a very meek,
+decent, little person."
+
+"You _never_ find the artist--you only find his work, and that's all you
+need find. When the artist's a woman, and the woman's an actress,
+meekness and decency will doubtless be there in the right proportions,"
+Nash went on. "Miriam will represent them for you, if you give her her
+cue, with the utmost charm."
+
+"Of course she'll inspire devotions--_that's_ all right," said Peter
+with a wild cheerfulness.
+
+"And of course they'll inspire responses, and with that
+consequence--don't you see?--they'll mitigate her solitude, they'll even
+enliven it," Nash set forth.
+
+"She'll probably box a good many ears: that'll be lively!" Peter
+returned with some grimness.
+
+"Oh magnificent!--it will be a merry life. Yet with its tragic passages,
+its distracted or its pathetic hours," Gabriel insisted. "In short, a
+little of everything."
+
+They walked on without further speech till at last Peter resumed: "The
+best thing for a woman in her situation is to marry some decent
+care-taking man."
+
+"Oh I daresay she'll do that too!" Nash laughed; a remark as a result of
+which his companion lapsed afresh into silence. Gabriel left him a
+little to enjoy this; after which he added: "There's somebody she'd
+marry to-morrow."
+
+Peter wondered. "Do you mean her friend Dashwood?"
+
+"No, no, I mean Nick Dormer."
+
+"She'd marry _him_?" Peter gasped.
+
+"I mean her head's full of him. But she'll hardly get the chance."
+
+Peter watched himself. "Does she like him as much as that?"
+
+"I don't quite know how much you mean, but enough for all practical
+ends."
+
+"Marrying a fashionable actress is hardly a practical end."
+
+"Certainly not, but I'm not speaking from his point of view." Nash was
+perfectly lucid. "Moreover, I thought you just now said it would be such
+a good thing for her."
+
+"To marry Nick Dormer?"
+
+"You said a good decent man, and he's one of the very decentest."
+
+"I wasn't thinking of the individual, but of the protection. It would
+fence her about, settle certain questions, or appear to; it would make
+things safe and comfortable for her and keep a lot of cads and
+blackguards away."
+
+"She ought to marry the prompter or the box-keeper," said Nash. "Then it
+would be all right. I think indeed they generally do, don't they?"
+
+Peter felt for a moment a strong disposition to drop his friend on the
+spot, to cross to the other side of the street and walk away without
+him. But there was a different impulse which struggled with this one and
+after a minute overcame it, the impulse that led to his saying
+presently: "Has she told you she's--a--she's in love with Nick?"
+
+"No, no--that's not the way I know it."
+
+"Has Nick told you then?"
+
+"On the contrary, I've told _him_."
+
+"You've rendered him a questionable service if you've no proof," Peter
+pronounced.
+
+"My proof's only that I've seen her with him. She's charming, poor dear
+thing."
+
+"But surely she isn't in love with every man she's charming to."
+
+"I mean she's charming to _me_," Nash returned. "I see her that way. I
+see her interested--and what it does to her, with her, _for_ her. But
+judge for yourself--the first time you get a chance."
+
+"When shall I get a chance? Nick doesn't come near her."
+
+"Oh he'll come, he'll come; his picture isn't finished."
+
+"You mean _he'll_ be the box-keeper, then?"
+
+"My dear fellow, I shall never allow it," said Gabriel Nash. "It would
+be idiotic and quite unnecessary. He's beautifully arranged--in quite a
+different line. Fancy his taking that sort of job on his hands! Besides,
+she'd never expect it; she's not such a goose. They're very good
+friends--it will go on that way. She's an excellent person for him to
+know; she'll give him lots of ideas of the plastic kind. He would have
+been up there before this, but it has taken him time to play his
+delightful trick on his constituents. That of course is pure amusement;
+but when once his effect has been well produced he'll get back to
+business, and his business will be a very different matter from
+Miriam's. Imagine him writing her advertisements, living on her money,
+adding up her profits, having rows and recriminations with her agent,
+carrying her shawl, spending his days in her rouge-pot. The right man
+for that, if she must have one, will turn up. '_Pour le mariage, non_.'
+She isn't wholly an idiot; she really, for a woman, quite sees things as
+they are."
+
+As Peter had not crossed the street and left Gabriel planted he now
+suffered the extremity of irritation. But descrying in the dim vista of
+the Edgware Road a vague and vigilant hansom he waved his stick with
+eagerness and with the abrupt declaration that, feeling tired, he must
+drive the rest of his way. He offered Nash, as he entered the vehicle,
+no seat, but this coldness was not reflected in the lucidity with which
+that master of every subject went on to affirm that there was of course
+a danger--the danger that in given circumstances Miriam would leave the
+stage.
+
+"Leave it, you mean, for some man?"
+
+"For the man we're talking about."
+
+"For Nick Dormer?" Peter asked from his place in the cab, his paleness
+lighted by its lamps.
+
+"If he should make it a condition. But why should he? why should he make
+_any_ conditions? He's not an ass either. You see it would be a
+bore"--Nash kept it up while the hansom waited--"because if she were to
+do anything of that sort she'd make him pay for the sacrifice."
+
+"Oh yes, she'd make him pay for the sacrifice," Peter blindly concurred.
+
+"And then when he had paid she'd go back to her footlights," Gabriel
+developed from the curbstone as his companion closed the apron of the
+cab.
+
+"I see--she'd go back--good-night," Peter returned. "_Please_ go on!" he
+cried to the driver through the hole in the roof. And while the vehicle
+rolled away he growled to himself: "Of course she would--and quite
+right!"
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+"Judge for yourself when you get a chance," Nash had said to him; and as
+it turned out he was able to judge two days later, for he found his
+cousin in Balaklava Place on the Tuesday following his walk with their
+insufferable friend. He had not only stayed away from the theatre on the
+Monday evening--he regarded this as an achievement of some
+importance--but had not been near Miriam during the day. He had meant to
+absent himself from her company on Tuesday as well; a determination
+confirmed by the fact that the afternoon turned to rain. But when at ten
+minutes to five o'clock he jumped into a hansom and directed his course
+to Saint John's Wood it was precisely upon the weather that he shifted
+the responsibility of his behaviour.
+
+Miriam had dined when he reached the villa, but she was lying down,
+unduly fatigued, before going to the theatre. Mrs. Rooth was, however,
+in the drawing-room with three gentlemen, in two of whom the fourth
+visitor was not startled to recognise Basil Dashwood and Gabriel Nash.
+Dashwood appeared to have become Miriam's brother-in-arms and a second
+child--a fonder one--to Mrs. Rooth; it had reached Peter on some late
+visit that the young actor had finally moved his lodgings into the
+quarter, making himself a near neighbour for all sorts of convenience.
+"Hang his convenience!" Peter thought, perceiving that Mrs. Lovick's
+"Arty" was now altogether one of the family. Oh the family!--it was a
+queer one to be connected with: that consciousness was acute in
+Sherringham's breast to-day as he entered Mrs. Rooth's little circle.
+The place was filled with cigarette-smoke and there was a messy
+coffee-service on the piano, whose keys Basil Dashwood lightly touched
+for his own diversion. Nash, addressing the room of course, was at one
+end of a little sofa with his nose in the air, and Nick Dormer was at
+the other end, seated much at his ease and with a certain privileged
+appearance of having been there often before, though Sherringham knew he
+had not. He looked uncritical and very young, as rosy as a school-boy on
+a half-holiday. It was past five o'clock in the day, but Mrs. Rooth was
+not dressed; there was, however, no want of finish in her elegant
+attitude--the same relaxed grandeur (she seemed to let you understand)
+for which she used to be distinguished at Castle Nugent when the house
+was full. She toyed incongruously, in her unbuttoned wrapper, with a
+large tinsel fan which resembled a theatrical property.
+
+It was one of the discomforts of Peter's position that many of those
+minor matters which are superficially at least most characteristic of
+the histrionic life had power to displease him, so that he was obliged
+constantly to overlook and condone and pretend. He disliked besmoked
+drawing-rooms and irregular meals and untidy arrangements; he could
+suffer from the vulgarity of Mrs. Rooth's apartments, the importunate
+photographs which gave on his nerves, the barbarous absence of signs of
+an orderly domestic life, the odd volumes from the circulating library
+(you could see what they were--the very covers told you--at a glance)
+tumbled about under smeary cups and glasses. He hadn't waited till now
+to feel it "rum" that fate should have let him in for such contacts;
+but as he stood before his hostess and her companions he wondered
+perhaps more than ever why he should. Her companions somehow, who were
+not responsible, didn't keep down his wonder; which was particularly
+odd, since they were not superficially in the least of Bohemian type.
+Almost the first thing that struck him, as happened, in coming into the
+room, was the fresh fact of the high good looks of his cousin, a
+gentleman, to one's taste and for one's faith, in a different enough
+degree from the stiff-collared, conversible Dashwood. Peter didn't hate
+Nick for being of so fine an English grain; he knew rather the brush of
+a new wave of annoyance at Julia's stupid failure to get on with him
+under that good omen.
+
+It was his first encounter with the late member for Harsh since his
+arrival in London: they had been on one side and the other so much taken
+up with their affairs. Since their last meeting Nick had, as we know, to
+his kinsman's perception, really put on a new character: he had done the
+finest stroke of business in the quietest way. This had made him a
+presence to be counted with, and in just the sense in which poor Peter
+desired least to count. Poor Peter, after his somersault in the blue,
+had just lately been much troubled; he was ravaged by contending
+passions; he paid every hour in a torment of unrest for what was false
+in his position, the impossibility of keeping the presentable parts of
+his character together, the opposition of interest and desire. Nick, his
+junior and a lighter weight, had settled _his_ problem and showed no
+wounds; there was something impertinent and mystifying in it. Yet he
+looked, into the bargain, too innocently young and happy, and too
+careless and modest and amateurish, to figure as a rival or even as the
+genius he was apparently going to try to be--the genius that the other
+day, in the studio there with Biddy, Peter had got a startled glimpse of
+his power to become. Julia's brother would have liked to be aware of
+grounds of resentment, to be able to hold she had been badly treated or
+that Nick was basely fatuous, for in that case he might have had the
+resource of taking offence. But where was the outrage of his merely
+being liked by a woman in respect to whom one had definitely denied
+one's self the luxury of pretensions, especially if, as the wrong-doer,
+he had taken no action in the matter? It could scarcely be called
+wrong-doing to call, casually, on an afternoon when the lady didn't seem
+to be there. Peter could at any rate rejoice that Miriam didn't; and he
+proposed to himself suggesting to Nick after a little that they should
+adjourn together--they had such interesting things to talk about.
+Meanwhile Nick greeted him with a friendly freedom in which he could
+read neither confusion nor defiance. Peter was reassured against a
+danger he believed he didn't recognise and puzzled by a mystery he
+flattered himself he hadn't heeded. And he was still more ashamed of
+being reassured than of being puzzled.
+
+It must be recorded that Miriam's absence from the scene was not
+prolonged. Nick, as Sherringham gathered, had been about a quarter of an
+hour in the house, which would have given her, gratified by his
+presence, due time to array herself to come down to him. At all events
+she was in the room, prepared apparently to go to the theatre, very
+shortly after one of her guests had become sensible of how glad he was
+she was out of it. Familiarity had never yet cured him of a certain
+tremor of expectation, and even of suspense, in regard to her entrances;
+a flutter caused by the simple circumstance of her infinite variety. To
+say she was always acting would too much convey that she was often
+fatiguing; since her changing face affected this particular admirer at
+least not as a series of masks, but as a response to perceived
+differences, an intensity of that perception, or still more as something
+richly constructional, like the shifting of the scene in a play or like
+a room with many windows. The image she was to project was always
+incalculable, but if her present denied her past and declined
+responsibility for her future it made a good thing of the hour and kept
+the actual peculiarly fresh. This time the actual was a bright, gentle,
+graceful, smiling, young woman in a new dress, eager to go out, drawing
+on fresh gloves, who looked as if she were about to step into a carriage
+and--it was Gabriel Nash who thus formulated her physiognomy--do a lot
+of London things.
+
+The young woman had time to spare, however, and she sat down and talked
+and laughed and presently gave, as seemed to Peter, a deeper glow to the
+tawdry little room, which could do for others if it had to do for her.
+She described herself as in a state of nervous muddle, exhausted,
+blinded, _abrutie_, with the rehearsals of the forthcoming piece--the
+first night was close at hand, and it was going to be of a vileness:
+they would all see!--but there was no correspondence between this
+account of the matter and her present bravery of mood. She sent her
+mother away--to "put on some clothes or something"--and, left alone with
+the visitors, went to a long glass between the windows, talking always
+to Nick Dormer, and revised and rearranged a little her own attire. She
+talked to Nick, over her shoulder, and to Nick only, as if he were the
+guest to recognise and the others didn't count. She broke out at once on
+his having thrown up his seat, wished to know if the strange story told
+her by Mr. Nash were true--that he had knocked all the hopes of his
+party into pie.
+
+Nick took it any way she liked and gave a pleasant picture of his
+party's ruin, the critical condition of public affairs: he was as yet
+clearly closed to contrition or shame. The pilgrim from Paris, before
+Miriam's entrance, had not, in shaking hands with him, made even a
+roundabout allusion to his odd "game"; he felt he must somehow show good
+taste--so English people often feel--at the cost of good manners. But he
+winced on seeing how his scruples had been wasted, and was struck with
+the fine, jocose, direct turn of his kinsman's conversation with the
+young actress. It was a part of her unexpectedness that she took the
+heavy literal view of Nick's behaviour; declared frankly, though without
+ill nature, that she had no patience with his mistake. She was horribly
+disappointed--she had set her heart on his being a great statesman, one
+of the rulers of the people and the glories of England. What was so
+useful, what was so noble?--how it belittled everything else! She had
+expected him to wear a cordon and a star some day--acquiring them with
+the greatest promptitude--and then to come and see her in her _loge_: it
+would look so particularly well. She talked after the manner of a lovely
+Philistine, except perhaps when she expressed surprise at
+hearing--hearing from Gabriel Nash--that in England gentlemen accoutred
+with those emblems of their sovereign's esteem didn't so far forget
+themselves as to stray into the dressing-rooms of actresses. She
+admitted after a moment that they were quite right and the
+dressing-rooms of actresses nasty places; but she was sorry, for that
+was the sort of thing she had always figured in a corner--a
+distinguished man, slightly bald, in evening dress, with orders,
+admiring the smallness of a satin shoe and saying witty things. Nash was
+convulsed with hilarity at this--such a vision of the British political
+hero. Coming back from the glass and making that critic give her his
+place on the sofa, she seated herself near Nick and continued to
+express her regret at his perversity.
+
+"They all say that--all the charming women, but I shouldn't have looked
+for it from you," Nick replied. "I've given you such an example of what
+I can do in another line."
+
+"Do you mean my portrait? Oh I've got it, with your name and 'M.P.' in
+the corner, and that's precisely why I'm content. 'M.P.' in the corner
+of a picture is delightful, but I want to break the mould: I don't in
+the least insist on your giving specimens to others. And the artistic
+life, when you can lead another--if you've any alternative, however
+modest--is a very poor business. It comes last in dignity--after
+everything else. Ain't I up to my eyes in it and don't I truly know?"
+
+"You talk like my broken-hearted mother," said Nick.
+
+"Does she hate it so intensely?"
+
+"She has the darkest ideas about it--the wildest theories. I can't
+imagine where she gets them; partly I think from a general conviction
+that the 'esthetic'--a horrible insidious foreign disease--is eating the
+healthy core out of English life (dear old English life!) and partly
+from the charming pictures in _Punch_ and the clever satirical articles,
+pointing at mysterious depths of contamination, in the other weekly
+papers. She believes there's a dreadful coterie of uncannily artful and
+desperately refined people who wear a kind of loose faded uniform and
+worship only beauty--which is a fearful thing; that Gabriel has
+introduced me to it; that I now spend all my time in it, and that for
+its sweet sake I've broken the most sacred vows. Poor Gabriel, who, so
+far as I can make out, isn't in any sort of society, however bad!"
+
+"But I'm uncannily artful," Nash objected, "and though I can't afford
+the uniform--I believe you get it best somewhere in South Audley
+Street--I do worship beauty. I really think it's me the weekly papers
+mean."
+
+"Oh I've read the articles--I know the sort!" said Basil Dashwood.
+
+Miriam looked at him. "Go and see if the brougham's there--I ordered it
+early."
+
+Dashwood, without moving, consulted his watch. "It isn't time yet--I
+know more about the brougham than you. I've made a ripping good
+arrangement for her stable--it really costs her nothing," the young
+actor continued confidentially to Peter, near whom he had placed
+himself.
+
+"Your mother's quite right to be broken-hearted," Miriam declared, "and
+I can imagine exactly what she has been through. I should like to talk
+with her--I should like to see her." Nick showed on this easy amusement,
+reminding her she had talked to him while she sat for her portrait in
+quite the opposite sense, most helpfully and inspiringly; and Nash
+explained that she was studying the part of a political duchess and
+wished to take observations for it, to work herself into the character.
+The girl might in fact have been a political duchess as she sat, her
+head erect and her gloved hands folded, smiling with aristocratic
+dimness at Nick. She shook her head with stately sadness; she might have
+been trying some effect for Mary Stuart in Schiller's play. "I've
+changed since that. I want you to be the grandest thing there is--the
+counsellor of kings."
+
+Peter wondered if it possibly weren't since she had met his sister in
+Nick's studio that she had changed, if perhaps she hadn't seen how it
+might give Julia the sense of being more effectually routed to know that
+the woman who had thrown the bomb was one who also tried to keep Nick in
+the straight path. This indeed would involve an assumption that Julia
+might know, whereas it was perfectly possible she mightn't and more than
+possible that if she should she wouldn't care. Miriam's essential
+fondness for trying different ways was always there as an adequate
+reason for any particular way; a truth which, however, sometimes only
+half-prevented the particular way from being vexatious to a particular
+observer.
+
+"Yet after all who's more esthetic than you and who goes in more for the
+beautiful?" Nick asked. "You're never so beautiful as when you pitch
+into it."
+
+"Oh, I'm an inferior creature, of an inferior sex, and I've to earn my
+bread as I can. I'd give it all up in a moment, my odious trade--for an
+inducement."
+
+"And pray what do you mean by an inducement?" Nick demanded.
+
+"My dear fellow, she means you--if you'll give her a permanent
+engagement to sit for you!" Gabriel volunteered. "What singularly crude
+questions you ask!"
+
+"I like the way she talks," Mr. Dashwood derisively said, "when I gave
+up the most brilliant prospects, of very much the same kind as Mr.
+Dormer's, expressly to go on the stage."
+
+"You're an inferior creature too," Miriam promptly pronounced.
+
+"Miss Rooth's very hard to satisfy," Peter observed at this. "A man of
+distinction, slightly bald, in evening dress, with orders, in the corner
+of her _loge_--she has such a personage ready made to her hand and she
+doesn't so much as look at him. Am _I_ not an inducement? Haven't I
+offered you a permanent engagement?"
+
+"Your orders--where are your orders?" she returned with a sweet smile,
+getting up.
+
+"I shall be a minister next year and an ambassador before you know it.
+Then I shall stick on everything that can be had."
+
+"And they call _us_ mountebanks!" cried the girl. "I've been so glad to
+see you again--do you want another sitting?" she went on to Nick as if
+to take leave of him.
+
+"As many as you'll give me--I shall be grateful for all," he made
+answer. "I should like to do you as you are at present. You're totally
+different from the woman I painted--you're wonderful."
+
+"The Comic Muse!" she laughed. "Well, you must wait till our first
+nights are over--I'm _sur les dents_ till then. There's everything to do
+and I've to do it all. That fellow's good for nothing, for nothing but
+domestic life"--and she glanced at Basil Dashwood. "He hasn't an
+idea--not one you'd willingly tell of him, though he's rather useful for
+the stables. We've got stables now--or we try to look as if we had:
+Dashwood's ideas are _de cette force_. In ten days I shall have more
+time."
+
+"The Comic Muse? Never, never," Peter protested. "You're not to go
+smirking through the age and down to posterity--I'd rather see you as
+Medusa crowned with serpents. That's what you look like when you look
+best."
+
+"That's consoling--when I've just bought a lovely new bonnet, all red
+roses and bows. I forgot to tell you just now that when you're an
+ambassador you may propose anything you like," Miriam went on. "But
+forgive me if I make that condition. Seriously speaking, come to me
+glittering with orders and I shall probably succumb. I can't resist
+stars and garters. Only you must, as you say, have them all. I _don't_
+like to hear Mr. Dormer talk the slang of the studio--like that phrase
+just now: it _is_ a fall to a lower state. However, when one's low one
+must crawl, and I'm crawling down to the Strand. Dashwood, see if
+mamma's ready. If she isn't I decline to wait; you must bring her in a
+hansom. I'll take Mr. Dormer in the brougham; I want to talk with Mr.
+Dormer; he must drive with me to the theatre. His situation's full of
+interest." Miriam led the way out of the room as she continued to
+chatter, and when she reached the house-door with the four men in her
+train the carriage had just drawn up at the garden-gate. It appeared
+that Mrs. Rooth was not ready, and the girl, in spite of a remonstrance
+from Nick, who had a sense of usurping the old lady's place, repeated
+her injunction that she should be brought on in a cab. Miriam's
+gentlemen hung about her at the gate, and she insisted on Nick's taking
+his seat in the brougham and taking it first. Before she entered she put
+her hand out to Peter and, looking up at him, held his own kindly. "Dear
+old master, aren't you coming to-night? I miss you when you're not
+there."
+
+"Don't go--don't go--it's too much," Nash freely declared.
+
+"She is wonderful," said Mr. Dashwood, all expert admiration; "she _has_
+gone into the rehearsals tooth and nail. But nothing takes it out of
+her."
+
+"Nothing puts it into you, my dear!" Miriam returned. Then she pursued
+to Peter: "You're the faithful one--you're the one I count on." He was
+not looking at her; his eyes travelled into the carriage, where they
+rested on Nick Dormer, established on the farther seat with his face
+turned toward the farther window. He was the one, faithful or no,
+counted on or no, whom a charming woman had preferred to carry off, and
+there was clear triumph for him in that fact. Yet it pleased, it
+somewhat relieved, his kinsman to see his passivity as not a little
+foolish. Miriam noted something of this in Peter's eyes, for she
+exclaimed abruptly, "Don't kill him--he doesn't care for me!" With which
+she passed into the carriage and let it roll away.
+
+Peter stood watching it till he heard Dashwood again beside him. "You
+wouldn't believe what I make him do the whole thing for--a little rascal
+I know."
+
+"Good-bye; take good care of Mrs. Rooth," said Gabriel Nash, waving a
+bland farewell to the young actor. He gave a smiling survey of the
+heavens and remarked to Sherringham that the rain had stopped. Was he
+walking, was he driving, should they be going in the same direction?
+Peter cared little about his direction and had little account of it to
+give; he simply moved away in silence and with Gabriel at his side. This
+converser was partly an affliction to him; indeed the fact that he
+couldn't only make light of him added to the oppression. It was just to
+him nevertheless to note that he could hold his peace occasionally: he
+had for instance this afternoon taken little part in the talk at
+Balaklava Place. Peter greatly disliked to speak to him of Miriam, but
+he liked Nash himself to make free with her, and even liked him to say
+such things as might be a little viciously and unguardedly contradicted.
+He was not, however, moved to gainsay something dropped by his
+companion, disconnectedly, at the end of a few minutes; a word to the
+effect that she was after all the best-natured soul alive. All the same,
+Nash added, it wouldn't do for her to take possession of a nice life
+like Nick's; and he repeated that for his part he would never allow it.
+It would be on his conscience to interfere. To which Peter returned
+disingenuously that they might all do as they liked--it didn't matter a
+button to _him_. And with an effort to carry off that comedy he changed
+the subject.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+He wouldn't for a moment have admitted that he was jealous of his old
+comrade, but would almost have liked to be accused of it: for this would
+have given him a chance he rather lacked and missed, the right occasion
+to declare with plausibility that motives he couldn't avow had no
+application to his case. How could a man be jealous when he was not a
+suitor? how could he pretend to guard a property which was neither his
+own nor destined to become his own? There could be no question of loss
+when one had nothing at stake, and no question of envy when the
+responsibility of possession was exactly what one prayed to be delivered
+from. The measure of one's susceptibility was one's pretensions, and
+Peter was not only ready to declare over and over again that, thank God,
+he had none: his spiritual detachment was still more complete--he
+literally suffered from the fact that nobody appeared to care to hear
+him say it. He connected an idea of virtue and honour with his attitude,
+since surely it was a high case of conduct to have quenched a personal
+passion for the good of the public service. He had gone over the whole
+question at odd, irrepressible hours; he had returned, spiritually
+speaking, the buffet administered to him all at once, that day in
+Rosedale Road, by the spectacle of the _crânerie_ with which Nick could
+let worldly glories slide. Resolution for resolution he preferred after
+all another sort, and his own _crânerie_ would be shown in the way he
+should stick to his profession and stand up for British interests. If
+Nick had leaped over a wall he would leap over a river. The course of
+his river was already traced and his loins were already girded. Thus he
+was justified in holding that the measure of a man's susceptibility was
+a man's attitude: that was the only thing he was bound to give an
+account of.
+
+He was perpetually giving an account of it to his own soul in default of
+other listeners. He was quite angry at having tasted a sweetness in
+Miriam's assurance at the carriage--door, bestowed indeed with very
+little solemnity, that Nick didn't care for her. Wherein did it concern
+him that Nick cared for her or that Nick didn't? Wherein did it signify
+to him that Gabriel Nash should have taken upon himself to disapprove of
+a union between the young actress and the young painter and to frustrate
+an accident that might perhaps prove fortunate? For those had also been
+cooling words at the hour, though Peter blushed on the morrow to think
+that he felt in them anything but Nash's personal sublimity. He was
+ashamed of having been refreshed, and refreshed by so sickly a
+draught--it being all his theory that he was not in a fever. As for
+keeping an eye on Nick, it would soon become clear to that young man and
+that young man's charming friend that he had quite other uses for his
+eyes. The pair, with Nash to help, might straighten out their
+complications according to their light. He would never speak to Nick of
+Miriam; he felt indeed just now as if he should never speak to Nick of
+anything. He had traced the course of his river, as I say, and the real
+proof would be in the way he should, clearing the air, land on the
+opposite bank. It was a case for action--for vigorous, unmistakable
+action. He had done very little since his arrival in London but moon
+round a _fille de théâtre_ who was taken up partly, though she bluffed
+it off, with another man, and partly with arranging new petticoats for a
+beastly old "poetic drama"; but this little waste of time should
+instantly be made up. He had given himself a definite rope, and he had
+danced to the end of his rope, and now he would dance back. That was all
+right--so right that Peter could only express to himself how right it
+was by whistling with extravagance.
+
+He whistled as he went to dine with a great personage the day after his
+meeting with Nick in Balaklava Place; a great personage to whom he had
+originally paid his respects--it was high time--the day before that
+meeting, the previous Monday. The sense of omissions to repair, of a
+superior line to take, perhaps made him study with more zeal to please
+the personage, who gave him ten minutes and asked him five questions. A
+great many doors were successively opened before any palpitating pilgrim
+who was about to enter the presence of this distinguished man; but they
+were discreetly closed again behind Sherringham, and I must ask the
+reader to pause with me at the nearer end of the momentary vista. This
+particular pilgrim fortunately felt he could count on recognition not
+only as a faithful if obscure official in the great hierarchy, but as a
+clever young man who happened to be connected by blood with people his
+lordship had intimately known. No doubt it was simply as the clever
+young man that Peter received the next morning, from the dispenser of
+his lordship's hospitality, a note asking him to dine on the morrow.
+Such cards had come to him before, and he had always obeyed their call;
+he did so at present, however, with a sense of unusual intention. In due
+course his intention was translated into words; before the gentlemen
+left the dining-room he respectfully asked his noble host for some
+further brief and benevolent hearing.
+
+"What is it you want? Tell me now," the master of his fate replied,
+motioning to the rest of the company to pass out and detaining him where
+they stood.
+
+Peter's excellent training covered every contingency: he could always be
+as concise or as diffuse as the occasion required. Even he himself,
+however, was surprised at the quick felicity of the terms in which he
+was conscious of conveying that, were it compatible with higher
+conveniences, he should extremely like to be transferred to duties in a
+more distant quarter of the globe. Indeed, fond as he was of thinking
+himself a man of emotions controlled by civility, it is not impossible
+that a greater candour than he knew glimmered through Peter's expression
+and trembled through his tone as he presented this petition. He had
+aimed at a good manner in presenting it, but perhaps the best of the
+effect produced for his interlocutor was just where it failed, where it
+confessed a secret that the highest diplomacy would have guarded.
+Sherringham remarked to the minister that he didn't care in the least
+where the place might be, nor how little coveted a post; the further
+away the better, and the climate didn't matter. He would only prefer of
+course that there should be really something to do, though he would make
+the best of it even if there were not. He stopped in time, or at least
+thought he did, not to betray his covertly seeking relief from minding
+his having been jilted in a flight to latitudes unfavourable to human
+life. His august patron gave him a sharp look which for a moment seemed
+the precursor of a sharper question; but the moment elapsed and the
+question failed to come. This considerate omission, characteristic of a
+true man of the world and representing quick guesses and still quicker
+indifferences, made our gentleman from that moment his lordship's ardent
+partisan. What did come was a good-natured laugh and the exclamation:
+"You know there are plenty of swamps and jungles, if you want that sort
+of thing," Peter replied that it was very much that sort of thing he did
+want; whereupon his chief continued: "I'll see--I'll see. If anything
+turns up you shall hear."
+
+Something turned up the very next day: our young man, taken at his word,
+found himself indebted to the postman for a note of concise intimation
+that the high position of minister to the smallest of Central American
+republics would be apportioned him. The republic, though small, was big
+enough to be "shaky," and the position, though high, not so exalted that
+there were not much greater altitudes above it to which it was a
+stepping-stone. Peter, quite ready to take one thing with another,
+rejoiced at his easy triumph, reflected that he must have been even more
+noticed at headquarters than he had hoped, and, on the spot, consulting
+nobody and waiting for nothing, signified his unqualified acceptance of
+the place. Nobody with a grain of sense would have advised him to do
+anything else. It made him happier than he had supposed he should ever
+be again; it made him feel professionally in the train, as they said in
+Paris; it was serious, it was interesting, it was exciting, and his
+imagination, letting itself loose into the future, began once more to
+scale the crowning eminence. It was very simple to hold one's course if
+one really tried, and he blessed the variety of peoples. Further
+communications passed, the last enjoining on him to return to Paris for
+a short interval a week later, after which he would be advised of the
+date for his proceeding to his remoter duties.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+The next thing he meanwhile did was to call with his news on Lady Agnes
+Dormer; it is not unworthy of note that he took on the other hand no
+step to make his promotion known to Miriam Rooth. To render it probable
+he should find his aunt he went at the luncheon-hour; and she was indeed
+on the point of sitting down to that repast with Grace. Biddy was not at
+home--Biddy was never at home now, her mother said: she was always at
+Nick's place, she spent her life there, she ate and drank there, she
+almost slept there. What she contrived to do there for so many hours and
+what was the irresistible spell Lady Agnes couldn't pretend she had
+succeeded in discovering. She spoke of this baleful resort only as
+"Nick's place," and spoke of it at first as little as possible. She
+judged highly probable, however, that Biddy would come in early that
+afternoon: there was something or other, some common social duty, she
+had condescended to promise she would perform with Grace. Poor Lady
+Agnes, whom Peter found somehow at once grim and very prostrate--she
+assured her nephew her nerves were all gone--almost abused her younger
+daughter for two minutes, having evidently a deep-seated need of abusing
+some one. I must yet add that she didn't wait to meet Grace's eye before
+recovering, by a rapid gyration, her view of the possibilities of
+things--those possibilities from which she still might squeeze, as a
+parent almost in despair, the drop that would sweeten her cup. "Dear
+child," she had the presence of mind to subjoin, "her only fault is
+after all that she adores her brother. She has a capacity for adoration
+and must always take her gospel from some one."
+
+Grace declared to Peter that her sister would have stayed at home if she
+had dreamed he was coming, and Lady Agnes let him know that she had
+heard all about the hour he had spent with the poor child at Nick's
+place and about his extraordinary good nature in taking the two girls to
+the play. Peter lunched in Calcutta Gardens, spending an hour there
+which proved at first unexpectedly and, as seemed to him, unfairly
+dismal. He knew from his own general perceptions, from what Biddy had
+told him and from what he had heard Nick say in Balaklava Place, that
+his aunt would have been wounded by her son's apostasy; but it was not
+till he saw her that he appreciated the dark difference this young man's
+behaviour had made in the outlook of his family. Evidently that
+behaviour had sprung a dreadful leak in the great vessel of their hopes.
+These were things no outsider could measure, and they were none of an
+outsider's business; it was enough that Lady Agnes struck him really as
+a woman who had received her death-blow. She looked ten years older; she
+was white and haggard and tragic. Her eyes burned with a strange fitful
+fire that prompted one to conclude her children had better look out for
+her. When not filled with this unnatural flame they were suffused with
+comfortless tears; and altogether the afflicted lady was, as he viewed
+her, very bad, a case for anxiety. It was because he had known she would
+be very bad that he had, in his kindness, called on her exactly in this
+manner; but he recognised that to undertake to be kind to her in
+proportion to her need might carry one very far. He was glad he had not
+himself a wronged mad mother, and he wondered how Nick could bear the
+burden of the home he had ruined. Apparently he didn't bear it very far,
+but had taken final, convenient refuge in Rosedale Road.
+
+Peter's judgement of his perverse cousin was considerably confused, and
+not the less so for the consciousness that he was perhaps just now not
+in the best state of mind for judging him at all. At the same time,
+though he held in general that a man of sense has always warrant enough
+in his sense for doing the particular thing he prefers, he could
+scarcely help asking himself whether, in the exercise of a virile
+freedom, it had been absolutely indispensable Nick should work such
+domestic woe. He admitted indeed that that was an anomalous figure for
+Nick, the worker of domestic woe. Then he saw that his aunt's
+grievance--there came a moment, later, when she asserted as much--was
+not quite what her recreant child, in Balaklava Place, had represented
+it--with questionable taste perhaps--to a mocking actress; was not a
+mere shocked quarrel with his adoption of a "low" career, or a horror,
+the old-fashioned horror, of the _louches_ licences taken by artists
+under pretext of being conscientious: the day for this was past, and
+English society thought the brush and the fiddle as good as anything
+else--with two or three exceptions. It was not what he had taken up but
+what he had put down that made the sorry difference, and the tragedy
+would have been equally great if he had become a wine-merchant or a
+horse-dealer. Peter had gathered at first that Lady Agnes wouldn't trust
+herself to speak directly of her trouble, and he had obeyed what he
+supposed the best discretion in making no allusion to it. But a few
+minutes before they rose from table she broke out, and when he
+attempted to utter a word of mitigation there was something that went to
+his heart in the way she returned: "Oh you don't know--you don't know!"
+He felt Grace's eyes fixed on him at this instant in a mystery of
+supplication, and was uncertain as to what she wanted--that he should
+say something more to console her mother or should hurry away from the
+subject. Grace looked old and plain and--he had thought on coming
+in--rather cross, but she evidently wanted something. "You don't know,"
+Lady Agnes repeated with a trembling voice, "you don't know." She had
+pushed her chair a little away from her place; she held her
+pocket-handkerchief pressed hard to her mouth, almost stuffed into it,
+and her eyes were fixed on the floor. She made him aware he did
+virtually know--know what towering piles of confidence and hope had been
+dashed to the earth. Then she finished her sentence unexpectedly--"You
+don't know what my life with my great husband was." Here on the other
+hand Peter was slightly at fault--he didn't exactly see what her life
+with her great husband had to do with it. What was clear to him,
+however, was that they literally had looked for things all in the very
+key of that greatness from Nick. It was not quite easy to see why this
+had been the case--it had not been precisely Peter's own prefigurement.
+Nick appeared to have had the faculty of planting that sort of
+flattering faith in women; he had originally given Julia a tremendous
+dose of it, though she had since shaken off the effects.
+
+"Do you really think he would have done such great things, politically
+speaking?" Peter risked. "Do you consider that the root of the matter
+was so essentially in him?"
+
+His hostess had a pause, looking at him rather hard. "I only think what
+all his friends--all his father's friends--have thought. He was his
+father's son after all. No young man ever had a finer training, and he
+gave from the first repeated proof of the highest ability, the highest
+ambition. See how he got in everywhere. Look at his first seat--look at
+his second," Lady Agnes continued. "Look at what every one says at this
+moment."
+
+"Look at all the papers!" said Grace. "Did you ever hear him speak?" she
+asked. And when Peter reminded her how he had spent his life in foreign
+lands, shut out from such pleasures, she went on: "Well, you lost
+something."
+
+"It was very charming," said Lady Agnes quietly and poignantly.
+
+"Of course he's charming, whatever he does," Peter returned. "He'll be a
+charming artist."
+
+"Oh God help us!" the poor lady groaned, rising quickly.
+
+"He won't--that's the worst," Grace amended. "It isn't as if he'd do
+things people would like, I've been to his place, and I never saw such a
+horrid lot of things--not at all clever or pretty."
+
+Yet her mother, at this, turned upon her with sudden asperity. "You know
+nothing whatever about the matter!" Then she added for Peter that, as it
+happened, her children did have a good deal of artistic taste: Grace was
+the only one who was totally deficient in it. Biddy was very
+clever--Biddy really might learn to do pretty things. And anything the
+poor child could learn was now no more than her duty--there was so
+little knowing what the future had in store for them all.
+
+"You think too much of the future--you take terribly gloomy views," said
+Peter, looking for his hat.
+
+"What other views can one take when one's son has deliberately thrown
+away a fortune?"
+
+"Thrown one away? Do you mean through not marrying----?"
+
+"I mean through killing by his perversity the best friend he ever had."
+
+Peter stared a moment; then with laughter: "Ah but Julia isn't dead of
+it!"
+
+"I'm not talking of Julia," said his aunt with a good deal of majesty.
+"Nick isn't mercenary, and I'm not complaining of that."
+
+"She means Mr. Carteret," Grace explained with all her competence. "He'd
+have done anything if Nick had stayed in the House."
+
+"But he's not dead?"
+
+"Charles Carteret's dying," said Lady Agnes--"his end's dreadfully near.
+He has been a sort of providence to us--he was Sir Nicholas's second
+self. But he won't put up with such insanity, such wickedness, and that
+chapter's closed."
+
+"You mean he has dropped Nick out of his will?"
+
+"Cut him off utterly. He has given him notice."
+
+"The old scoundrel!"--Peter couldn't keep this back. "But Nick will work
+the better for that--he'll depend on himself."
+
+"Yes, and whom shall we depend on?" Grace spoke up.
+
+"Don't be vulgar, for God's sake!" her mother ejaculated with a certain
+inconsequence.
+
+"Oh leave Nick alone--he'll make a lot of money," Peter declared
+cheerfully, following his two companions into the hall.
+
+"I don't in the least care if he does or not," said Lady Agnes. "You
+must come upstairs again--I've lots to say to you yet," she went on,
+seeing him make for his hat. "You must arrange to come and dine with us
+immediately; it's only because I've been so steeped in misery that I
+didn't write to you the other day--directly after you had called. We
+don't give parties, as you may imagine, but if you'll come just as we
+are, for old acquaintance' sake--"
+
+"Just with Nick--if Nick will come--and dear Biddy," Grace interposed.
+
+"Nick must certainly come, as well as dear Biddy, whom I hoped so much
+to find," Peter pronounced. "Because I'm going away--I don't know when
+I, shall see them again."
+
+"Wait with mamma. Biddy will come in now at any moment," Grace urged.
+
+"You're going away?" said Lady Agnes, pausing at the foot of the stairs
+and turning her white face upon him. Something in her voice showed she
+had been struck by his own tone.
+
+"I've had promotion and you must congratulate me. They're sending me out
+as minister to a little hot hole in Central America--six thousand miles
+away. I shall have to go rather soon."
+
+"Oh I'm so glad!" Lady Agnes breathed. Still she paused at the foot of
+the stair and still she gazed.
+
+"How very delightful--it will lead straight off to all sorts of other
+good things!" Grace a little coarsely commented.
+
+"Oh I'm crawling up--I'm an excellency," Peter laughed.
+
+"Then if you dine with us your excellency must have great people to meet
+you."
+
+"Nick and Biddy--they're great enough."
+
+"Come upstairs--come upstairs," said Lady Agnes, turning quickly and
+beginning to ascend.
+
+"Wait for Biddy--I'm going out," Grace continued, extending her hand to
+her kinsman. "I shall see you again--not that you care; but good-bye
+now. Wait for Biddy," the girl repeated in a lower tone, fastening her
+eyes on his with the same urgent mystifying gleam he thought he had
+noted at luncheon.
+
+"Oh I'll go and see her in Rosedale Road," he threw off.
+
+"Do you mean to-day--now?"
+
+"I don't know about to-day, but before I leave England."
+
+"Well, she'll be in immediately," said Grace. "Good-bye to your
+excellency."
+
+"Come up, Peter--_please_ come up," called Lady Agnes from the top of
+the stairs.
+
+He mounted and when he found himself in the drawing-room with her and
+the door closed she expressed her great interest in his fine prospects
+and position, which she wished to hear all about. She rang for coffee
+and indicated the seat he would find most comfortable: it shone before
+him for a moment that she would tell him he might if he wished light a
+cigar. For Peter had suddenly become restless--too restless to occupy a
+comfortable chair; he seated himself in it only to jump up again, and he
+went to the window, while he imparted to his hostess the very little he
+knew about his post, on hearing a vehicle drive up to the door. A strong
+light had just been thrown into his mind, and it grew stronger when,
+looking out, he saw Grace Dormer issue from the house in a hat and a
+jacket which had all the air of having been assumed with extraordinary
+speed. Her jacket was unbuttoned and her gloves still dangling from the
+hands with which she was settling her hat. The vehicle into which she
+hastily sprang was a hansom-cab which had been summoned by the butler
+from the doorstep and which rolled away with her after she had given an
+address.
+
+"Where's Grace going in such a hurry?" he asked of Lady Agnes; to which
+she replied that she hadn't the least idea--her children, at the pass
+they had all come to, knocked about as they liked.
+
+Well, he sat down again; he stayed a quarter of an hour and then he
+stayed longer, and during this time his appreciation of what she had in
+her mind gathered force. She showed him that precious quantity clearly
+enough, though she showed it by no clumsy, no voluntary arts. It looked
+out of her sombre, conscious eyes and quavered in her preoccupied,
+perfunctory tones. She took an extravagant interest in his future
+proceedings, the probable succession of events in his career, the
+different honours he would be likely to come in for, the salary attached
+to his actual appointment, the salary attached to the appointments that
+would follow--they would be sure to, wouldn't they?--and what he might
+reasonably expect to save. Oh he must save--Lady Agnes was an advocate
+of saving; and he must take tremendous pains and get on and be clever
+and fiercely ambitious: he must make himself indispensable and rise to
+the top. She was urgent and suggestive and sympathetic; she threw
+herself into the vision of his achievements and emoluments as if to
+appease a little the sore hunger with which Nick's treachery had left
+her. This was touching to her nephew, who didn't remain unmoved even at
+those more importunate moments when, as she fell into silence, fidgeting
+feverishly with a morsel of fancy-work she had plucked from a table, her
+whole presence became an intense, repressed appeal to him. What that
+appeal would have been had it been uttered was: "Oh Peter, take little
+Biddy; oh my dear young friend, understand your interests at the same
+time that you understand mine; be kind and reasonable and clever; save
+me all further anxiety and tribulation and accept my lovely, faultless
+child from my hands."
+
+That was what Lady Agnes had always meant, more or less, that was what
+Grace had meant, and they meant it with singular lucidity on the present
+occasion, Lady Agnes meant it so much that from one moment to another
+he scarce knew what she might do; and Grace meant it so much that she
+had rushed away in a hansom to fetch her sister from the studio. Grace,
+however, was a fool, for Biddy certainly wouldn't come. The news of his
+promotion had started them off, adding point to their idea of his being
+an excellent match; bringing home to them sharply the sense that if he
+were going away to strange countries he must take Biddy with him--that
+something at all events must be settled about Biddy before he went. They
+had suddenly begun to throb, poor things, with alarm at the ebbing
+hours.
+
+Strangely enough the perception of all this hadn't the effect of
+throwing him on the defensive and still less that of making him wish to
+bolt. When once he had made sure what was in the air he recognised a
+propriety, a real felicity in it; couldn't deny that he was in certain
+ways a good match, since it was quite probable he would go far; and was
+even generous enough--as he had no fear of being materially dragged to
+the altar--to enter into the conception that he might offer some balm to
+a mother who had had a horrid disappointment. The feasibility of
+marrying Biddy was not exactly augmented by the idea that his doing so
+would be a great offset to what Nick had made Lady Agnes suffer; but at
+least Peter didn't dislike his strenuous aunt so much as to wish to
+punish her for her nature. He was not afraid of her, whatever she might
+do; and though unable to grasp the practical relevancy of Biddy's being
+produced on the instant was willing to linger half an hour on the chance
+of successful production.
+
+There was meanwhile, moreover, a certain contagion in Lady Agnes's
+appeal--it made him appeal sensibly to himself, since indeed, as it is
+time to say, the glass of our young man's spirit had been polished for
+that reflexion. It was only at this moment really that he became
+inwardly candid. While making up his mind that his only safety was in
+flight and taking the strong measure of a request for help toward it, he
+was yet very conscious that another and probably still more effectual
+safeguard--especially if the two should be conjoined--lay in the hollow
+of his hand. His sister's words in Paris had come back to him and had
+seemed still wiser than when uttered: "She'll save you disappointments;
+you'd know the worst that can happen to you, and it wouldn't be bad."
+Julia had put it into a nutshell--Biddy would probably save him
+disappointments. And then she was--well, she was Biddy. Peter knew
+better what that was since the hour he had spent with her in Rosedale
+Road. But he had brushed away the sense of it, though aware that in
+doing so he took only half-measures and was even guilty of a sort of
+fraud upon himself. If he was sincere in wishing to put a gulf between
+his future and that sad expanse of his past and present over which
+Miriam had cast her shadow there was a very simple way to do so. He had
+dodged this way, dishonestly fixing on another which, taken alone, was
+far from being so good; but Lady Agnes brought him back to it. She held
+him in well-nigh confused contemplation of it, during which the safety,
+as Julia had called it, of the remedy wrought upon him as he wouldn't
+have believed beforehand, and not least to the effect of sweetening, of
+prettily colouring, the pill. It would be simple and it would deal with
+all his problems; it would put an end to all alternatives, which, as
+alternatives were otherwise putting an end to him, would be an excellent
+thing. It would settle the whole question of his future, and it was high
+time this should be settled.
+
+Peter took two cups of coffee while he made out his future with Lady
+Agnes, but though he drank them slowly he had finished them before Biddy
+turned up. He stayed three-quarters of an hour, saying to himself she
+wouldn't come--why should she come? Lady Agnes stooped to no avowal; she
+really stooped, so far as bald words went, to no part of the business;
+but she made him fix the next day save one for coming to dinner, and her
+repeated declaration that there would be no one else, not another
+creature but themselves, had almost the force of the supplied form for a
+promise to pay. In giving his word that he would come without fail, and
+not write the next day to throw them over for some function he should
+choose to dub obligatory, he felt quite as if he were putting his name
+to such a document. He went away at half-past three; Biddy of course
+hadn't come, and he had been sure she wouldn't. He couldn't imagine what
+Grace's idea had been, nor what pretext she had put forward to her
+sister. Whatever these things Biddy had seen through them and hated
+them. Peter could but like her the more for that.
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+
+Lady Agnes would doubtless have done better, in her own interest or in
+that of her child, to have secured his company for the very next
+evening. This she had indeed attempted, but her application of her
+thought had miscarried, Peter bethinking himself that he was importantly
+engaged. Her ladyship, moreover, couldn't presume to answer for Nick,
+since after all they must of course _have_ Nick, though, to tell the
+truth, the hideous truth, she and her son were scarcely on terms. Peter
+insisted on Nick, wished particularly to see him, and gave his hostess
+notice that he would make each of them forgive everything to the other.
+She returned that all her son had to forgive was her loving him more
+than her life, and she would have challenged Peter, had he allowed it,
+on the general ground of the comparative dignity of the two arts of
+painting portraits and governing nations. Our friend declined the
+challenge: the most he did was to intimate that he perhaps saw Nick more
+vividly as a painter than as a governor. Later he remembered vaguely
+something his aunt had said about their being a governing family.
+
+He was going, by what he could ascertain, to a very queer climate and
+had many preparations to make. He gave his best attention to these, and
+for a couple of hours after leaving Lady Agnes rummaged London for books
+from which he might extract information about his new habitat. It made
+apparently no great figure in literature, and Peter could reflect that
+he was perhaps destined to find a salutary distraction in himself
+filling the void with a volume of impressions. After he had resigned
+himself to necessary ignorance he went into the Park. He treated himself
+to an afternoon or two there when he happened to drop upon London in
+summer--it refreshed his sense of the British interests he would have to
+stand up for. Moreover, he had been hiding more or less, and now all
+that was changed and this was the simplest way not to hide. He met a
+host of friends, made his situation as public as possible and accepted
+on the spot a great many invitations; all subject, however, to the
+mental reservation that he should allow none of them to interfere with
+his being present the first night of Miriam's new venture. He was going
+to the equator to get away from her, but to repudiate the past with some
+decency of form he must show an affected interest, if he could muster
+none other, in an occasion that meant so much for her. The least
+intimate of her associates would do that, and Peter remembered how, at
+the expense of good manners, he had stayed away from her first
+appearance on any stage at all. He would have been shocked had he found
+himself obliged to go back to Paris without giving her at the imminent
+crisis the personal countenance she had so good a right to expect.
+
+It was nearly eight o'clock when he went to Great Stanhope Street to
+dress for dinner and learn that a note awaiting him on the hall-table
+and which bore the marks of hasty despatch had come three or four hours
+before. It exhibited the signature of Miriam Rooth and let him know that
+she positively expected him at the theatre by eleven o'clock the next
+morning, for which hour a dress-rehearsal of the revived play had been
+hurriedly projected, the first night being now definitely fixed for the
+impending Saturday. She counted on his attendance at both ceremonies,
+but with particular reasons for wishing to see him in the morning. "I
+want you to see and judge and tell me," she said, "for my mind's like a
+flogged horse--it won't give another kick." It was for the Saturday he
+had made Lady Agnes his promise; he had thought of the possibility of
+the play in doing so, but had rested in the faith that, from valid
+symptoms, this complication would not occur till the following week. He
+decided nothing on the spot as to the conflict of occupations--it was
+enough to send Miriam three words to the effect that he would sooner
+perish than fail her on the morrow.
+
+He went to the theatre in the morning, and the episode proved curious
+and instructive. Though there were twenty people in the stalls it bore
+little resemblance to those _répétitions générales_ to which, in Paris,
+his love of the drama had often attracted him and which, taking place at
+night, in the theatre closed to the public, are virtually first
+performances with invited spectators. They were to his sense always
+settled and stately, rehearsals of the _première_ even more than
+rehearsals of the play. The present occasion was less august; it was not
+so much a concert as a confusion of sounds, and it took audible and at
+times disputatious counsel with itself. It was rough and frank and
+spasmodic, but was lively and vivid and, in spite of the serious
+character of the piece, often exceedingly droll: while it gave
+Sherringham, oddly enough, a more present sense than ever of bending
+over the hissing, smoking, sputtering caldron in which a palatable
+performance is stewed. He looked into the gross darkness that may result
+from excess of light; that is, he understood how knocked up, on the eve
+of production, every one concerned in the preparation of a piece might
+be, with nerves overstretched and glasses blurred, awaiting the test
+and the response, the echo to be given back by the big, receptive,
+artless, stupid, delightful public. Peter's interest had been great in
+advance, and as Miriam since his arrival had taken him much into her
+confidence he knew what she intended to do and had discussed a hundred
+points with her. They had differed about some of them and she had always
+said: "Ah but wait till you see how I shall do it at the time!" That was
+usually her principal reason and her most convincing argument. She had
+made some changes at the last hour--she was going to do several things
+in another way. But she wanted a touchstone, wanted a fresh ear, and, as
+she told Sherringham when he went behind after the first act, that was
+why she had insisted on this private trial, to which a few fresh ears
+were to be admitted. They didn't want to allow it her, the theatre
+people, they were such a parcel of donkeys; but as to what she meant in
+general to insist on she had given them a hint she flattered herself
+they wouldn't soon forget.
+
+She spoke as if she had had a great battle with her fellow-workers and
+had routed them utterly. It was not the first time he had heard her talk
+as if such a life as hers could only be a fighting life and of her frank
+measure of the fine uses of a faculty for making a row. She rejoiced she
+possessed this faculty, for she knew what to do with it; and though
+there might be a certain swagger in taking such a stand in advance when
+one had done the infinitely little she had yet done, she nevertheless
+trusted to the future to show how right she should have been in
+believing a pack of idiots would never hold out against her and would
+know they couldn't afford to. Her assumption of course was that she
+fought for the light and the right, for the good way and the thorough,
+for doing a thing properly if one did it at all. What she had really
+wanted was the theatre closed for a night and the dress-rehearsal, put
+on for a few people, given instead of _Yolande_. That she had not got,
+but she would have it the next time. She spoke as if her triumphs behind
+the scenes as well as before would go by leaps and bounds, and he could
+perfectly see, for the time, that she would drive her coadjutors in
+front of her like sheep. Her tone was the sort of thing that would have
+struck one as preposterous if one hadn't believed in her; but if one did
+so believe it only seemed thrown in with the other gifts. How was she
+going to act that night and what could be said for such a hateful way of
+doing things? She thrust on poor Peter questions he was all unable to
+answer; she abounded in superlatives and tremendously strong objections.
+He had a sharper vision than usual of the queer fate, for a peaceable
+man, of being involved in a life of so violent a rhythm: one might as
+well be hooked to a Catharine-wheel and whiz round in flame and smoke.
+
+It had only been for five minutes, in the wing, amid jostling and
+shuffling and shoving, that they held this conference. Miriam, splendid
+in a brocaded anachronism, a false dress of the beginning of the
+century, and excited and appealing, imperious, reckless and
+good-humoured, full of exaggerated propositions, supreme determinations
+and comic irrelevancies, showed as radiant a young head as the stage had
+ever seen. Other people quickly surrounded her, and Peter saw that
+though, she wanted, as she said, a fresh ear and a fresh eye she was
+liable to rap out to those who possessed these advantages that they
+didn't know what they were talking about. It was rather hard for her
+victims--Basil Dashwood let him into this, wonderfully painted and in a
+dress even more beautiful than Miriam's, that of a young dandy under
+Charles the Second: if you were not in the business you were one kind
+of donkey and if you _were_ in the business you were another kind. Peter
+noted with a certain chagrin that Gabriel Nash had failed; he preferred
+to base his annoyance on that ground when the girl, after the remark
+just quoted from Dashwood, laughing and saying that at any rate the
+thing would do because it would just have to do, thrust vindictively but
+familiarly into the young actor's face a magnificent feather fan. "Isn't
+he too lovely," she asked, "and doesn't he know how to do it?" Dashwood
+had the sense of costume even more than Peter had inferred or supposed
+he minded, inasmuch as it now appeared he had gone profoundly into the
+question of what the leading lady was to wear. He had drawn patterns and
+hunted up stuffs, had helped her to try on her clothes, had bristled
+with ideas and pins. It would not have been quite clear, Peter's ground
+for resenting Nash's cynical absence; it may even be thought singular he
+should have missed him. At any rate he flushed a little when their young
+woman, of whom he inquired whether she hadn't invited her oldest and
+dearest friend, made answer: "Oh he says he doesn't like the
+kitchen-fire--he only wants the pudding!" It would have taken the
+kitchen-fire to account at that point for the red of Sherringham's
+cheek; and he was indeed uncomfortably heated by helping to handle, as
+he phrased it, the saucepans.
+
+This he felt so much after he had returned to his seat, which he forbore
+to quit again till the curtain had fallen on the last act, that in spite
+of the high beauty of that part of the performance of which Miriam
+carried the weight there were moments when his relief overflowed into
+gasps, as if he had been scrambling up the bank of a torrent after an
+immersion. The girl herself, out in the open of her field to win, was of
+the incorruptible faith: she had been saturated to good purpose with the
+great spirit of Madame Carré. That was conspicuous while the play went
+on and she guarded the whole march with fagged piety and passion.
+Sherringham had never liked the piece itself; he held that as barbarous
+in form and false in feeling it did little honour to the British
+theatre; he despised many of the speeches, pitied Miriam for having to
+utter them, and considered that, lighted by that sort of candle, the
+path of fame might very well lead nowhere.
+
+When the ordeal was over he went behind again, where in the
+rose-coloured satin of the silly issue the heroine of the occasion said
+to him: "Fancy my having to drag through that other stuff to-night--the
+brutes!" He was vague about the persons designated in this allusion, but
+he let it pass: he had at the moment a kind of detached foreboding of
+the way any gentleman familiarly connected with her in the future would
+probably form the habit of letting objurgations and some other things
+pass. This had become indeed now a frequent state of mind with him; the
+instant he was before her, near her, next her, he found himself a
+helpless subject of the spell which, so far at least as he was
+concerned, she put forth by contact and of which the potency was
+punctual and absolute: the fit came on, as he said, exactly as some
+esteemed express-train on a great line bangs at a given moment into the
+station. At a distance he partly recovered himself--that was the
+encouragement for going to the shaky republic; but as soon as he entered
+her presence his life struck him as a thing disconnected from his will.
+It was as if he himself had been one thing and his behaviour another; he
+had shining views of this difference, drawn as they might be from the
+coming years--little illustrative scenes in which he saw himself in
+strange attitudes of resignation, always rather sad and still and with a
+slightly bent head. Such images should not have been inspiring, but it
+is a fact that they were something to go upon. The gentleman with the
+bent head had evidently given up something that was dear to him, but it
+was exactly because he had got his price that he was there. "Come and
+see me three or four hours hence," Miriam said--"come, that is, about
+six. I shall rest till then, but I want particularly to talk with you.
+There will be no one else--not the tip of any tiresome nose. You'll do
+me good." So of course he drove up at six.
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+
+"I don't know; I haven't the least idea; I don't care; don't ask
+me!"--it was so he met some immediate appeal of her artistic egotism,
+some challenge of his impression of her at this and that moment. Hadn't
+she frankly better give up such and such a point and return to their
+first idea, the one they had talked over so much? Peter replied to this
+that he disowned all ideas; that at any rate he should never have
+another as long as he lived, and that, so help him heaven, they had
+worried that hard bone more than enough.
+
+"You're tired of me--yes, already," she said sadly and kindly. They were
+alone, her mother had not peeped out and she had prepared herself to
+return to the Strand. "However, it doesn't matter and of course your
+head's full of other things. You must think me ravenously
+selfish--perpetually chattering about my vulgar shop. What will you have
+when one's a vulgar shop-girl? You used to like it, but then you weren't
+an ambassador."
+
+"What do you know about my being a minister?" he asked, leaning back in
+his chair and showing sombre eyes. Sometimes he held her handsomer on
+the stage than off, and sometimes he reversed that judgement. The former
+of these convictions had held his mind in the morning, and it was now
+punctually followed by the other. As soon as she stepped on the boards
+a great and special alteration usually took place in her--she was in
+focus and in her frame; yet there were hours too in which she wore her
+world's face before the audience, just as there were hours when she wore
+her stage face in the world. She took up either mask as it suited her
+humour. To-day he was seeing each in its order and feeling each the
+best. "I should know very little if I waited for you to tell me--that's
+very certain," Miriam returned. "It's in the papers that you've got a
+high appointment, but I don't read the papers unless there's something
+in them about myself. Next week I shall devour them and think them, no
+doubt, inane. It was Basil told me this afternoon of your promotion--he
+had seen it announced somewhere, I'm delighted if it gives you more
+money and more advantages, but don't expect me to be glad that you're
+going away to some distant, disgusting country."
+
+"The matter has only just been settled and we've each been busy with our
+own affairs. But even if you hadn't given me these opportunities," Peter
+went on, "I should have tried to see you to-day, to tell you my news and
+take leave of you."
+
+"Take leave? Aren't you coming to-morrow?"
+
+"Oh yes, I shall see you through that. But I shall rush away the very
+moment it's over."
+
+"I shall be much better then--really I shall," the girl said.
+
+"The better you are the worse you are."
+
+She returned his frown with a beautiful charity. "If it would do you any
+good I'd be bad."
+
+"The worse you are the better you are!" Peter laughed. "You're a
+devouring demon."
+
+"Not a bit! It's you."
+
+"It's I? I like that."
+
+"It's you who make trouble, who are sore and suspicious and supersubtle,
+not taking things as they come and for what they are, but twisting them
+into misery and falsity. Oh I've watched you enough, my dear friend, and
+I've been sorry for you--and sorry as well for myself; for I'm not so
+taken up with myself, in the low greedy sense, as you think. I'm not
+such a base creature. I'm capable of gratitude, I'm capable of
+affection. One may live in paint and tinsel, but one isn't absolutely
+without a soul. Yes, I've got one," the girl went on, "though I do smear
+my face and grin at myself in the glass and practise my intonations. If
+what you're going to do is good for you I'm very glad. If it leads to
+good things, to honour and fortune and greatness, I'm enchanted. If it
+means your being away always, for ever and ever, of course that's
+serious. You know it--I needn't tell you--I regard you as I really don't
+regard any one else. I've a confidence in you--ah it's a luxury! You're
+a gentleman, _mon bon_--ah you're a gentleman! It's just that. And then
+you see, you understand, and that's a luxury too. You're a luxury
+altogether, dear clever Mr. Sherringham. Your being where I shall never
+see you isn't a thing I shall enjoy; I know that from the separation of
+these last months--after our beautiful life in Paris, the best thing
+that ever happened to me or that ever will. But if it's your career, if
+it's your happiness--well, I can miss you and hold my tongue. I _can_ be
+disinterested--I can!"
+
+"What did you want me to come for?" he asked, all attentive and
+motionless. The same impression, the old impression, was with him again;
+the sense that if she was sincere it was sincerity of execution, if she
+was genuine it was the genuineness of doing it well. She did it so well
+now that this very fact was charming and touching. In claiming from him
+at the theatre this hour of the afternoon she had wanted honestly (the
+more as she had not seen him at home for several days) to go over with
+him once again, on the eve of the great night--it would be for her
+second creation the critics would lie so in wait; the first success
+might have been a fluke--some of her recurrent doubts: knowing from
+experience of what good counsel he often was, how he could give a
+worrying question its "settler" at the last. Then she had heard from
+Dashwood of the change in his situation, and that had really from one
+moment to the other made her think sympathetically of his
+preoccupations--led her open-handedly to drop her own. She was sorry to
+lose him and eager to let him know how good a friend she was conscious
+he had been to her. But the expression of this was already, at the end
+of a minute, a strange bedevilment: she began to listen to herself, to
+speak dramatically, to represent. She uttered the things she felt as if
+they were snatches of old play-books, and really felt them the more
+because they sounded so well. This, however, didn't prevent their really
+being as good feelings as those of anybody else, and at the moment her
+friend, to still a rising emotion--which he knew he shouldn't
+still--articulated the challenge I have just recorded, she had for his
+sensibility, at any rate, the truth of gentleness and generosity.
+
+"There's something the matter with you, my dear--you're jealous," Miriam
+said. "You're jealous of poor Mr. Dormer. That's an example of the way
+you tangle everything up. Lord, he won't hurt you, nor me either!"
+
+"He can't hurt me, certainly," Peter returned, "and neither can you; for
+I've a nice little heart of stone and a smart new breastplate of iron.
+The interest I take in you is something quite extraordinary; but the
+most extraordinary thing in it is that it's perfectly prepared to
+tolerate the interest of others."
+
+"The interest of others needn't trouble it much!" Miriam declared. "If
+Mr. Dormer has broken off his marriage to such an awfully fine
+woman--for she's that, your swell of a sister--it isn't for a ranting
+wretch like me. He's kind to me because that's his nature and he notices
+me because that's his business; but he's away up in the clouds--a
+thousand miles over my head. He has got something 'on,' as they say;
+he's in love with an idea. I think it's a shocking bad one, but that's
+his own affair. He's quite _exalté_; living on nectar and ambrosia--what
+he has to spare for us poor crawling things on earth is only a few dry
+crumbs. I didn't even ask him to come to rehearsal. Besides, he thinks
+you're in love with me and that it wouldn't be honourable to cut in.
+He's capable of that--isn't it charming?"
+
+"If he were to relent and give up his scruples would you marry him?"
+Peter asked.
+
+"Mercy, how you chatter about 'marrying'!" the girl laughed. "_C'est la
+maladie anglaise_--you've all got it on the brain."
+
+"Why I put it that way to please you," he explained. "You complained to
+me last year precisely that this was not what seemed generally wanted."
+
+"Oh last year!"--she made nothing of that. Then differently, "Yes, it's
+very tiresome!" she conceded.
+
+"You told me, moreover, in Paris more than once that you wouldn't listen
+to anything but that."
+
+"Well," she declared, "I won't, but I shall wait till I find a husband
+who's charming enough and bad enough. One who'll beat me and swindle me
+and spend my money on other women--that's the sort of man for me. Mr.
+Dormer, delightful as he is, doesn't come up to that."
+
+"You'll marry Basil Dashwood." He spoke it with conviction.
+
+"Oh 'marry'?--call it marry if you like. That's what poor mother
+threatens me with--she lives in dread of it."
+
+"To this hour," he mentioned, "I haven't managed to make out what your
+mother wants. She has so many ideas, as Madame Carré said."
+
+"She wants me to be some sort of tremendous creature--all her ideas are
+reducible to that. What makes the muddle is that she isn't clear about
+the creature she wants most. A great actress or a great lady--sometimes
+she inclines for one and sometimes for the other, but on the whole
+persuading herself that a great actress, if she'll cultivate the right
+people, may _be_ a great lady. When I tell her that won't do and that a
+great actress can never be anything but a great vagabond, then the dear
+old thing has tantrums, and we have scenes--the most grotesque: they'd
+make the fortune, for a subject, of some play-writing rascal, if he had
+the wit to guess them; which, luckily for us perhaps, he never will. She
+usually winds up by protesting--_devinez un peu quoi_!" Miriam added.
+And as her companion professed his complete inability to divine: "By
+declaring that rather than take it that way I must marry _you_."
+
+"She's shrewder than I thought," Peter returned. "It's the last of
+vanities to talk about, but I may state in passing that if you'd marry
+me you should be the greatest of all possible ladies."
+
+She had a beautiful, comical gape. "Lord o' mercy, my dear fellow, what
+natural capacity have I for that?"
+
+"You're artist enough for anything. I shall be a great diplomatist: my
+resolution's firmly taken, I'm infinitely cleverer than you have the
+least idea of, and you shall be," he went on, "a great diplomatist's
+wife."
+
+"And the demon, the devil, the devourer and destroyer, that you are so
+fond of talking about: what, in such a position, do you do with that
+element of my nature? _Où le fourrez-vous_?" she cried as with a real
+anxiety.
+
+"I'll look after it, I'll keep it under. Rather perhaps I should say
+I'll bribe it and amuse it; I'll gorge it with earthly grandeurs."
+
+"That's better," said Miriam; "for a demon that's kept under is a shabby
+little demon. Don't let's be shabby." Then she added: "Do you really go
+away the beginning of next week?"
+
+"Monday night if possible."
+
+"Ah that's but to Paris. Before you go to your new post they must give
+you an interval here."
+
+"I shan't take it--I'm so tremendously keen for my duties. I shall
+insist on going sooner. Oh," he went on, "I shall be concentrated now."
+
+"I'll come and act there." She met it all--she was amused and amusing.
+"I've already forgotten what it was I wanted to discuss with you," she
+said--"it was some trumpery stuff. What I want to say now is only one
+thing: that it's not in the least true that because my life pitches me
+in every direction and mixes me up with all sorts of people--or rather
+with one sort mainly, poor dears!--I haven't a decent character, I
+haven't common honesty. Your sympathy, your generosity, your patience,
+your precious suggestions, our dear sweet days last summer in Paris, I
+shall never forget. You're the best--you're different from all the
+others. Think of me as you please and make profane jokes about my mating
+with a disguised 'Arty'--I shall think of _you_ only in one way. I've a
+great respect for you. With all my heart I hope you'll be a great
+diplomatist. God bless you, dear clever man."
+
+She got up as she spoke and in so doing glanced at the clock--a movement
+that somehow only added to the noble gravity of her discourse: she was
+considering his time so much more than her own. Sherringham, at this,
+rising too, took out his watch and stood a moment with his eyes bent
+upon it, though without in the least seeing what the needles marked.
+"You'll have to go, to reach the theatre at your usual hour, won't you?
+Let me not keep you. That is, let me keep you only long enough just to
+say this, once for all, as I shall never speak of it again. I'm going
+away to save myself," he frankly said, planted before her and seeking
+her eyes with his own. "I ought to go, no doubt, in silence, in decorum,
+in virtuous submission to hard necessity--without asking for credit or
+sympathy, without provoking any sort of scene or calling attention to my
+fortitude. But I can't--upon my soul I can't. I can go, I can see it
+through, but I can't hold my tongue. I want you to know all about it, so
+that over there, when I'm bored to death, I shall at least have the
+exasperatingly vain consolation of feeling that you do know--and that it
+does neither you nor me any good!"
+
+He paused a moment; on which, as quite vague, she appealed. "That I 'do
+know' what?"
+
+"That I've a consuming passion for you and that it's impossible."
+
+"Oh impossible, my friend!" she sighed, but with a quickness in her
+assent.
+
+"Very good; it interferes, the gratification of it would interfere
+fatally, with the ambition of each of us. Our ambitions are inferior and
+odious, but we're tied fast to them."
+
+"Ah why ain't we simple?" she quavered as if all touched by it. "Why
+ain't we of the people--_comme tout le monde_--just a man and a girl
+liking each other?"
+
+He waited a little--she was so tenderly mocking, so sweetly ambiguous.
+"Because we're precious asses! However, I'm simple enough, after all,
+to care for you as I've never cared for any human creature. You have, as
+it happens, a personal charm for me that no one has ever approached, and
+from the top of your splendid head to the sole of your theatrical shoe
+(I could go down on my face--there, abjectly--and kiss it!) every inch
+of you is dear and delightful to me. Therefore good-bye."
+
+She took this in with wider eyes: he had put the matter in a way that
+struck her. For a moment, all the same, he was afraid she would reply as
+on the confessed experience of so many such tributes, handsome as this
+one was. But she was too much moved--the pure colour that had risen to
+her face showed it--to have recourse to this particular facility. She
+was moved even to the glimmer of tears, though she gave him her hand
+with a smile. "I'm so glad you've said all that, for from you I know
+what it means. Certainly it's better for you to go away. Of course it's
+all wrong, isn't it?--but that's the only thing it can be: therefore
+it's all right, isn't it? Some day when we're both great people we'll
+talk these things over; then we shall be quiet, we shall be rich, we
+shall be at peace--let us hope so at least--and better friends than
+others about us will know." She paused, smiling still, and then said
+while he held her hand: "Don't, _don't_ come to-morrow night."
+
+With this she attempted to draw her hand away, as if everything were
+settled and over; but the effect of her movement was that, as he held
+her tight, he was simply drawn toward her and close to her. The effect
+of this, in turn, was that, releasing her only to possess her the more
+completely, he seized her in his arms and, breathing deeply "I love you,
+you know," clasped her in a long embrace. His demonstration and her
+conscious sufferance, almost equally liberal, so sustained themselves
+that the door of the room had time to open slowly before either had
+taken notice. Mrs. Rooth, who had not peeped in before, peeped in now,
+becoming in this manner witness of an incident she could scarce have
+counted on. The unexpected indeed had for Mrs. Rooth never been an
+insuperable element in things; it was her position in general to be too
+acquainted with all the passions for any crude surprise. As the others
+turned round they saw her stand there and smile, and heard her ejaculate
+with wise indulgence: "Oh you extravagant children!"
+
+Miriam brushed off her tears, quickly but unconfusedly. "He's going
+away, the wretch; he's bidding us farewell."
+
+Peter--it was perhaps a result of his acute agitation--laughed out at
+the "us" (he had already laughed at the charge of puerility), and Mrs.
+Rooth went on: "Going away? Ah then I must have one too!" She held out
+both her hands, and Sherringham, stepping forward to take them, kissed
+her respectfully on each cheek, in the foreign manner, while she
+continued: "Our dear old friend--our kind, gallant gentleman!"
+
+"The gallant gentleman has been promoted to a great post--the proper
+reward of his gallantry," Miriam said. "He's going out as minister to
+some impossible place--where is it?"
+
+"As minister--how very charming! We _are_ getting on." And their
+companion languished up at him with a world of approval.
+
+"Oh well enough. One must take what one can get," he answered.
+
+"You'll get everything now, I'm sure, shan't you?" Mrs. Rooth asked with
+an inflexion that called back to him comically--the source of the sound
+was so different--the very vibrations he had heard the day before from
+Lady Agnes.
+
+"He's going to glory and he'll forget all about us--forget he has ever
+known such low people. So we shall never see him again, and it's better
+so. Good-bye, good-bye," Miriam repeated; "the brougham must be there,
+but I won't take you. I want to talk to mother about you, and we shall
+say things not fit for you to hear. Oh I'll let you know what we
+lose--don't be afraid," she added to Mrs. Rooth. "He's the rising star
+of diplomacy."
+
+"I knew it from the first--I know how things turn out for such people as
+you!" cried the old woman, gazing fondly at Sherringham. "But you don't
+mean to say you're not coming to-morrow night?"
+
+"Don't--don't; it's great folly," Miriam interposed; "and it's quite
+needless, since you saw me to-day."
+
+Peter turned from the mother to the daughter, the former of whom broke
+out to the latter: "Oh you dear rogue, to say one has _seen_ you yet!
+You know how you'll come up to it--you'll be beyond everything."
+
+"Yes, I shall be there--certainly," Peter said, at the door, to Mrs.
+Rooth.
+
+"Oh you dreadful goose!" Miriam called after him. But he went out
+without looking round at her.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SEVENTH
+
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+
+Nick Dormer had for the hour quite taken up his abode at his studio,
+where Biddy usually arrived after breakfast to give him news of the
+state of affairs in Calcutta Gardens and where many letters and
+telegrams were now addressed him. Among such missives, on the morning of
+the Saturday on which Peter Sherringham had promised to dine at the
+other house, was a note from Miriam Rooth, informing Nick that if he
+shouldn't telegraph to put her off she would turn up about half-past
+eleven, probably with her mother, for just one more sitting. She added
+that it was a nervous day for her and that she couldn't keep still, so
+that it would really be very kind to let her come to him as a refuge.
+She wished to stay away from the theatre, where everything was now
+settled--or so much the worse for the others if it wasn't--till the
+evening; in spite of which she should if left to herself be sure to go
+there. It would keep her quiet and soothe her to sit--he could keep her
+quiet (he was such a blessing that way!) at any time. Therefore she
+would give him two or three hours--or rather she would herself ask for
+them--if he didn't positively turn her from the door.
+
+It had not been definite to Nick that he wanted another sitting at all
+for the slight work, as he held it to be, that Miriam had already helped
+him to achieve. He regarded this work as a mere light wind-fall of the
+shaken tree: he had made what he could of it and would have been
+embarrassed to make more. If it was not finished this was because it was
+not finishable; at any rate he had said all he had to say in that
+particular phrase. The young man, in truth, was not just now in the
+highest spirits; his imagination had within two or three days become
+conscious of a check that he tried to explain by the idea of a natural
+reaction. Any decision or violent turn, any need of a new sharp choice
+in one's career, was upsetting, and, exaggerate that importance and
+one's own as little as one would, a deal of flurry couldn't help
+attending, especially in the face of so much scandal, the horrid act,
+odious to one's modesty at the best, of changing one's clothes in the
+marketplace. That made life not at all positively pleasant, yet
+decidedly thrilling, for the hour; and it was well enough till the
+thrill abated. When this occurred, as it inevitably would, the romance
+and the glow of the adventure were exchanged for the chill and the
+prose. It was to these latter elements he had waked up pretty wide on
+this particular morning; and the prospect was not appreciably fresher
+from the fact that he had warned himself in advance it would be dull. He
+had in fact known how dull it would be, but now he would have time to
+learn even better. A reaction was a reaction, but it was not after all a
+catastrophe. It would be a feature of his very freedom that he should
+ask himself if he hadn't made a great mistake; this privilege would
+doubtless even remain within the limits of its nature in exposing him to
+hours of intimate conviction of his madness. But he would live to
+retract his retractations--this was the first thing to bear in mind.
+
+He was absorbed, even while he dressed, in the effort to achieve
+intelligibly to himself some such revolution when, by the first post,
+Miriam's note arrived. At first it did little to help his agility--it
+made him, seeing her esthetic faith as so much stronger and simpler than
+his own, wonder how he should keep with her at her high level. Ambition,
+in her, was always on the rush, and she was not a person to conceive
+that others might in bad moments listen for the trumpet in vain. It
+would never have occurred to her that only the day before he had spent a
+part of the afternoon quite at the bottom of the hill. He had in fact
+turned into the National Gallery and had wandered about there for more
+than an hour, and it was just while he did so that the immitigable
+recoil had begun perversely to make itself felt. The perversity was all
+the greater from the fact that if the experience was depressing this was
+not because he had been discouraged beyond measure by the sight of the
+grand things that had been done--things so much grander than any that
+would ever bear his signature. That variation he was duly acquainted
+with and should know in abundance again. What had happened to him, as he
+passed on this occasion from Titian to Rubens and from Gainsborough to
+Rembrandt, was that he found himself calling the whole exhibited art
+into question. What was it after all at the best and why had people
+given it so high a place? Its weakness, its limits broke upon him;
+tacitly blaspheming he looked with a lustreless eye at the palpable,
+polished, "toned" objects designed for suspension on hooks. That is, he
+blasphemed if it were blasphemy to feel that as bearing on the energies
+of man they were a poor and secondary show. The human force producing
+them was so far from one of the greatest; their place was a small place
+and their connexion with the heroic life casual and slight. They
+represented so little great ideas, and it was great ideas that kept the
+world from chaos. He had incontestably been in much closer relation with
+them a few months before than he was to-day: it made up a great deal
+for what was false and hollow, what was merely personal, in "politics"
+that, were the idea greater or smaller, they could at their best so
+directly deal with it. The love of it had really been much of the time
+at the bottom of his impulse to follow them up; though this was not what
+he had most talked of with his political friends or even with Julia. No,
+political as Julia was, he had not conferred with her much about the
+idea. However, this might have been his own fault quite as much as hers,
+and she in fact took such things, such enthusiasms, for granted--there
+was an immense deal in every way that she took for granted. On the other
+hand, he had often put forward this brighter side of the care for the
+public weal in his discussions with Gabriel Nash, to the end, it is
+true, of making that worthy scoff aloud at what he was pleased to term
+his hypocrisy. Gabriel maintained precisely that there were more ideas,
+more of those that man lived by, in a single room of the National
+Gallery than in all the statutes of Parliament. Nick had replied to this
+more than once that the determination of what man did live by was
+required; to which Nash had retorted (and it was very rarely that he
+quoted Scripture) that it was at any rate not by bread and beans alone.
+The statutes of Parliament gave him bread and beans _tout au plus_.
+
+Nick had at present no pretension of trying this question over again: he
+reminded himself that his ambiguity was subjective, as the philosophers
+said; the result of a mood which in due course would be at the mercy of
+another mood. It made him curse, and cursing, as a finality, lacked
+firmness--one had to drive in posts somewhere under. The greatest time
+to do one's work was when it didn't seem worth doing, for then one gave
+it a brilliant chance, that of resisting the stiffest test of all--the
+test of striking one as too bad. To do the most when there would be the
+least to be got by it was to be most in the spirit of high production.
+One thing at any rate was certain, Nick reflected: nothing on earth
+would induce him to change back again--not even if this twilight of the
+soul should last for the rest of his days. He hardened himself in his
+posture with a good conscience which, had they had a glimpse of it,
+would have made him still more diverting to those who already thought
+him so; and now, by a happy chance, Miriam suddenly supplied the bridge
+correcting the gap in his continuity. If he had made his sketch it was a
+proof he had done her, and that he had done her flashed upon him as a
+sign that she would be still more feasible. Art was _doing_--it came
+back to that--which politics in most cases weren't. He thus, to pursue
+our image, planted his supports in the dimness beneath all cursing, and
+on the platform so improvised was able, in his relief, to dance. He sent
+out a telegram to Balaklava Place requesting his beautiful sitter by no
+manner of means to fail him. When his servant came back it was to usher
+into the studio Peter Sherringham, whom the man had apparently found at
+the door.
+
+The hour was so early for general commerce that Nick immediately guessed
+his visitor had come on some rare errand; but this inference yielded to
+the reflexion that Peter might after all only wish to make up by present
+zeal for not having been near him before. He forgot that, as he had
+subsequently learned from Biddy, their foreign, or all but foreign,
+cousin had spent an hour in Rosedale Road, missing him there but pulling
+out Miriam's portrait, the day of his own last visit to Beauclere. These
+young men were not on a ceremonious footing and it was not in Nick's
+nature to keep a record of civilities rendered or omitted; nevertheless
+he had been vaguely conscious that during a stay in London elastic
+enough on Peter's part he and his kinsman had foregathered less than of
+yore. It was indeed an absorbing moment in the career of each, but even
+while recognising such a truth Nick judged it not impossible that
+Julia's brother might have taken upon himself to resent some
+suppositions failure of consideration for that lady; though this indeed
+would have been stupid and the newly appointed minister (to he had
+forgotten where) didn't often make mistakes. Nick held that as he had
+treated Julia with studious generosity she had nothing whatever to visit
+on him--wherefore Peter had still less. It was at any rate none of that
+gentleman's business. There were only two abatements to disposing in a
+few frank words of all this: one of them Nick's general hatred of
+talking of his private affairs (a reluctance in which he and Peter were
+well matched); and the other a truth involving more of a confession--the
+subtle truth that the most definite and even most soothing result of the
+collapse of his engagement was, as happened, an unprecedented
+consciousness of freedom. Nick's observation was of a different sort
+from his cousin's; he noted much less the signs of the hour and kept
+throughout a looser register of life; nevertheless, just as one of our
+young men had during these days in London found the air peopled with
+personal influences, the concussion of human atoms, so the other, though
+only asking to live without too many questions and work without too many
+rubs, to be glad and sorry in short on easy terms, had become aware of a
+certain social tightness, of the fact that life is crowded and passion
+restless, accident and community inevitable. Everybody with whom one had
+relations had other relations too, and even indifference was a mixture
+and detachment a compromise. The only wisdom was to consent to the
+loss, if necessary, of everything but one's temper and to the ruin, if
+necessary, of everything but one's work. It must be added that Peter's
+relative took precautions against irritation perhaps in excess of the
+danger, as departing travellers about to whiz through foreign countries
+mouth in phrase-books combinations of words they will never use. He was
+at home in clear air and disliked to struggle either for breath or for
+light. He had a dim sense that Peter felt some discomfort from him and
+might have come now to tell him so; in which case he should be sorry for
+the sufferer in various ways. But as soon as that aspirant began to
+speak suspicion reverted to mere ancient kindness, and this in spite
+of the fact that his speech had a slightly exaggerated promptitude,
+like the promptitude of business, which might have denoted
+self-consciousness. To Nick it quickly appeared better to be glad than
+to be sorry: this simple argument was more than sufficient to make him
+glad Peter was there.
+
+"My dear fellow, it's an unpardonable hour, isn't it? I wasn't even sure
+you'd be up, yet had to risk it, because my hours are numbered. I'm
+going away to-morrow," Peter went on; "I've a thousand things to do.
+I've had no talk with you this time such as we used to have of old (it's
+an irreparable loss, but it's your fault, you know), and as I've got to
+rush about all day I thought I'd just catch you before any one else
+does."
+
+"Some one has already caught me, but there's plenty of time," Nick
+returned.
+
+Peter all but asked a question--it fell short. "I see, I see. I'm sorry
+to say I've only a few minutes at best."
+
+"Man of crushing responsibilities, you've come to humiliate me!" his
+companion cried. "I know all about it."
+
+"It's more than I do then. That's not what I've come for, but I shall be
+delighted if I humiliate you a little by the way. I've two things in
+mind, and I'll mention the most difficult first. I came here the other
+day--the day after my arrival in town."
+
+"Ah yes, so you did; it was very good of you"--Nick remembered. "I ought
+to have returned your visit or left a card or written my name--to have
+done something in Great Stanhope Street, oughtn't I? You hadn't got this
+new thing then, or I'd have 'called.'"
+
+Peter eyed him a moment. "I say, what's the matter with you? Am I really
+unforgivable for having taken that liberty?"
+
+"What liberty?" Nick looked now quite innocent of care, and indeed his
+visitor's allusion was not promptly clear. He was thinking for the
+instant all of Biddy, of whom and whose secret inclinations Grace had
+insisted on talking to him. They were none of his business, and if he
+wouldn't for the world have let the girl herself suspect he had violent
+lights on what was most screened and curtained in her, much less would
+he have made Peter a clumsy present of this knowledge. Grace had a queer
+theory that Peter treated Biddy badly--treated them all somehow badly;
+but Grace's zeal (she had plenty of it, though she affected all sorts of
+fine indifference) almost always took the form of her being unusually
+wrong. Nick wanted to do only what Biddy would thank him for, and he
+knew very well what she wouldn't. She wished him and Peter to be great
+friends, and the only obstacle to this was that Peter was too much of a
+diplomatist. Peter made him for an instant think of her and of the hour
+they had lately spent together in the studio in his absence--an hour of
+which Biddy had given him a history full of items and omissions; and
+this in turn brought Nick's imagination back to his visitor's own side
+of the matter. That general human complexity of which the sense had
+lately increased with him, and to which it was owing that any thread one
+might take hold of would probably be the extremely wrong end of
+something, was illustrated by the fact that while poor Biddy was
+thinking of Peter it was ten to one poor Peter was thinking of Miriam
+Rooth. All of which danced before Nick's intellectual vision for a space
+briefer than my too numerous words.
+
+"I pitched into your treasures--I rummaged among your canvases," Peter
+said. "Biddy had nothing whatever to do with it--she maintained an
+attitude of irreproachable reserve. It has been on my conscience all
+these days and I ought to have done penance before. I've been putting it
+off partly because I'm so ashamed of my indiscretion. _Que voulez-vous_,
+my dear chap? My provocation was great. I heard you had been painting
+Miss Rooth, so that I couldn't restrain my curiosity. I simply went into
+that corner and struck out there--a trifle wildly no doubt. I dragged
+the young lady to the light--your sister turned pale as she saw me. It
+was a good deal like breaking open one of your letters, wasn't it?
+However, I assure you it's all right, for I congratulate you both on
+your style and on your correspondent."
+
+"You're as clever, as witty, as humorous as ever, old boy," Nick
+pronounced, going himself into the corner designated by his companion
+and laying his hands on the same canvas. "Your curiosity's the highest
+possible tribute to my little attempt and your sympathy sets me right
+with myself. There she is again," Nick went on, thrusting the picture
+into an empty frame; "you shall see her whether you wish to or not."
+
+"Right with yourself? You don't mean to say you've been wrong!" Peter
+returned, standing opposite the portrait.
+
+"Oh I don't know. I've been kicking up such a row. Anything's better
+than a row."
+
+"She's awfully good--she's awfully true," said Peter. "You've done more
+to her since the other day. You've put in several things."
+
+"Yes, but I've worked distractedly. I've not altogether conformed to the
+good rule about being off with the old love."
+
+"With the old love?"--and the visitor looked hard at the picture.
+
+"Before you're on with the new!" Nick had no sooner uttered these words
+than he coloured: it occurred to him his friend would probably infer an
+allusion to Julia. He therefore added quickly: "It isn't so easy to
+cease to represent an affectionate constituency. Really most of my time
+for a fortnight has been given to letter-writing. They've all been
+unexpectedly charming. I should have thought they'd have loathed and
+despised me. But not a bit of it; they cling to me fondly--they struggle
+with me tenderly. I've been down to talk with them about it, and we've
+passed the most sociable, delightful hours. I've designated my
+successor; I've felt a good deal like the Emperor Charles the Fifth when
+about to retire to the monastery of Yuste. The more I've seen of them in
+this way the more I've liked them, and they declare it has been the same
+with themselves about me. We spend our time assuring each other we
+hadn't begun to know each other till now. In short it's all wonderfully
+jolly, but it isn't business. _C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la
+guerre_."
+
+"They're not so charming as they might be if they don't offer to keep
+you and let you paint."
+
+"They do, almost--it's fantastic," said Nick. "Remember they haven't
+yet seen a daub of my brush."
+
+"Well, I'm sorry for you; we live in too enlightened an age," Peter
+returned. "You can't suffer for art--that grand romance is over. Your
+experience is interesting; it seems to show that at the tremendous pitch
+of civilisation we've reached you can't suffer from anything but
+hunger."
+
+"I shall doubtless," Nick allowed, "do that enough to make up for the
+rest."
+
+"Never, never, when you paint so well as this."
+
+"Oh come, you're too good to be true," Nick said. "But where did you
+learn that one's larder's full in proportion as one's work's fine?"
+
+Peter waived this curious point--he only continued to look at the
+picture; after which he roundly brought out: "I'll give you your price
+for it on the spot."
+
+"Ah you're so magnanimous that you shall have it for nothing!" And Nick,
+touched to gratitude, passed his arm into his visitor's.
+
+Peter had a pause. "Why do you call me magnanimous?"
+
+"Oh bless my soul, it's hers--I forgot!" laughed Nick, failing in his
+turn to answer the other's inquiry. "But you shall have another."
+
+"Another? Are you going to do another?"
+
+"This very morning. That is, I shall begin it. I've heard from her;
+she's coming to sit--a short time hence."
+
+Peter turned away a little at this, releasing himself, and, as if the
+movement had been an effect of his host's words, looked at his watch
+earnestly to dissipate that appearance. He fell back to consider the
+work from further off. "The more you do her the better--she has all the
+qualities of a great model. From that point of view it's a pity she has
+another trade: she might make so good a thing of this one. But how
+shall you do her again?" he asked ingenuously.
+
+"Oh I can scarcely say; we'll arrange something; we'll talk it over.
+It's extraordinary how well she enters into what one wants: she knows
+more than one does one's self. She isn't, as you Frenchmen say, the
+first comer. However, you know all about that, since you invented her,
+didn't you? That's what she says; she's awfully sweet on you," Nick
+kindly pursued. "What I ought to do is to try something as different as
+possible from that thing; not the sibyl, the muse, the tremendous
+creature, but the charming woman, the person one knows, differently
+arranged as she appears _en ville_, she calls it. I'll do something
+really serious and send it to you out there with my respects. It will
+remind you of home and perhaps a little even of me. If she knows it's
+for you she'll throw herself into it in the right spirit. Leave it to
+us, my dear fellow; we'll turn out something splendid."
+
+"It's jolly to hear you, but I shall send you a cheque," said Peter very
+stoutly.
+
+"I suppose it's all right in your position, but you're too proud," his
+kinsman answered.
+
+"What do you mean by my position?"
+
+"Your exaltation, your high connexion with the country, your treating
+with sovereign powers as the representative of a sovereign power. Isn't
+that what they call 'em?"
+
+Peter, who had turned round again, listened to this with his eyes fixed
+on Nick's face while he once more drew forth his watch. "Brute!" he
+exclaimed familiarly, at the same time dropping his eyes on the watch.
+"When did you say you expect your sitter?"
+
+"Oh we've plenty of time; don't be afraid of letting me see you agitated
+by her presence."
+
+"Brute!" Peter again ejaculated.
+
+This friendly personal note cleared the air, made their communication
+closer. "Stay with me and talk to me," said Nick; "I daresay it's good
+for me. It may be the last time I shall see you without having before
+anything else to koo-too."
+
+"Beast!" his kinsman once more, and a little helplessly, threw off;
+though next going on: "Haven't you something more to show me then--some
+other fruit of your genius?"
+
+"Must I bribe you by setting my sign-boards in a row? You know what I've
+done; by which I mean of course you know what I haven't. My genius, as
+you're so good as to call it, has hitherto been dreadfully sterile. I've
+had no time, no opportunity, no continuity. I must go and sit down in a
+corner and learn my alphabet. That thing isn't good; what I shall do for
+you won't be good. Don't protest, my dear fellow; nothing will be fit to
+look at for a long time." After which poor Nick wound up: "And think of
+my ridiculous age! As the good people say (or don't they say it?), it's
+a rum go. It won't be amusing."
+
+"Ah you're so clever you'll get on fast," Peter returned, trying to
+think how he could most richly defy the injunction not to protest.
+
+"I mean it won't be amusing for others," said Nick, unperturbed by this
+levity. "They want results, and small blame to them."
+
+"Well, whatever you do, don't talk like Mr. Gabriel Nash," Peter went
+on. "Sometimes I think you're just going to."
+
+Nick stared a moment. "Ah he never would have said _that_ 'They want
+results, the damned asses'--that would have been more in his key."
+
+"It's the difference of a _nuance_! And are you extraordinarily happy?"
+Peter added as his host now obliged him by arranging half-a-dozen
+canvases so that he could look at them.
+
+"Not so much so, doubtless, as the artistic life ought to make one:
+because all one's people are not so infatuated as one's electors. But
+little by little I'm learning the charm of pig-headedness."
+
+"Your mother's very bad," Peter allowed--"I lunched with her day before
+yesterday."
+
+"Yes, I know, I know"--Nick had such reason to know; "but it's too late,
+too late. I must just peg away here and not mind. I've after all a great
+advantage in my life."
+
+His companion waited impartially to hear. "And that would be--?"
+
+"Well, knowing what I want to do. That's everything, you know."
+
+"It's an advantage, however, that you've only just come in for, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Yes, but the delay and the probation only make me prize it the more.
+I've got it now; and it makes up for the absence of some other things."
+
+Again Peter had a pause. "That sounds a little flat," he remarked at
+last.
+
+"It depends on what you compare it with. It has more point than I
+sometimes found in the House of Commons."
+
+"Oh I never thought I should like that!"
+
+There was another drop during which Nick moved about the room turning up
+old sketches to see if he had anything more to show, while his visitor
+continued to look at the unfinished and in some cases, as seemed,
+unpromising productions already exposed. They were far less interesting
+than the portrait of Miriam Rooth and, it would have appeared, less
+significant of ability. For that particular effort Nick's talent had
+taken an inspired flight. So much Peter thought, as he had thought it
+intensely before; but the words he presently uttered had no visible
+connexion with it. They only consisted of the abrupt inquiry; "Have you
+heard anything from Julia?"
+
+"Not a syllable. Have you?"
+
+"Dear no; she never writes to me."
+
+"But won't she on the occasion of your promotion?"
+
+"I daresay not," said Peter; and this was the only reference to Mrs.
+Dallow that passed between her brother and her late intended. It left a
+slight stir of the air which Peter proceeded to allay by an allusion
+comparatively speaking more relevant. He expressed disappointment that
+Biddy shouldn't have come in, having had an idea she was always in
+Rosedale Road of a morning. That was the other branch of his present
+errand--the wish to see her and give her a message for Lady Agnes, upon
+whom, at so early an hour, he had not presumed to intrude in Calcutta
+Gardens. Nick replied that Biddy did in point of fact almost always turn
+up, and for the most part early: she came to wish him good-morning and
+start him for the day. She was a devoted Electra, laying a cool, healing
+hand on a distracted, perspiring Orestes. He reminded Peter, however,
+that he would have a chance of seeing her that evening, and of seeing
+Lady Agnes; for wasn't he to do them the honour of dining in Calcutta
+Gardens? Biddy, the day before, had arrived full of that excitement.
+Peter explained that this was exactly the sad subject of his actual
+_démarche_: the project of the dinner in Calcutta Gardens had, to his
+exceeding regret, fallen to pieces. The fact was (didn't Nick know it?)
+the night had been suddenly and perversely fixed for Miriam's première,
+and he was under a definite engagement with her not to stay away from
+it. To add to the bore of the thing he was obliged to return to Paris
+the very next morning. He was quite awfully sorry, for he had promised
+Lady Agnes: he didn't understand then about Miriam's affair, in regard
+to which he had given a previous pledge. He was more grieved than he
+could say, but he could never fail Miss Rooth: he had professed from the
+first an interest in her which he must live up to a little more. This
+was his last chance--he hadn't been near her at the trying time of her
+first braving of the public. And the second night of the play wouldn't
+do--it must be the first or nothing. Besides, he couldn't wait over till
+Monday.
+
+While Peter recited all his hindrance Nick was occupied in rubbing with
+a cloth a palette he had just scraped. "I see what you mean--I'm very
+sorry too. I'm sorry you can't give my mother this joy--I give her so
+little."
+
+"My dear fellow, you might give her a little more!" it came to Peter to
+say. "It's rather too much to expect _me_ to make up for your
+omissions!"
+
+Nick looked at him with a moment's fixedness while he polished the
+palette; and for that moment he felt the temptation to reply: "There's a
+way you could do that, to a considerable extent--I think you guess
+it--which wouldn't be intrinsically disagreeable." But the impulse
+passed without expressing itself in speech, and he simply brought out;
+"You can make this all clear to Biddy when she comes, and she'll make it
+clear to my mother."
+
+"Poor little Biddy!" Peter mentally sighed, thinking of the girl with
+that job before her; but what he articulated was that this was exactly
+why he had come to the studio. He had inflicted his company on Lady
+Agnes the previous Thursday and had partaken of a meal with her, but had
+not seen Biddy though he had waited for her, had hoped immensely she'd
+come in. Now he'd wait again--dear Bid was thoroughly worth it.
+
+"Patience, patience then--you've always me!" said Nick; to which he
+subjoined: "If it's a question of going to the play I scarcely see why
+you shouldn't dine at my mother's all the same. People go to the play
+after dinner."
+
+"Yes, but it wouldn't be fair, it wouldn't be decent: it's a case when I
+must be in my seat from the rise of the curtain." Peter, about this, was
+thoroughly lucid. "I should force your mother to dine an hour earlier
+than usual and then in return for her courtesy should go off to my
+entertainment at eight o'clock, leaving her and Grace and Biddy
+languishing there. I wish I had proposed in time that they should go
+with me," he continued not very ingenuously.
+
+"You might do that still," Nick suggested.
+
+"Oh at this time of day it would be impossible to get a box."
+
+"I'll speak to Miss Rooth about it if you like when she comes," smiled
+Nick.
+
+"No, it wouldn't do," said Peter, turning away and looking once more at
+his watch. He made tacitly the addition that still less than asking Lady
+Agnes for his convenience to dine early would _this_ be decent, would it
+be thinkable. His taking Biddy the night he dined with her and with Miss
+Tressilian had been something very like a violation of those
+proprieties. He couldn't say that, however, to the girl's brother, who
+remarked in a moment that it was all right, since Peter's action left
+him his own freedom.
+
+"Your own freedom?"--and Peter's question made him turn.
+
+"Why you see now I can go to the theatre myself."
+
+"Certainly; I hadn't thought of that. You'd naturally have been going."
+
+"I gave it up for the prospect of your company at home."
+
+"Upon my word you're too good--I don't deserve such sacrifices," said
+Peter, who read in his kinsman's face that this was not a figure of
+speech but the absolute truth. "Didn't it, however, occur to you that,
+as it would turn out, I might--I even naturally _would_--myself be
+going?" he put forth.
+
+Nick broke into a laugh. "It would have occurred to me if I understood a
+little better--!" But he paused, as still too amused.
+
+"If you understood a little better what?"
+
+"Your situation, simply."
+
+Peter looked at him a moment. "Dine with me to-night by ourselves and at
+a club. We'll go to the theatre together and then you'll understand it."
+
+"With pleasure, with pleasure: we'll have a jolly evening," said Nick.
+
+"Call it jolly if you like. When did you say she was coming?" Peter
+asked.
+
+"Biddy? Oh probably, as I tell you, at any moment."
+
+"I mean the great Miriam," Peter amended.
+
+"The great Miriam, if she's punctual, will be here in about forty
+minutes."
+
+"And will she be likely to find your sister?"
+
+"That will depend, my dear fellow, on whether my sister remains to see
+her."
+
+"Exactly; but the point's whether you'll allow her to remain, isn't it?"
+
+Nick looked slightly mystified. "Why shouldn't she do as she likes?"
+
+"In that case she'll probably go."
+
+"Yes, unless she stays."
+
+"Don't let her," Peter dropped; "send her away." And to explain this he
+added: "It doesn't seem exactly the right sort of thing, fresh young
+creatures like Bid meeting _des femmes de théâtre_." His explanation, in
+turn, struck him as requiring another clause; so he went on: "At least
+it isn't thought the right sort of thing abroad, and even in England my
+foreign ideas stick to me."
+
+Even with this amplification, however, his plea evidently still had for
+his companion a flaw; which, after he had considered it a moment, Nick
+exposed in the simple words: "Why, you originally introduced them in
+Paris, Biddy and Miss Rooth. Didn't they meet at your rooms and
+fraternise, and wasn't that much more 'abroad' than this?"
+
+"So they did, but my hand had been forced and she didn't like it," Peter
+answered, suspecting that for a diplomatist he looked foolish.
+
+"Miss Rooth didn't like it?" Nick persisted.
+
+"That I confess I've forgotten. Besides, she wasn't an actress then.
+What I mean is that Biddy wasn't particularly pleased with her."
+
+"Why she thought her wonderful--praised her to the sides. I remember
+that."
+
+"She didn't like her as a woman; she praised her as an actress."
+
+"I thought you said she wasn't an actress then," Nick returned.
+
+Peter had a pause. "Oh Biddy thought so. She has seen her since,
+moreover. I took her the other night, and her curiosity's satisfied."
+
+"It's not of any consequence, and if there's a reason for it I'll bundle
+her off directly," Nick made haste to say. "But the great Miriam seems
+such a kind, good person."
+
+"So she is, charming, charming,"--and his visitor looked hard at him.
+
+"Here comes Biddy now," Nick went on. "I hear her at the door: you can
+warn her yourself."
+
+"It isn't a question of 'warning'--that's not in the least my idea. But
+I'll take Biddy away," said Peter.
+
+"That will be still more energetic."
+
+"No, it will be simply more selfish--I like her company." Peter had
+turned as if to go to the door and meet the girl; but he quickly checked
+himself, lingering in the middle of the room, and the next instant Biddy
+had come in. When she saw him there she also stopped.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+
+"Come on boldly, my dear," said Nick. "Peter's bored to death waiting
+for you."
+
+"Ah he's come to say he won't dine with us to-night!" Biddy stood with
+her hand on the latch.
+
+"I leave town to-morrow: I've everything to do; I'm broken-hearted; it's
+impossible"--Peter made of it again such a case as he could. "Please
+make my peace with your mother--I'm ashamed of not having written to her
+last night."
+
+She closed the door and came in while her brother said to her, "How in
+the world did you guess it?"
+
+"I saw it in the _Morning Post_." And she kept her eyes on their
+kinsman.
+
+"In the _Morning Post_?" he vaguely echoed.
+
+"I saw there's to be a first night at that theatre, the one you took us
+to. So I said, 'Oh he'll go there.'"
+
+"Yes, I've got to do that too," Peter admitted.
+
+"She's going to sit to me again this morning, his wonderful actress--she
+has made an appointment: so you see I'm getting on," Nick pursued to his
+sister.
+
+"Oh I'm so glad--she's so splendid!" The girl looked away from her
+cousin now, but not, though it seemed to fill the place, at the
+triumphant portrait of Miriam Rooth.
+
+"I'm delighted you've come in. I _have_ waited for you," Peter hastened
+to declare to her, though conscious that this was in the conditions
+meagre.
+
+"Aren't you coming to see us again?"
+
+"I'm in despair, but I shall really not have time. Therefore it's a
+blessing not to have missed you here."
+
+"I'm very glad," said Biddy. Then she added: "And you're going to
+America--to stay a long time?"
+
+"Till I'm sent to some better place."
+
+"And will that better place be as far away?"
+
+"Oh Biddy, it wouldn't be better then," said Peter.
+
+"Do you mean they'll give you something to do at home?"
+
+"Hardly that. But I've a tremendous lot to do at home to-day." For the
+twentieth time Peter referred to his watch.
+
+She turned to her brother, who had admonished her that she might bid him
+good-morning. She kissed him and he asked what the news would be in
+Calcutta Gardens; to which she made answer: "The only news is of course
+the great preparations they're making, poor dears, for Peter. Mamma
+thinks you must have had such a nasty dinner the other day," the girl
+continued to the guest of that romantic occasion.
+
+"Faithless Peter!" said Nick, beginning to whistle and to arrange a
+canvas in anticipation of Miriam's arrival.
+
+"Dear Biddy, thank your stars you're not in my horrid profession,"
+protested the personage so designated. "One's bowled about like a
+cricket-ball, unable to answer for one's freedom or one's comfort from
+one moment to another."
+
+"Oh ours is the true profession--Biddy's and mine," Nick broke out,
+setting up his canvas; "the career of liberty and peace, of charming
+long mornings spent in a still north light and in the contemplation, I
+may even say in the company, of the amiable and the beautiful."
+
+"That certainty's the case when Biddy comes to see you," Peter returned.
+
+Biddy smiled at him. "I come every day. Anch'io son pittore! I encourage
+Nick awfully."
+
+"It's a pity I'm not a martyr--she'd bravely perish with me," Nick said.
+
+"You are--you're a martyr--when people say such odious things!" the girl
+cried. "They do say them. I've heard many more than I've repeated to
+you."
+
+"It's you yourself then, indignant and loyal, who are the martyr,"
+observed Peter, who wanted greatly to be kind to her.
+
+"Oh I don't care!"--but she threw herself, flushed and charming, into a
+straight appeal to him. "Don't you think one can do as much good by
+painting great works of art as by--as by what papa used to do? Don't you
+think art's necessary to the happiness, to the greatness of a people?
+Don't you think it's manly and honourable? Do you think a passion for
+it's a thing to be ashamed of? Don't you think the artist--the
+conscientious, the serious one--is as distinguished a member of society
+as any one else?"
+
+Peter and Nick looked at each other and laughed at the way she had got
+up her subject, and Nick asked their kinsman if she didn't express it
+all in perfection. "I delight in general in artists, but I delight still
+more in their defenders," Peter made reply, perhaps a little meagrely,
+to Biddy.
+
+"Ah don't attack me if you're wise!" Nick said.
+
+"One's tempted to when it makes Biddy so fine."
+
+"Well, that's the way she encourages me: it's meat and drink to me,"
+Nick went on. "At the same time I'm bound to say there's a little
+whistling in the dark in it."
+
+"In the dark?" his sister demanded.
+
+"The obscurity, my dear child, of your own aspirations, your mysterious
+ambitions and esthetic views. Aren't there some heavyish shadows there?"
+
+"Why I never cared for politics."
+
+"No, but you cared for life, you cared for society, and you've chosen
+the path of solitude and concentration."
+
+"You horrid boy!" said Biddy.
+
+"Give it up, that arduous steep--give it up and come out with me," Peter
+interposed.
+
+"Come out with you?"
+
+"Let us walk a little or even drive a little. Let us at any rate talk a
+little."
+
+"I thought you had so much to do," Biddy candidly objected.
+
+"So I have, but why shouldn't you do a part of it with me? Would there
+be any harm? I'm going to some tiresome shops--you'll cheer the frugal
+hour."
+
+The girl hesitated, then turned to Nick. "Would there be any harm?"
+
+"Oh it's none of _his_ business!" Peter protested.
+
+"He had better take you home to your mother."
+
+"I'm going home--I shan't stay here to-day," Biddy went on. Then to
+Peter: "I came in a hansom, but I shall walk back. Come that way with
+me."
+
+"With pleasure. But I shall not be able to go in," Peter added.
+
+"Oh that's no matter," said the girl. "Good-bye, Nick."
+
+"You understand then that we dine together--at seven sharp. Wouldn't a
+club, as I say, be best?" Peter, before going, inquired of Nick. He
+suggested further which club it should be; and his words led Biddy, who
+had directed her steps toward the door, to turn a moment as with a
+reproachful question--whether it was for this Peter had given up
+Calcutta Gardens. But her impulse, if impulse it was, had no sequel
+save so far as it was a sequel that Peter freely explained to her, after
+Nick had assented to his conditions, that her brother too had a desire
+to go to Miss Rooth's first night and had already promised to accompany
+him.
+
+"Oh that's perfect; it will be so good for him--won't it?--if he's going
+to paint her again," Biddy responded.
+
+"I think there's nothing so good for him as that he happens to have such
+a sister as you," Peter declared as they went out. He heard at the same
+time the sound of a carriage stopping, and before Biddy, who was in
+front of him, opened the door of the house had been able to say to
+himself, "What a bore--there's Miriam!" The opened door showed him that
+truth--this young lady in the act of alighting from the brougham
+provided by Basil Dashwood's thrifty zeal. Her mother followed her, and
+both the new visitors exclaimed and rejoiced, in their demonstrative
+way, as their eyes fell on their valued friend. The door had closed
+behind Peter, but he instantly and violently rang, so that they should
+be admitted with as little delay as possible, while he stood
+disconcerted, and fearing he showed it, by the prompt occurrence of an
+encounter he had particularly sought to avert. It ministered, moreover,
+a little to this sensibility that Miriam appeared to have come somewhat
+before her time. The incident promised, however, to pass off in a fine
+florid way. Before he knew it both the ladies had taken possession of
+Biddy, who looked at them with comparative coldness, tempered indeed by
+a faint glow of apprehension, and Miriam had broken out:
+
+"We know you, we know you; we saw you in Paris, and you came to my
+theatre a short time ago with Mr. Sherringham!"
+
+"We know your mother, Lady Agnes Dormer. I hope her ladyship's very
+well," said Mrs. Rooth, who had never struck Peter as a more
+objectionable old woman.
+
+"You offered to do a head of me or something or other: didn't you tell
+me you work in clay? I daresay you've forgotten all about it, but I
+should be delighted," Miriam pursued with the richest urbanity. Peter
+was not concerned with her mother's pervasiveness, though he didn't like
+Biddy to see even that; but he hoped his companion would take the
+overcharged benevolence of the young actress in the spirit in which,
+rather to his surprise, it evidently was offered. "I've sat to your
+clever brother many times," said Miriam; "I'm going to sit again. I
+daresay you've seen what we've done--he's too delightful. _Si vous
+saviez comme cela me repose_!" she added, turning for a moment to Peter.
+Then she continued, smiling at Biddy; "Only he oughtn't to have thrown
+up such prospects, you know. I've an idea I wasn't nice to you that day
+in Paris--I was nervous and scared and perverse. I remember perfectly; I
+_was_ odious. But I'm better now--you'd see if you were to know me. I'm
+not a bad sort--really I'm not. But you must have your own friends.
+Happy they--you look so charming! Immensely like Mr. Dormer, especially
+about the eyes; isn't she, mamma?"
+
+"She comes of a beautiful Norman race--the finest, purest strain," the
+old woman simpered. "Mr. Dormer's sometimes so good as to come and see
+us--we're always at home on Sunday; and if some day you found courage to
+come with him you might perhaps find it pleasant, though very different
+of course from the circle in which you habitually move."
+
+Biddy murmured a vague recognition of these wonderful civilities, and
+Miriam commented: "Different, yes; but we're all right, you know. Do
+come," she added. Then turning to Sherringham: "Remember what I told
+you--I don't expect you to-night."
+
+"Oh I understand; I shall come,"--and Peter knew he grew red.
+
+"It will be idiotic. Keep him, keep him away--don't let him," Miriam
+insisted to Biddy; with which, as Nick's portals now were gaping, she
+drew her mother away.
+
+Peter, at this, walked off briskly with Biddy, dropping as he did so:
+"She's too fantastic!"
+
+"Yes, but so tremendously good-looking. I shall ask Nick to take me
+there," the girl said after a moment.
+
+"Well, she'll do you no harm. They're all right, as she says. It's the
+world of art--you were standing up so for art just now."
+
+"Oh I wasn't thinking so much of that kind," she demurred.
+
+"There's only one kind--it's all the same thing. If one sort's good the
+other is."
+
+Biddy walked along a moment. "Is she serious? Is she conscientious?"
+
+"She has the makings of a great artist," Peter opined.
+
+"I'm glad to hear you think a woman can be one."
+
+"In that line there has never been any doubt about it."
+
+"And only in that line?"
+
+"I mean on the stage in general, dramatic or lyric. It's as the actress
+that the woman produces the most complete and satisfactory artistic
+results."
+
+"And only as the actress?"
+
+He weighed it. "Yes, there's another art in which she's not bad."
+
+"Which one do you mean?" asked Biddy.
+
+"That of being charming and good, that of being indispensable to man."
+
+"Oh that isn't an art."
+
+"Then you leave her only the stage. Take it if you like in the widest
+sense."
+
+Biddy appeared to reflect a moment, as to judge what sense this might
+be. But she found none that was wide enough, for she cried the next
+minute: "Do you mean to say there's nothing for a woman but to be an
+actress?"
+
+"Never in my life. I only say that that's the best thing for a woman to
+be who finds herself irresistibly carried into the practice of the arts;
+for there her capacity for them has most application and her incapacity
+for them least. But at the same time I strongly recommend her not to be
+an artist if she can possibly help it. It's a devil of a life."
+
+"Oh I know; men want women not to be anything."
+
+"It's a poor little refuge they try to take from the overwhelming
+consciousness that you're in very fact everything."
+
+"Everything?" And the girl gave a toss. "That's the kind of thing you
+say to keep us quiet."
+
+"Dear Biddy, you see how well we succeed!" laughed Peter.
+
+To which she replied by asking irrelevantly: "Why is it so necessary for
+you to go to the theatre to-night if Miss Rooth doesn't want you to?"
+
+"My dear child, she does want me to. But that has nothing to do with
+it."
+
+"Why then did she say that she doesn't?"
+
+"Oh because she meant just the contrary."
+
+"Is she so false then--is she so vulgar?"
+
+"She speaks a special language; practically it isn't false, because it
+renders her thought and those who know her understand it."
+
+"But she doesn't use it only to those who know her," Biddy returned,
+"since she asked me, who have so little the honour of her acquaintance,
+to keep you away to-night. How am I to know that she meant by that that
+I'm to urge you on to go?"
+
+He was on the point of replying, "Because you've my word for it"; but he
+shrank in fact from giving his word--he had some fine scruples--and
+sought to relieve his embarrassment by a general tribute. "Dear Biddy,
+you're delightfully acute: you're quite as clever as Miss Rooth." He
+felt, however, that this was scarcely adequate and he continued: "The
+truth is that its being important for me to go is a matter quite
+independent of that young lady's wishing it or not wishing it. There
+happens to be a definite intrinsic propriety in it which determines the
+thing and which it would take me long to explain."
+
+"I see. But fancy your 'explaining' to me: you make me feel so
+indiscreet!" the girl cried quickly--an exclamation which touched him
+because he was not aware that, quick as it had been, she had still had
+time to be struck first--though she wouldn't for the world have
+expressed it--with the oddity of such a duty at such a season. In fact
+that oddity, during a silence of some minutes, came back to Peter
+himself: the note had been forced--it sounded almost ignobly frivolous
+from a man on the eve of proceeding to a high diplomatic post. The
+effect of this, none the less, was not to make him break out with "Hang
+it, I _will_ keep my engagement to your mother!" but to fill him with
+the wish to shorten his present strain by taking Biddy the rest of the
+way in a cab. He was uncomfortable, and there were hansoms about that he
+looked at wistfully. While he was so occupied his companion took up the
+talk by an abrupt appeal.
+
+"Why did she say that Nick oughtn't to have resigned his seat?"
+
+"Oh I don't know. It struck her so. It doesn't matter much."
+
+But Biddy kept it up. "If she's an artist herself why doesn't she like
+people to go in for art, especially when Nick has given his time to
+painting her so beautifully? Why does she come there so often if she
+disapproves of what he has done?"
+
+"Oh Miriam's disapproval--it doesn't count; it's a manner of speaking."
+
+"Of speaking untruths, do you mean? Does she think just the reverse--is
+that the way she talks about everything?"
+
+"We always admire most what we can do least," Peter brought forth; "and
+Miriam of course isn't political. She ranks painters more or less with
+her own profession, about which already, new as she is to it, she has no
+illusions. They're all artists; it's the same general sort of thing. She
+prefers men of the world--men of action."
+
+"Is that the reason she likes you?" Biddy mildly mocked.
+
+"Ah she doesn't like me--couldn't you see it?"
+
+The girl at first said nothing; then she asked: "Is that why she lets
+you call her 'Miriam'?"
+
+"Oh I don't, to her face."
+
+"Ah only to mine!" laughed Biddy.
+
+"One says that as one says 'Rachel' of her great predecessor."
+
+"Except that she isn't so great, quite yet, is she?"
+
+"Far from it; she's the freshest of novices--she has scarcely been four
+months on the stage. But no novice has ever been such an adept. She'll
+go very fast," Peter pursued, "and I daresay that before long she'll be
+magnificent."
+
+"What a pity you'll not see that!" Biddy sighed after a pause.
+
+"Not see it?"
+
+"If you're thousands of miles away."
+
+"It is a pity," Peter said; "and since you mention it I don't mind
+frankly telling you--throwing myself on your mercy, as it were--that
+that's why I make such a point of a rare occasion like to-night. I've a
+weakness for the drama that, as you perhaps know, I've never concealed,
+and this impression will probably have to last me in some barren spot
+for many, many years."
+
+"I understand--I understand. I hope therefore it will be charming." And
+the girl walked faster.
+
+"Just as some other charming impressions will have to last," Peter
+added, conscious of keeping up with her by some effort. She seemed
+almost to be running away from him, an impression that led him to
+suggest, after they had proceeded a little further without more words,
+that if she were in a hurry they had perhaps better take a cab. Her face
+was strange and touching to him as she turned it to make answer:
+
+"Oh I'm not in the least in a hurry and I really think I had better
+walk."
+
+"We'll walk then by all means!" Peter said with slightly exaggerated
+gaiety; in pursuance of which they went on a hundred yards. Biddy kept
+the same pace; yet it was scarcely a surprise to him that she should
+suddenly stop with the exclamation:
+
+"After all, though I'm not in a hurry I'm tired! I had better have a
+cab; please call that one," she added, looking about her.
+
+They were in a straight, blank, ugly street, where the small, cheap,
+grey-faced houses had no expression save that of a rueful, unconsoled
+acknowledgment of the universal want of identity. They would have
+constituted a "terrace" if they could, but they had dolefully given it
+up. Even a hansom that loitered across the end of the vista turned a
+sceptical back upon it, so that Sherringham had to lift his voice in a
+loud appeal. He stood with Biddy watching the cab approach them. "This
+is one of the charming things you'll remember," she said, turning her
+eyes to the general dreariness from the particular figure of the
+vehicle, which was antiquated and clumsy. Before he could reply she had
+lightly stepped into the cab; but as he answered, "Most assuredly it
+is," and prepared to follow her she quickly closed the apron.
+
+"I must go alone; you've lots of things to do--it's all right"; and
+through the aperture in the roof she gave the driver her address. She
+had spoken with decision, and Peter fully felt now that she wished to
+get away from him. Her eyes betrayed it, as well as her voice, in a
+look, a strange, wandering ray that as he stood there with his hand on
+the cab he had time to take from her. "Good-bye, Peter," she smiled; and
+as the thing began to rumble away he uttered the same tepid, ridiculous
+farewell.
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+
+At the entrance of Miriam and her mother Nick, in the studio, had
+stopped whistling, but he was still gay enough to receive them with
+every appearance of warmth. He thought it a poor place, ungarnished,
+untapestried, a bare, almost grim workshop, with all its revelations and
+honours still to come. But his visitors smiled on it a good deal in the
+same way in which they had smiled on Bridget Dormer when they met her at
+the door: Mrs. Rooth because vague, prudent approbation was the habit of
+her foolish face--it was ever the least danger; and Miriam because, as
+seemed, she was genuinely glad to find herself within the walls of which
+she spoke now as her asylum. She broke out in this strain to her host
+almost as soon as she had crossed the threshold, commending his
+circumstances, his conditions of work, as infinitely happier than her
+own. He was quiet, independent, absolute, free to do what he liked as he
+liked it, shut up in his little temple with his altar and his divinity;
+not hustled about in a mob of people, having to posture and grin to pit
+and gallery, to square himself at every step with insufferable
+conventions and with the ignorance and vanity of others. He was
+blissfully alone.
+
+"Mercy, how you do abuse your fine profession! I'm sure I never urged
+you to adopt it!" Mrs. Rooth cried, in real bewilderment, to her
+daughter.
+
+"She was abusing mine still more the other day," joked Nick--"telling me
+I ought to be ashamed of it and of myself."
+
+"Oh I never know from one moment to the other--I live with my heart in
+my mouth," sighed the old woman.
+
+"Aren't you quiet about the great thing--about my personal behaviour?"
+Miriam smiled. "My improprieties are all of the mind."
+
+"I don't know what you _call_ your personal behaviour," her mother
+objected.
+
+"You would very soon if it were not what it is."
+
+"And I don't know why you should wish to have it thought you've a wicked
+mind," Mrs. Rooth agreeably grumbled.
+
+"Yes, but I don't see very well how I can make you understand that. At
+any rate," Miriam pursued with her grand eyes on Nick, "I retract what I
+said the other day about Mr. Dormer. I've no wish to quarrel with him on
+the way he has determined to dispose of his life, because after all it
+does suit me very well. It rests me, this little devoted corner; oh it
+rests me! It's out of the row and the dust, it's deliciously still and
+they can't get at me. Ah when art's like this, _à la bonne heure_!" And
+she looked round on such a presentment of "art" in a splendid way that
+produced amusement on the young man's part at its contrast with the
+humble fact. Miriam shone upon him as if she liked to be the cause of
+his mirth and went on appealing to him: "You'll always let me come here
+for an hour, won't you, to take breath--to let the whirlwind pass? You
+needn't trouble yourself about me; I don't mean to impose on you in the
+least the necessity of painting me, though if that's a manner of helping
+you to get on you may be sure it will always be open to you. Do what you
+like with me in that respect; only let me sit here on a high stool,
+keeping well out of your way, and see what you happen to be doing. I'll
+tell you my own adventures when you want to hear them."
+
+"The fewer adventures you have to tell the better, my dear," said Mrs.
+Rooth; "and if Mr. Dormer keeps you quiet he'll add ten years to my
+life."
+
+"It all makes an interesting comment on Mr. Dormer's own quietness, on
+his independence and sweet solitude," Nick observed. "Miss Rooth has to
+work with others, which is after all only what Mr. Dormer has to do when
+he works with Miss Rooth. What do you make of the inevitable sitter?"
+
+"Oh," answered Miriam, "you can say to the inevitable sitter, 'Hold your
+tongue, you brute!'"
+
+"Isn't it a good deal in that manner that I've heard you address your
+comrades at the theatre?" Mrs. Rooth inquired. "That's why my heart's in
+my mouth."
+
+"Yes, but they hit me back; they reply to me--_comme de raison_--as I
+should never think of replying to Mr. Dormer. It's a great advantage to
+him that when he's peremptory with his model it only makes her better,
+adds to her expression of gloomy grandeur."
+
+"We did the gloomy grandeur in the other picture: suppose therefore we
+try something different in this," Nick threw off.
+
+"It _is_ serious, it _is_ grand," murmured Mrs. Rooth, who had taken up
+a rapt attitude before the portrait of her daughter. "It makes one
+wonder what she's thinking of. Beautiful, commendable things--that's
+what it seems to say."
+
+"What can I be thinking of but the tremendous wisdom of my mother?"
+Miriam returned. "I brought her this morning to see that thing--she had
+only seen it in its earliest stage--and not to presume to advise you
+about anything else you may be so good as to embark on. She wanted, or
+professed she wanted, terribly to know what you had finally arrived at.
+She was too impatient to wait till you should send it home."
+
+"Ah send it home--send it home; let us have it always with us!" Mrs.
+Rooth engagingly said. "It will keep us up, up, and up on the heights,
+near the stars--be always for us a symbol and a reminder!"
+
+"You see I was right," Miriam went on; "for she appreciates thoroughly,
+in her own way, and almost understands. But if she worries or distracts
+you I'll send her directly home--I've kept the carriage there on
+purpose. I must add that I don't feel quite safe to-day in letting her
+out of my sight. She's liable to make dashes at the theatre and play
+unconscionable tricks there. I shall never again accuse mamma of a want
+of interest in my profession. Her interest to-day exceeds even my own.
+She's all over the place and she has ideas--ah but ideas! She's capable
+of turning up at the theatre at five o'clock this afternoon to demand
+the repainting of the set in the third act. For myself I've not a word
+more to say on the subject--I've accepted every danger, I've swallowed
+my fate. Everything's no doubt wrong, but nothing can possibly be right.
+Let us eat and drink, for to-night we die. If you say so mamma shall go
+and sit in the carriage, and as there's no means of fastening the doors
+(is there?) your servant shall keep guard over her."
+
+"Just as you are now--be so good as to remain so; sitting just that
+way--leaning back with a smile in your eyes and one hand on the sofa
+beside you and supporting you a little. I shall stick a flower into the
+other hand--let it lie in your lap just as it is. Keep that thing on
+your head--it's admirably uncovered: do you call such an unconsidered
+trifle a bonnet?--and let your head fall back a little. There it
+is--it's found. This time I shall really do something, and it will be as
+different as you like from that other crazy job. Here we go!" It was in
+these irrelevant but earnest words that Nick responded to his sitter's
+uttered vagaries, of which her charming tone and countenance diminished
+the superficial acerbity. He held up his hands a moment, to fix her in
+her limits, and in a few minutes had a happy sense of having begun to
+work.
+
+"The smile in her eyes--don't forget the smile in her eyes!" Mrs. Rooth
+softly chanted, turning away and creeping about the room. "That will
+make it so different from the other picture and show the two sides of
+her genius, the wonderful range between them. They'll be splendid mates,
+and though I daresay I shall strike you as greedy you must let me hope
+you'll send this one home too."
+
+She explored the place discreetly and on tiptoe, talking twaddle as she
+went and bending her head and her eyeglass over various objects with an
+air of imperfect comprehension that didn't prevent Nick's private recall
+of the story of her underhand, commercial habits told by Gabriel Nash at
+the exhibition in Paris the first time her name had fallen on his ear. A
+queer old woman from whom, if you approached her in the right way, you
+could buy old pots--it was in this character that she had originally
+been introduced to him. He had lost sight of it afterwards, but it
+revived again as his observant eyes, at the same time that they followed
+his active hand, became aware of her instinctive, appraising gestures.
+There was a moment when he frankly laughed out--there was so little in
+his poor studio to appraise. Mrs. Rooth's wandering eyeglass and vague,
+polite, disappointed, bent back and head made a subject for a sketch on
+the instant: they gave such a sudden pictorial glimpse of the element of
+race. He found himself seeing the immemorial Jewess in her hold up a
+candle in a crammed back shop. There was no candle indeed and his studio
+was not crammed, and it had never occurred to him before that she was a
+grand-daughter of Israel save on the general theory, so stoutly held by
+several clever people, that few of us are not under suspicion. The late
+Rudolf Roth had at least been, and his daughter was visibly her father's
+child; so that, flanked by such a pair, good Semitic presumptions
+sufficiently crowned the mother. Receiving Miriam's sharp, satiric
+shower without shaking her shoulders she might at any rate have been the
+descendant of a tribe long persecuted. Her blandness was beyond all
+baiting; she professed she could be as still as a mouse. Miriam, on the
+other side of the room, in the tranquil beauty of her attitude--"found"
+indeed, as Nick had said--watched her a little and then declared she had
+best have been locked up at home. Putting aside her free account of the
+dangers to which her mother exposed her, it wasn't whimsical to imagine
+that within the limits of that repose from which the Neville-Nugents
+never wholly departed the elder lady might indeed be a trifle fidgety
+and have something on her mind. Nick presently mentioned that it
+wouldn't be possible for him to "send home" his second performance; and
+he added, in the exuberance of having already got a little into relation
+with his work, that perhaps this didn't matter, inasmuch as--if Miriam
+would give him his time, to say nothing of her own--a third and a fourth
+masterpiece might also some day very well struggle into the light. His
+model rose to this without conditions, assuring him he might count upon
+her till she grew too old and too ugly and that nothing would make her
+so happy as that he should paint her as often as Romney had painted the
+celebrated Lady Hamilton. "Ah Lady Hamilton!" deprecated Mrs. Rooth;
+while Miriam, who had on occasion the candour of a fine acquisitiveness,
+wished to know what particular reason there might be for his not letting
+them have the picture he was now beginning.
+
+"Why I've promised it to Peter Sherringham--he has offered me money for
+it," Nick replied. "However, he's welcome to it for nothing, poor chap,
+and I shall be delighted to do the best I can for him."
+
+Mrs. Rooth, still prowling, stopped in the middle of the room at this,
+while her daughter echoed: "He offered you money--just as we came in?"
+
+"You met him then at the door with my sister? I supposed you had--he's
+taking her home," Nick explained.
+
+"Your sister's a lovely girl--such an aristocratic type!" breathed Mrs.
+Rooth. Then she added: "I've a tremendous confession to make to you."
+
+"Mamma's confessions have to be tremendous to correspond with her
+crimes," said Miriam. "She asked Miss Dormer to come and see us,
+suggested even that you might bring her some Sunday. I don't like the
+way mamma does such things--too much humility, too many _simagrées_,
+after all; but I also said what I could to be nice to her. Your sister
+_is_ charming--awfully pretty and modest. If you were to press me I
+should tell you frankly that it seems to me rather a social muddle, this
+rubbing shoulders of 'nice girls' and _filles de théâtre_: I shouldn't
+think it would do your poor young things much good. However, it's their
+own affair, and no doubt there's no more need of their thinking we're
+worse than we are than of their thinking we're better. The people they
+live with don't seem to know the difference--I sometimes make my
+reflexions about the public one works for."
+
+"Ah if you go in for the public's knowing differences you're far too
+particular," Nick laughed. "_D'où tombez-vous_? as you affected French
+people say. If you've anything at stake on that you had simply better
+not play."
+
+"Dear Mr. Dormer, don't encourage her to be so dreadful; for it _is_
+dreadful, the way she talks," Mrs. Rooth broke in. "One would think we
+weren't respectable--one would think I had never known what I've known
+and been what I've been."
+
+"What one would think, beloved mother, is that you're a still greater
+humbug than you are. It's you, on the contrary, who go down on your
+knees, who pour forth apologies about our being vagabonds."
+
+"Vagabonds--listen to her!--after the education I've given her and our
+magnificent prospects!" wailed Mrs. Rooth, sinking with clasped hands
+upon the nearest ottoman.
+
+"Not after our prospects, if prospects they be: a good deal before them.
+Yes, you've taught me tongues and I'm greatly obliged to you--they no
+doubt give variety as well as incoherency to my conversation; and that
+of people in our line is for the most part notoriously monotonous and
+shoppy. The gift of tongues is in general the sign of your true
+adventurer. Dear mamma, I've no low standard--that's the last thing,"
+Miriam went on. "My weakness is my exalted conception of respectability.
+Ah _parlez-moi de ça_ and of the way I understand it! If I were to go in
+for being respectable you'd see something fine. I'm awfully conservative
+and I know what respectability is, even when I meet people of society on
+the accidental middle ground of either glowering or smirking. I know
+also what it isn't--it isn't the sweet union of well-bred little girls
+('carefully-nurtured,' don't they call them?) and painted she-mummers. I
+should carry it much further than any of these people: I should never
+look at the likes of us! Every hour I live I see that the wisdom of the
+ages was in the experience of dear old Madame Carré--was in a hundred
+things she told me. She's founded on a rock. After that," Miriam went on
+to her host, "I can assure you that if you were so good as to bring Miss
+Dormer to see us we should be angelically careful of her and surround
+her with every attention and precaution."
+
+"The likes of us--the likes of us!" Mrs. Rooth repeated plaintively and
+with a resentment as vain as a failure to sneeze. "I don't know what
+you're talking about and I decline to be turned upside down, I've my
+ideas as well as you, and I repudiate the charge of false humility. I've
+been through too many troubles to be proud, and a pleasant, polite
+manner was the rule of my life even in the days when, God knows, I had
+everything. I've never changed and if with God's help I had a civil
+tongue then, I've a civil tongue now. It's more than you always have, my
+poor, perverse, passionate child. Once a lady always a lady--all the
+footlights in the world, turn them up as high as you will, make no
+difference there. And I think people know it, people who know
+anything--if I may use such an expression--and it's because they know it
+that I'm not afraid to address them in a pleasant way. So I must
+say--and I call Mr. Dormer to witness, for if he could reason with you a
+bit about it he might render several people a service--your conduct to
+Mr. Sherringham simply breaks my heart," Mrs. Rooth concluded, taking a
+jump of several steps in the fine modern avenue of her argument.
+
+Nick was appealed to, but he hung back, drawing with a free hand, and
+while he forbore Miriam took it up. "Mother's good--mother's very good;
+but it's only little by little that you discover how good she is." This
+seemed to leave him at ease to ask their companion, with the
+preliminary intimation that what she had just said was very striking,
+what she meant by her daughter's conduct to old Peter. Before Mrs. Rooth
+could answer this question, however, Miriam broke across with one of her
+own. "Do you mind telling me if you made your sister go off with Mr.
+Sherringham because you knew it was about time for me to turn up? Poor
+Mr. Dormer, I get you into trouble, don't I?" she added quite with
+tenderness.
+
+"Into trouble?" echoed Nick, looking at her head but not at her eyes.
+
+"Well, we won't talk about that!" she returned with a rich laugh.
+
+He now hastened to say that he had nothing to do with his sister's
+leaving the studio--she had only come, as it happened, for a moment. She
+had walked away with Peter Sherringham because they were cousins and old
+friends: he was to leave England immediately, for a long time, and he
+had offered her his company going home. Mrs. Rooth shook her head very
+knowingly over the "long time" Mr. Sherringham would be absent--she
+plainly had her ideas about that; and she conscientiously related that
+in the course of the short conversation they had all had at the door of
+the house her daughter had reminded Miss Dormer of something that had
+passed between them in Paris on the question of the charming young
+lady's modelling her head.
+
+"I did it to make the idea of our meeting less absurd--to put it on the
+footing of our both being artists. I don't ask you if she has talent,"
+said Miriam.
+
+"Then I needn't tell you," laughed Nick.
+
+"I'm sure she has talent and a very refined inspiration. I see something
+in that corner, covered with a mysterious veil," Mrs. Rooth insinuated;
+which led Miriam to go on immediately:
+
+"Has she been trying her hand at Mr. Sherringham?"
+
+"When should she try her hand, poor dear young lady? He's always sitting
+with us," said Mrs. Rooth.
+
+"Dear mamma, you exaggerate. He has his moments--when he seems to say
+his prayers to me; but we've had some success in cutting them down. _Il
+s'est bien détaché ces jours-ci_, and I'm very happy for him. Of course
+it's an impertinent allusion for me to make; but I should be so
+delighted if I could think of him as a little in love with Miss Dormer,"
+the girl pursued, addressing Nick.
+
+"He is, I think, just a little--just a tiny bit," her artist allowed,
+working away; while Mrs. Rooth ejaculated to her daughter
+simultaneously:
+
+"How can you ask such fantastic questions when you know he's dying for
+_you_?"
+
+"Oh dying!--he's dying very hard!" cried Miriam. "Mr. Sherringham's a
+man of whom I can't speak with too much esteem and affection and who may
+be destined to perish by some horrid fever (which God forbid!) in the
+unpleasant country he's going to. But he won't have caught his fever
+from your humble servant."
+
+"You may kill him even while you remain in perfect health yourself,"
+said Nick; "and since we're talking of the matter I don't see the harm
+of my confessing that he strikes me as far gone--oh as very bad indeed."
+
+"And yet he's in love with your sister?--_je n'y suis plus_."
+
+"He tries to be, for he sees that as regards you there are difficulties.
+He'd like to put his hand on some nice girl who'd be an antidote to his
+poison."
+
+"Difficulties are a mild name for them; poison even is a mild name for
+the ill he suffers from. The principal difficulty is that he doesn't
+know what the devil he wants. The next is that I don't either--or what
+the devil I want myself. I only know what I don't want," Miriam kept on
+brightly and as if uttering some happy, beneficent truth. "I don't want
+a person who takes things even less simply than I do myself. Mr.
+Sherringham, poor man, must be very uncomfortable, for one side of him's
+in a perpetual row with the other side. He's trying to serve God and
+Mammon, and I don't know how God will come off. What I like in you is
+that you've definitely let Mammon go--it's the only decent way. That's
+my earnest conviction, and yet they call us people light. Dear Mr.
+Sherringham has tremendous ambitions--tremendous _riguardi_, as we used
+to say in Italy. He wants to enjoy every comfort and to save every
+appearance, and all without making a scrap of a sacrifice. He expects
+others--me, for instance--to make all the sacrifices. _Merci_, much as I
+esteem him and much as I owe him! I don't know how he ever came to stray
+at all into our bold, bad, downright Bohemia: it was a cruel trick for
+fortune to play him. He can't keep out of it, he's perpetually making
+dashes across the border, and yet as soon as he gets here he's on pins
+and needles. There's another in whose position--if I were in it--I
+wouldn't look at the likes of us!"
+
+"I don't know much about the matter," Nick brought out after some intent
+smudging, "but I've an idea Peter thinks he has made or at least is
+making sacrifices."
+
+"So much the better--you must encourage him, you must help him."
+
+"I don't know what my daughter's talking about," Mrs. Rooth
+contributed--"she's much too paradoxical for my plain mind. But there's
+one way to encourage Mr. Sherringham--there's one way to help him; and
+perhaps it won't be a worse way for a gentleman of your good nature that
+it will help me at the same time. Can't I look to you, dear Mr. Dormer,
+to see that he does come to the theatre to-night--that he doesn't feel
+himself obliged to stay away?"
+
+"What danger is there of his staying away?" Nick asked.
+
+"If he's bent on sacrifices that's a very good one to begin with,"
+Miriam observed.
+
+"That's the mad, bad way she talks to him--she has forbidden the dear
+unhappy gentleman the house!" her mother cried. "She brought it up to
+him just now at the door--before Miss Dormer: such very odd form! She
+pretends to impose her commands upon him."
+
+"Oh he'll be there--we're going to dine together," said Nick. And when
+Miriam asked him what that had to do with it he went on: "Why we've
+arranged it; I'm going, and he won't let me go alone."
+
+"You're going? I sent you no places," his sitter objected.
+
+"Yes, but I've got one. Why didn't you, after all I've done for you?"
+
+She beautifully thought of it. "Because I'm so good. No matter," she
+added, "if Mr. Sherringham comes I won't act."
+
+"Won't you act for me?"
+
+"She'll act like an angel," Mrs. Rooth protested. "She might do, she
+might be, anything in all the world; but she won't take common pains."
+
+"Of one thing there's no doubt," said Miriam: "that compared with the
+rest of us--poor passionless creatures--mamma does know what she wants."
+
+"And what's that?" Nick inquired, chalking on.
+
+"She wants everything."
+
+"Never, never--I'm much more humble," retorted the old woman; upon
+which her daughter requested her to give then to Mr. Dormer, who was a
+reasonable man and an excellent judge, a general idea of the scope of
+her desires.
+
+As, however, Mrs. Rooth, sighing and deprecating, was not quick to
+acquit herself, the girl tried a short cut to the truth with the abrupt
+demand: "Do you believe for a single moment he'd marry me?"
+
+"Why he has proposed to you--you've told me yourself--a dozen times."
+
+"Proposed what to me?" Miriam rang out. "I've told you _that_ neither a
+dozen times nor once, because I've never understood. He has made
+wonderful speeches, but has never been serious."
+
+"You told me he had been in the seventh heaven of devotion, especially
+that night we went to the foyer of the Français," Mrs. Rooth insisted.
+
+"Do you call the seventh heaven of devotion serious? He's in love with
+me, _je le veux bien_; he's so poisoned--Mr. Dormer vividly puts it--as
+to require a strong antidote; but he has never spoken to me as if he
+really expected me to listen to him, and he's the more of a gentleman
+from that fact. He knows we haven't a square foot of common ground--that
+a grasshopper can't set up a house with a fish. So he has taken care to
+say to me only more than he can possibly mean. That makes it stand just
+for nothing."
+
+"Did he say more than he can possibly mean when he took formal leave of
+you yesterday--for ever and ever?" the old woman cried.
+
+On which Nick re-enforced her. "And don't you call that--his taking
+formal leave--a sacrifice?"
+
+"Oh he took it all back, his sacrifice, before he left the house."
+
+"Then has that no meaning?" demanded Mrs. Rooth.
+
+"None that I can make out," said her daughter.
+
+"Ah I've no patience with you: you can be stupid when you will--you can
+be even that too!" the poor lady groaned.
+
+"What mamma wishes me to understand and to practise is the particular
+way to be artful with Mr. Sherringham," said Miriam. "There are
+doubtless depths of wisdom and virtue in it. But I see only one
+art--that of being perfectly honest."
+
+"I like to hear you talk--it makes you live, brings you out," Nick
+contentedly dropped. "And you sit beautifully still. All I want to say
+is please continue to do so: remain exactly as you are--it's rather
+important--for the next ten minutes."
+
+"We're washing our dirty linen before you, but it's all right," the girl
+returned, "because it shows you what sort of people we are, and that's
+what you need to know. Don't make me vague and arranged and fine in this
+new view," she continued: "make me characteristic and real; make life,
+with all its horrid facts and truths, stick out of me. I wish you could
+put mother in too; make us live there side by side and tell our little
+story. 'The wonderful actress and her still more wonderful mamma'--don't
+you think that's an awfully good subject?"
+
+Mrs. Rooth, at this, cried shame on her daughter's wanton humour,
+professing that she herself would never accept so much from Nick's good
+nature, and Miriam settled it that at any rate he was some day and in
+some way to do her mother, _really_ do her, and so make her, as one of
+the funniest persons that ever was, live on through the ages.
+
+"She doesn't believe Mr. Sherringham wants to marry me any more than you
+do," the girl, taking up her dispute again after a moment, represented
+to Nick; "but she believes--how indeed can I tell you what she
+believes?--that I can work it so well, if you understand, that in the
+fulness of time I shall hold him in a vice. I'm to keep him along for
+the present, but not to listen to him, for if I listen to him I shall
+lose him. It's ingenious, it's complicated; but I daresay you follow
+me."
+
+"Don't move--don't move," said Nick. "Pardon a poor clumsy beginner."
+
+"No, I shall explain quietly. Somehow--here it's _very_ complicated and
+you mustn't lose the thread--I shall be an actress and make a tremendous
+lot of money, and somehow too (I suppose a little later) I shall become
+an ambassadress and be the favourite of courts. So you see it will all
+be delightful. Only I shall have to go very straight. Mamma reminds me
+of a story I once heard about the mother of a young lady who was in
+receipt of much civility from the pretender to a crown, which indeed he,
+and the young lady too, afterwards more or less wore. The old countess
+watched the course of events and gave her daughter the cleverest advice:
+'_Tiens bon, ma fille_, and you shall sit upon a throne.' Mamma wishes
+me to _tenir bon_--she apparently thinks there's a danger I mayn't--so
+that if I don't sit upon a throne I shall at least parade at the foot of
+one. And if before that, for ten years, I pile up the money, they'll
+forgive me the way I've made it. I should hope so, if I've _tenu bon_!
+Only ten years is a good while to hold out, isn't it? If it isn't Mr.
+Sherringham it will be some one else. Mr. Sherringham has the great
+merit of being a bird in the hand. I'm to keep him along, I'm to be
+still more diplomatic than even he can be."
+
+Mrs. Rooth listened to her daughter with an air of assumed reprobation
+which melted, before the girl had done, into a diverted, complacent
+smile--the gratification of finding herself the proprietress of so much
+wit and irony and grace. Miriam's account of her mother's views was a
+scene of comedy, and there was instinctive art in the way she added
+touch to touch and made point upon point. She was so quiet, to oblige
+her painter, that only her fine lips moved--all her expression was in
+their charming utterance. Mrs. Rooth, after the first flutter of a less
+cynical spirit, consented to be sacrificed to an effect of the really
+high order she had now been educated to recognise; so that she scarce
+hesitated, when Miriam had ceased speaking, before she tittered out with
+the fondest indulgence: '_Comédienne_!' And she seemed to appeal to
+their companion. "Ain't she fascinating? That's the way she does for
+you!"
+
+"It's rather cruel, isn't it," said Miriam, "to deprive people of the
+luxury of calling one an actress as they'd call one a liar? I represent,
+but I represent truly."
+
+"Mr. Sherringham would marry you to-morrow--there's no question of ten
+years!" cried Mrs. Rooth with a comicality of plainness.
+
+Miriam smiled at Nick, deprecating his horror of such talk. "Isn't it
+droll, the way she can't get it out of her head?" Then turning almost
+coaxingly to the old woman: "_Voyons_, look about you: they don't marry
+us like that."
+
+"But they do--_cela se voit tous les jours_. Ask Mr. Dormer."
+
+"Oh never! It would be as if I asked him to give us a practical proof."
+
+"I shall never prove anything by marrying any one," Nick said. "For me
+that question's over."
+
+Miriam rested kind eyes on him. "Dear me, how you must hate me!" And
+before he had time to reply she went on to her mother: "People marry
+them to make them leave the stage; which proves exactly what I say."
+
+"Ah they offer them the finest positions," reasoned Mrs. Rooth.
+
+"Do you want me to leave it then?"
+
+"Oh you can manage if you will!"
+
+"The only managing I know anything about is to do my work. If I manage
+that decently I shall pull through."
+
+"But, dearest, may our work not be of many sorts?"
+
+"I only know one," said Miriam.
+
+At this her mother got up with a sigh. "I see you do wish to drive me
+into the street."
+
+"Mamma's bewildered--there are so many paths she wants to follow, there
+are so many bundles of hay. As I told you, she wishes to gobble them
+all," the girl pursued. Then she added: "Yes, go and take the carriage;
+take a turn round the Park--you always delight in that--and come back
+for me in an hour."
+
+"I'm too vexed with you; the air will do me good," said Mrs. Rooth. But
+before she went she addressed Nick: "I've your assurance that you'll
+bring him then to-night?"
+
+"Bring Peter? I don't think I shall have to drag him," Nick returned.
+"But you must do me the justice to remember that if I should resort to
+force I should do something that's not particularly in my interest--I
+should be magnanimous."
+
+"We must always be that, mustn't we?" moralised Mrs. Rooth.
+
+"How could it affect your interest?" Miriam asked less abstractedly.
+
+"Yes, as you say," her mother mused at their host, "the question of
+marriage has ceased to exist for you."
+
+"Mamma goes straight at it!" laughed the girl, getting up while Nick
+rubbed his canvas before answering. Miriam went to mamma and settled
+her bonnet and mantle in preparation for her drive, then stood a moment
+with a filial arm about her and as if waiting for their friend's
+explanation. This, however, when it came halted visibly.
+
+"Why you said a while ago that if Peter was there you wouldn't act."
+
+"I'll act for _him_," smiled Miriam, inconsequently caressing her
+mother.
+
+"It doesn't matter whom it's for!" Mrs. Rooth declared sagaciously.
+
+"Take your drive and relax your mind," said the girl, kissing her. "Come
+for me in an hour; not later--but not sooner." She went with her to the
+door, bundled her out, closed it behind her and came back to the
+position she had quitted. "_This_ is the peace I want!" she gratefully
+cried as she settled into it.
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+
+Peter Sherringham said so little during the performance that his
+companion was struck by his dumbness, especially as Miriam's acting
+seemed to Nick magnificent. He held his breath while she was on the
+stage--she gave the whole thing, including the spectator's emotion, such
+a lift. She had not carried out her fantastic menace of not exerting
+herself, and, as Mrs. Rooth had said, it little mattered for whom she
+acted. Nick was conscious in watching her that she went through it all
+for herself, for the idea that possessed her and that she rendered with
+extraordinary breadth. She couldn't open the door a part of the way to
+it and let it simply peep in; if it entered at all it must enter in full
+procession and occupy the premises in state.
+
+This was what had happened on an occasion which, as the less tormented
+of our young men felt in his stall, grew larger with each throb of the
+responsive house; till by the time the play was half over it appeared to
+stretch out wide arms to the future. Nick had often heard more applause,
+but had never heard more attention, since they were all charmed and
+hushed together and success seemed to be sitting down with them. There
+had been of course plenty of announcement--the newspapers had abounded
+and the arts of the manager had taken the freest license; but it was
+easy to feel a fine, universal consensus and to recognise everywhere
+the light spring of hope. People snatched their eyes from the stage an
+instant to look at each other, all eager to hand on the torch passed to
+them by the actress over the footlights. It was a part of the impression
+that she was now only showing to the full, for this time she had verse
+to deal with and she made it unexpectedly exquisite. She was beauty,
+melody, truth; she was passion and persuasion and tenderness. She caught
+up the obstreperous play in soothing, entwining arms and, seeming to
+tread the air in the flutter of her robe, carried it into the high
+places of poetry, of art, of style. And she had such tones of nature,
+such concealments of art, such effusions of life, that the whole scene
+glowed with the colour she communicated, and the house, pervaded with
+rosy fire, glowed back at the scene. Nick looked round in the intervals;
+he felt excited and flushed--the night had turned to a feast of
+fraternity and he expected to see people embrace each other. The crowd,
+the agitation, the triumph, the surprise, the signals and rumours, the
+heated air, his associates, near him, pointing out other figures who
+presumably were celebrated but whom he had never heard of, all amused
+him and banished every impulse to question or to compare. Miriam was as
+happy as some right sensation--she would have fed the memory with deep
+draughts.
+
+One of the things that amused him or at least helped to fill his
+attention was Peter's attitude, which apparently didn't exclude
+criticism--rather indeed mainly implied it. This admirer never took his
+eyes off the actress, but he made no remark about her and never stirred
+out of his chair. Nick had had from the first a plan of going round to
+speak to her, but as his companion evidently meant not to move he
+scrupled at being more forward. During their brief dinner together--they
+were determined not to be late--Peter had been silent, quite recklessly
+grave, but also, his kinsman judged, full of the wish to make it clear
+he was calm. In his seat he was calmer than ever and had an air even of
+trying to suggest that his attendance, preoccupied as he was with deeper
+solemnities, was more or less mechanical, the result of a conception of
+duty, a habit of courtesy. When during a scene in the second act--a
+scene from which Miriam was absent--Nick observed to him that one might
+judge from his reserve that he wasn't pleased he replied after a moment:
+"I've been looking for her mistakes." And when Nick made answer to this
+that he certainly wouldn't find them he said again in an odd tone: "No,
+I shan't find them--I shan't find them." It might have seemed that since
+the girl's performance was a dazzling success he regarded his evening as
+rather a failure.
+
+After the third act Nick said candidly: "My dear fellow, how can you sit
+here? Aren't you going to speak to her?"
+
+To which Peter replied inscrutably: "Lord, no, never again. I bade her
+good-bye yesterday. She knows what I think of her form. It's very good,
+but she carries it a little too far. Besides, she didn't want me to
+come, and it's therefore more discreet to keep away from her."
+
+"Surely it isn't an hour for discretion!" Nick cried. "Excuse me at any
+rate for five minutes."
+
+He went behind and reappeared only as the curtain was rising on the
+fourth act; and in the interval between the fourth and the fifth he went
+again for a shorter time. Peter was personally detached, but he
+consented to listen to his companion's vivid account of the state of
+things on the stage, where the elation of victory had lighted up the
+place. The strain was over, the ship in port--they were all wiping their
+faces and grinning. Miriam--yes, positively--was grinning too, and she
+hadn't asked a question about Peter nor sent him a message. They were
+kissing all round and dancing for joy. They were on the eve, worse luck,
+of a tremendous run. Peter groaned irrepressibly for this; it was, save
+for a slight sign a moment later, the only vibration caused in him by
+his cousin's report. There was but one voice of regret that they hadn't
+put on the piece earlier, as the end of the season would interrupt the
+run. There was but one voice too about the fourth act--it was believed
+all London would rush to see the fourth act. The crowd about her was a
+dozen deep and Miriam in the midst of it all charming; she was receiving
+in the ugly place after the fashion of royalty, almost as hedged with
+the famous "divinity," yet with a smile and a word for each. She was
+really like a young queen on her accession. When she saw him, Nick, she
+had kissed her hand to him over the heads of the courtiers. Nick's
+artless comment on this was that she had such pretty manners. It made
+Peter laugh--apparently at his friend's conception of the manners of a
+young queen. Mrs. Rooth, with a dozen shawls on her arm, was as red as
+the kitchen-fire, but you couldn't tell if Miriam were red or pale: she
+was so cleverly, finely made up--perhaps a little too much. Dashwood of
+course was greatly to the fore, but you hadn't to mention his own
+performance to him: he took it all handsomely and wouldn't hear of
+anything but that _her_ fortune was made. He didn't say much indeed, but
+evidently had ideas about her fortune; he nodded significant things and
+whistled inimitable sounds--"Heuh, heuh!" He was perfectly satisfied;
+moreover, he looked further ahead than any one.
+
+It was on coming back to his place after the fourth act that Nick put
+in, for his companion's benefit, most of these touches in his sketch of
+the situation. If Peter had continued to look for Miriam's mistakes he
+hadn't yet found them: the fourth act, bristling with dangers, putting a
+premium on every sort of cheap effect, had rounded itself without a
+flaw. Sitting there alone while Nick was away he had leisure to meditate
+on the wonder of this--on the art with which the girl had separated
+passion from violence, filling the whole place and never screaming; for
+it had often seemed to him in London of old that the yell of theatrical
+emotion rang through the shrinking night like the voice of the Sunday
+newsboy. Miriam had never been more present to him than at this hour;
+but she was inextricably transmuted--present essentially as the romantic
+heroine she represented. His state of mind was of the strangest and he
+was conscious of its strangeness, just as he was conscious in his very
+person of a lapse of resistance which likened itself absurdly to
+liberation. He felt weak at the same time that he felt inspired, and he
+felt inspired at the same time that he knew, or believed he knew, that
+his face was a blank. He saw things as a shining confusion, and yet
+somehow something monstrously definite kept surging out of them. Miriam
+was a beautiful, actual, fictive, impossible young woman of a past age,
+an undiscoverable country, who spoke in blank verse and overflowed with
+metaphor, who was exalted and heroic beyond all human convenience and
+who yet was irresistibly real and related to one's own affairs. But that
+reality was a part of her spectator's joy, and she was not changed back
+to the common by his perception of the magnificent trick of art with
+which it was connected. Before his kinsman rejoined him Peter, taking a
+visiting-card from his pocket, had written on it in pencil a few words
+in a foreign tongue; but as at that moment he saw Nick coming in he
+immediately put it out of view.
+
+The last thing before the curtain rose on the fifth act that young man
+mentioned his having brought a message from Basil Dashwood, who hoped
+they both, on leaving the theatre, would come to supper with him in
+company with Miriam and her mother and several others: he had prepared a
+little informal banquet in honour of so famous a night. At this, while
+the curtain was about to rise, Peter immediately took out his card again
+and added something--he wrote the finest small hand you could see. Nick
+asked him what he was doing, and he waited but an instant. "It's a word
+to say I can't come."
+
+"To Dashwood? Oh I shall go," said Nick.
+
+"Well, I hope you'll enjoy it!" his companion replied in a tone which
+came back to him afterwards.
+
+When the curtain fell on the last act the people stayed, standing up in
+their places for acclamation. The applause shook the house--the recall
+became a clamour, the relief from a long tension. This was in any
+performance a moment Peter detested, but he stood for an instant beside
+Nick, who clapped, to his cousin's diplomatic sense, after the fashion
+of a school-boy at the pantomime. There was a veritable roar while the
+curtain drew back at the side most removed from our pair. Peter could
+see Basil Dashwood holding it, making a passage for the male "juvenile
+lead," who had Miriam in tow. Nick redoubled his efforts; heard the
+plaudits swell; saw the bows of the leading gentleman, who was hot and
+fat; saw Miriam, personally conducted and closer to the footlights, grow
+brighter and bigger and more swaying; and then became aware that his own
+comrade had with extreme agility slipped out of the stalls. Nick had
+already lost sight of him--he had apparently taken but a minute to
+escape from the house; and wondered at his quitting him without a
+farewell if he was to leave England on the morrow and they were not to
+meet at the hospitable Dashwood's. He wondered even what Peter was "up
+to," since, as he had assured him, there was no question of his going
+round to Miriam. He waited to see this young lady reappear three times,
+dragging Dashwood behind her at the second with a friendly arm, to whom,
+in turn, was hooked Miss Fanny Rover, the actress entrusted in the piece
+with the inevitable comic relief. He went out slowly with the crowd and
+at the door looked again for Peter, who struck him as deficient for once
+in finish. He couldn't know that in another direction and while he was
+helping the house to "rise" at its heroine, his kinsman had been
+particularly explicit.
+
+On reaching the lobby Peter had pounced on a small boy in buttons, who
+seemed superfluously connected with a desolate refreshment-room and,
+from the tips of his toes, was peeping at the stage through the glazed
+hole in the door of a box. Into one of the child's hands he thrust the
+card he had drawn again from his waistcoat and into the other the
+largest silver coin he could find in the same receptacle, while he bent
+over him with words of adjuration--words the little page tried to help
+himself to apprehend by instantly attempting to peruse the other words
+written on the card.
+
+"That's no use--it's Italian," said Peter; "only carry it round to Miss
+Rooth without a minute's delay. Place it in her hand and she'll give you
+some object--a bracelet, a glove, or a flower--to bring me back as a
+sign that she has received it. I shall be outside; bring me there what
+she gives you and you shall have another shilling--only fly!"
+
+His small messenger sounded him a moment with the sharp face of London
+wage-earning, and still more of London tip-earning, infancy, and
+vanished as swiftly as a slave of the Arabian Nights. While he waited in
+the lobby the audience began to pour out, and before the urchin had
+come back to him he was clapped on the shoulder by Nick.
+
+"I'm glad I haven't lost you, but why didn't you stay to give her a
+hand?"
+
+"Give her a hand? I hated it."
+
+"My dear man, I don't follow you," Nick said. "If you won't come to
+Dashwood's supper I fear our ways don't lie together."
+
+"Thank him very much; say I've to get up at an unnatural hour." To this
+Peter added: "I think I ought to tell you she may not be there."
+
+"Miss Rooth? Why it's all _for_ her."
+
+"I'm waiting for a word from her--she may change her mind."
+
+Nick showed his interest. "For you? What then have you proposed?"
+
+"I've proposed marriage," said Peter in a strange voice.
+
+"I say--!" Nick broke out; and at the same moment Peter's messenger
+squeezed through the press and stood before him.
+
+"She has given me nothing, sir," the boy announced; "but she says I'm to
+say 'All right!'"
+
+Nick's stare widened. "You've proposed through _him_?"
+
+"Aye, and she accepts. Good-night!"--on which, turning away, Peter
+bounded into a hansom. He said something to the driver through the roof,
+and Nick's eyes followed the cab as it started off. This young man was
+mystified, was even amused; especially when the youth in buttons,
+planted there and wondering too, brought forth:
+
+"Please sir, he told me he'd give me a shilling and he've forgot it."
+
+"Oh I can't pay you for _that_!" Nick laughed. But he fished out a dole,
+though he was vexed at the injury to the supper.
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+
+Peter meanwhile rolled away through the summer night to Saint John's
+Wood. He had put the pressure of strong words on his young friend,
+entreating her to drive home immediately, return there without any one,
+without even her mother. He wished to see her alone and for a purpose he
+would fully and satisfactorily explain--couldn't she trust him? He
+besought her to remember his own situation and throw over her supper,
+throw over everything. He would wait for her with unspeakable impatience
+in Balaklava Place.
+
+He did so, when he got there, but it had taken half an hour.
+Interminable seemed his lonely vigil in Miss Lumley's drawing-room,
+where the character of the original proprietress came out to him more
+than ever before in a kind of afterglow of old sociabilities, a vulgar,
+ghostly reference. The numerous candles had been lighted for him, and
+Mrs. Rooth's familiar fictions lay about; but his nerves forbade him the
+solace of a chair and a book. He walked up and down, thinking and
+listening, and as the long window, the balmy air permitting, stood open
+to the garden, he passed several times in and out. A carriage appeared
+to stop at the gate--then there was nothing; he heard the rare rattle of
+wheels and the far-off hum of London. His impatience was overwrought,
+and though he knew this it persisted; it would have been no easy matter
+for Miriam to break away from the flock of her felicitators. Still less
+simple was it doubtless for her to leave poor Dashwood with his supper
+on his hands. Perhaps she would bring Dashwood with her, bring him to
+time her; she was capable of playing him--that is, of playing Her
+Majesty's new representative to the small far-off State, or even of
+playing them both--that trick. Perhaps the little wretch in
+buttons--Peter remembered now the neglected shilling--only pretending to
+go round with his card, had come back with an invented answer. But how
+could he know, since presumably he couldn't read Italian, that his
+answer would fit the message? Peter was sorry now that he himself had
+not gone round, not snatched Miriam bodily away, made sure of her and of
+what he wanted of her.
+
+When forty minutes had elapsed he regarded it as proved that she
+wouldn't come, and, asking himself what he should do, determined to
+drive off again and seize her at her comrade's feast. Then he remembered
+how Nick had mentioned that this entertainment was not to be held at the
+young actor's lodgings but at some tavern or restaurant the name of
+which he had not heeded. Suddenly, however, Peter became aware with joy
+that this name didn't matter, for there was something at the garden door
+at last. He rushed out before she had had time to ring, and saw as she
+stepped from the carriage that she was alone. Now that she was there,
+that he had this evidence she had listened to him and trusted him, all
+his impatience and bitterness gave way and a flood of pleading
+tenderness took their place in the first words he spoke to her. It was
+far "dearer" of her than he had any right to dream, but she was the best
+and kindest creature--this showed it--as well as the most wonderful. He
+was really not off his head with his contradictory ways; no, before
+heaven he wasn't, and he would explain, he would make everything clear.
+Everything was changed.
+
+She stopped short in the little dusky garden, looking at him in the
+light of the open window. Then she called back to the coachman--they had
+left the garden door open--"Wait for me, mind; I shall want you again."
+
+"What's the matter--won't you stay?" Peter asked. "Are you going out
+again at this absurd hour? I won't hurt you," he gently urged. And he
+went back and closed the garden door. He wanted to say to the coachman,
+"It's no matter--please drive away." At the same time he wouldn't for
+the world have done anything offensive to her.
+
+"I've come because I thought it better to-night, as things have turned
+out, to do the thing you ask me, whatever it may be," she had already
+begun. "That's probably what you calculated I would think, eh? What this
+evening has been you've seen, and I must allow that your hand's in it.
+That you know for yourself--that you doubtless felt as you sat there.
+But I confess I don't imagine what you want of me here now," she added.
+She had remained standing in the path.
+
+Peter felt the irony of her "now" and how it made a fool of him, but he
+had been prepared for this and for much worse. He had begged her not to
+think him a fool, but in truth at present he cared little if she did.
+Very likely he was--in spite of his plea that everything was changed: he
+cared little even himself. However, he spoke in the tone of intense
+reason and of the fullest disposition to satisfy her. This lucidity only
+took still more from the dignity of his change of front: his separation
+from her the day before had had such pretensions to being lucid. But the
+explanation and the justification were in the very fact, the fact that
+had complete possession of him. He named it when he replied to her:
+"I've simply overrated my strength."
+
+"Oh I knew--I knew! That's why I entreated you not to come!" Miriam
+groaned. She turned away lamenting, and for a moment he thought she
+would retreat to her carriage. But he passed his hand into her arm, to
+draw her forward, and after an instant felt her yield.
+
+"The fact is we must have this thing out," he said. Then he added as he
+made her go into the house, bending over her, "The failure of my
+strength--that was just the reason of my coming."
+
+She broke into her laugh at these words, as she entered the
+drawing-room, and it made them sound pompous in their false wisdom. She
+flung off, as a good-natured tribute to the image of their having the
+thing out, a white shawl that had been wrapped round her. She was still
+painted and bedizened, in the splendid dress of her climax, so that she
+seemed protected and alienated by the character she had been acting.
+"Whatever it is you want--when I understand--you'll be very brief, won't
+you? Do you know I've given up a charming supper for you? Mamma has gone
+there. I've promised to go back to them."
+
+"You're an angel not to have let her come with you. I'm sure she wanted
+to," Peter made reply.
+
+"Oh she's all right, but she's nervous." Then the girl added: "Couldn't
+she keep you away after all?"
+
+"Whom are you talking about?" Biddy Dormer was as absent from his mind
+as if she had never existed.
+
+"The charming thing you were with this morning. Is she so afraid of
+obliging me? Oh she'd be so good for you!"
+
+"Don't speak of that," Peter gravely said. "I was in perfect good faith
+yesterday when I took leave of you. I was--I was. But I can't--I can't:
+you're too unutterably dear to me."
+
+"Oh don't--_please_ don't!" Miriam wailed at this. She stood before the
+fireless chimney-piece with one of her hands on it. "If it's only to say
+that, don't you know, what's the use?"
+
+"It isn't only to say that. I've a plan, a perfect plan: the whole thing
+lies clear before me."
+
+"And what's the whole thing?"
+
+He had to make an effort. "You say your mother's nervous. Ah if you knew
+how nervous I am!"
+
+"Well, I'm not. Go on."
+
+"Give it up--give it up!" Peter stammered.
+
+"Give it up?" She fixed him like a mild Medusa.
+
+"I'll marry you to-morrow if you'll renounce; and in return for the
+sacrifice you make for me I'll do more for you than ever was done for a
+woman before."
+
+"Renounce after to-night? Do you call that a plan?" she asked. "Those
+are old words and very foolish ones--you wanted something of that sort a
+year ago."
+
+"Oh I fluttered round the idea at that time; we were talking in the air.
+I didn't really believe I could make you see it then, and certainly you
+didn't see it. My own future, moreover, wasn't definite to me. I didn't
+know what I could offer you. But these last months have made a
+difference--I do know now. Now what I say is deliberate--It's deeply
+meditated. I simply can't live without you, and I hold that together we
+may do great things."
+
+She seemed to wonder. "What sort of things?"
+
+"The things of my profession, of my life, the things one does for one's
+country, the responsibility and the honour of great affairs; deeply
+fascinating when one's immersed in them, and more exciting really--put
+them even at that--than the excitements of the theatre. Care for me only
+a little and you'll see what they are, they'll take hold of you. Believe
+me, believe me," Peter pleaded; "every fibre of my being trembles in
+what I say to you."
+
+"You admitted yesterday it wouldn't do," she made answer. "Where were
+the fibres of your being then?"
+
+"They throbbed in me even more than now, and I was trying, like an ass,
+not to feel them. Where was this evening yesterday--where were the
+maddening hours I've just spent? Ah you're the perfection of
+perfections, and as I sat there to-night you taught me what I really
+want."
+
+"The perfection of perfections?" the girl echoed with the strangest
+smile.
+
+"I needn't try to tell you: you must have felt to-night with such
+rapture what you are, what you can do. How can I give that up?" he
+piteously went on.
+
+"How can _I_, my poor friend? I like your plans and your
+responsibilities and your great affairs, as you call them. _Voyons_,
+they're infantile. I've just shown that I'm a perfection of perfections:
+therefore it's just the moment to 'renounce,' as you gracefully say? Oh
+I was sure, I was sure!" And Miriam paused, resting eyes at once lighted
+and troubled on him as in the effort to think of some arrangement that
+would help him out of his absurdity. "I was sure, I mean, that if you
+did come your poor, dear, doting brain would be quite confused," she
+presently pursued. "I can't be a muff in public just for you,
+_pourtant_. Dear me, why do you like us so much?"
+
+"Like you? I loathe you!"
+
+"_Je le vois parbleu bien_!" she lightly returned. "I mean why do you
+feel us, judge us, understand us so well? I please you because you see,
+because you know; and then for that very reason of my pleasing you must
+adapt me to your convenience, you must take me over, as they say. You
+admire me as an artist and therefore want to put me into a box in which
+the artist will breathe her last. Ah be reasonable; you must let her
+live!"
+
+"Let her live? As if I could prevent her living!" Peter cried with
+unmistakable conviction. "Even if I did wish how could I prevent a
+spirit like yours from expressing itself? Don't talk about my putting
+you in a box, for, dearest child, I'm taking you out of one," he all
+persuasively explained. "The artist is irrepressible, eternal; she'll be
+in everything you are and in everything you do, and you'll go about with
+her triumphantly exerting your powers, charming the world, carrying
+everything before you."
+
+Miriam's colour rose, through all her artificial surfaces, at this all
+but convincing appeal, and she asked whimsically: "Shall you like that?"
+
+"Like my wife to be the most brilliant woman in Europe? I think I can do
+with it."
+
+"Aren't you afraid of me?"
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+"Bravely said. How little you know me after all!" sighed the girl.
+
+"I tell the truth," Peter ardently went on; "and you must do me the
+justice to admit that I've taken the time to dig deep into my feelings.
+I'm not an infatuated boy; I've lived, I've had experience, I've
+observed; in short I know what I mean and what I want. It isn't a thing
+to reason about; it's simply a need that consumes me. I've put it on
+starvation diet, but that's no use--really, it's no use, Miriam," the
+young man declared with a ring that spoke enough of his sincerity. "It
+is no question of my trusting you; it's simply a question of your
+trusting me. You're all right, as I've heard you say yourself; you're
+frank, spontaneous, generous; you're a magnificent creature. Just
+quietly marry me and I'll manage you."
+
+"'Manage' me?" The girl's inflexion was droll; it made him change
+colour.
+
+"I mean I'll give you a larger life than the largest you can get in any
+other way. The stage is great, no doubt, but the world's greater. It's a
+bigger theatre than any of those places in the Strand. We'll go in for
+realities instead of fables, and you'll do them far better than you do
+the fables."
+
+Miriam had listened attentively, but her face that could so show things
+showed her despair at his perverted ingenuity. "Pardon my saying it
+after your delightful tributes to my worth," she returned in a moment,
+"but I've never listened to anything quite so grandly unreal. You think
+so well of me that humility itself ought to keep me silent; nevertheless
+I _must_ utter a few shabby words of sense. I'm a magnificent creature
+on the stage--well and good; it's what I want to be and it's charming to
+see such evidence that I succeed. But off the stage, woe betide us both,
+I should lose all my advantages. The fact's so patent that it seems to
+me I'm very good-natured even to discuss it with you."
+
+"Are you on the stage now, pray? Ah Miriam, if it weren't for the
+respect I owe you!" her companion wailed.
+
+"If it weren't for that I shouldn't have come here to meet you. My gift
+is the thing that takes you: could there be a better proof than that
+it's to-night's display of it that has brought you to this unreason?
+It's indeed a misfortune that you're so sensitive to our poor arts,
+since they play such tricks with your power to see things as they are.
+Without my share of them I should be a dull, empty, third-rate woman,
+and yet that's the fate you ask me to face and insanely pretend you're
+ready to face yourself."
+
+"Without it--without it?" Sherringham cried. "Your own sophistry's
+infinitely worse than mine. I should like to see you without it for the
+fiftieth part of a second. What I ask you to give up is the dusty boards
+of the play-house and the flaring footlights, but not the very essence
+of your being. Your 'gift,' your genius, is yourself, and it's because
+it's yourself that I yearn for you. If it had been a thing you could
+leave behind by the easy dodge of stepping off the stage I would never
+have looked at you a second time. Don't talk to me as if I were a
+simpleton--with your own false simplifications! You were made to charm
+and console, to represent beauty and harmony and variety to miserable
+human beings; and the daily life of man is the theatre for that--not a
+vulgar shop with a turnstile that's open only once in the twenty-four
+hours. 'Without it,' verily!" Peter proceeded with a still, deep heat
+that kept down in a manner his rising scorn and exasperated passion.
+"Please let me know the first time you're without your face, without
+your voice, your step, your exquisite spirit, the turn of your head and
+the wonder of your look!"
+
+Miriam at this moved away from him with a port that resembled what she
+sometimes showed on the stage when she turned her young back upon the
+footlights and then after a few steps grandly swept round again. This
+evolution she performed--it was over in an instant--on the present
+occasion; even to stopping short with her eyes upon him and her head
+admirably erect. "Surely it's strange," she said, "the way the other
+solution never occurs to you."
+
+"The other solution?"
+
+"That _you_ should stay on the stage."
+
+"I don't understand you," her friend gloomed.
+
+"Stay on _my_ stage. Come off your own."
+
+For a little he said nothing; then: "You mean that if I'll do that
+you'll have me?"
+
+"I mean that if it were to occur to you to offer me a little sacrifice
+on your own side it might place the matter in a slightly more attractive
+light."
+
+"Continue to let you act--as my wife?" he appealed. "Is it a real
+condition? Am I to understand that those are your terms?"
+
+"I may say so without fear, because you'll never accept them."
+
+"Would you accept them _from_ me?" he demanded; "accept the manly, the
+professional sacrifice, see me throw up my work, my prospects--of course
+I should have to do that--and simply become your appendage?"
+
+She raised her arms for a prodigious fall. "My dear fellow, you invite
+me with the best conscience in the world to become yours."
+
+"The cases are not equal. You'd make of me the husband of an actress. I
+should make of you the wife of an ambassador."
+
+"The husband of an actress, _c'est bientôt dit_, in that tone of scorn!
+If you're consistent," said Miriam, all lucid and hard, "it ought to be
+a proud position for you."
+
+"What do you mean, if I'm consistent?"
+
+"Haven't you always insisted on the beauty and interest of our art and
+the greatness of our mission? Haven't you almost come to blows with poor
+Gabriel Nash about it? What did all that mean if you won't face the
+first consequences of your theory? Either it was an enlightened
+conviction or it was an empty pretence. If you were only talking
+against time I'm glad to know it," she rolled out with a darkening eye.
+"The better the cause, it seems to me, the better the deed; and if the
+theatre _is_ important to the 'human spirit,' as you used to say so
+charmingly, and if into the bargain you've the pull of being so fond of
+me, I don't see why it should be monstrous of you to give us your
+services in an intelligent, indirect way. Of course if you're not
+serious we needn't talk at all; but if you are, with your conception of
+what the actor can do, why is it so base to come to the actor's aid,
+taking one devotion with another? If I'm so fine I'm worth looking after
+a bit, and the place where I'm finest is the place to look after me!"
+
+He had a long pause again, taking her in as it seemed to him he had
+never done. "You were never finer than at this minute, in the deepest
+domesticity of private life. I've no conception whatever of what the
+actor can do, and no theory whatever about the importance of the
+theatre. Any infatuation of that sort has completely dropped from me,
+and for all I care the theatre may go to the dogs--which I judge it
+altogether probably will!"
+
+"You're dishonest, you're ungrateful, you're false!" Miriam flashed. "It
+was the theatre brought you here--if it hadn't been for the theatre I
+never would have looked at you. It was in the name of the theatre you
+first made love to me; it's to the theatre you owe every advantage that,
+so far as I'm concerned, you possess."
+
+"I seem to possess a great many!" poor Peter derisively groaned.
+
+"You might avail yourself better of those you have! You make me angry,
+but I want to be fair," said the shining creature, "and I can't be
+unless you are. You're not fair, nor candid, nor honourable, when you
+swallow your words and abjure your faith, when you throw over old
+friends and old memories for a selfish purpose."
+
+"'Selfish purpose' is, in your own convenient idiom, _bientôt dit_,"
+Peter promptly answered. "I suppose you consider that if I truly
+esteemed you I should be ashamed to deprive the world of the light of
+your genius. Perhaps my esteem isn't of the right quality--there are
+different kinds, aren't there? At any rate I've explained to you that I
+propose to deprive the world of nothing at all. You shall be celebrated,
+_allez_!"
+
+"Vain words, vain words, my dear!" and she turned off again in her
+impatience. "I know of course," she added quickly, "that to befool
+yourself with such twaddle you must be pretty bad."
+
+"Yes, I'm pretty bad," he admitted, looking at her dismally. "What do
+you do with the declaration you made me the other day--the day I found
+my cousin here--that you'd take me if I should come to you as one who
+had risen high?"
+
+Miriam thought of it. "I remember--the chaff about the honours, the
+orders, the stars and garters. My poor foolish friend, don't be so
+painfully literal. Don't you know a joke when you see it? It was to
+worry your cousin, wasn't it? But it didn't in the least succeed."
+
+"Why should you wish to worry my cousin?"
+
+"Because he's so provoking!" she instantly answered; after which she
+laughed as if for her falling too simply into the trap he had laid.
+"Surely, at all events, I had my freedom no less than I have it now.
+Pray what explanations should I have owed you and in what fear of you
+should I have gone? However, that has nothing to do with it. Say I did
+tell you that we might arrange it on the day you should come to me
+covered with glory in the shape of little tinkling medals: why should
+you anticipate that transaction by so many years and knock me down such
+a long time in advance? Where's the glory, please, and where are the
+medals?"
+
+"Dearest girl, am I not going to strange parts--a capital
+promotion--next month," he insistently demanded, "and can't you trust me
+enough to believe I speak with a real appreciation of the facts (that
+I'm not lying to you in short) when I tell you I've my foot in the
+stirrup? The glory's dawning. _I_'m all right too."
+
+"What you propose to me, then, is to accompany you _tout bonnement_ to
+your new post. What you propose to me is to pack up and start?"
+
+"You put it in a nutshell." But Peter's smile was strained.
+
+"You're touching--it has its charm. But you can't get anything in any of
+the Americas, you know. I'm assured there are no medals to be picked up
+in those parts--which are therefore 'strange' indeed. That's why the
+diplomatic body hate them all."
+
+"They're on the way, they're on the way!"--he could only feverishly
+hammer. "The people here don't keep us long in disagreeable places
+unless we want to stay. There's one thing you can get anywhere if you've
+ability, and nowhere if you've not, and in the disagreeable places
+generally more than in the others; and that--since it's the element of
+the question we're discussing--is simply success. It's odious to be put
+on one's swagger, but I protest against being treated as if I had
+nothing to offer--to offer a person who has such glories of her own. I'm
+not a little presumptuous ass; I'm a man accomplished and determined,
+and the omens are on my side." Peter faltered a moment and then with a
+queer expression went on: "Remember, after all, that, strictly speaking,
+your glories are also still in the future." An exclamation at these
+words burst from Miriam's lips, but her companion resumed quickly: "Ask
+my official superiors, ask any of my colleagues, if they consider I've
+nothing to offer."
+
+He had an idea as he ceased speaking that she was on the point of
+breaking out with some strong word of resentment at his allusion to the
+contingent nature of her prospects. But it only deepened his wound to
+hear her say with extraordinary mildness: "It's perfectly true that my
+glories are still to come, that I may fizzle out and that my little
+success of to-day is perhaps a mere flash in the pan. Stranger things
+have been--something of that sort happens every day. But don't we talk
+too much of that part of it?" she asked with a weary patience that was
+noble in its effect. "Surely it's vulgar to think only of the noise
+one's going to make--especially when one remembers how utterly _bêtes_
+most of the people will be among whom one makes it. It isn't to my
+possible glories I cling; it's simply to my idea, even if it's destined
+to betray me and sink me. I like it better than anything else--a
+thousand times better (I'm sorry to have to put it in such a way) than
+tossing up my head as the fine lady of a little coterie."
+
+"A little coterie? I don't know what you're talking about!"--for this at
+least Peter could fight.
+
+"A big coterie, then! It's only that at the best. A nasty, prim,
+'official' woman who's perched on her little local pedestal and thinks
+she's a queen for ever because she's ridiculous for an hour! Oh you
+needn't tell me, I've seen them abroad--the dreariest females--and could
+imitate them here. I could do one for you on the spot if I weren't so
+tired. It's scarcely worth mentioning perhaps all this while--but I'm
+ready to drop." She picked up the white mantle she had tossed off,
+flinging it round her with her usual amplitude of gesture. "They're
+waiting for me and I confess I'm hungry. If I don't hurry they'll eat up
+all the nice things. Don't say I haven't been obliging, and come back
+when you're better. Good-night."
+
+"I quite agree with you that we've talked too much about the vulgar side
+of our question," Peter returned, walking round to get between her and
+the French window by which she apparently had a view of leaving the
+room. "That's because I've wanted to bribe you. Bribery's almost always
+vulgar."
+
+"Yes, you should do better. _Merci_! There's a cab: some of them have
+come for me. I must go," she added, listening for a sound that reached
+her from the road.
+
+Peter listened too, making out no cab. "Believe me, it isn't wise to
+turn your back on such an affection as mine and on such a confidence,"
+he broke out again, speaking almost in a warning tone--there was a touch
+of superior sternness in it, as of a rebuke for real folly, but it was
+meant to be tender--and stopping her within a few feet of the window.
+"Such things are the most precious that life has to give us," he added
+all but didactically.
+
+She had listened once more for a little; then she appeared to give up
+the idea of the cab. The reader need hardly be told that at this stage
+of her youthful history the right way for her lover to take her wouldn't
+have been to picture himself as acting for her highest good. "I like
+your calling the feeling with which I inspire you confidence," she
+presently said; and the deep note of the few words had something of the
+distant mutter of thunder.
+
+"What is it, then, when I offer you everything I have, everything I am,
+everything I shall ever be?"
+
+She seemed to measure him as for the possible success of an attempt to
+pass him. But she remained where she was. "I'm sorry for you, yes, but
+I'm also rather ashamed."
+
+"Ashamed of _me_?"
+
+"A brave offer to see me through--that's what I should call confidence.
+You say to-day that you hate the theatre--and do you know what has made
+you do it? The fact that it has too large a place in your mind to let
+you disown it and throw it over with a good conscience. It has a deep
+fascination for you, and yet you're not strong enough to do so
+enlightened and public a thing as take up with it in my person. You're
+ashamed of yourself for that, as all your constant high claims for it
+are on record; so you blaspheme against it to try and cover your retreat
+and your treachery and straighten out your personal situation. But it
+won't do, dear Mr. Sherringham--it won't do at all," Miriam proceeded
+with a triumphant, almost judicial lucidity which made her companion
+stare; "you haven't the smallest excuse of stupidity, and your
+perversity is no excuse whatever. Leave her alone altogether--a poor
+girl who's making her way--or else come frankly to help her, to give her
+the benefit of your wisdom. Don't lock her up for life under the
+pretence of doing her good. What does one most good is to see a little
+honesty. You're the best judge, the best critic, the best observer, the
+best _believer_, that I've ever come across: you're committed to it by
+everything you've said to me for a twelvemonth, by the whole turn of
+your mind, by the way you've followed us up, all of us, from far back.
+If an art's noble and beneficent one shouldn't be afraid to offer it
+one's arm. Your cousin isn't: he can make sacrifices."
+
+"My cousin?" Peter amazedly echoed. "Why, wasn't it only the other day
+you were throwing his sacrifices in his teeth?"
+
+Under this imputation on her straightness Miriam flinched but for an
+instant. "I did that to worry _you_," she smiled.
+
+"Why should you wish to worry me if you care so little about me?"
+
+"Care little about you? Haven't I told you often, didn't I tell you
+yesterday, how much I care? Ain't I showing it now by spending half the
+night here with you--giving myself away to all those cynics--taking all
+this trouble to persuade you to hold up your head and have the courage
+of your opinions?"
+
+"You invent my opinions for your convenience," said Peter all undaunted.
+"As long ago as the night I introduced you, in Paris, to Mademoiselle
+Voisin, you accused me of looking down on those who practise your art. I
+remember how you came down on me because I didn't take your friend
+Dashwood seriously enough. Perhaps I didn't; but if already at that time
+I was so wide of the mark you can scarcely accuse me of treachery now."
+
+"I don't remember, but I daresay you're right," Miriam coldly meditated.
+"What I accused you of then was probably simply what I reproach you with
+now--the germ at least of your deplorable weakness. You consider that we
+do awfully valuable work, and yet you wouldn't for the world let people
+suppose you really take our side. If your position was even at that time
+so false, so much the worse for you, that's all. Oh it's refreshing,"
+his formidable friend exclaimed after a pause during which Peter seemed
+to himself to taste the full bitterness of despair, so baffled and
+cheapened he intimately felt--"oh it's refreshing to see a man burn his
+ships in a cause that appeals to him, give up something precious for it
+and break with horrid timidities and snobberies! It's the most beautiful
+sight in the world."
+
+Poor Peter, sore as he was, and with the cold breath of failure in his
+face, nevertheless burst out laughing at this fine irony. "You're
+magnificent, you give me at this moment the finest possible illustration
+of what you mean by burning one's ships. Verily, verily there's no one
+like you: talk of timidity, talk of refreshment! If I had any talent for
+it I'd go on the stage to-morrow, so as to spend my life with you the
+better."
+
+"If you'll do that I'll be your wife the day after your first
+appearance. That would be really respectable," Miriam said.
+
+"Unfortunately I've no talent."
+
+"That would only make it the more respectable."
+
+"You're just like poor Nick," Peter returned--"you've taken to imitating
+Gabriel Nash. Don't you see that it's only if it were a question of my
+going on the stage myself that there would be a certain fitness in your
+contrasting me invidiously with Nick and in my giving up one career for
+another? But simply to stand in the wing and hold your shawl and your
+smelling-bottle--!" he concluded mournfully, as if he had ceased to
+debate.
+
+"Holding my shawl and my smelling-bottle is a mere detail, representing
+a very small part of the whole precious service, the protection and
+encouragement, for which a woman in my position might be indebted to a
+man interested in her work and as accomplished and determined as you
+very justly describe yourself."
+
+"And would it be your idea that such a man should live on the money
+earned by an exhibition of the person of his still more accomplished and
+still more determined wife?"
+
+"Why not if they work together--if there's something of his spirit and
+his support in everything she does?" Miriam demanded. "_Je vous
+attendais_ with the famous 'person'; of course that's the great stick
+they beat us with. Yes, we show it for money, those of us who have
+anything decent to show, and some no doubt who haven't, which is the
+real scandal. What will you have? It's only the envelope of the idea,
+it's only our machinery, which ought to be conceded to us; and in
+proportion as the idea takes hold of us do we become unconscious of the
+clumsy body. Poor old 'person'--if you knew what _we_ think of it! If
+you don't forget it that's your own affair: it shows you're dense before
+the idea."
+
+"That _I_'m dense?"--and Peter appealed to their lamplit solitude, the
+favouring, intimate night that only witnessed his defeat, as if this
+outrage had been all that was wanting.
+
+"I mean the public is--the public who pays us. After all, they expect us
+to look at _them_ too, who are not half so well worth it. If you should
+see some of the creatures who have the face to plant themselves there in
+the stalls before one for three mortal hours! I daresay it would be
+simpler to have no bodies, but we're all in the same box, and it would
+be a great injustice to the idea, and we're all showing ourselves all
+the while; only some of us are not worth paying."
+
+"You're extraordinarily droll, but somehow I can't laugh at you," he
+said, his handsome face drawn by his pain to a contraction sufficiently
+attesting the fact. "Do you remember the second time I ever saw you--the
+day you recited at my place?" he abruptly asked; a good deal as if he
+were taking from his quiver an arrow which, if it was the last, was also
+one of the sharpest.
+
+"Perfectly, and what an idiot I was, though it was only yesterday!"
+
+"You expressed to me then a deep detestation of the sort of
+self-exposure to which the profession you were taking up would commit
+you. If you compared yourself to a contortionist at a country fair I'm
+only taking my cue from you."
+
+"I don't know what I may have said then," replied Miriam, whose steady
+flight was not arrested by this ineffectual bolt; "I was no doubt
+already wonderful for talking of things I know nothing about. I was only
+on the brink of the stream and I perhaps thought the water colder than
+it is. One warms it a bit one's self when once one's in. Of course I'm a
+contortionist and of course there's a hateful side, but don't you see
+how that very fact puts a price on every compensation, on the help of
+those who are ready to insist on the _other_ side, the grand one, and
+especially on the sympathy of the person who's ready to insist most and
+to keep before us the great thing, the element that makes up for
+everything?"
+
+"The element--?" Peter questioned with a vagueness that was pardonably
+exaggerated. "Do you mean your success?"
+
+"I mean what you've so often been eloquent about," she returned with an
+indulgent shrug--"the way we simply stir people's souls. Ah there's
+where life can help us," she broke out with a change of tone, "there's
+where human relations and affections can help us; love and faith and joy
+and suffering and experience--I don't know what to call 'em! They
+suggest things, they light them up and sanctify them, as you may say;
+they make them appear worth doing." She became radiant a while, as if
+with a splendid vision; then melting into still another accent, which
+seemed all nature and harmony and charity, she proceeded: "I must tell
+you that in the matter of what we can do for each other I have a
+tremendously high ideal. I go in for closeness of union, for identity of
+interest. A true marriage, as they call it, must do one a lot of good!"
+
+He stood there looking at her for a time during which her eyes
+sustained his penetration without a relenting gleam, some lapse of
+cruelty or of paradox. But with a passionate, inarticulate sound he
+turned away, to remain, on the edge of the window, his hands in his
+pockets, gazing defeatedly, doggedly, into the featureless night, into
+the little black garden which had nothing to give him but a familiar
+smell of damp. The warm darkness had no relief for him, and Miriam's
+histrionic hardness flung him back against a fifth-rate world, against a
+bedimmed, star-punctured nature which had no consolation--the bleared,
+irresponsive eyes of the London firmament. For the brief space of his
+glaring at these things he dumbly and helplessly raged. What he wanted
+was something that was not in _that_ thick prospect. What was the
+meaning of this sudden, offensive importunity of "art," this senseless,
+mocking catch, like some irritating chorus of conspirators in a bad
+opera, in which her voice was so incongruously conjoined with Nick's and
+in which Biddy's sweet little pipe had not scrupled still more
+bewilderingly to mingle? Art might yield to damnation: what commission
+after all had he ever given it to better him or bother him? If the
+pointless groan in which Peter exhaled a part of his humiliation had
+been translated into words, these words would have been as heavily
+charged with a genuine British mistrust of the uncanny principle as if
+the poor fellow speaking them had never quitted his island. Several
+acquired perceptions had struck a deep root in him, but an immemorial,
+compact formation lay deeper still. He tried at the present hour to rest
+on it spiritually, but found it inelastic; and at the very moment when
+most conscious of this absence of the rebound or of any tolerable ease
+he felt his vision solicited by an object which, as he immediately
+guessed, could only add to the complication of things.
+
+An undefined shape hovered before him in the garden, halfway between the
+gate and the house; it remained outside of the broad shaft of lamplight
+projected from the window. It wavered for a moment after it had become
+aware of his observation and then whisked round the corner of the lodge.
+This characteristic movement so effectually dispelled the mystery--it
+could only be Mrs. Rooth who resorted to such conspicuous
+secrecies--that, to feel the game up and his interview over, he had no
+need to see the figure reappear on second thoughts and dodge about in
+the dusk with a sportive, vexatious vagueness. Evidently Miriam's
+warning of a few minutes before had been founded: a cab had deposited
+her anxious mother at the garden door. Mrs. Rooth had entered with
+precautions; she had approached the house and retreated; she had effaced
+herself--had peered and waited and listened. Maternal solicitude and
+muddled calculations had drawn her from a feast as yet too imperfectly
+commemorative. The heroine of the occasion of course had been
+intolerably missed, so that the old woman had both obliged the company
+and quieted her own nerves by jumping insistently into a hansom and
+rattling up to Saint John's Wood to reclaim the absentee. But if she had
+wished to be in time she had also desired not to be impertinent, and
+would have been still more embarrassed to say what she aspired to
+promote than to phrase what she had proposed to hinder. She wanted to
+abstain tastefully, to interfere felicitously, and, more generally and
+justifiably--the small hours having come--to see what her young charges
+were "up to." She would probably have gathered that they were
+quarrelling, and she appeared now to be motioning to Peter to know if it
+were over. He took no notice of her signals, if signals they were; he
+only felt that before he made way for the poor, odious lady there was
+one small spark he might strike from Miriam's flint.
+
+Without letting her guess that her mother was on the premises he turned
+again to his companion, half-expecting she would have taken her chance
+to regard their discussion as more than terminated and by the other
+egress flit away from him in silence. But she was still there; she was
+in the act of approaching him with a manifest intention of kindness, and
+she looked indeed, to his surprise, like an angel of mercy.
+
+"Don't let us part so harshly," she said--"with your trying to make me
+feel as if I were merely disobliging. It's no use talking--we only hurt
+each other. Let us hold our tongues like decent people and go about our
+business. It isn't as if you hadn't any cure--when you've such a capital
+one. Try it, try it, my dear friend--you'll see! I wish you the highest
+promotion and the quickest--every success and every reward. When you've
+got them all, some day, and I've become a great swell too, we'll meet on
+that solid basis and you'll be glad I've been dreadful now."
+
+"Surely before I leave you I've a right to ask you this," he answered,
+holding fast in both his own the cool hand of farewell she had chosen
+finally to torment him with. "Are you ready to follow up by a definite
+promise your implied assurance that I've a remedy?"
+
+"A definite promise?" Miriam benignly gazed--it was the perfection of
+indirectness. "I don't 'imply' that you've a remedy. I declare it on the
+house-tops. That delightful girl--"
+
+"I'm not talking of any delightful girl but you!" he broke in with a
+voice that, as he afterwards learned, struck Mrs. Rooth's ears in the
+garden with affright. "I simply hold you, under pain of being convicted
+of the grossest prevarication, to the strict sense of what you said ten
+minutes ago."
+
+"Ah I've said so many things! One has to do that to get rid of you. You
+rather hurt my hand," she added--and jerked it away in a manner showing
+that if she was an angel of mercy her mercy was partly for herself.
+
+"As I understand you, then, I may have some hope if I do renounce my
+profession?" Peter pursued. "If I break with everything, my prospects,
+my studies, my training, my emoluments, my past and my future, the
+service of my country and the ambition of my life, and engage to take up
+instead the business of watching your interests so far as I may learn
+how and ministering to your triumphs so far as may in me lie--if after
+further reflexion I decide to go through these preliminaries, have I
+your word that I may definitely look to you to reward me with your
+precious hand?"
+
+"I don't think you've any right to put the question to me now," she
+returned with a promptitude partly produced perhaps by the clear-cut
+form his solemn speech had given--there was a charm in the sound of
+it--to each item of his enumeration. "The case is so very contingent, so
+dependent on what you ingeniously call your further reflexion. While you
+really reserve everything you ask me to commit myself. If it's a
+question of further reflexion why did you drag me up here? And then,"
+she added, "I'm so far from wishing you to take any such monstrous
+step."
+
+"Monstrous you call it? Just now you said it would be sublime."
+
+"Sublime if it's done with spontaneity, with passion; ridiculous if it's
+done 'after further reflexion.' As you said, perfectly, a while ago, it
+isn't a thing to reason about."
+
+"Ah what a help you'd be to me in diplomacy!" Peter yearningly cried.
+"Will you give me a year to consider?"
+
+"Would you trust _me_ for a year?"
+
+"Why not, if I'm ready to trust you for life?"
+
+"Oh I shouldn't be free then, worse luck. And how much you seem to take
+for granted one must like you!"
+
+"Remember," he could immediately say, "that you've made a great point of
+your liking me. Wouldn't you do so still more if I were heroic?"
+
+She showed him, for all her high impatience now, the interest of a long
+look. "I think I should pity you in such a cause. Give it all to _her_;
+don't throw away a real happiness!"
+
+"Ah you can't back out of your position with a few vague and even rather
+impertinent words!" Peter protested. "You accuse me of swallowing my
+opinions, but you swallow your pledges. You've painted in heavenly
+colours the sacrifice I'm talking of, and now you must take the
+consequences."
+
+"The consequences?"
+
+"Why my coming back in a year to square you."
+
+"Ah you're a bore!"--she let him have it at last. "Come back when you
+like. I don't wonder you've grown desperate, but fancy _me_ then!" she
+added as she looked past him at a new interlocutor.
+
+"Yes, but if he'll square you!" Peter heard Mrs. Rooth's voice respond
+all persuasively behind him. She had stolen up to the window now, had
+passed the threshold, was in the room, but her daughter had not been
+startled. "What is it he wants to do, dear?" she continued to Miriam.
+
+"To induce me to marry him if he'll go upon the stage. He'll practise
+over there--where he's going--and then come back and appear. Isn't it
+too dreadful? Talk him out of it, stay with him, soothe him!" the girl
+hurried on. "You'll find some drinks and some biscuits in the
+cupboard--keep him with you, pacify him, give him _his_ little supper.
+Meanwhile I'll go to mine; I'll take the brougham; don't follow!"
+
+With which words Miriam bounded into the garden, her white drapery
+shining for an instant in the darkness before she disappeared. Peter
+looked about him to pick up his hat, but while he did so heard the bang
+of the gate and the quick carriage get into motion. Mrs. Rooth appeared
+to sway violently and in opposed directions: that of the impulse to rush
+after Miriam and that of the extraordinary possibility to which the
+young lady had alluded. She was in doubt, yet at a venture, detaining
+him with a maternal touch, she twinkled up at their visitor like an
+insinuating glow-worm. "I'm so glad you came."
+
+"I'm not. I've got nothing by it," Peter said as he found his hat.
+
+"Oh it was so beautiful!" she declared.
+
+"The play--yes, wonderful. I'm afraid it's too late for me to avail
+myself of the privilege your daughter offers me. Good-night."
+
+"Ah it's a pity; won't you take _anything_?" asked Mrs. Rooth. "When I
+heard your voice so high I was scared and hung back." But before he
+could reply she added: "Are you really thinking of the stage?"
+
+"It comes to the same thing."
+
+"Do you mean you've proposed?"
+
+"Oh unmistakably."
+
+"And what does she say?"
+
+"Why you heard: she says I'm an ass."
+
+"Ah the little wretch!" laughed Mrs. Rooth. "Leave her to me. I'll help
+you. But you are mad. Give up nothing--least of all your advantages."
+
+"I won't give up your daughter," said Peter, reflecting that if this was
+cheap it was at any rate good enough for Mrs. Rooth. He mended it a
+little indeed by adding darkly: "But you can't make her take me."
+
+"I can prevent her taking any one else."
+
+"Oh _can_ you?" Peter cried with more scepticism than ceremony.
+
+"You'll see--you'll see." He passed into the garden, but, after she had
+blown out the candles and drawn the window to, Mrs. Rooth went with him.
+"All you've got to do is to be yourself--to be true to your fine
+position," she explained as they proceeded. "Trust me with the
+rest--trust me and be quiet."
+
+"How can one be quiet after this magnificent evening?"
+
+"Yes, but it's just that!" panted the eager old woman. "It has launched
+her so on this sea of dangers that to make up for the loss of the old
+security (don't you know?) we must take a still firmer hold."
+
+"Aye, of what?" Peter asked as Mrs. Rooth's comfort became vague while
+she stopped with him at the garden door.
+
+"Ah you know: of the _real_ life, of the true anchor!" Her hansom was
+waiting for her and she added: "I kept it, you see; but a little
+extravagance on the night one's fortune has come!--"
+
+Peter stared. Yes, there were people whose fortune had come; but he
+managed to stammer: "Are you following her again?"
+
+"For you--for you!" And she clambered into the vehicle. From the seat,
+enticingly, she offered him the place beside her. "Won't you come too? I
+know he invited you." Peter declined with a quick gesture and as he
+turned away he heard her call after him, to cheer him on his lonely
+walk: "I shall keep this up; I shall never lose sight of her!"
+
+
+
+
+BOOK EIGHTH
+
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+
+When Mrs. Dallow returned to London just before London broke up the fact
+was immediately known in Calcutta Gardens and was promptly communicated
+to Nick Dormer by his sister Bridget. He had learnt it in no other
+way--he had had no correspondence with Julia during her absence. He
+gathered that his mother and sisters were not ignorant of her
+whereabouts--he never mentioned her name to them--but as to this he was
+not sure if the source of their information had been the _Morning Post_
+or a casual letter received by the inscrutable Biddy. He knew Biddy had
+some epistolary commerce with Julia; he had an impression Grace
+occasionally exchanged letters with Mrs. Gresham. Biddy, however, who,
+as he was also well aware, was always studying what he would like,
+forbore to talk to him about the absent mistress of Harsh beyond once
+dropping the remark that she had gone from Florence to Venice and was
+enjoying gondolas and sunsets too much to leave them. Nick's comment on
+this was that she was a happy woman to have such a go at Titian and
+Tintoret: as he spoke, and for some time afterwards, the sense of how he
+himself should enjoy a like "go" made him ache with ineffectual longing.
+
+He had forbidden himself at the present to think of absence, not only
+because it would be inconvenient and expensive, but because it would be
+a kind of retreat from the enemy, a concession to difficulty. The enemy
+was no particular person and no particular body of persons: not his
+mother; not Mr. Carteret, who, as he heard from the doctor at Beauclere,
+lingered on, sinking and sinking till his vitality appeared to have the
+vertical depth of a gold-mine; not his pacified constituents, who had
+found a healthy diversion in returning another Liberal wholly without
+Mrs. Dallow's aid (she had not participated even to the extent of a
+responsive telegram in the election); not his late colleagues in the
+House, nor the biting satirists of the newspapers, nor the brilliant
+women he took down at dinner-parties--there was only one sense in which
+he ever took them down; not in short his friends, his foes, his private
+thoughts, the periodical phantom of his shocked father: the enemy was
+simply the general awkwardness of his situation. This awkwardness was
+connected with the sense of responsibility so greatly deprecated by
+Gabriel Nash, Gabriel who had ceased to roam of late on purpose to miss
+as few scenes as possible of the drama, rapidly growing dull alas, of
+his friend's destiny; but that compromising relation scarcely drew the
+soreness from it. The public flurry produced by his collapse had only
+been large enough to mark the flatness of our young man's position when
+it was over. To have had a few jokes cracked audibly at your expense
+wasn't an ordeal worth talking of; the hardest thing about it was merely
+that there had not been enough of them to yield a proportion of good
+ones. Nick had felt in fine the benefit of living in an age and in a
+society where number and pressure have, for the individual figure,
+especially when it's a zero, compensations almost equal to their
+cruelties.
+
+No, the pinch for his conscience after a few weeks had passed was simply
+an acute mistrust of the superficiality of performance into which the
+desire to justify himself might hurry him. That desire was passionate
+as regards Julia Dallow; it was ardent also as regards his mother; and,
+to make it absolutely uncomfortable, it was complicated with the
+conviction that neither of them would know his justification even when
+she should see it. They probably couldn't know it if they would, and
+very certainly wouldn't if they could. He assured himself, however, that
+this limitation wouldn't matter; it was their affair--his own was simply
+to have the right sort of thing to show. The work he was now attempting
+wasn't the right sort of thing, though doubtless Julia, for instance,
+would dislike it almost as much as if it were. The two portraits of
+Miriam, after the first exhilaration of his finding himself at large,
+filled him with no private glee; they were not in the direction in which
+he wished for the present really to move. There were moments when he
+felt almost angry, though of course he held his tongue, when by the few
+persons who saw them they were pronounced wonderfully clever. That they
+were wonderfully clever was just the detestable thing in them, so active
+had that cleverness been in making them seem better than they were.
+There were people to whom he would have been ashamed to show them, and
+these were the people whom it would give him most pleasure some day to
+please. Not only had he many an hour of disgust at his actual work, but
+he thought he saw as in an ugly revelation that nature had cursed him
+with an odious facility and that the lesson of his life, the sternest
+and wholesomest, would be to keep out of the trap it had laid for him.
+He had fallen into this trap on the threshold and had only scrambled out
+with his honour. He had a talent for appearance, and that was the fatal
+thing; he had a damnable suppleness and a gift of immediate response, a
+readiness to oblige, that made him seem to take up causes which he
+really left lying, enabled him to learn enough about them in an hour to
+have all the air of having converted them to his use. Many people used
+them--that was the only thing to be said--who had taken them in much
+less. He was at all events too clever by half, since this pernicious
+overflow had wrecked most of his attempts. He had assumed a virtue and
+enjoyed assuming it, and the assumption had cheated his father and his
+mother and his affianced wife and his rich benefactor and the candid
+burgesses of Harsh and the cynical reporters of the newspapers. His
+enthusiasms had been but young curiosity, his speeches had been young
+agility, his professions and adhesions had been like postage-stamps
+without glue: the head was all right, but they wouldn't stick. He stood
+ready now to wring the neck of the irrepressible vice that certainly
+would tend to nothing so much as to get him into further trouble. His
+only real justification would be to turn patience--his own of
+course--inside out; yet if there should be a way to misread that recipe
+his humbugging genius could be trusted infallibly to discover it. Cheap
+and easy results would dangle before him, little amateurish
+conspicuities at exhibitions helped by his history; putting it in his
+power to triumph with a quick "What do you say to that?" over those he
+had wounded. The fear of this danger was corrosive; it poisoned even
+lawful joys. If he should have a striking picture at the Academy next
+year it wouldn't be a crime; yet he couldn't help suspecting any
+conditions that would enable him to be striking so soon. In this way he
+felt quite enough how Gabriel Nash had "had" him whenever railing at his
+fever for proof, and how inferior as a productive force the desire to
+win over the ill-disposed might be to the principle of quiet growth.
+Nash had a foreign manner of lifting up his finger and waving it before
+him, as if to put an end to everything, whenever it became, in
+conversation or discussion, to any extent a question whether any one
+would "like" anything.
+
+It was presumably in some degree at least a due respect for the
+principle of quiet growth that kept Nick on the spot at present, made
+him stick fast to Rosedale Road and Calcutta Gardens and deny himself
+the simplifications of absence. Do what he would he couldn't despoil
+himself of the impression that the disagreeable was somehow connected
+with the salutary, and the "quiet" with the disagreeable, when
+stubbornly borne; so he resisted a hundred impulses to run away to Paris
+or to Florence, coarse forms of the temptation to persuade himself by
+material motion that he was launched. He stayed in London because it
+seemed to him he was there more conscious of what he had undertaken, and
+he had a horror of shirking the consciousness. One element in it indeed
+was his noting how little convenience he could have found in a foreign
+journey even had his judgement approved such a subterfuge. The stoppage
+of his supplies from Beauclere had now become an historic fact, with
+something of the majesty of its class about it: he had had time to see
+what a difference this would make in his life. His means were small and
+he had several old debts, the number of which, as he believed, loomed
+large to his mother's imagination. He could never tell her she
+exaggerated, because he told her nothing of that sort in these days:
+they had no intimate talk, for an impenetrable partition, a tall,
+bristling hedge of untrimmed misconceptions, had sprung up between them.
+Poor Biddy had made a hole in it through which she squeezed from side to
+side, to keep up communications, at the cost of many rents and
+scratches; but Lady Agnes walked straight and stiff, never turning her
+head, never stopping to pluck the least little daisy of consolation. It
+was in this manner she wished to signify that she had accepted her
+wrongs. She draped herself in them as in a Roman mantle and had never
+looked so proud and wasted and handsome as now that her eyes rested only
+on ruins.
+
+Nick was extremely sorry for her, though he marked as a dreadful want of
+grace her never setting a foot in Rosedale Road--she mentioned his
+studio no more than if it had been a private gambling-house or something
+worse; sorry because he was well aware that for the hour everything must
+appear to her to have crumbled. The luxury of Broadwood would have to
+crumble: his mind was very clear about that. Biddy's prospects had
+withered to the finest, dreariest dust, and Biddy indeed, taking a
+lesson from her brother's perversities, seemed little disposed to better
+a bad business. She professed the most peace-making sentiments, but when
+it came really to doing something to brighten up the scene she showed
+herself portentously corrupt. After Peter Sherringham's heartless flight
+she had wantonly slighted an excellent opportunity to repair her
+misfortune. Lady Agnes had reason to infer, about the end of June, that
+young Mr. Grindon, the only son--the other children being girls--of an
+immensely rich industrial and political baronet in the north, was
+literally waiting for the faintest sign. This reason she promptly
+imparted to her younger daughter, whose intelligence had to take it in
+but who had shown it no other consideration. Biddy had set her charming
+face as a stone; she would have nothing to do with signs, and she,
+practically speaking, wilfully, wickedly refused a magnificent offer, so
+that the young man carried his high expectations elsewhere. How much in
+earnest he had been was proved by the fact that before Goodwood had come
+and gone he was captured by Lady Muriel Macpherson. It was superfluous
+to insist on the frantic determination to get married written on such an
+accident as that. Nick knew of this episode only through Grace, and he
+deplored its having occurred in the midst of other disasters.
+
+He knew or he suspected something more as well--something about his
+brother Percival which, should it come to light, no phase of their
+common history would be genial enough to gloss over. It had usually been
+supposed that Percy's store of comfort against the ills of life was
+confined to the infallibility of his rifle. He was not sensitive, and
+his use of that weapon represented a resource against which common
+visitations might have spent themselves. It had suddenly come to Nick's
+ears, however, that he cultivated a concurrent support in the person of
+a robust countrywoman, housed in an ivied corner of Warwickshire, in
+whom he had long been interested and whom, without any flourish of
+magnanimity, he had ended by making his wife. The situation of the
+latest born of the pledges of this affection, a blooming boy--there had
+been two or three previously--was therefore perfectly regular and of a
+nature to make a difference in the worldly position, as the phrase ran,
+of his moneyless uncle. If there be degrees in the absolute and Percy
+had an heir--others, moreover, supposedly following--Nick would have to
+regard himself as still more moneyless than before. His brother's last
+step was doubtless, given the case, to be commended; but such
+discoveries were enlivening only when made in other families, and Lady
+Agnes would scarcely enjoy learning to what tune she had become a
+grandmother.
+
+Nick forbore from delicacy to intimate to Biddy that he thought it a
+pity she couldn't care for Mr. Grindon; but he had a private sense that
+if she had been capable of such a feat it would have lightened a little
+the weight he himself had to carry. He bore her a slight grudge, which
+lasted till Julia Dallow came back; when the circumstance of the girl's
+being summoned immediately down to Harsh created a diversion that was
+perhaps after all only fanciful. Biddy, as we know, entertained a
+theory, which Nick had found occasion to combat, that Mrs. Dallow had
+not treated him perfectly well; therefore in going to Harsh the very
+first time that relative held out a hand to her so jealous a little
+sister must have recognised a special inducement. The inducement might
+have been that the relative had comfort for her, that she was acting by
+her cousin's direct advice, that they were still in close communion on
+the question of the offers Biddy was not to accept, that in short
+Peter's sister had taken upon herself to see that their young friend
+should remain free for the day of the fugitive's inevitable return. Once
+or twice indeed Nick wondered if Julia had herself been visited, in a
+larger sense, by the thought of retracing her steps--if she wished to
+draw out her young friend's opinion as to how she might do that
+gracefully. During the few days she was in town Nick had seen her twice
+in Great Stanhope Street, but neither time alone. She had said to him on
+one of these occasions in her odd, explosive way: "I should have thought
+you'd have gone away somewhere--it must be such a bore." Of course she
+firmly believed he was staying for Miriam, which he really was not; and
+probably she had written this false impression off to Peter, who, still
+more probably, would prefer to regard it as just. Nick was staying for
+Miriam only in the sense that he should very glad of the money he might
+receive for the portrait he was engaged in painting. That money would be
+a great convenience to him in spite of the obstructive ground Miriam had
+taken in pretending--she had blown half a gale about it--that he had
+had no right to dispose of such a production without her consent. His
+answer to this was simply that the purchaser was so little of a stranger
+that it didn't go, so to speak, out of the family, out of hers. It
+didn't matter, Miriam's retort that if Mr. Sherringham had formerly been
+no stranger he was utterly one now, so that nothing would ever less
+delight him than to see her hated image on his wall. He would back out
+of the bargain and Nick be left with the picture on his hands. Nick
+jeered at this shallow theory and when she came to sit the question
+served as well as another to sprinkle their familiar silences with
+chaff. He already knew something, as we have seen, of the conditions in
+which his distracted kinsman had left England; and this connected
+itself, in casual meditation, with some of the calculations imputable to
+Julia and to Biddy. There had naturally been a sequel to the queer
+behaviour perceptible in Peter, at the theatre, on the eve of his
+departure--a sequel lighted by a word of Miriam's in the course of her
+first sitting to Nick after her great night. "Fancy"--so this
+observation ran--"fancy the dear man finding time in the press of all
+his last duties to ask me to marry him!"
+
+"He told me you had found time in the press of all yours to say you
+would," Nick replied. And this was pretty much all that had passed on
+the subject between them--save of course her immediately making clear
+that Peter had grossly misinformed him. What had happened was that she
+had said she would do nothing of the sort. She professed a desire not to
+be confronted again with this obnoxious theme, and Nick easily fell in
+with it--quite from his own settled inclination not to handle that kind
+of subject with her. If Julia had false ideas about him, and if Peter
+had them too, his part of the business was to take the simplest course
+to establish the falsity. There were difficulties indeed attached even
+to the simplest course, but there would be a difficulty the less if one
+should forbear to meddle in promiscuous talk with the general,
+suggestive topic of intimate unions. It is certain that in these days
+Nick cultivated the practice of forbearances for which he didn't
+receive, for which perhaps he never would receive, due credit.
+
+He had been convinced for some time that one of the next things he
+should hear would be that Julia Dallow had arranged to marry either Mr.
+Macgeorge or some other master of multitudes. He could think of that
+now, he found--think of it with resignation even when Julia, before his
+eyes, looked so handsomely forgetful that her appearance had to be taken
+as referring still more to their original intimacy than to his
+comparatively superficial offence. What made this accomplishment of his
+own remarkable was that there was something else he thought of quite as
+much--the fact that he had only to see her again to feel by how great a
+charm she had in the old days taken possession of him. This charm
+operated apparently in a very direct, primitive way: her presence
+diffused it and fully established it, but her absence left comparatively
+little of it behind. It dwelt in the very facts of her person--it was
+something she happened physically to be; yet--considering that the
+question was of something very like loveliness--its envelope of
+associations, of memories and recurrences, had no great destiny. She
+packed it up and took it away with her quite as if she had been a woman
+who had come to sell a set of laces. The laces were as wonderful as ever
+when taken out of the box, but to admire again their rarity you had to
+send for the woman. What was above all remarkable for our young man was
+that Miriam Rooth fetched a fellow, vulgarly speaking, very much less
+than Julia at the times when, being on the spot, Julia did fetch. He
+could paint Miriam day after day without any agitating blur of vision;
+in fact the more he saw of her the clearer grew the atmosphere through
+which she blazed, the more her richness became one with that of the
+flowering work. There are reciprocities and special sympathies in such a
+relation; mysterious affinities they used to be called, divinations of
+private congruity. Nick had an unexpressed conviction that if, according
+to his defeated desire, he had embarked with Mrs. Dallow in this
+particular quest of a great prize, disaster would have overtaken them on
+the deep waters. Even with the limited risk indeed disaster had come;
+but it was of a different kind and it had the advantage for him that now
+she couldn't reproach and denounce him as the cause of it--couldn't do
+so at least on any ground he was obliged to recognise. She would never
+know how much he had cared for her, how much he cared for her still;
+inasmuch as the conclusive proof for himself was his conscious
+reluctance to care for another woman--evidence she positively misread.
+Some day he would doubtless try to do that; but such a day seemed as yet
+far off, and he had meanwhile no spite, no vindictive impulse, to help
+him. The soreness that mingled with his liberation, the sense of
+indignity even, as of a full cup suddenly dashed by a blundering hand
+from his lips, demanded certainly a balm; but it found the balm, for the
+time, in another passion, not in a rancorous exercise of the same--a
+passion strong enough to make him forget what a pity it was he was not
+so formed as to care for two women at once.
+
+As soon as Julia returned to England he broke ground to his mother on
+the subject of her making the mistress of Broadwood understand that she
+and the girls now regarded their occupancy of that estate as absolutely
+over. He had already, several weeks before, picked a little at the arid
+tract of that indicated surrender, but in the interval the soil appeared
+to have formed again to a considerable thickness. It was disagreeable to
+him to call his parent's attention to the becoming course, and
+especially disagreeable to have to emphasise it and discuss it and
+perhaps clamour for it. He would have liked the whole business to be
+tacit--a little triumph of silent delicacy. But he found reasons to
+suspect that what in fact would be most tacit was Julia's certain
+endurance of any chance failure of that charm. Lady Agnes had a theory
+that they had virtually--"practically" as she said--given up the place,
+so that there was no need of making a splash about it; but Nick
+discovered in the course of an exploration of Biddy's view more rigorous
+perhaps than any to which he had ever subjected her, that none of their
+property had been removed from the delightful house--none of the things
+(there were ever so many things) heavily planted there when their mother
+took possession. Lady Agnes was the proprietor of innumerable articles
+of furniture, relics and survivals of her former greatness, and moved
+about the world with a train of heterogeneous baggage; so that her quiet
+overflow into the spaciousness of Broadwood had had all the luxury of a
+final subsidence. What Nick had to propose to her now was a dreadful
+combination, a relapse into the conditions she most hated--seaside
+lodgings, bald storehouses in the Marylebone Road, little London rooms
+crammed with objects that caught the dirt and made them stuffy. He was
+afraid he should really finish her, and he himself was surprised in a
+degree at his insistence. He wouldn't have supposed he should have cared
+so much, but he found he did care intensely. He cared enough--it says
+everything--to explain to his mother that her retention of Broadwood
+would show "practically" (since that was her great word) for the
+violation of an agreement. Julia had given them the place on the
+understanding that he was to marry her, and once he was definitely not
+to marry her they had no right to keep the place. "Yes, you make the
+mess and _we_ pay the penalty!" the poor lady flashed out; but this was
+the only overt protest she made--except indeed to contend that their
+withdrawal would be an act ungracious and offensive to Julia. She looked
+as she had looked during the months that succeeded his father's death,
+but she gave a general, a final grim assent to the proposition that, let
+their kinswoman take it as she would, their own duty was unmistakably
+clear.
+
+It was Grace who was principal representative of the idea that Julia
+would be outraged by such a step; she never ceased to repeat that she
+had never heard of anything so "nasty." Nick would have expected this of
+Grace, but he felt rather bereft and betrayed when Biddy murmured to him
+that _she_ knew--that there was really no need of their sacrificing
+their mother's comfort to an extravagant scruple. She intimated that if
+Nick would only consent to their going on with Broadwood as if nothing
+had happened--or rather as if everything had happened--she would answer
+for the feelings of the owner. For almost the first time in his life
+Nick disliked what Biddy said to him, and he gave her a sharp rejoinder,
+a taste of the general opinion that they all had enough to do to answer
+for themselves. He remembered afterwards the way she looked at
+him--startled, even frightened and with rising tears--before turning
+away. He held that they should judge better how Julia would take it
+after they had thrown up the place; and he made it his duty to arrange
+that his mother should formally advise her, by letter, of their
+intending to depart at once. Julia could then protest to her heart's
+content. Nick was aware that for the most part he didn't pass for
+practical; he could imagine why, from his early years, people should
+have joked him about it. But this time he was determined to rest on a
+rigid view of things as they were. He didn't sec his mother's letter,
+but he knew that it went. He felt she would have been more loyal if she
+had shown it to him, though of course there could be but little question
+of loyalty now. That it had really been written, however, very much on
+the lines he dictated was clear to him from the subsequent surprise
+which Lady Agnes's blankness didn't prevent his divining.
+
+Julia acknowledged the offered news, but in unexpected terms: she had
+apparently neither resisted nor protested; she had simply been very glad
+to get her house back again and had not accused any of them of
+nastiness. Nick saw no more of her letter than he had seen of his
+mother's, but he was able to say to Grace--to their parent he was
+studiously mute--"My poor child, you see after all that we haven't
+kicked up such a row." Grace shook her head and looked gloomy and deeply
+wise, replying that he had no cause to triumph--they were so far from
+having seen the end of it yet. Thus he guessed that his mother had
+complied with his wish on the calculation that it would be a mere form,
+that Julia would entreat them not to be so fantastic and that he himself
+would then, in the presence of her wounded surprise, consent to a quiet
+continuance, so much in the interest--the air of Broadwood had a
+purity!--of the health of all of them. But since Julia jumped at their
+sacrifice he had no chance to be mollified: he had all grossly to
+persist in having been right.
+
+At bottom probably he was a little surprised at Julia's so prompt
+assent. Literally speaking, it was not perfectly graceful. He was sorry
+his mother had been so deceived, but was sorrier still for Biddy's
+mistake--it showed she might be mistaken about other things. Nothing was
+left now but for Lady Agnes to say, as she did substantially whenever
+she saw him: "We're to prepare to spend the autumn at Worthing then or
+some other horrible place? I don't know their names: it's the only thing
+we can afford." There was an implication in this that if he expected her
+to drag her girls about to country-houses in a continuance of the
+fidgety effort to work them off he must understand at once that she was
+now too weary and too sad and too sick. She had done her best for them
+and it had all been vain and cruel--now therefore the poor creatures
+must look out for themselves. To the grossness of Biddy's misconduct she
+needn't refer, nor to the golden opportunity that young woman had
+forfeited by her odious treatment of Mr. Grindon. It was clear that this
+time Lady Agnes was incurably discouraged; so much so as to fail to
+glean the dimmest light from the fact that the girl was really making a
+long stay at Harsh. Biddy went to and fro two or three times and then in
+August fairly settled there; and what her mother mainly saw in her
+absence was the desire to keep out of the way of household reminders of
+her depravity. In fact, as turned out, Lady Agnes and Grace gathered
+themselves together in the first days of that month for another visit to
+the very old lady who had been Sir Nicholas's godmother; after which
+they went somewhere else--so that the question of Worthing had not
+immediately to be faced.
+
+Nick stayed on in London with the obsession of work humming in his ears;
+he was joyfully conscious that for three or four months, in the empty
+Babylon, he would have ample stores of time. But toward the end of
+August he got a letter from Grace in which she spoke of her situation
+and of her mother's in a manner that seemed to impose on him the doing
+of something tactful. They were paying a third visit--he knew that in
+Calcutta Gardens lady's-maids had been to and fro with boxes,
+replenishments of wardrobes--and yet somehow the outlook for the autumn
+was dark. Grace didn't say it in so many words, but what he read between
+the lines was that they had no more invitations. What, therefore, in
+pity's name was to become of them? People liked them well enough when
+Biddy was with them, but they didn't care for her mother and her, that
+prospect _tout pur_, and Biddy was cooped up indefinitely with Julia.
+This was not the manner in which Grace had anciently alluded to her
+sister's happy visits at Harsh, and the change of tone made Nick wince
+with a sense of all that had collapsed. Biddy was a little fish worth
+landing in short, scantly as she seemed disposed to bite, and Grace's
+rude probity could admit that she herself was not.
+
+Nick had an inspiration: by way of doing something tactful he went down
+to Brighton and took lodgings, for several weeks, in the general
+interest, the very quietest and sunniest he could find. This he intended
+as a kindly surprise, a reminder of how he had his mother's and sisters'
+comfort at heart, how he could exert himself and save them trouble. But
+he had no sooner concluded his bargain--it was a more costly one than he
+had at first calculated--than he was bewildered and befogged to learn
+that the persons on whose behalf he had so exerted himself were to pass
+the autumn at Broadwood with Julia. That daughter of privilege had taken
+the place into familiar use again and was now correcting their former
+surprise at her crude indifference--this was infinitely characteristic
+of Julia--by inviting them to share it with her. Nick wondered vaguely
+what she was "up to"; but when his mother treated herself to the line
+irony of addressing him an elaborately humble request for his consent to
+their accepting the merciful refuge--she repeated this expression three
+times--he replied that she might do exactly as she liked: he would only
+mention that he shouldn't feel himself at liberty to come and see her
+there. This condition proved apparently to Lady Agnes's mind no
+hindrance, and she and her daughters were presently reinstated in the
+very apartments they had learned so to love. This time in fact it was
+even better than before--they had still fewer expenses. The expenses
+were Nick's: he had to pay a forfeit to the landlady at Brighton for
+backing out of his contract. He said nothing to his mother about that
+bungled business--he was literally afraid; but a sad event just then
+reminded him afresh how little it was the moment for squandering money.
+Mr. Carteret drew his last breath; quite painlessly it seemed, as the
+closing scene was described at Beauclere when the young man went down to
+the funeral. Two or three weeks later the contents of his will were made
+public in the _Illustrated London News_, where it definitely appeared
+that he left a very large fortune, not a penny of which was to go to
+Nick. The provision for Mr. Chayter's declining years was remarkably
+handsome.
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+
+Miriam had mounted at a bound, in her new part, several steps in the
+ladder of fame, and at the climax of the London season this fact was
+brought home to her from hour to hour. It produced a thousand
+solicitations and entanglements, and she rapidly learned that to be
+celebrated takes up almost as much of one's own time as of other
+people's. Even though, as she boasted, she had reduced to a science the
+practice of "working" her mother--she made use of the good lady socially
+to the utmost, pushing her perpetually into the breach--there was many a
+juncture at which it was clear that she couldn't too much disoblige
+without hurting her cause. She made almost an income out of the
+photographers--their appreciation of her as a subject knew no
+bounds--and she supplied the newspapers with columns of characteristic
+copy. To the gentlemen who sought speech of her on behalf of these
+organs she poured forth, vindictively, floods of unscrupulous romance;
+she told them all different tales, and, as her mother told them others
+more marvellous yet, publicity was cleverly caught by rival versions,
+which surpassed each other in authenticity. The whole case was
+remarkable, was unique; for if the girl was advertised by the
+bewilderment of her readers she seemed to every sceptic, on his going to
+see her, as fine as if he had discovered her for himself. She was still
+accommodating enough, however, from time to time, to find an hour to
+come and sit to Nick Dormer, and he helped himself further by going to
+her theatre whenever he could. He was conscious Julia Dallow would
+probably hear of this and triumph with a fresh sense of how right she
+had been; but the reflexion only made him sigh resignedly, so true it
+struck him as being that there are some things explanation can never
+better, can never touch.
+
+Miriam brought Basil Dashwood once to see her portrait, and Basil, who
+commended it in general, directed his criticism mainly to two
+points--its not yet being finished and its not having gone into that
+year's Academy. The young actor audibly panted; he felt the short breath
+of Miriam's rapidity, the quick beat of her success, and, looking at
+everything now from the standpoint of that speculation, could scarcely
+contain his impatience at the painter's clumsy slowness. He thought the
+latter's second attempt much better than his first, but somehow it ought
+by that time to be shining in the eye of the public. He put it to their
+friend with an air of acuteness--he had those felicities--that in every
+great crisis there is nothing like striking while the iron is hot. He
+even betrayed the conviction that by putting on a spurt Nick might wind
+up the job and still get the Academy people to take him in. Basil knew
+some of them; he all but offered to speak to them--the case was so
+exceptional; he had no doubt he could get something done. Against the
+appropriation of the work by Peter Sherringham he explicitly and loudly
+protested, in spite of the homeliest recommendations of silence from
+Miriam; and it was indeed easy to guess how such an arrangement would
+interfere with his own conception of the eventual right place for the
+two portraits--the vestibule of the theatre, where every one going in
+and out would see them suspended face to face and surrounded by
+photographs, artistically disposed, of the young actress in a variety of
+characters. Dashwood showed superiority in his jump to the contention
+that so exhibited the pictures would really help to draw. Considering
+the virtue he attributed to Miriam the idea was exempt from narrow
+prejudice.
+
+Moreover, though a trifle feverish, he was really genial; he repeated
+more than once, "Yes, my dear sir, you've done it this time." This was a
+favourite formula with him; when some allusion was made to the girl's
+success he greeted it also with a comfortable "This time she _has_ done
+it." There was ever a hint of fine judgement and far calculation in his
+tone. It appeared before he went that this time even he himself had done
+it--he had taken up something that would really answer. He told Nick
+more about Miriam, more certainly about her outlook at that moment, than
+she herself had communicated, contributing strongly to our young man's
+impression that one by one every gage of a great career was being
+dropped into her cup. Nick himself tasted of success vicariously for the
+hour. Miriam let her comrade talk only to contradict him, and
+contradicted him only to show how indifferently she could do it. She
+treated him as if she had nothing more to learn about his folly, but as
+if it had taken intimate friendship to reveal to her the full extent of
+it. Nick didn't mind her intimate friendships, but he ended by disliking
+Dashwood, who gave on his nerves--a circumstance poor Julia, had it come
+to her knowledge, would doubtless have found deplorably significant.
+Miriam was more pleased with herself than ever: she now made no scruple
+of admitting that she enjoyed all her advantages. She had a fuller
+vision of how successful success could be; she took everything as it
+came--dined out every Sunday and even went into the country till the
+Monday morning; kept a hundred distinguished names on her lips and
+abounded in strange tales of the people who were making up to her. She
+struck Nick as less strenuous than she had been hitherto, as making even
+an aggressive show of inevitable laxities; but he was conscious of no
+obligation to rebuke her for it--the less as he had a dim vision that
+some effect of that sort, some irritation of his curiosity, was what she
+desired to produce. She would perhaps have liked, for reasons best known
+to herself, to look as if she were throwing herself away, not being able
+to do anything else. He couldn't talk to her as if he took a deep
+interest in her career, because in fact he didn't; she remained to him
+primarily and essentially a pictorial object, with the nature of whose
+vicissitudes he was concerned--putting common charity and his personal
+good nature of course aside--only so far as they had something to say in
+her face. How could he know in advance what turn of her experience,
+twist of her life, would say most?--so possible was it even that
+complete failure or some incalculable perversion (innumerable were the
+queer traps that might be set for her) would only make her for his
+particular purpose more precious.
+
+When she had left him at any rate, the day she came with Basil Dashwood,
+and still more on a later occasion, that of his turning back to his work
+after putting her into her carriage, and otherwise bare-headedly
+manifesting, the last time, for that year apparently, that he was to see
+her--when she had left him it occurred to him in the light of her quick
+distinction that there were deep differences in the famous artistic
+life. Miriam was already in a glow of glory--which, moreover, was
+probably but a faint spark in relation to the blaze to come; and as he
+closed the door on her and took up his palette to rub it with a dirty
+cloth the little room in which his own battle was practically to be
+fought looked woefully cold and grey and mean. It was lonely and yet at
+the same time was peopled with unfriendly shadows--so thick he foresaw
+them gather in winter twilights to come--the duller conditions, the
+longer patiences, the less immediate and less personal joys. His late
+beginning was there and his wasted youth, the mistakes that would still
+bring forth children after their image, the sedentary solitude, the grey
+mediocrity, the poor explanations, the effect of foolishness he dreaded
+even from afar of in having to ask people to wait, and wait longer, and
+wait again, for a fruition which to their sense at least might well
+prove a grotesque anti-climax. He yearned enough over it, however it
+should figure, to feel that this possible pertinacity might enter into
+comparison even with such a productive force as Miriam's. That was after
+all in his bare studio the most collective dim presence, the one that
+kept him company best as he sat there and that made it the right place,
+however wrong--the sense that it was to the thing in itself he was
+attached. This was Miriam's case too, but the sharp contrast, which she
+showed him she also felt, was in the number of other things she got with
+the thing in itself.
+
+I hasten to add that our young man had hours when this last mystic value
+struck him as requiring for its full operation no adjunct whatever--as
+being in its own splendour a summary of all adjuncts and apologies. I
+have related that the great collections, the National Gallery and the
+Museum, were sometimes rather a series of dead surfaces to him; but the
+sketch I have attempted of him will have been inadequate if it fails to
+suggest that there were other days when, as he strolled through them, he
+plucked right and left perfect nosegays of reassurance. Bent as he was
+on working in the modern, which spoke to him with a thousand voices, he
+judged it better for long periods not to haunt the earlier masters,
+whose conditions had been so different--later he came to see that it
+didn't matter much, especially if one kept away; but he was liable to
+accidental deflexions from this theory, liable in particular to feel the
+sanctity of the great portraits of the past. These were the things the
+most inspiring, in the sense that while generations, while worlds had
+come and gone, they seemed far most to prevail and survive and testify.
+As he stood before them the perfection of their survival often struck
+him as the supreme eloquence, the virtue that included all others,
+thanks to the language of art, the richest and most universal. Empires
+and systems and conquests had rolled over the globe and every kind of
+greatness had risen and passed away, but the beauty of the great
+pictures had known nothing of death or change, and the tragic centuries
+had only sweetened their freshness. The same faces, the same figures
+looked out at different worlds, knowing so many secrets the particular
+world didn't, and when they joined hands they made the indestructible
+thread on which the pearls of history were strung.
+
+Miriam notified her artist that her theatre was to close on the tenth of
+August, immediately after which she was to start, with the company, on a
+tremendous tour of the provinces. They were to make a lot of money, but
+they were to have no holiday, and she didn't want one; she only wanted
+to keep at it and make the most of her limited opportunities for
+practice; inasmuch as at that rate, playing but two parts a year--and
+such parts: she despised them!--she shouldn't have mastered the
+rudiments of her trade before decrepitude would compel her to lay it by.
+The first time she came to the studio after her visit with Dashwood she
+sprang up abruptly at the end of half an hour, saying she could sit no
+more--she had had enough and to spare of it. She was visibly restless
+and preoccupied, and though Nick had not waited till now to note that
+she had more moods in her list than he had tints on his palette he had
+never yet seen her sensibility at this particular pitch. It struck him
+rather as a waste of passion, but he was ready to let her go. She looked
+round the place as if suddenly tired of it and then said mechanically,
+in a heartless London way, while she smoothed down her gloves, "So
+you're just going to stay on?" After he had confessed that this was his
+dark purpose she continued in the same casual, talk-making manner: "I
+daresay it's the best thing for you. You're just going to grind, eh?"
+
+"I see before me an eternity of grinding."
+
+"All alone by yourself in this dull little hole? You _will_ be
+conscientious, you _will_ be virtuous."
+
+"Oh my solitude will be mitigated--I shall have models and people."
+
+"What people--what models?" Miriam asked as she arranged her hat before
+the glass.
+
+"Well, no one so good as you."
+
+"That's a prospect!" the girl laughed--"for all the good you've got out
+of me!"
+
+"You're no judge of that quantity," said Nick, "and even I can't measure
+it just yet. Have I been rather a bore and a brute? I can easily believe
+it; I haven't talked to you--I haven't amused you as I might. The truth
+is that taking people's likenesses is a very absorbing, inhuman
+occupation. You can't do much to them besides."
+
+"Yes, it's a cruel honour to pay them."
+
+"Cruel--that's too much," he objected.
+
+"I mean it's one you shouldn't confer on those you like, for when it's
+over it's over: it kills your interest in them. After you've finished
+them you don't like them any more at all."
+
+"Surely I like _you_," Nick returned, sitting tilted back before his
+picture with his hands in his pockets.
+
+"We've done very well: it's something not to have quarrelled"--and she
+smiled at him now, seeming more "in" it. "I wouldn't have had you slight
+your work--I wouldn't have had you do it badly. But there's no fear of
+that for you," she went on. "You're the real thing and the rare bird. I
+haven't lived with you this way without seeing that: you're the sincere
+artist so much more than I. No, no, don't protest," she added with one
+of her sudden, fine transitions to a deeper tone. "You'll do things that
+will hand on your name when my screeching is happily over. Only you do
+seem to me, I confess, rather high and dry here--I speak from the point
+of view of your comfort and of my personal interest in you. You strike
+me as kind of lonely, as the Americans say--rather cut off and isolated
+in your grandeur. Haven't you any confrères--fellow-artists and people
+of that sort? Don't they come near you?"
+
+"I don't know them much," Nick humbly confessed. "I've always been
+afraid of them, and how can they take me seriously?"
+
+"Well, _I_'ve got confrères, and sometimes I wish I hadn't! But does
+your sister never come near you any more," she asked, "or is it only the
+fear of meeting me?"
+
+He was aware of his mother's theory that Biddy was constantly bundled
+home from Rosedale Road at the approach of improper persons: she was as
+angry at this as if she wouldn't have been more so had her child
+suffered exposure; but the explanation he gave his present visitor was
+nearer the truth. He reminded her that he had already told her--he had
+been careful to do this, so as not to let it appear she was
+avoided--that his sister was now most of the time in the country,
+staying with an hospitable relation.
+
+"Oh yes," the girl rejoined to this, "with Mr. Sherringham's sister,
+Mrs.--what's her name? I always forget." And when he had pronounced the
+word with a reluctance he doubtless failed sufficiently to conceal--he
+hated to talk of Julia by any name and didn't know what business Miriam
+had with her--she went on: "That's the one--the beauty, the wonderful
+beauty. I shall never forget how handsome she looked the day she found
+me here. I don't in the least resemble her, but I should like to have a
+try at that type some day in a comedy of manners. But who the devil will
+write me a comedy of manners? There it is! The danger would be, no
+doubt, that I should push her _à la charge_."
+
+Nick listened to these remarks in silence, saying to himself that if she
+should have the bad taste--which she seemed trembling on the brink
+of--to make an allusion to what had passed between the lady in question
+and himself he should dislike her beyond remedy. It would show him she
+was a coarse creature after all. Her good genius interposed, however, as
+against this hard penalty, and she quickly, for the moment at least,
+whisked away from the topic, demanding, since they spoke of comrades and
+visitors, what had become of Gabriel Nash, whom she hadn't heard of for
+so many days.
+
+"I think he's tired of me," said Nick; "he hasn't been near me either.
+But after all it's natural--he has seen me through."
+
+"Seen you through? Do you mean," she laughed, "seen through you? Why
+you've only just begun."
+
+"Precisely, and at bottom he doesn't like to see me begin. He's afraid I
+shall do something."
+
+She wondered--as with the interest of that. "Do you mean he's jealous?"
+
+"Not in the least, for from the moment one does anything one ceases to
+compete with him. It leaves him the field more clear. But that's just
+the discomfort for him--he feels, as you said just now, kind of lonely:
+he feels rather abandoned and even, I think, a little betrayed. So far
+from being jealous he yearns for me and regrets me. The only thing he
+really takes seriously is to speculate and understand, to talk about the
+reasons and the essence of things: the people who do that are the
+highest. The applications, the consequences, the vulgar little effects,
+belong to a lower plane, for which one must doubtless be tolerant and
+indulgent, but which is after all an affair of comparative accidents and
+trifles. Indeed he'll probably tell me frankly the next time I see him
+that he can't but feel that to come down to small questions of
+action--to the small prudences and compromises and simplifications of
+practice--is for the superior person really a fatal descent. One may be
+inoffensive and even commendable after it, but one can scarcely pretend
+to be interesting. '_Il en faut comme ça_,' but one doesn't haunt them.
+He'll do his best for me; he'll come back again, but he'll come back
+sad, and finally he'll fade away altogether. Hell go off to Granada or
+somewhere."
+
+"The simplifications of practice?" cried Miriam. "Why they're just
+precisely the most blessed things on earth. What should we do without
+them?"
+
+"What indeed?" Nick echoed. "But if we need them it's because we're not
+superior persons. We're awful Philistines."
+
+"I'll be one with _you_," the girl smiled. "Poor Nash isn't worth
+talking about. What was it but a small question of action when he
+preached to you, as I know he did, to give up your seat?"
+
+"Yes, he has a weakness for giving up--he'll go with you as far as that.
+But I'm not giving up any more, you see. I'm pegging away, and that's
+gross."
+
+"He's an idiot--_n'en parlons plus_!" she dropped, gathering up her
+parasol but lingering.
+
+"Ah I stick to him," Nick said. "He helped me at a difficult time."
+
+"You ought to be ashamed to confess it."
+
+"Oh you _are_ a Philistine!" Nick returned.
+
+"Certainly I am," she declared, going toward the door--"if it makes me
+one to be sorry, awfully sorry and even rather angry, that I haven't
+before me a period of the same sort of unsociable pegging away that you
+have. For want of it I shall never really be good. However, if you don't
+tell people I've said so they'll never know. Your conditions are far
+better than mine and far more respectable: you can do as many things as
+you like in patient obscurity while I'm pitchforked into the _mêlée_ and
+into the most improbable fame--all on the back of a solitary _cheval de
+bataille_, a poor broken-winded screw. I read it clear that I shall be
+condemned for the greater part of the rest of my days--do you see
+that?--to play the stuff I'm acting now. I'm studying Juliet and I want
+awfully to do her, but really I'm mortally afraid lest, making a success
+of her, I should find myself in such a box. Perhaps the brutes would
+want Juliet for ever instead of my present part. You see amid what
+delightful alternatives one moves. What I long for most I never shall
+have had--five quiet years of hard all-round work in a perfect company,
+with a manager more perfect still, playing five hundred things and never
+being heard of at all. I may be too particular, but that's what I should
+have liked. I think I'm disgusting with my successful crudities. It's
+discouraging; it makes one not care much what happens. What's the use,
+in such an age, of being good?"
+
+"Good? Your haughty claim," Nick laughed, "is that you're bad."
+
+"I mean _good_, you know--there are other ways. Don't be stupid." And
+Miriam tapped him--he was near her at the door--with her parasol.
+
+"I scarcely know what to say to you," he logically pleaded, "for
+certainly it's your fault if you get on so fast."
+
+"I'm too clever--I'm a humbug."
+
+"That's the way I used to be," said Nick.
+
+She rested her brave eyes on him, then turned them over the room slowly;
+after which she attached them again, kindly, musingly--rather as if he
+had been a fine view or an interesting object--to his face. "Ah, the
+pride of that--the sense of purification! He 'used' to be forsooth! Poor
+me! Of course you'll say, 'Look at the sort of thing I've undertaken to
+produce compared with the rot you have.' So it's all right. Become great
+in the proper way and don't expose me." She glanced back once more at
+the studio as if to leave it for ever, and gave another last look at the
+unfinished canvas on the easel. She shook her head sadly, "Poor Mr.
+Sherringham--with _that_!" she wailed.
+
+"Oh I'll finish it--it will be very decent," Nick said.
+
+"Finish it by yourself?"
+
+"Not necessarily. You'll come back and sit when you return to London."
+
+"Never, never, never again."
+
+He wondered. "Why you've made me the most profuse offers and promises."
+
+"Yes, but they were made in ignorance and I've backed out of them. I'm
+capricious too--_faites la part de ça_. I see it wouldn't do--I didn't
+know it then. We're too far apart--I _am_, as you say, a Philistine."
+And as he protested with vehemence against this unscrupulous bad faith
+she added: "You'll find other models. Paint Gabriel Nash."
+
+"Gabriel Nash--as a substitute for you?"
+
+"It will be a good way to get rid of him. Paint Mrs. Dallow too," Miriam
+went on as she passed out of the door he had opened for her--"paint Mrs.
+Dallow if you wish to eradicate the last possibility of a throb."
+
+It was strange that, since only a moment before he had been in a state
+of mind to which the superfluity of this reference would have been the
+clearest thing about it, he should now have been moved to receive it
+quickly, naturally, irreflectively, receive it with the question: "The
+last possibility? Do you mean in her or in me?"
+
+"Oh in you. I don't know anything about 'her.'"
+
+"But that wouldn't be the effect," he argued with the same supervening
+candour. "I believe that if she were to sit to me the usual law would be
+reversed."
+
+"The usual law?"
+
+"Which you cited a while since and of which I recognised the general
+truth. In the case you speak of," he said, "I should probably make a
+shocking picture."
+
+"And fall in love with her again? Then for God's sake risk the daub!"
+Miriam laughed out as she floated away to her victoria.
+
+
+
+
+XLIX
+
+
+She had guessed happily in saying to him that to offer to paint Gabriel
+Nash would be the way to get rid of that visitant. It was with no such
+invidious purpose indeed that our young man proposed to his intermittent
+friend to sit; rather, as August was dusty in the London streets, he had
+too little hope that Nash would remain in town at such a time to oblige
+him. Nick had no wish to get rid of his private philosopher; he liked
+his philosophy, and though of course premeditated paradox was the light
+to read him by he yet had frequently and incidentally an inspired
+unexpectedness. He remained in Rosedale Road the man who most produced
+by his presence the effect of company. All the other men of Nick's
+acquaintance, all his political friends, represented, often very
+communicatively, their own affairs, their own affairs alone; which when
+they did it well was the most their host could ask of them. But Nash had
+the rare distinction that he seemed somehow to figure _his_ affairs, the
+said host's, and to show an interest in them unaffected by the ordinary
+social limitations of capacity. This relegated him to the class of high
+luxuries, and Nick was well aware that we hold our luxuries by a fitful
+and precarious tenure. If a friend without personal eagerness was one of
+the greatest of these it would be evident to the simplest mind that by
+the law of distribution of earthly boons such a convenience should be
+expected to forfeit in duration what it displayed in intensity. He had
+never been without a suspicion that Nash was too good to last, though
+for that matter nothing had yet confirmed a vague apprehension that his
+particular manner of breaking up or breaking down would be by his
+wishing to put so fresh a recruit in relation with other disciples.
+
+That would practically amount to a catastrophe, Nick felt; for it was
+odd that one could both have a great kindness for him and not in the
+least, when it came to the point, yearn for a view of his personal
+extensions. His originality had always been that he appeared to have
+none; and if in the first instance he had introduced his bright, young,
+political prodigy to Miriam and her mother, that was an exception for
+which Peter Sherringham's interference had been mainly responsible. All
+the same, however, it was some time before Nick ceased to view it as
+perhaps on the awkward books that, to complete his education as it were,
+Gabriel would wish him to converse a little with spirits formed by a
+like tonic discipline. Nick had an instinct, in which there was no
+consciousness of detriment to Nash, that the pupils, possibly even the
+imitators, of such a genius would be, as he mentally phrased it,
+something awful. He could be sure, even Gabriel himself could be sure,
+of his own reservations, but how could either of them be sure of those
+of others? Imitation is a fortunate homage only in proportion as it
+rests on measurements, and there was an indefinable something in Nash's
+doctrine that would have been discredited by exaggeration or by zeal.
+Providence happily appeared to have spared it this ordeal; so that Nick
+had after months still to remind himself how his friend had never
+pressed on his attention the least little group of fellow-mystics, never
+offered to produce them for his edification. It scarcely mattered now
+that he was just the man to whom the superficial would attribute that
+sort of tail: it would probably have been hard, for example, to persuade
+Lady Agnes or Julia Dallow or Peter Sherringham that he was not most at
+home in some dusky, untidy, dimly-imagined suburb of "culture," a region
+peopled by unpleasant phrasemongers who thought him a gentleman and who
+had no human use but to be held up in the comic press--which was,
+moreover, probably restrained by decorum from touching upon the worst of
+their aberrations.
+
+Nick at any rate never ran his academy to earth nor so much as skirted
+the suburb in question; never caught from the impenetrable background of
+his life the least reverberation of flitting or of flirting, the
+fainting esthetic ululation. There had been moments when he was even
+moved to anxiety by the silence that poor Gabriel's own faculty of sound
+made all about him--when at least it reduced to plainer elements (the
+mere bald terms of lonely singleness and thrift, of the lean philosophic
+life) the mystery he could never wholly dissociate from him, the air as
+of the transient and occasional, the likeness to curling vapour or
+murmuring wind or shifting light. It was, for instance, a symbol of this
+unclassified state, the lack of all position as a name in cited lists,
+that Nick in point of fact had no idea where he lived, would not have
+known how to go and see him or send him a doctor if he had heard he was
+ill. He had never walked with him to any door of Gabriel's own, even to
+pause at the threshold, though indeed Nash had a club, the Anonymous, in
+some improbable square, of which he might be suspected of being the only
+member--one had never heard of another--where it was vaguely understood
+letters would some day or other find him. Fortunately he pressed with
+no sharpness the spring of pity--his whole "form" was so easy a grasp
+of the helm of consciousness, which he would never let go. He would
+never consent to any deformity, but would steer his course straight
+through the eventual narrow pass and simply go down over the horizon.
+
+He in any case turned up Rosedale Road one day after Miriam had left
+London; he had just come back from a fortnight in Brittany, where he had
+drawn refreshment from the tragic sweetness of--well, of everything. He
+was on his way somewhere else--was going abroad for the autumn but was
+not particular what he did, professing that he had come back just to get
+Nick utterly off his mind. "It's very nice, it's very nice; yes, yes, I
+see," he remarked, giving a little, general, assenting sigh as his eyes
+wandered over the simple scene--a sigh which for a suspicious ear would
+have testified to an insidious reaction.
+
+Nick's ear, as we know, was already suspicious; a fact accounting for
+the expectant smile--it indicated the pleasant apprehension of a theory
+confirmed--with which he returned: "Do you mean my pictures are nice?"
+
+"Yes, yes, your pictures and the whole thing."
+
+"The whole thing?"
+
+"Your existence in this little, remote, independent corner of the great
+city. The disinterestedness of your attitude, the persistence of your
+effort, the piety, the beauty, in short the edification, of the whole
+spectacle."
+
+Nick laughed a little ruefully. "How near to having had enough of me you
+must be when you speak of me as edifying!" Nash changed colour slightly
+at this; it was the first time in his friend's remembrance that he had
+given a sign of embarrassment. "_Vous allez me lâcher_, I see it coming;
+and who can blame you?--for I've ceased to be in the least spectacular.
+I had my little hour; it was a great deal, for some people don't even
+have that. I've given you your curious case and I've been generous; I
+made the drama last for you as long as I could. You'll 'slope,' my dear
+fellow--you'll quietly slope; and it will be all right and inevitable,
+though I shall miss you greatly at first. Who knows whether without you
+I shouldn't still have been 'representing' Harsh, heaven help me? You
+rescued me; you converted me from a representative into an
+example--that's a shade better. But don't I know where you must be when
+you're reduced to praising my piety?"
+
+"Don't turn me away," said Nash plaintively; "give me a cigarette."
+
+"I shall never dream of turning you away; I shall cherish you till the
+latest possible hour. I'm only trying to keep myself in tune with the
+logic of things. The proof of how I cling is that precisely I want you
+to sit to me."
+
+"To sit to you?" With which Nick could fancy his visitor a little blank.
+
+"Certainly, for after all it isn't much to ask. Here we are and the
+hour's peculiarly propitious--long light days with no one coming near
+me, so that I've plenty of time. I had a hope I should have some orders:
+my younger sister, whom you know and who's a great optimist, plied me
+with that vision. In fact we invented together a charming little sordid
+theory that there might be rather a 'run' on me from the chatter (such
+as it was) produced by my taking up this line. My sister struck out the
+idea that a good many of the pretty ladies would think me interesting
+and would want to be done. Perhaps they do, but they've controlled
+themselves, for I can't say the run has commenced. They haven't even
+come to look, but I daresay they don't yet quite take it in. Of course
+it's a bad time--with every one out of town; though you know they might
+send for me to come and do them at home. Perhaps they will when they
+settle down. A portrait-tour of a dozen country-houses for the autumn
+and winter--what do you say to that for the ardent life? I know I
+excruciate you," Nick added, "but don't you see how it's in my interest
+to try how much you'll still stand?"
+
+Gabriel puffed his cigarette with a serenity so perfect that it might
+have been assumed to falsify these words. "Mrs. Dallow will send for
+you--_vous allez voir ça_," he said in a moment, brushing aside all
+vagueness.
+
+"She'll send for me?"
+
+"To paint her portrait; she'll recapture you on that basis. She'll get
+you down to one of the country-houses, and it will all go off as
+charmingly--with sketching in the morning, on days you can't hunt, and
+anything you like in the afternoon, and fifteen courses in the evening;
+there'll be bishops and ambassadors staying--as if you were a
+'well-known,' awfully clever amateur. Take care, take care, for, fickle
+as you may think me, I can read the future: don't imagine you've come to
+the end of me yet. Mrs. Dallow and your sister, of both of whom I speak
+with the greatest respect, are capable of hatching together the most
+conscientious, delightful plan for you. Your differences with the
+beautiful lady will be patched up and you'll each come round a little
+and meet the other halfway. The beautiful lady will swallow your
+profession if you'll swallow hers. She'll put up with the palette if
+you'll put up with the country-house. It will be a very unusual one in
+which you won't find a good north room where you can paint. You'll go
+about with her and do all her friends, all the bishops and ambassadors,
+and you'll eat your cake and have it, and every one, beginning with your
+wife, will forget there's anything queer about you, and everything will
+be for the best in the best of worlds; so that, together--you and
+she--you'll become a great social institution and every one will think
+she has a delightful husband; to say nothing of course of your having a
+delightful wife. Ah my dear fellow, you turn pale, and with reason!"
+Nash went lucidly on: "that's to pay you for having tried to make me let
+you have it. You have it then there! I may be a bore"--the emphasis of
+this, though a mere shade, testified to the first personal resentment
+Nick had ever heard his visitor express--"I may be a bore, but once in a
+while I strike a light, I make things out. Then I venture to repeat,
+'Take care, take care.' If, as I say, I respect _ces dames_ infinitely
+it's because they will be acting according to the highest wisdom of
+their sex. That's the sort of thing women do for a man--the sort of
+thing they invent when they're exceptionally good and clever. When
+they're not they don't do so well; but it's not for want of trying.
+There's only one thing in the world better than their incomparable
+charm: it's their abysmal conscience. Deep calleth unto deep--the one's
+indeed a part of the other. And when they club together, when they
+earnestly consider, as in the case we're supposing," Nash continued,
+"then the whole thing takes a lift; for it's no longer the virtue of the
+individual, it's that of the wondrous sex."
+
+"You're so remarkable that, more than ever, I must paint you," Nick
+returned, "though I'm so agitated by your prophetic words that my hand
+trembles and I shall doubtless scarcely be able to hold my brush. Look
+how I rattle my easel trying to put it into position. I see it all there
+just as you show it. Yes, it will be a droll day, and more modern than
+anything yet, when the conscience of women makes out good reasons for
+men's not being in love with them. You talk of their goodness and
+cleverness, and it's certainly much to the point. I don't know what else
+they themselves might do with those graces, but I don't see what man can
+do with them but be fond of them where he finds them."
+
+"Oh you'll do it--you'll do it!" cried Nash, brightly jubilant.
+
+"What is it I shall do?"
+
+"Exactly what I just said; if not next year then the year after, or the
+year after that. You'll go halfway to meet her and she'll drag you about
+and pass you off. You'll paint the bishops and become a social
+institution. That is, you'll do it if you don't take great care."
+
+"I shall, no doubt, and that's why I cling to you. You must still look
+after me," Nick went on. "Don't melt away into a mere improbable
+reminiscence, a delightful, symbolic fable--don't if you can possibly
+help it. The trouble is, you see, that you can't really keep hold very
+tight, because at bottom it will amuse you much more to see me in
+another pickle than to find me simply jogging down the vista of the
+years on the straight course. Let me at any rate have some sort of
+sketch of you as a kind of feather from the angel's wing or a photograph
+of the ghost--to prove to me in the future that you were once a solid
+sociable fact, that I didn't invent you, didn't launch you as a deadly
+hoax. Of course I shall be able to say to myself that you can't have
+been a fable--otherwise you'd have a moral; but that won't be enough,
+because I'm not sure you won't have had one. Some day you'll peep in
+here languidly and find me in such an attitude of piety--presenting my
+bent back to you as I niggle over some interminable botch--that I shall
+give cruelly on your nerves and you'll just draw away, closing the door
+softly. You'll be gentle and considerate about it and spare me, you
+won't even make me look round. You'll steal off on tiptoe, never, never
+to return."
+
+Gabriel consented to sit; he professed he should enjoy it and be glad to
+give up for it his immediate foreign commerce, so vague to Nick, so
+definite apparently to himself; and he came back three times for the
+purpose. Nick promised himself a deal of interest from this experiment,
+for with the first hour of it he began to feel that really as yet, given
+the conditions under which he now studied him, he had never at all
+thoroughly explored his friend. His impression had been that Nash had a
+head quite fine enough to be a challenge, and that as he sat there day
+by day all sorts of pleasant and paintable things would come out in his
+face. This impression was not gainsaid, but the whole tangle grew
+denser. It struck our young man that he had never _seen_ his subject
+before, and yet somehow this revelation was not produced by the sense of
+actually seeing it. What was revealed was the difficulty--what he saw
+was not the measurable mask but the ambiguous meaning. He had taken
+things for granted which literally were not there, and he found things
+there--except that he couldn't catch them--which he had not hitherto
+counted in or presumed to handle. This baffling effect, eminently in the
+line of the mystifying, so familiar to Nash, might have been the result
+of his whimsical volition, had it not appeared to our artist, after a
+few hours of the job, that his sitter was not the one who enjoyed it
+most. He was uncomfortable, at first vaguely and then definitely
+so--silent, restless, gloomy, dim, as if on the test the homage of a
+directer attention than he had ever had gave him less pleasure than he
+would have supposed. He had been willing to judge of this in good
+faith; but frankly he rather suffered. He wasn't cross, but was clearly
+unhappy, and Nick had never before felt him contract instead of
+expanding.
+
+It was all accordingly as if a trap had been laid for him, and our young
+man asked himself if it were really fair. At the same time there was
+something richly rare in such a relation between the subject and the
+artist, and Nick was disposed to go on till he should have to stop for
+pity or for shame. He caught eventually a glimmer of the truth
+underlying the strangeness, guessed that what upset his friend was
+simply the reversal, in such a combination, of his usual terms of
+intercourse. He was so accustomed to living upon irony and the
+interpretation of things that it was new to him to be himself
+interpreted and--as a gentleman who sits for his portrait is always
+liable to be--interpreted all ironically. From being outside of the
+universe he was suddenly brought into it, and from the position of a
+free commentator and critic, an easy amateurish editor of the whole
+affair, reduced to that of humble ingredient and contributor. It
+occurred afterwards to Nick that he had perhaps brought on a catastrophe
+by having happened to throw off as they gossiped or languished, and not
+alone without a cruel intention, but with an impulse of genuine
+solicitude: "But, my dear fellow, what will you do when you're old?"
+
+"Old? What do you call old?" Nash had replied bravely enough, but with
+another perceptible tinge of irritation. "Must I really remind you at
+this time of day that that term has no application to such a condition
+as mine? It only belongs to you wretched people who have the incurable
+superstition of 'doing'; it's the ignoble collapse you prepare for
+yourselves when you cease to be able to do. For me there'll be no
+collapse, no transition, no clumsy readjustment of attitude; for I
+shall only _be_, more and more, with all the accumulations of
+experience, the longer I live."
+
+"Oh I'm not particular about the term," said Nick. "If you don't call it
+old, the ultimate state, call it weary--call it final. The accumulations
+of experience are practically accumulations of fatigue."
+
+"I don't know anything about weariness. I live freshly--it doesn't
+fatigue me."
+
+"Then you need never die," Nick declared.
+
+"Certainly; I daresay I'm indestructible, immortal."
+
+Nick laughed out at this--it would be such fine news to some people. But
+it was uttered with perfect gravity, and it might very well have been in
+the spirit of that gravity that Nash failed to observe his agreement to
+sit again the next day. The next and the next and the next passed, but
+he never came back.
+
+True enough, punctuality was not important for a man who felt that he
+had the command of all time. Nevertheless his disappearance "without a
+trace," that of a personage in a fairy-tale or a melodrama, made a
+considerable impression on his friend as the months went on; so that,
+though he had never before had the least difficulty about entering into
+the play of Gabriel's humour, Nick now recalled with a certain fanciful
+awe the special accent with which he had ranked himself among
+imperishable things. He wondered a little if he hadn't at last,
+balancing always on the stretched tight-rope of his wit, fallen over on
+the wrong side. He had never before, of a truth, been so nearly witless,
+and would have to have gone mad in short to become so singularly simple.
+Perhaps indeed he was acting only more than usual in his customary
+spirit--thoughtfully contributing, for Nick's enlivenment, a purple rim
+of mystery to an horizon now so dreadfully let down. The mystery at any
+rate remained; another shade of purple in fact was virtually added to
+it. Nick had the prospect, for the future, of waiting to see, all
+curiously, when Nash would turn up, if ever, and the further
+diversion--it almost consoled him for the annoyance of being left with a
+second unfinished thing on his hands--of imagining in the portrait he
+had begun an odd tendency to fade gradually from the canvas. He couldn't
+catch it in the act, but he could have ever a suspicion on glancing at
+it that the hand of time was rubbing it away little by little--for all
+the world as in some delicate Hawthorne tale--and making the surface
+indistinct and bare of all resemblance to the model. Of course the moral
+of the Hawthorne tale would be that his personage would come back in
+quaint confidence on the day his last projected shadow should have
+vanished.
+
+
+
+
+L
+
+
+One day toward the end of March of the following year, in other words
+more than six months after Mr. Nash's disappearance, Bridget Dormer came
+into her brother's studio and greeted him with the effusion that
+accompanies a return from an absence. She had been staying at
+Broadwood--she had been staying at Harsh. She had various things to tell
+him about these episodes, about his mother, about Grace, about her small
+subterraneous self, and about Percy's having come, just before, over to
+Broadwood for two days; the longest visit with which, almost since they
+could remember, the head of the family had honoured their common parent.
+Nick noted indeed that this demonstration had apparently been taken as a
+great favour, and Biddy loyally testified to the fact that her elder
+brother was awfully jolly and that his presence had been a pretext for
+tremendous fun. Nick accordingly asked her what had passed about his
+marriage--what their mother had said to him.
+
+"Oh nothing," she replied; and Percy had said nothing to Lady Agnes and
+not a word to herself. This partly explained, for his junior, the
+consequent beatitude--none but cheerful topics had been produced; but he
+questioned the girl further--to a point which led her to say: "Oh I
+daresay that before long she'll write to her."
+
+"Who'll write to whom?"
+
+"Mamma'll write to Percy's wife. I'm sure he'd like it. Of course we
+shall end by going to see her. He was awfully disappointed at what he
+found in Spain--he didn't find anything."
+
+Biddy spoke of his disappointment almost with commiseration, for she was
+evidently inclined this morning to a fresh and kindly view of things.
+Nick could share her feeling but so far as was permitted by a
+recognition merely general of what his brother must have looked for. It
+might have been snipe and it might have been bristling boars. Biddy was
+indeed brief at first about everything, in spite of all the weeks that
+had gone since their last meeting; for he quickly enough saw she had
+something behind--something that made her gay and that she wanted to
+come to quickly. He was vaguely vexed at her being, fresh from
+Broadwood, so gay as that; for--it was impossible to shut one's eyes to
+the fact--what had practically come to pass in regard to that rural
+retreat was exactly what he had desired to avert. All winter, while it
+had been taken for granted his mother and sisters were doing what he
+wished, they had been doing precisely what he hated. He held Biddy
+perhaps least responsible, and there was no one he could exclusively
+blame. He washed his hands of the matter and succeeded fairly well, for
+the most part, in forgetting he was not pleased. Julia herself in truth
+appeared to have been the most active member of the little group united
+to make light of his decencies. There had been a formal restitution of
+Broadwood, but the three ladies were there more than ever, with the
+slight difference that they were mainly there with its mistress. Mahomet
+had declined to go any more to the mountain, so the mountain had
+virtually come to Mahomet.
+
+After their long visit in the autumn Lady Agnes and her girls had come
+back to town; but they had gone down again for Christmas and Julia had
+taken this occasion to write to Nick that she hoped very much he
+wouldn't refuse them all his own company for just a little scrap of the
+supremely sociable time. Nick, after reflexion, judged it best not to
+refuse, so that he passed, in the event, four days under his cousin's
+roof. The "all" proved a great many people, for she had taken care to
+fill the house. She took the largest view of hospitality and Nick had
+never seen her so splendid, so free-handed, so gracefully active. She
+was a perfect mistress of the revels; she had arranged some ancient
+bravery for every day and for every night. The Dormers were so much in
+it, as the phrase was, that after all their discomfiture their fortune
+seemed in an hour to have come back. There had been a moment when, in
+extemporised charades, Lady Agnes, an elderly figure being required,
+appeared on the point of undertaking the part of the housekeeper at a
+castle, who, dropping her _h_'s, showed sheeplike tourists about; but
+she waived the opportunity in favour of her daughter Grace. Even Grace
+had a great success; Grace dropped her _h_'s as with the crash of
+empires. Nick of course was in the charades and in everything, but Julia
+was not; she only invented, directed, led the applause. When nothing
+else was forward Nick "sketched" the whole company: they followed him
+about, they waylaid him on staircases, clamouring to be allowed to sit.
+He obliged them so far as he could, all save Julia, who didn't clamour;
+and, growing rather red, he thought of Gabriel Nash while he bent over
+the paper. Early in the new year he went abroad for six weeks, but only
+as far as Paris. It was a new Paris for him then; a Paris of the Rue
+Bonaparte and three or four professional friends--he had more of these
+there than in London; a Paris of studios and studies and models, of
+researches and revelations, comparisons and contrasts, of strong
+impressions and long discussions and rather uncomfortable economies,
+small cafés, bad fires and the general sense of being twenty again.
+
+While he was away his mother and sisters--Lady Agnes now sometimes wrote
+to him--returned to London for a month, and before he was again
+established in Rosedale Road they went back for a third course of
+Broadwood. After they had been there five days--and this was the salt of
+the whole feast--Julia took herself off to Harsh, leaving them in
+undisturbed possession. They had remained so--they wouldn't come up to
+town till after Easter. The trick was played, and Biddy, as I have
+mentioned, was now very content. Her brother presently learned, however,
+that the reason of this was not wholly the success of the trick; unless
+indeed her further ground were only a continuation of it. She was not in
+London as a forerunner of her mother; she was not even as yet in
+Calcutta Gardens. She had come to spend a week with Florry Tressilian,
+who had lately taken the dearest little flat in a charming new place,
+just put up, on the other side of the Park, with all kinds of lifts and
+tubes and electricities. Florry had been awfully nice to her--had been
+with them ever so long at Broadwood while the flat was being painted and
+prepared--and mamma had then let her, let Biddy, promise to come to her,
+when everything was ready, so that they might have a happy old maids'
+(for they _were_, old maids now!) house-warming together. If Florry
+could by this time do without a chaperon--she had two latchkeys and went
+alone on the top of omnibuses, and her name was in the Red Book--she was
+enough of a duenna for another girl. Biddy referred with sweet cynical
+eyes to the fine happy stride she had thus taken in the direction of
+enlightened spinsterhood; and Nick hung his head, immensely abashed and
+humiliated, for, modern as he had fatuously supposed himself, there were
+evidently currents more modern yet.
+
+It so happened that on this particular morning he had drawn out of a
+corner his interrupted study of Gabriel Nash; on no further
+curiosity--he had only been looking round the room in a rummaging
+spirit--than to see how much or how little of it remained. It had become
+to his view so dim an adumbration--he was sure of this, and it pressed
+some spring of melancholy mirth--that it didn't seem worth putting away,
+and he left it leaning against a table as if it had been a blank canvas
+or a "preparation" to be painted over. In this posture it attracted
+Biddy's attention, for on a second glance it showed distinguishable
+features. She had not seen it before and now asked whom it might
+represent, remarking also that she could almost guess, yet not quite:
+she had known the original but couldn't name him.
+
+"Six months ago, for a few days, it represented Gabriel Nash," Nick
+replied. "But it isn't anybody or anything now."
+
+"Six months ago? What's the matter with it and why don't you go on?"
+
+"What's the matter with it is more than I can tell you. But I can't go
+on because I've lost my model."
+
+She had an almost hopeful stare. "Is he beautifully dead?"
+
+Her brother laughed out at the candid cheerfulness, hopefulness almost,
+with which this inquiry broke from her. "He's only dead to me. He has
+gone away."
+
+"Where has he gone?"
+
+"I haven't the least idea."
+
+"Why, have you quarrelled?"--Biddy shone again.
+
+"Quarrelled? For what do you take us? Docs the nightingale quarrel with
+the moon?"
+
+"I needn't ask which of you is the moon," she said.
+
+"Of course I'm the nightingale. But, more literally," Nick continued,
+"Nash has melted back into the elements--he's part of the great air of
+the world." And then as even with this lucidity he saw the girl still
+mystified: "I've a notion he has gone to India and at the present moment
+is reclining on a bank of flowers in the vale of Cashmere."
+
+Biddy had a pause, after which she dropped: "Julia will be glad--she
+dislikes him so."
+
+"If she dislikes him why should she be glad he's so enviably placed?"
+
+"I mean about his going away. She'll be glad of that."
+
+"My poor incorrigible child," Nick cried, "what has Julia to do with
+it?"
+
+"She has more to do with things than you think," Biddy returned with all
+her bravery. Yet she had no sooner uttered the words than she
+perceptibly blushed. Hereupon, to attenuate the foolishness of her
+blush--only it had the opposite effect--she added: "She thinks he has
+been a bad element in your life."
+
+Nick emitted a long strange sound. "She thinks perhaps, but she doesn't
+think enough; otherwise she'd arrive at this better thought--that she
+knows nothing whatever about my life."
+
+"Ah brother," the girl pleaded with solemn eyes, "you don't imagine what
+an interest she takes in it. She has told me many times--she has talked
+lots to me about it." Biddy paused and then went on, an anxious little
+smile shining through her gravity as if from a cautious wonder as to how
+much he would take: "She has a conviction it was Mr. Nash who made
+trouble between you."
+
+"Best of little sisters," Nick pronounced, "those are thoroughly
+second-rate ideas, the result of a perfectly superficial view. Excuse my
+possibly priggish tone, but they really attribute to my dear detached
+friend a part he's quite incapable of playing. He can neither make
+trouble nor take trouble; no trouble could ever either have come out of
+him or have got into him. Moreover," our young man continued, "if Julia
+has talked to you so much about the matter there's no harm in my talking
+to you a little. When she threw me over in an hour it was on a perfectly
+definite occasion. That occasion was the presence in my studio of a
+dishevelled, an abandoned actress."
+
+"Oh Nick, she has not thrown you over!" Biddy protested. "She has
+not--I've proof."
+
+He felt at this direct denial a certain stir of indignation and looked
+at the girl with momentary sternness. "Has she sent you here to tell me
+this? What do you mean by proof?"
+
+Biddy's eyes, at these questions, met her brother's with a strange
+expression, and for a few seconds, while she looked entreatingly into
+them, she wavered there with parted lips and vaguely stretched out her
+hands. The next minute she had burst into tears--she was sobbing on his
+breast. He said "Hallo!" and soothed her; but it was very quickly over.
+Then she told him what she meant by her proof and what she had had on
+her mind ever since her present arrival. It was a message from Julia,
+but not to say--not to say what he had questioned her about just before;
+though indeed, more familiar now that he had his arm round her, she
+boldly expressed the hope it might in the end come to the same thing.
+Julia simply wanted to know--- she had instructed her to sound him
+discreetly--if Nick would undertake her portrait; and she wound up this
+experiment in "sounding" by the statement that their beautiful kinswoman
+was dying to sit.
+
+"Dying to sit?" echoed Nick, whose turn it was this time to feel his
+colour rise.
+
+"At any moment you like after Easter, when she comes up. She wants a
+full-length and your very best, your most splendid work."
+
+Nick stared, not caring that he had blushed. "Is she serious?"
+
+"Ah Nick--serious!" Biddy reasoned tenderly. She came nearer again and
+he thought her again about to weep. He took her by the shoulders,
+looking into her eyes.
+
+"It's all right if she knows _I_ am. But why doesn't she come like any
+one else? I don't refuse people!"
+
+"Nick, dearest Nick!" she went on, her eyes conscious and pleading. He
+looked into them intently--as well as she could he play at sounding--and
+for a moment, between these young persons, the air was lighted by the
+glimmer of mutual searchings and suppressed confessions. Nick read deep
+and then, suddenly releasing his sister, turned away. She didn't see his
+face in that movement, but an observer to whom it had been presented
+might have fancied it denoted a foreboding that was not exactly a dread,
+yet was not exclusively a joy.
+
+The first thing he made out in the room, when he could distinguish, was
+Gabriel Nash's portrait, which suddenly filled him with an unreasoning
+rancour. He seized it and turned it about, jammed it back into its
+corner with its face against the wall. This small diversion might have
+served to carry off the embarrassment with which he had finally averted
+himself from Biddy. The embarrassment, however, was all his own; none of
+it was reflected in the way she resumed, after a silence in which she
+had followed his disposal of the picture:
+
+"If she's so eager to come here--for it's here she wants to sit, not in
+Great Stanhope Street, never!--how can she prove better that she doesn't
+care a bit if she meets Miss Rooth?"
+
+"She won't meet Miss Rooth," Nick replied rather dryly.
+
+"Oh I'm sorry!" said Biddy. She was as frank as if she had achieved a
+virtual victory, and seemed to regret the loss of a chance for Julia to
+show an equal mildness. Her tone made her brother laugh, but she went on
+with confidence: "She thought it was Mr. Nash who made Miss Rooth come."
+
+"So he did, by the way," said Nick.
+
+"Well then, wasn't that making trouble?"
+
+"I thought you admitted there was no harm in her being here."
+
+"Yes, but _he_ hoped there'd be."
+
+"Poor Nash's hopes!" Nick laughed. "My dear child, it would take a
+cleverer head than you or me, or even Julia, who must have invented that
+wise theory, to say what they were. However, let us agree that even if
+they were perfectly fiendish my good sense has been a match for them."
+
+"Oh Nick, that's delightful!" chanted Biddy. Then she added: "Do you
+mean she doesn't come any more?"
+
+"The dishevelled actress? She hasn't been near me for months."
+
+"But she's in London--she's always acting? I've been away so much I've
+scarcely observed," Biddy explained with a slight change of note.
+
+"The same silly part, poor creature, for nearly a year. It appears that
+that's 'success'--in her profession. I saw her in the character several
+times last summer, but haven't set foot in her theatre since."
+
+Biddy took this in; then she suggested; "Peter wouldn't have liked
+that."
+
+"Oh Peter's likes--!" Nick at his easel, beginning to work, conveniently
+sighed.
+
+"I mean her acting the same part for a year."
+
+"I'm sure I don't know; he has never written me a word."
+
+"Nor me either," Biddy returned.
+
+There was another short silence, during which Nick brushed at a panel.
+It ended in his presently saying: "There's one thing certainly Peter
+_would_ like--that is simply to be here to-night. It's a great
+night--another great night--for the abandoned one. She's to act Juliet
+for the first time."
+
+"Ah how I should like to see her!" the girl cried.
+
+Nick glanced at her; she sat watching him. "She has sent me a stall; I
+wish she had sent me two. I should have been delighted to take you."
+
+"Don't you think you could get another?" Biddy quavered.
+
+"They must be in tremendous demand. But who knows after all?" Nick
+added, at the same moment looking round. "Here's a chance--here's quite
+an extraordinary chance!"
+
+His servant had opened the door and was ushering in a lady whose
+identity was indeed justly reflected in those words. "Miss Rooth!" the
+man announced; but he was caught up by a gentleman who came next and who
+exclaimed, laughing and with a gesture gracefully corrective: "No,
+no--no longer Miss Rooth!"
+
+Miriam entered the place with her charming familiar grandeur--entered
+very much as she might have appeared, as she appeared every night, early
+in her first act, at the back of the stage, by the immemorial middle
+door. She might exactly now have been presenting herself to the house,
+taking easy possession, repeating old movements, looking from one to the
+other of the actors before the footlights. The rich "Good-morning" she
+threw into the air, holding out her right hand to Biddy and then giving
+her left to Nick--as she might have given it to her own brother--had
+nothing to tell of intervals or alienations. She struck Biddy as still
+more terrible in her splendid practice than when she had seen her
+before--the practice and the splendour had now something almost royal.
+The girl had had occasion to make her curtsey to majesties and
+highnesses, but the flutter those effigies produced was nothing to the
+way in which at the approach of this young lady the agitated air seemed
+to recognise something supreme. So the deep mild eyes she bent on Biddy
+were not soothing, though for that matter evidently intended to soothe.
+Biddy wondered Nick could have got so used to her--he joked at her as
+she loomed--and later in the day, still under the great impression of
+this incident, she even wondered that Peter could have full an impunity.
+It was true that Peter apparently didn't quite feel one.
+
+"You never came--you never came," Miriam said to her kindly and sadly;
+and Biddy, recognising the allusion, the invitation to visit the actress
+at home, had to explain how much she had been absent from London and
+then even that her brother hadn't proposed to take her.
+
+"Very true--he hasn't come himself. What's he doing now?" asked Miss
+Rooth, standing near her young friend but looking at Nick, who had
+immediately engaged in conversation with his other visitor, a gentleman
+whose face came back to the girl. She had seen this gentleman on the
+stage with the great performer--that was it, the night Peter took her to
+the theatre with Florry Tressilian. Oh that Nick would only do something
+of that sort now! This desire, quickened by the presence of the strange,
+expressive woman, by the way she scattered sweet syllables as if she
+were touching the piano-keys, combined with other things to make our
+young lady's head swim--other things too mingled to name, admiration and
+fear and dim divination and purposeless pride and curiosity and
+resistance, the impulse to go away and the determination to (as she
+would have liked fondly to fancy it) "hold her ground." The actress
+courted her with a wondrous voice--what was the matter with the actress
+and what did she want?--and Biddy tried in return to give an idea of
+what Nick was doing. Not succeeding very well she was about to appeal to
+her brother, but Miriam stopped her with the remark that it didn't
+signify; besides, Dashwood was telling Nick something--something they
+wanted him to know. "We're in a great excitement--he has taken a
+theatre," Miriam added.
+
+"Taken a theatre?" Biddy was vague.
+
+"We're going to set up for ourselves. He's going to do for me
+altogether. It has all been arranged only within a day or two. It
+remains to be seen how it will answer," Miriam smiled. Biddy murmured
+some friendly hope, and the shining presence went on: "Do you know why
+I've broken in here to-day after a long absence--interrupting your poor
+brother so basely, taking up his precious time? It's because I'm so
+nervous."
+
+"About your first night?" Biddy risked.
+
+"Do you know about that--are you coming?" Miriam had caught at it.
+
+"No, I'm not coming--I haven't a place."
+
+"Will you come if I send you one?"
+
+"Oh but really it's too beautiful of you!" breathed the girl.
+
+"You shall have a box; your brother shall bring you. They can't squeeze
+in a pin, I'm told; but I've kept a box, I'll manage it. Only if I do,
+you know, mind you positively come!" She sounded it as the highest of
+favours, resting her hand on Biddy's.
+
+"Don't be afraid. And may I bring a friend--the friend with whom I'm
+staying?"
+
+Miriam now just gloomed. "Do you mean Mrs. Dallow?"
+
+"No, no--Miss Tressilian. She puts me up, she has got a flat. Did you
+ever see a flat?" asked Biddy expansively. "My cousin's not in London."
+Miriam replied that she might bring whom she liked and Biddy broke out
+to her brother: "Fancy what kindness, Nick: we're to have a box to-night
+and you're to take me!"
+
+Nick turned to her a face of levity which struck her even at the time as
+too cynically free, but which she understood when the finer sense of it
+subsequently recurred to her. Mr. Dashwood interposed with the remark
+that it was all very well to talk about boxes, but that he didn't see
+how at that time of day the miracle was to be worked.
+
+"You haven't kept one as I told you?" Miriam demanded.
+
+"As you told me, my dear? Tell the lamb to keep its tenderest mutton
+from the wolves!"
+
+"You shall have one: we'll arrange it," Miriam went on to Biddy.
+
+"Let me qualify that statement a little, Miss Dormer," said Basil
+Dashwood. "We'll arrange it if it's humanly possible."
+
+"We'll arrange it even if it's inhumanly _im_possible--that's just the
+point," Miriam declared to the girl. "Don't talk about trouble--what's
+he meant for but to take it? _Cela s'annonce bien_, you see," she
+continued to Nick: "doesn't it look as if we should pull beautifully
+together?" And as he answered that he heartily congratulated her--he was
+immensely interested in what he had been told--she exclaimed after
+resting her eyes on him a moment: "What will you have? It seemed
+simpler! It was clear there had to be some one." She explained further
+to Nick what had led her to come in at that moment, while Dashwood
+approached Biddy with a civil assurance that they would see, they would
+leave no stone unturned, though he would not have taken upon himself to
+promise.
+
+Miriam reminded Nick of the blessing he had been to her nearly a year
+before, on her other first night, when she was all impatient and on
+edge; how he had let her come and sit there for hours--helped her to
+possess her soul till the evening and to keep out of harm's way. The
+case was the same at present, with the aggravation indeed that he would
+understand--Dashwood's nerves as well as her own: Dashwood's were a
+great deal worse than hers. Everything was ready for Juliet; they had
+been rehearsing for five months--it had kept her from going mad from the
+treadmill of the other piece--and he, Nick, had occurred to her again,
+in the last intolerable hours, as the friend in need, the salutary
+stop-gap, no matter how much she worried him. She shouldn't be turned
+out? Biddy broke away from Basil Dashwood: she must go, she must hurry
+off to Miss Tressilian with her news. Florry might make some other
+stupid engagement for the evening: she must be warned in time. The girl
+took a flushed, excited leave after having received a renewal of
+Miriam's pledge and even heard her say to Nick that he must now give
+back the seat already sent him--they should be sure to have another use
+for it.
+
+
+
+
+LI
+
+
+That night at the theatre and in the box--the miracle had been wrought,
+the treasure found--Nick Dormer pointed out to his two companions the
+stall he had relinquished, which was close in front; noting how oddly it
+remained during the whole of the first act vacant. The house was beyond
+everything, the actress beyond any one; though to describe again so
+famous an occasion--it has been described repeatedly by other
+reporters--is not in the compass of the closing words of a history
+already too sustained. It is enough to say that these great hours marked
+an era in contemporary art and that for those who had a spectator's
+share in them the words "revelation," "incarnation," "acclamation,"
+"demonstration," "ovation"--to name only a few, and all accompanied by
+the word "extraordinary"--acquired a new force. Miriam's Juliet was an
+exquisite image of young passion and young despair, expressed in the
+truest, divinest music that had ever poured from tragic lips. The great
+childish audience, gaping at her points, expanded there before her like
+a lap to catch flowers.
+
+During the first interval our three friends in the box had plenty to
+talk about, and they were so occupied with it that for some time they
+failed to observe a gentleman who had at last come into the empty stall
+near the front. This discovery was presently formulated by Miss
+Tressilian in the cheerful exclamation: "Only fancy--there's Mr.
+Sherringham!" This of course immediately became a high wonder--a wonder
+for Nick and Biddy, who had not heard of his return; and the prodigy was
+quickened by the fact that he gave no sign of looking for them or even
+at them. Having taken possession of his place he sat very still in it,
+staring straight before him at the curtain. His abrupt reappearance held
+the seeds of anxiety both for Biddy and for Nick, so that it was mainly
+Miss Tressilian who had freedom of mind to throw off the theory that he
+had come back that very hour--had arrived from a long journey. Couldn't
+they see how strange he was and how brown, how burnt and how red, how
+tired and how worn? They all inspected him, though Biddy declined Miss
+Tressilian's glass; but he was evidently indifferent to notice and
+finally Biddy, leaning back in her chair, dropped the fantastic words:
+
+"He has come home to marry Juliet!"
+
+Nick glanced at her and then replied: "What a disaster--to make such a
+journey as that and to be late for the fair!"
+
+"Late for the fair?"
+
+"Why she's married--these three days. They did it very quietly; Miriam
+says because her mother hated it and hopes it won't be much known! All
+the same she's Basil Dashwood's wedded wife--he has come in just in time
+to take the receipts for Juliet. It's a good thing, no doubt, for there
+are at least two fortunes to be made out of her, and he'll give up the
+stage." Nick explained to Miss Tressilian, who had inquired, that the
+gentleman in question was the actor who was playing Mercutio, and he
+asked Biddy if she hadn't known that this was what they were telling him
+in Rosedale Road that morning. She replied that she had understood
+nothing but that she was to be where she was, and she sank considerably
+behind the drapery of the box. From this cover she was able to launch,
+creditably enough, the exclamation:
+
+"Poor, poor Peter!"
+
+Nick got up and stood looking at poor, poor Peter. "He ought to come
+round and speak to us, but if he doesn't see us I suppose he doesn't."
+He quitted the box as to go to the restored exile, and I may add that as
+soon as he had done so Florence Tressilian bounded over to the dusk in
+which Biddy had nestled. What passed immediately between these young
+ladies needn't concern us: it is sufficient to mention that two minutes
+later Miss Tressilian broke out:
+
+"Look at him, dearest; he's turning his head this way!"
+
+"Thank you, I don't care to watch his turns," said Biddy; and she
+doubtless demeaned herself in the high spirit of these words. It
+nevertheless happened that directly afterwards she had certain knowledge
+of his having glanced at his watch as if to judge how soon the curtain
+would rise again, as well as of his having then jumped up and passed
+quickly out of his place. The curtain had risen again without his
+reappearing and without Nick's returning. Indeed by the time Nick
+slipped in a good deal of the third act was over; and even then, even
+when the curtain descended, Peter had not come back. Nick sat down in
+silence to watch the stage, to which the breathless attention of his
+companions seemed attached, though Biddy after a moment threw round at
+him a single quick look. At the end of the act they were all occupied
+with the recalls, the applause and the responsive loveliness of Juliet
+as she was led out--Mercutio had to give her up to Romeo--and even for a
+few minutes after the deafening roar had subsided nothing was said among
+the three. At last Nick began:
+
+"It's quite true he has just arrived; he's in Great Stanhope Street.
+They've given him several weeks, to make up for the uncomfortable way
+they bundled him off--to get there in time for some special business
+that had suddenly to be gone into--when he first went out: he tells me
+they even then promised that. He got into Southampton only a few hours
+ago, rushed up by the first train he could catch and came off here
+without any dinner."
+
+"Fancy!" said Miss Tressilian; while Biddy more generally asked if Peter
+might be in good health and appeared to have been happy. Nick replied
+that he described his post as beastly but didn't seem to have suffered
+from it. He was to be in England probably a month, he was awfully brown,
+he sent his love to Biddy. Miss Tressilian looked at his empty stall and
+was of the opinion that it would be more to the point if he were to come
+in to see her.
+
+"Oh he'll turn up; we had a goodish talk in the lobby where he met me. I
+think he went out somewhere."
+
+"How odd to come so many thousand miles for this and then not to stay!"
+Biddy fluted.
+
+"Did he come on purpose for this?" Miss Tressilian asked.
+
+"Perhaps he's gone out to get his dinner!" joked Biddy.
+
+Her friend suggested that he might be behind the scenes, but Nick cast
+doubts; whereupon Biddy asked if he himself were not going round. At
+this moment the curtain rose; Nick said he would go in the next
+interval. As soon as it came he quitted the box, remaining absent while
+it lasted.
+
+All this time, in the house, there was no sign of Peter. Nick reappeared
+only as the fourth act was beginning and uttered no word to his
+companions till it was over. Then, after a further delay produced by
+renewed vociferous proofs of the personal victory won, he depicted his
+visit to the stage and the wonderful sight of Miriam on the field of
+battle. Miss Tressilian inquired if he had found Mr. Sherringham with
+her; to which he replied that, save across the footlights, she had not
+been in touch with him. At this a soft exclamation broke from Biddy.
+"Poor Peter! Where is he, then?"
+
+Nick seemed to falter. "He's walking the streets."
+
+"Walking the streets?"
+
+"I don't know--I give it up!" our young man replied; and his tone, for
+some minutes, reduced his companions to silence. But a little later
+Biddy said:
+
+"Was it for him this morning she wanted that place--when she asked you
+to give yours back?"
+
+"For him exactly. It's very odd she had just managed to keep it--for all
+the good use he makes of it! She told me just now that she heard from
+him, at his post, a short time ago, to the effect that he had seen in a
+newspaper a statement she was going to do Juliet and that he firmly
+intended, though the ways and means were not clear to him--his leave of
+absence hadn't yet come out and he couldn't be sure when it would
+come--to be present on her first night; whereby she must do him the
+service to provide him a place. She thought this a speech rather in the
+air, so that in the midst of all her cares she took no particular pains
+about the matter. She had an idea she had really done with him for a
+long time. But this afternoon what does he do but telegraph to her from
+Southampton that he keeps his appointment and counts on her for a stall?
+Unless she had got back mine she wouldn't have been able to help him.
+When she was in Rosedale Road this morning she hadn't received his
+telegram; but his promise, his threat, whatever it was, came back to
+her: she had a vague foreboding and thought that on the chance she had
+better hold something ready. When she got home she found his telegram,
+and she told me he was the first person she saw in the house, through
+her fright when she came on in the second act. It appears she was
+terrified this time, and it lasted half through the play."
+
+"She must be rather annoyed at his having gone away," Miss Tressilian
+observed.
+
+"Annoyed? I'm not so sure!" laughed Nick.
+
+"Ah here he comes back!" cried Biddy, behind her fan, while the absentee
+edged into his seat in time for the fifth act. He stood there a moment,
+first looking round the theatre; then he turned his eyes to the box
+occupied by his relatives, smiling and waving his hand.
+
+"After that he'll surely come and see you," said Miss Tressilian.
+
+"We shall see him as we go out," Biddy returned: "he must lose no more
+time."
+
+Nick looked at him with a glass, then exclaiming: "Well, I'm glad he has
+pulled himself together!"
+
+"Why what's the matter with him--if he wasn't disappointed of his seat?"
+Miss Tressilian demanded.
+
+"The matter with him is that a couple of hours ago he had a great
+shock."
+
+"A great shock?"
+
+"I may as well mention it at last," Nick went on. "I had to say
+something to him in the lobby there when we met--something I was pretty
+sure he couldn't like. I let him have it full in the face--it seemed to
+me better and wiser. I let him know that Juliet's married."
+
+"Didn't he know it?" asked Biddy, who, with her face raised, had
+listened in deep stillness to every word that fell from her brother.
+
+"How should he have known it? It has only just taken place, and they've
+been so clever, for reasons of their own--those people move among a lot
+of considerations that are absolutely foreign to us--about keeping it
+out of the papers. They put in a lot of lies and they leave out the real
+things."
+
+"You don't mean to say Mr. Sherringham wanted to _marry_ her!" Miss
+Tressilian gasped.
+
+"Don't ask me what he wanted--I daresay we shall never know. One thing's
+very certain--that he didn't like my news, dear old Peter, and that I
+shan't soon forget the look in his face as he turned away from me and
+slipped out into the street. He was too much upset--he couldn't trust
+himself to come back; he had to walk about--he tried to walk it off."
+
+"Let us hope, then, he _has_ walked it off!"
+
+"Ah poor fellow--he couldn't hold out to the end; he has had to come
+back and look at her once more. He knows she'll be sublime in these last
+scenes."
+
+"Is he so much in love with her as that? What difference does it make
+for an actress if she _is_ mar--?" But in this rash inquiry Miss
+Tressilian suddenly checked herself.
+
+"We shall probably never know how much he has been in love with her, nor
+what difference it makes. We shall never know exactly what he came back
+for, nor why he couldn't stand it out there any longer without relief,
+nor why he scrambled down here all but straight from the station, nor
+why after all, for the last two hours, he has been roaming the streets.
+And it doesn't matter, for it's none of our business. But I'm sorry for
+him--she is going to be sublime," Nick added. The curtain was rising on
+the tragic climax of the play.
+
+Miriam Rooth was sublime; yet it may be confided to the reader that
+during these supreme scenes Bridget Dormer directed her eyes less to the
+inspired actress than to a figure in the stalls who sat with his own
+gaze fastened to the stage. It may further be intimated that Peter
+Sherringham, though he saw but a fragment of the performance, read
+clear, at the last, in the intense light of genius with which this
+fragment was charged, that even so after all he had been rewarded for
+his formidable journey. The great trouble of his infatuation subsided,
+leaving behind it something appreciably deep and pure. This pacification
+was far from taking place at once, but it was helped on, unexpectedly to
+him--it began to work at least--the very next night he saw the play,
+through the whole of which he then sat. He felt somehow recalled to the
+real by the very felicity of this experience, the supreme exhibition
+itself. He began to come back as from a far-off province of his history
+where miserable madness had reigned. He had been baffled, he had got his
+answer; it must last him--that was plain. He didn't fully accept it the
+first week or the second; but he accepted it sooner than he could have
+supposed had he known what it was to be when he paced at night, under
+the southern stars, the deck of the ship bearing him to England.
+
+It had been, as we know, Miss Tressilian's view, and even Biddy's, that
+evening, that Peter Sherringham would join them as they left the
+theatre. This view, however, was not confirmed by the event, for our
+troubled gentleman vanished utterly--disappointingly crude behaviour on
+the part of a young diplomatist who had distinguished himself--before
+any one could put a hand on him. And he failed to make up for his
+crudity by coming to see any one the next day, or even the next. Indeed
+many days elapsed and very little would have been known about him had it
+not been that, in the country, Mrs. Dallow knew. What Mrs. Dallow knew
+was eventually known to Biddy Dormer; and in this way it could be
+established in his favour that he had remained some extraordinarily
+small number of days in London, had almost directly gone over to Paris
+to see his old chief. He came back from Paris--Biddy learnt this not
+from Julia, but in a much more immediate way: she knew it by his
+pressing the little electric button at the door of Florence Tressilian's
+flat one day when the good Florence was out and she herself was at home.
+He made on this occasion a very long visit. The good Florence knew it
+not much later, you may be sure--and how he had got their address from
+Nick--and she took an extravagant pleasure in it. Mr. Sherringham had
+never been to see _her_--the like of her--in his life: therefore it was
+clear what had made him begin. When he had once begun he kept it up, and
+Miss Tressilian's pleasure grew.
+
+Good as she was, she could remember without the slightest relenting what
+Nick Dormer had repeated to them at the theatre about the dreary side of
+Peter's present post. However, she was not bound to make a stand at this
+if persons more nearly concerned, Lady Agnes and the girl herself,
+didn't mind it. How little _they_ minded it, and Grace and Julia Dallow
+and even Nick, was proved in the course of a meeting that took place at
+Harsh during the Easter holidays. The mistress of that seat had a small
+and intimate party to celebrate her brother's betrothal. The two ladies
+came over from Broadwood; even Nick, for two days, went back to his old
+hunting-ground, and Miss Tressilian relinquished for as long a time the
+delights of her newly arranged flat. Peter Sherringham obtained an
+extension of leave, so that he might go back to his legation with a
+wife. Fortunately, as it turned out, Biddy's ordeal, in the more or less
+torrid zone, was not cruelly prolonged, for the pair have already
+received a superior appointment. It is Lady Agnes's proud opinion that
+her daughter is even now shaping their destiny. I say "even now," for
+these facts bring me very close to contemporary history. During those
+two days at Harsh Nick arranged with the former mistress of his fate the
+conditions, as they might be called, under which she should sit to him;
+and every one will remember in how recent an exhibition general
+attention was attracted, as the newspapers said in describing the
+private view, to the noble portrait of a lady which was the final
+outcome of that arrangement. Gabriel Nash had been at many a private
+view, but he was not at that one.
+
+These matters are highly recent, however, as I say; so that in glancing
+about the little circle of the interests I have tried to evoke I am
+suddenly warned by a sharp sense of modernness. This renders it
+difficult to me, for instance, in taking leave of our wonderful Miriam,
+to do much more than allude to the general impression that her
+remarkable career is even yet only in its early prime. Basil Dashwood
+has got his theatre, and his wife--people know now she _is_ his
+wife--has added three or four new parts to her repertory; but every one
+is agreed that both in public and in private she has a great deal more
+to show. This is equally true of Nick Dormer, in regard to whom I may
+finally say that his friend Nash's predictions about his reunion with
+Mrs. Dallow have not up to this time been justified. On the other hand,
+I must not omit to add, this lady has not, at the latest accounts,
+married Mr. Macgeorge. It is very true there has been a rumour that Mr.
+Macgeorge is worried about her--has even ceased at all fondly to believe
+in her.
+
+
+
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Tragic Muse, by Henry James</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Tragic Muse</p>
+<p>Author: Henry James</p>
+<p>Release Date: December 10, 2006  [eBook #20085]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRAGIC MUSE***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Chuck Greif, R. Cedron,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team Europe<br />
+    (http://dp.rastko.net/)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>THE TRAGIC MUSE</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">BY</p>
+
+<h3>HENRY JAMES</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br />ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON<br />
+1921</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><a name="toc" id="toc"></a></p>
+<table summary="toc" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
+<tr><td><a href="#PREFACE"><b>PREFACE</b></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_FIRST"><b>BOOK FIRST:</b></a>
+<a href="#I">&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>I,</b></a>
+<a href="#II"><b>II,</b></a>
+<a href="#III"><b>III,</b></a>
+<a href="#IV"><b>IV,</b></a>
+<a href="#V"><b>V,</b></a>
+<a href="#VI"><b>VI</b></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_SECOND"><b>BOOK SECOND:</b></a>
+<a href="#VII">&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>VII,</b></a>
+<a href="#VIII"><b>VIII,</b></a>
+<a href="#IX"><b>IX,</b></a>
+<a href="#X"><b>X,</b></a>
+<a href="#XI"><b>XI,</b></a>
+<a href="#XII"><b>XII</b></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_THIRD"><b>BOOK THIRD:</b></a>
+<a href="#XIII">&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>XIII,</b></a>
+<a href="#XIV"><b>XIV,</b></a>
+<a href="#XV"><b>XV,</b></a>
+<a href="#XVI"><b>XVI,</b></a>
+<a href="#XVII"><b>XVII</b></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_FOURTH"><b>BOOK FOURTH:</b></a>
+<a href="#XVIII">&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>XVIII,</b></a>
+<a href="#XIX"><b>XIX,</b></a>
+<a href="#XX"><b>XX,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXI"><b>XXI</b></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_FIFTH"><b>BOOK FIFTH:</b></a>
+<a href="#XXII">&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>XXII,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXIII"><b>XXIII,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXIV"><b>XXIV,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXV"><b>XXV,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXVI"><b>XXVI,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXVII"><b>XXVII,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXVIII"><b>XXVIII,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXIX"><b>XXIX,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXX"><b>XXX,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXXI"><b>XXXI</b></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_SIX"><b>BOOK SIX:</b></a>
+<a href="#XXXII">&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>XXXII,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXXIII"><b>XXXIII,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXXIV"><b>XXXIV,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXXV"><b>XXXV,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXXVI"><b>XXXVI,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXXVII"><b>XXXVII,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXXVIII"><b>XXXVIII,</b></a>
+<a href="#XXXIX"><b>XXXIX,</b></a>
+<a href="#XL"><b>XL,</b></a>
+<a href="#XLI"><b>XLI</b></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_SEVENTH"><b>BOOK SEVENTH:</b></a>
+<a href="#XLII">&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>XLII,</b></a>
+<a href="#XLIII"><b>XLIII,</b></a>
+<a href="#XLIV"><b>XLIV,</b></a>
+<a href="#XLV"><b>XLV,</b></a>
+<a href="#XLVI"><b>XLVI</b></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_EIGHTH"><b>BOOK EIGHTH:</b></a>
+<a href="#XLVII">&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>XLVII,</b></a>
+<a href="#XLVIII"><b>XLVIII,</b></a>
+<a href="#XLIX"><b>XLIX,</b></a>
+<a href="#L"><b>L,</b></a>
+<a href="#LI"><b>LI</b></a>
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p>I profess a certain vagueness of remembrance in respect to the origin
+and growth of <i>The Tragic Muse</i>, which appeared in the <i>Atlantic
+Monthly</i> 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&mdash;as I like to
+do in general&mdash;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"&mdash;art, that is, as a human complication and a
+social stumbling-block&mdash;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?&mdash;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&mdash;why there <i>should</i> be was another matter&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Yet I continue to see experience giving me its jog mainly in the form of
+an invitation from the gentle editor of the <i>Atlantic</i>, 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&mdash;though for reasons still obscure to me&mdash;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
+<i>The Tragic Muse</i> 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&mdash;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 <i>tone</i> of <i>The Tragic Muse</i>, its
+constant and doubtless rather fine-drawn truth to its particular sought
+pitch and accent, are, critically speaking, its principal merit&mdash;the
+inner harmony that I perhaps presumptuously permit myself to compare to
+an unevaporated scent.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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. <i>There</i> was
+my subject this time&mdash;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&mdash;the difficulties being the
+story&mdash;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&mdash;therefore what should one say to some other young man who would
+chuck something and somebody else, admired in their way too?</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;an interesting
+one, indispensably&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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
+<i>can</i> 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&mdash;for the romantic
+effect&mdash;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&mdash;especially in the English world&mdash;only at the
+importance of heeding what it may mean.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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 <i>had</i> 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 <i>how</i> that principle of health and safety, working as an
+absolutely premeditated art, has prevailed. There may in its absence be
+life, incontestably, as <i>The Newcomes</i> has life, as <i>Les Trois
+Mousquetaires</i>, as Tolstoi's <i>Peace and War</i>, have it; but what do such
+large, loose, baggy monsters, with their queer elements of the
+accidental and the arbitrary, artistically <i>mean</i>? We have heard it
+maintained, we well remember, that such things are "superior to art";
+but we understand least of all what <i>that</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>I recall with this confirmed infatuation of retrospect that through the
+mild perceptions I here glance at there struck for <i>The Tragic Muse</i> 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&mdash;and my long story, through the usual
+difficulties, as well. The usual difficulties&mdash;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&mdash;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 <i>not</i>, 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&mdash;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, <i>has</i> the organic centre
+succeeded in getting into proper position.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>But I am far from pretending that these desperations of ingenuity have
+not&mdash;as through seeming <i>most</i> of the very essence of the problem&mdash;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 <i>The Tragic Muse</i> I catch again
+the very odour of Paris, which comes up in the rich rumble of the Rue de
+la Paix&mdash;with which my room itself, for that matter, seems
+impregnated&mdash;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&mdash;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 <i>foreshortened</i> 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!</p>
+
+<p>But I have got too much out of the "old" Kensington light of twenty
+years ago&mdash;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&mdash;always entrancing range of questions&mdash;the order, the reason,
+the relation, of presented aspects. With three <i>general</i> 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
+<i>showing</i> them beautifully become so&mdash;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&mdash;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 <i>link</i> 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 <i>arbitrary</i> stroke,
+the touch without its reason, but as payment for that service the
+process insists on being kept impeccably the right one.</p>
+
+<p>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, <i>The Tragic Muse</i> 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&mdash;since why, if
+it be, are we treated to such an intolerable dose of Sherringham's? It
+can't be in Sherringham's&mdash;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&mdash;with such an
+amount of exposed subjectivity all round her&mdash;can so dense a medium be a
+centre? Such questions as those go straight&mdash;thanks to which they are, I
+profess, delightful; going straight they are of the sort that makes
+answers possible. Miriam <i>is</i> 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&mdash;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
+<i>alternation</i>. 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 <i>aspects</i>, that of making them
+amusingly various, had haunted the author of <i>The Tragic Muse</i> from far
+back, and he was in due course to yield to it all luxuriously, too
+luxuriously perhaps, in <i>The Awkward Age</i>, as will doubtless with the
+extension of these remarks be complacently shown.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>The Princess
+Casamassima</i>, 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 <i>usurping</i> 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&mdash;or
+with the second of whom she at least is importantly concerned&mdash;<i>is</i>
+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 <i>them</i>: 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>The late R. L. Stevenson was to write to me, I recall&mdash;and precisely on
+the occasion of <i>The Tragic Muse</i>&mdash;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 <i>per se</i> 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
+<i>was</i> a nice point if one would&mdash;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&mdash;a light that may well dazzle to distress any ingenuous
+worker in the same field. In those parts of his brief but inimitable
+<i>Histoire Comique</i> on which he is most to be congratulated&mdash;for there
+are some that prompt to reserves&mdash;he has "done the actress," as well as
+the actor, done above all the mountebank, the mummer and the <i>cabotin</i>,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Her relation to Nick Dormer, for instance, was intended as a superior
+interest&mdash;that of being (while perfectly sincere, sincere for <i>her</i>, 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&mdash;for I have
+represented him as in his day quite sufficiently troubled and
+anxious&mdash;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&mdash;capable, that is, of
+<i>not</i> asking of him&mdash;will depend on what he shall ask of <i>her</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>This puts her quite on a different level from that of the vivid monsters
+of M. France, whose artistic identity is the last thing <i>they</i> wish to
+chuck&mdash;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 <i>his</i> 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 <i>her</i>; 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&mdash;one of those deep
+subjections that, in men of "taste," the Com&eacute;die Fran&ccedil;aise used in old
+days to conspire for and some such odd and affecting examples of which
+were to be noted&mdash;he yet offers her his hand and an introduction to the
+very best society if she will leave the stage. The power&mdash;and her having
+the sense of the power&mdash;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&mdash;if there
+were nothing else, and there is much&mdash;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 <i>represent</i>
+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").</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>been</i> 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&mdash;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 <i>his</i> 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;that to each of the men&mdash;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&mdash;us novelists, especially in the
+old days&mdash;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&mdash;and on grounds both various and interesting to trace&mdash;to
+remain very imperfect.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>in triumph</i> must be
+flat in proportion as it really sticks to its subject&mdash;it can only
+smuggle in relief and variety. For, to put the matter in an image, all
+we then&mdash;in his triumph&mdash;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&mdash;therefore he
+mayn't "have" it, in the form of the privilege of the hero, at the same
+time. The privilege of the hero&mdash;that is, of the martyr or of the
+interesting and appealing and comparatively floundering <i>person</i>&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;at least by
+intention&mdash;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, <i>The Tragic Muse</i> has struck
+me again as conscious of a bright advantage.</p>
+
+<p class="r">HENRY JAMES.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Page 3]</a></span></p><hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_FIRST" id="BOOK_FIRST"></a>BOOK FIRST</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a><a href="#toc">I</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;Christmas
+and Easter, Whitsuntide and the autumn&mdash;Paris besprinkles itself at a
+night's notice. They had about them the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>Three ladies and a young man, they were obviously a family&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"En v'l&agrave; 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;that was visible even as they sat there&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> 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&mdash;his inches, his limbs, his friendly eyes, the
+modulation of his voice, the cleanness of his flesh-tints and the
+fashion of his garments&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, Biddy, why should we sit moping here all day? Come and take a
+turn about with me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Where shall we find you, then, if Peter comes?" asked the other Miss
+Dormer, making no movement at all.</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay Peter won't come. He'll leave us here to cool our heels."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;a man with the skin of a beast round his loins,
+tussling with a naked woman in some primitive effort of courtship or
+capture.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay that if Peter comes Julia'll be with him," the elder girl
+remarked irrelevantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well then he can take Julia about. That will be more proper," said Lady
+Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother dear, she doesn't care a rap about art. It's a fearful bore
+looking at fine things with Julia," Nick returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you go with him, Grace?"&mdash;and Biddy appealed to her sister.</p>
+
+<p>"I think she has awfully good taste!" Grace exclaimed, not answering
+this inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Don't</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I say nothing but what she'd say herself," the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> young man urged. "About
+some things she has very good taste, but about this kind of thing she
+has no taste at all."</p>
+
+<p>"That's better, I think," said Lady Agnes, turning her eyes again to the
+"kind of thing" her son appeared to designate.</p>
+
+<p>"She's awfully clever&mdash;awfully!" Grace went on with decision.</p>
+
+<p>"Awfully, awfully!" her brother repeated, standing in front of her and
+smiling down at her.</p>
+
+<p>"You are nasty, Nick. You know you are," said the young lady, but more
+in sorrow than in anger.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;in
+that place, you know?" she asked of her mother. "Then we'd come back
+when it was ready."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Then perhaps Peter will if he comes. I'm sure he's up in everything of
+that sort."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh hang Peter!" Nick exclaimed. "Leave him out of account, and <i>do</i>
+order lunch, mother; but not cold beef and pickles."</p>
+
+<p>"I must say&mdash;about <i>him</i>&mdash;you're not nice," Biddy ventured to remark to
+her brother, hesitating and even blushing a little.</p>
+
+<p>"You make up for it, my dear," the young man answered, giving her
+chin&mdash;a very charming, rotund, little chin&mdash;a friendly whisk with his
+forefinger.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't imagine what you've got against him," her ladyship said
+gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> 'Hell has no fury like a woman scorned'; nor like a man
+either."</p>
+
+<p>"Peter has such a tremendous lot to do&mdash;it's a very busy time at the
+embassy; there are sure to be reasons," Biddy explained with her pretty
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Reasons enough, no doubt!" said Lady Agnes&mdash;who accompanied these words
+with an ambiguous sigh, however, as if in Paris even the best reasons
+would naturally be bad ones.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>"She's younger than you, my dear!" cried the elder girl, still resolute.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, nineteen days."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you know her birthday."</p>
+
+<p>"She knows yours; she always gives you something," Lady Agnes reminded
+her son.</p>
+
+<p>"Her taste is good <i>then</i>, isn't it, Nick?" Grace Dormer continued.</p>
+
+<p>"She makes charming presents; but, dear mother, it isn't <i>her</i> taste.
+It's her husband's."</p>
+
+<p>"How her husband's?"</p>
+
+<p>"The beautiful objects of which she disposes so freely are the things he
+collected for years laboriously, devotedly, poor man!"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't say she doesn't choose lovely ones,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> Grace remarked to her
+brother in a tone of some triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, they're all lovely. George Dallow's judgement was so sure, he
+was incapable of making a mistake," Nicholas Dormer returned.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how you can talk of him, he was dreadful," said Lady Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, if he was good enough for Julia to marry he's good enough for
+us to talk of."</p>
+
+<p>"She did him a very great honour."</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay, but he was not unworthy of it. No such enlightened
+collection of beautiful objects has been made in England in our time."</p>
+
+<p>"You think too much of beautiful objects!" Lady Agnes sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you were just now lamenting that I think too little."</p>
+
+<p>"It's very nice&mdash;his having left Julia so well off," Biddy interposed
+soothingly, as if she foresaw a tangle.</p>
+
+<p>"He treated her <i>en grand seigneur</i>, absolutely," Nick went on.</p>
+
+<p>"He used to look greasy, all the same"&mdash;Grace bore on it with a dull
+weight. "His name ought to have been Tallow."</p>
+
+<p>"You're not saying what Julia would like, if that's what you are trying
+to say," her brother observed.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be vulgar, Grace," said Lady Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"He's too much older than you, my dear," Grace answered without
+encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>"That's why I've noticed it&mdash;he's thirty-four.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> Do you call that too
+old? I don't care for slobbering infants!" Biddy cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be vulgar," Lady Agnes enjoined again.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;the murders, the tortures, all kinds of
+disease and indecency!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"British matron's soon said! I don't know what they're coming to."</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Nick, Nick!" Lady Agnes cried with a strange depth of feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"I like them better in London&mdash;they're much less unpleasant," said Grace
+Dormer.</p>
+
+<p>"They're things you can look at," her ladyship went on. "We certainly
+make the better show."</p>
+
+<p>"The subject doesn't matter, it's the treatment, the treatment!" Biddy
+protested in a voice like the tinkle of a silver bell.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Poor little Bid!"&mdash;her brother broke into a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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 <i>taper fort</i>, 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&mdash;I feel indulgent even to them: they
+give me an impression of intelligence, of eager observation. All art is
+one&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"'We,' do you say, my dear? Are you really setting up for an artist?"
+Lady Agnes asked.</p>
+
+<p>Nick just hesitated. "I was speaking for Biddy."</p>
+
+<p>"But you <i>are</i> one, Nick&mdash;you are!" the girl cried.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Agnes looked for an instant as if she were going to say once more
+"Don't be vulgar!" But she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"We're all in the same boat," Biddy repeated with cheerful zeal.</p>
+
+<p>"Not me, if you please!" Lady Agnes replied. "It's horrid messy work,
+your modelling."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah but look at the results!" said the girl eagerly&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a great deal being done here&mdash;a real vitality," Nicholas Dormer
+went on to his mother in the same reasonable informing way. "Some of
+these fellows go very far."</p>
+
+<p>"They do indeed!" said Lady Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm fond of young schools&mdash;like this movement in sculpture," Nick
+insisted with his slightly provoking serenity.</p>
+
+<p>"They're old enough to know better!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mayn't I look, mamma? It <i>is</i> necessary to my development," Biddy
+declared.</p>
+
+<p>"You may do as you like," said Lady Agnes with dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"She ought to see good work, you know," the young man went on.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> right, and his sister Grace interposed with
+the inquiry&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Please, mamma, are we never going to lunch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah mother, mother!" the young man murmured in a troubled way, looking
+down at her with a deep fold in his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>much</i> sense of
+responsibility," she pursued; "but sometimes I don't know what has
+become of it&mdash;it seems all, <i>all</i> gone!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah mother, mother!" he exclaimed again&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a><a href="#toc">II</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I ought to get plenty of ideas for my modelling, oughtn't I, Nick?" his
+sister put to him after a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah my poor child, what shall I say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think I've any capacity for ideas?" the girl continued
+ruefully.</p>
+
+<p>"Lots of them, no doubt. But the capacity for applying them, for putting
+them into practice&mdash;how much of that have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can I tell till I try?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by trying, Biddy dear?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why you know&mdash;you've seen me."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you call that trying?" her brother amusedly demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah Nick!" she said with sensibility. But then with more spirit: "And
+please what do you call it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this for instance is a good case." And her companion pointed to
+another bust&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Biddy looked at the image a moment. "Ah that's not trying; that's
+succeeding."</p>
+
+<p>"Not altogether; it's only trying seriously."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why shouldn't I be serious?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mother wouldn't like it. She has inherited the fine old superstition
+that art's pardonable only so long as it's bad&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"She doesn't want one to be professional," Biddy returned as if she
+could do justice to every system.</p>
+
+<p>"Better leave it alone then. There are always duffers enough."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to be a duffer," Biddy said. "But I thought you encouraged
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"So I did, my poor child. It was only to encourage myself."</p>
+
+<p>"With your own work&mdash;your painting?"</p>
+
+<p>"With my futile, my ill-starred endeavours. Union is strength&mdash;so that
+we might present a wider front, a larger surface of resistance."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;Nick was often mystifying, it
+was his only fault&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh don't lean on me. I'm a wretched broken reed&mdash;I'm no use <i>really</i>!"
+he promptly admonished her.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean you're a duffer?" Biddy asked in alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"Frightful, frightful!"</p>
+
+<p>"So that you intend to give up your work&mdash;to let it alone, as you advise
+<i>me</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"It has never been my work, all that business, Biddy. If it had it would
+be different. I should stick to it."</p>
+
+<p>"And you <i>won't</i> stick to it?" the girl said, standing before him
+open-eyed.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"A great talent&mdash;what's simpler than that?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"One excellent thing, dear Biddy: no talent at all!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yours is so real you can't help it."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall see, we shall see," said Nick Dormer. "Let us go look at that
+big group."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall see if your talent's real?" Biddy went on as she accompanied
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;just in the first glimpse&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> 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&mdash;she might have been a daughter&mdash;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&mdash;it struck Biddy as very long&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;he was
+uncommonly glad to see him.</p>
+
+<p>"I never come across you&mdash;I don't know why," Nick added while the two,
+smiling, looked each other up and down like men reunited after a long
+interval.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Different, yes, but not so different as that. Don't we both live in
+London, after all, and in the nineteenth century?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah my dear Dormer, excuse me: I don't live<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> in the nineteenth century.
+<i>Jamais de la vie</i>!" the gentleman declared.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor in London either?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know what I adore?" Nicholas Dormer asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I know well enough what you used to."</p>
+
+<p>"That's more than I do myself. There were so many things."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, there are many things&mdash;many, many: that's what makes life so
+amusing."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you find it amusing?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, <i>c'est &agrave; se tordre</i>. Don't you think so? Ah it was high
+time I should meet you&mdash;I see. I've an idea you need me."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"There are many gods and this is one of their temples," the mysterious
+personage went on. "It's a house of strange idols&mdash;isn't it?&mdash;and of
+some strange and unnatural sacrifices."</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> 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&mdash;there was
+a moment when the neglected creature resembled a tigress about to
+spring&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;one can't meet you there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I rove, drift, float," was the answer; "my feelings direct me&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I should like to get hold of you," Nick returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, in that case there would be no doubt the intellectual adventure.
+Those are the currents&mdash;any sort of personal relation&mdash;that govern my
+career."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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"&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, I keep you," he said, "unless on my side I deprive those
+ladies&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Charming women, but it's not an indissoluble union. We meet, we
+communicate, we part! They're going&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Who <i>is</i> he&mdash;who <i>are</i> they?" Biddy instantly asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a gentleman," Nick made answer&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> 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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want me to go back to mother?" the girl asked with a lengthening
+visage.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what do you think?" He asked it indeed gaily enough.</p>
+
+<p>"Is your conversation to be about&mdash;about private affairs?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I can't say that. But I doubt if mother would think it the sort of
+thing that's 'necessary to your development.'"</p>
+
+<p>This assertion appeared to inspire her with the eagerness with which she
+again broke out: "But who are they&mdash;who are they?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;read him with interest. He
+has written a very clever book."</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of a book?"</p>
+
+<p>"A sort of novel."</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of novel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care if he has. Peter's nothing to me. But I'll go if you wish
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Nick smiled upon her again and then said: "It doesn't signify. We'll all
+go."</p>
+
+<p>"All?" she echoed.</p>
+
+<p>"He won't hurt us. On the contrary he'll do us good."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"You enjoy Paris&mdash;you're happy here?" Mr. Nash inquired, leaning over
+his friend to speak to the girl.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"And French art interests you? You find things here that please?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, I like some of them."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Nash considered her kindly. "I hoped you'd say you like the Academy
+better."</p>
+
+<p>"She would if she didn't think you expected it," said Nicholas Dormer.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Nick!" Biddy protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Dormer's herself an English picture," their visitor pronounced in
+the tone of a man whose urbanity was a general solvent.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a compliment if you don't like them!" Biddy exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah some of them, some of them; there's a certain sort of thing!" Mr.
+Nash continued. "We must feel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> everything, everything that we can. We're
+here for that."</p>
+
+<p>"You do like English art then?" Nick demanded with a slight accent of
+surprise.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"They were my wild oats. I've sown them all."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall see that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh there's nothing of them now: a tame, scanty, homely growth. My only
+good generalisations are my actions."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall see <i>them</i> then."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;but mine are all the things I <i>don't</i> do. There are
+so many of those, so many, but they don't produce any effect. And then
+all the rest are shades&mdash;extremely fine shades."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Shades of impression, of appreciation," said the young man with his
+explanatory smile. "All my behaviour consists of my feelings."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, don't you show your feelings? You used to!"</p>
+
+<p>"Wasn't it mainly those of disgust?" Nash asked. "Those operate no
+longer. I've closed that window."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean you like everything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, no! But I look only at what I do like."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that you've lost the noble faculty of disgust?"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by the agreeable?" Nick demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh the happy moments of our consciousness&mdash;the multiplication of those
+moments. We must save as many as possible from the dark gulf."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think there are any wrongs in the world&mdash;any abuses and
+sufferings?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh so many, so many! That's why one must choose."</p>
+
+<p>"Choose to stop them, to reform them&mdash;isn't that the choice?" Biddy
+asked. "That's Nick's," she added, blushing and looking at this
+personage.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah our divergence&mdash;yes!" Mr. Nash sighed. "There are all kinds of
+machinery for that&mdash;very complicated and ingenious. Your formulas, my
+dear Dormer, your formulas!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hang 'em, I haven't got any!" Nick now bravely declared.</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You must be very sure you get hold of the beautiful," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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>I</i> am a fine consequence," said
+Gabriel Nash.</p>
+
+<p>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
+&aelig;sthete?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah there's one of the formulas! That's walking in one's hat! I've <i>no</i>
+profession, my dear young lady. I've no <i>&eacute;tat civil</i>. 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
+<i>m&eacute;tier</i>; to live such an art; to feel such a career!"</p>
+
+<p>Bridget Dormer turned her back and examined her statue, and her brother
+said to his old friend: "And to write?"</p>
+
+<p>"To write? Oh I shall never do it again!"</p>
+
+<p>"You've done it almost well enough to be inconsistent. That book of
+yours is anything but negative; it's complicated and ingenious."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, I'm extremely ashamed of that book," said Gabriel Nash.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah call yourself a bloated Buddhist and have done with it!" his
+companion exclaimed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>begin</i> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"And politics?" Nick asked.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"That, no doubt you'll say, is still far more for the convenience of
+others&mdash;is still worse for one's style."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>Biddy stepped nearer at this and drew still further on her courage.
+"Won't mamma be waiting? Oughtn't we to go to luncheon?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Both the young men looked up at her and Mr. Nash broke out: "You ought
+to protest! You ought to save him!"</p>
+
+<p>"To save him?" Biddy echoed.</p>
+
+<p>"He had a style, upon my word he had! But I've seen it go. I've read his
+speeches."</p>
+
+<p>"You were capable of that?" Nick laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"For you, yes. But it was like listening to a nightingale in a brass
+band."</p>
+
+<p>"I think they were beautiful," Biddy declared.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;to see all over, to see everything. There are so few like that."</p>
+
+<p>"I think he still sees," Biddy returned, wondering a little why Nick
+didn't defend himself.</p>
+
+<p>"He sees his 'side,' his dreadful 'side,' dear young lady. Poor man,
+fancy your having a 'side'&mdash;you, you&mdash;and spending your days and your
+nights looking at it! I'd as soon pass my life looking at an
+advertisement on a hoarding."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't see me some day a great statesman?" said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, it's exactly what I've a terror of."</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy! don't you admire them?" Biddy cried.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why what in the world is better?" Biddy asked.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;I must!" he
+added.</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a><a href="#toc">III</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, when one comes to Paris&mdash;!" 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 <i>"Mesdames sont seules?"</i> receiving in return from
+her ladyship the slightly snappish announcement <i>"Non; nous sommes
+beaucoup!"</i> 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 <i>carte</i> 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> hungry and had already
+broken a morsel from a long glazed roll.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Let him first be particular to come!" her ladyship exclaimed, turning a
+cold eye upon the waiter.</p>
+
+<p><i>"Poulet chasseur, filets mignons sauce bearnaise,"</i> the man suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;she was honourably conscious of having fed them decently, as
+she had always done everything&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes I think he does it to torment one. One can't mention her!"
+Grace responded.</p>
+
+<p>"It's better not to mention her, but to leave it alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet he never mentions her of himself."</p>
+
+<p>"In some cases that's supposed to show that people like people&mdash;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 <i>what</i> he's thinking of."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be awfully suitable," said Grace, biting her roll.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;he has known her always."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing can be plainer than that she likes him," Grace opined.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Julia!" Lady Agnes almost wailed; and her tone suggested that she
+knew more about that than she was ready to state.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah what Nick is&mdash;that's what I sometimes wonder!"</p>
+
+<p>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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't," said Lady Agnes quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is then? Certainly Percy isn't."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Agnes was silent a space. "There's no one like your father."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear papa!" Grace handsomely concurred. Then with a rapid transition:
+"It would be so jolly for all of us&mdash;she'd be so nice to us."</p>
+
+<p>"She's that already&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't meddle&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"If he does he won't," said Lady Agnes a trifle obscurely.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's what's so charming. And he could do anything then, couldn't
+he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, your father had no fortune to speak of."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but didn't Uncle Percy help him?"</p>
+
+<p>"His wife helped him," said Lady Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear mamma!"&mdash;the girl was prompt. "There's one thing," she added:
+"that Mr. Carteret will always help Nick."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by 'always'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why whether he marries Julia or not."</p>
+
+<p>"Things aren't so easy," Lady Agnes judged. "It will all depend on
+Nick's behaviour. He can stop it to-morrow."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Grace Dormer stared; she evidently thought Mr. Carteret's beneficence a
+part of the scheme of nature. "How could he stop it?"</p>
+
+<p>"By not being serious. It isn't so hard to prevent people giving you
+money."</p>
+
+<p>"Serious?" Grace repeated. "Does he want him to be a prig like Lord
+Egbert?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;that's exactly what he wants. And what he'll do for him he'll do
+for him only if he marries Julia."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he told you?" Grace inquired. And then, before her mother could
+answer, "I'm delighted at that!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh mamma!" Grace demurred.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;isn't there?&mdash;that poor papa had so little."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and there's the fact that it killed him!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"How d'ye do, Cousin Agnes? How d'ye do,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> 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&mdash;he might have done him the
+honour to call&mdash;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&mdash;an hour or two hence, on leaving this
+place. But we're here so quietly&mdash;not to go out, not to seem to appeal
+to the ambassador. Nick put it so&mdash;'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!'"</p>
+
+<p>"He never said a word to me about Julia," Peter Sherringham returned.
+Lady Agnes and her daughter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> 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 Elys&eacute;es. She had come up to Paris by an early
+train&mdash;- she had been staying at Versailles, of all places in the world.
+She had been a week in Paris on her return from Cannes&mdash;her stay there
+had been of nearly a month: fancy!&mdash;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&mdash;she had a
+dozen or two!&mdash;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&mdash;a rare thing for her; she usually stuck
+to it so in summer.</p>
+
+<p>"Three days with Mrs. Billinghurst&mdash;how very good-natured of her!" Lady
+Agnes commented.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh they're very nice to her," Sherringham said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I hope so!" Grace Dormer exhaled. "Why didn't you make her come
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>"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 H&ocirc;tel de Hollande."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course we'll do that," Lady Agnes declared. "Nick went to ask about
+her at the Westminster."</p>
+
+<p>"She gave that up; they wouldn't give her the rooms she wanted, her
+usual set."</p>
+
+<p>"She's delightfully particular!" Grace said complacently. Then she
+added: "She <i>does</i> like pictures, doesn't she?"</p>
+
+<p>Peter Sherringham stared. "Oh I daresay. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> that's not what she has in
+her head this morning. She has some news from London&mdash;she's immensely
+excited."</p>
+
+<p>"What has she in her head?" Lady Agnes asked.</p>
+
+<p>"What's her news from London?" Grace added.</p>
+
+<p>"She wants Nick to stand."</p>
+
+<p>"Nick to stand?" both ladies cried.</p>
+
+<p>"She undertakes to bring him in for Harsh. Mr. Pinks is dead&mdash;the
+fellow, you know, who got the seat at the general election. He dropped
+down in London&mdash;disease of the heart or something of that sort. Julia
+has her telegram, but I see it was in last night's papers."</p>
+
+<p>"Imagine&mdash;Nick never mentioned it!" said Lady Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you know, mother?&mdash;abroad he only reads foreign papers."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I know. I've no patience with him," her ladyship continued. "Dear
+Julia!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a nasty little place, and Pinks had a tight squeeze&mdash;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&mdash;if the man's Nick&mdash;and is ready to take the order to put him in."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure if she can do it she will," Grace pronounced.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear, dear Julia! And Nick can do something for himself," said the
+mother of this candidate.</p>
+
+<p>"I've no doubt he can do anything," Peter Sherringham returned
+good-naturedly. Then, "Do you mean in expenses?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, I daresay you may look to Julia. I think that's her idea."</p>
+
+<p>"Delightful Julia!" Lady Agnes broke out. "If poor Sir Nicholas could
+have known! Of course he must go straight home," she added.</p>
+
+<p>"He won't like that," said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>"Then he'll have to go without liking it."</p>
+
+<p>"It will rather spoil <i>your</i> little excursion, if you've only just
+come," Peter suggested; "to say nothing of the great Biddy's, if she's
+enjoying Paris."</p>
+
+<p>"We may stay perhaps&mdash;with Julia to protect us," said Lady Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah she won't stay; she'll go over for her man."</p>
+
+<p>"Her man&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"The fellow who stands, whoever he is&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful Julia!" Lady Agnes panted. "Of course Nick must go straight
+there too."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose he must see first if they'll have him."</p>
+
+<p>"If they'll have him? Why how can he tell till he tries?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean the people at headquarters, the fellows who arrange it."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it's a great name, Cousin Agnes&mdash;a very great name."</p>
+
+<p>"One of the greatest, simply," Lady Agnes smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the best name in the world!" said Grace more emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>"All the same it didn't prevent his losing his seat."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"By half-a-dozen votes: it was too odious!" her ladyship cried.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember&mdash;I remember. And in such a case as that why didn't they
+immediately put him in somewhere else?"</p>
+
+<p>"How one sees you live abroad, dear Peter! There happens to have been
+the most extraordinary lack of openings&mdash;I never saw anything like
+it&mdash;for a year. They've had their hand on him, keeping him all ready. I
+daresay they've telegraphed him."</p>
+
+<p>"And he hasn't told you?"</p>
+
+<p>Lady Agnes faltered. "He's so very odd when he's abroad!"</p>
+
+<p>"At home too he lets things go," Grace interposed. "He does so
+little&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"So he is, dear old man. But what does he do, what has he been doing, in
+a positive way?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has been painting."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah not seriously!" Lady Agnes protested.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the worst way," said Peter Sherringham. "Good things?"</p>
+
+<p>Neither of the ladies made a direct response to this, but Lady Agnes
+said: "He has spoken repeatedly. They're always calling on him."</p>
+
+<p>"He speaks magnificently," Grace attested.</p>
+
+<p>"That's another of the things I lose, living in far countries. And he's
+doing the Salon now with the great Biddy?"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p><p>Sherringham stared. "Aren't the things good? I had an idea&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good?" cried Lady Agnes. "They're too odious, too wicked."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," laughed Peter, "that's what people fall into if they live abroad.
+The French oughtn't to live abroad!"</p>
+
+<p>"Here they come," Grace announced at this point; "but they've got a
+strange man with them."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a bore when we want to talk!" Lady Agnes sighed.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;more of one's class and one's
+country. But this didn't prevent several<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> stray persons&mdash;Bridget Dormer
+for instance&mdash;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&mdash;she rather jumbled her comparisons&mdash;she thought he
+recalled a Titian.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a><a href="#toc">IV</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah repetition&mdash;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 <i>one</i> appearance, and the procession,
+regardless of expense, for ever and for ever different." The company was
+occupied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> 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!"</p>
+
+<p>Grace looked quickly away from him and said to her brother: "Nick, Mr.
+Pinks is dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Pinks?" asked Gabriel Nash, appearing to wonder where he should
+sit.</p>
+
+<p>"The member for Harsh; and Julia wants you to stand," the girl went on.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Pinks, the member for Harsh? What names to be sure!" Gabriel mused
+cheerfully, still unseated.</p>
+
+<p>"Julia wants me? I'm much obliged to her!" Nick absently said. "Nash,
+please sit by my mother, with Peter on her other side."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, it isn't Julia"&mdash;Lady Agnes spoke earnestly. "Every one wants
+you. Haven't you heard from your people? Didn't you know the seat was
+vacant?"</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's some <i>b&oelig;uf brais&eacute;</i>, my dear, and afterwards some galantine.
+Here's a dish of eggs with asparagus-tips."</p>
+
+<p>"I advise you to go in for it, Nick," said Peter Sherringham, to whom
+the preparation in question was presented.</p>
+
+<p>"Into the eggs with asparagus-tips? <i>Donnez m'en s'il vous pla&icirc;t</i>. My
+dear fellow, how can I stand? how can I sit? Where's the money to come
+from?"</p>
+
+<p>"The money? Why from Jul&mdash;&mdash;!" Grace began, but immediately caught her
+mother's eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Julia, how you do work her!" Nick<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> exclaimed. "Nash, I recommend
+you the asparagus-tips. Mother, he's my best friend&mdash;do look after him."</p>
+
+<p>"I've an impression I've breakfasted&mdash;I'm not sure," Nash smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"With those beautiful ladies? Try again&mdash;you'll find out."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather&mdash;if Julia goes down!" her elder daughter exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps Julia won't go down!" Nick answered humorously.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;we must go
+back!"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;how can you?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Gabriel partook of the fish, listening with interest. "But I thought we
+had no more pocket-boroughs."</p>
+
+<p>"It's pockets we rather lack, so many of us. There are plenty of
+Harshes," Nick Dormer observed.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you mean," Lady Agnes said to Nash with considerable
+majesty.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say you've to pay money to get into that awful
+place&mdash;that it's not <i>you</i> who are paid?"</p>
+
+<p>"Into that awful place?" Lady Agnes repeated blankly.</p>
+
+<p>"Into the House of Commons. That you don't get a high salary?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Nash, you're delightful: don't leave me&mdash;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?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What then did you think pocket-boroughs were?" Peter Sherringham asked.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Nash's facial radiance rested on him. "Why, boroughs that filled
+your pocket. To do that sort of thing without a bribe&mdash;<i>c'est trop
+fort!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, my dear&mdash;&mdash;!" Lady Agnes pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>"See Julia first, with all respect to Mr. Nash. She's of excellent
+counsel," said Peter Sherringham.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Nash smiled across the table at his host. "The lady first&mdash;the lady
+first! I've not a word to suggest as against any idea of hers."</p>
+
+<p>"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
+<i>b&oelig;uf brais&eacute;</i>.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"No, not dreadful&mdash;only inferior," the personage impugned protested.
+"Everything's relative."</p>
+
+<p>"Inferior to what?" Lady Agnes demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Nash appeared to consider a moment. "To anything else that may be in
+question."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing else is in question!" said her ladyship in a tone that would
+have been triumphant if it had not been so dry.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>"And are you assisting her?" Biddy inquired, pleased she had guessed so
+nearly right.</p>
+
+<p>"Not in the least&mdash;I'm rather choking her off. I consider it the lowest
+of the arts."</p>
+
+<p>"Lower than politics?" asked Peter Sherringham, who was listening to
+this.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear no, I won't say that. I think the Th&eacute;&acirc;tre Fran&ccedil;ais a greater
+institution than the House of Commons."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;that's a view. I think it's the view of my friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Of your friends?"</p>
+
+<p>"Two ladies&mdash;old acquaintances&mdash;whom I met in Paris a week ago and whom
+I've just been spending an hour with in this place."</p>
+
+<p>"You should have seen them; they struck me very much," Biddy said to her
+cousin.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to see them if they really have anything to say to the
+theatre."</p>
+
+<p>"It can easily be managed. Do you believe in the theatre?" asked Gabriel
+Nash.</p>
+
+<p>"Passionately," Sherringham confessed. "Don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Before Nash had had time to answer Biddy had interposed with a sigh.
+"How I wish I could go&mdash;but in Paris I can't!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take you, Biddy&mdash;I vow I'll take you."</p>
+
+<p>"But the plays, Peter," the girl objected. "Mamma says they're worse
+than the pictures."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we'll arrange that: they shall do one at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> Fran&ccedil;ais on purpose
+for a delightful little yearning English girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you make them?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can make them do anything I choose."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah then it's the theatre that believes in <i>you</i>," said Mr. Nash.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be ungrateful if it didn't after all I've done for it!"
+Sherringham gaily opined.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Better than being a politician? Ah, comedian for comedian, isn't the
+actor more honest?"</p>
+
+<p>Lady Agnes turned to her son and brought forth with spirit: "Think of
+your great father, Nicholas!"</p>
+
+<p>"He was an honest man," said Nicholas. "That's perhaps why he couldn't
+stand it."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Mrs.
+and Miss Rooth: isn't that the rather odd name?"</p>
+
+<p>"The very same. Only the daughter, according to her kind, desires to be
+known by some <i>nom de guerre</i> before she has even been able to enlist."</p>
+
+<p>"And what does she call herself?" Bridget Dormer asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Maud Vavasour, or Edith Temple, or Gladys Vane&mdash;some rubbish of that
+sort."</p>
+
+<p>"What then is her own name?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Miriam&mdash;Miriam Rooth. It would do very well and would give her the
+benefit of the prepossessing fact that&mdash;to the best of my belief at
+least&mdash;she's more than half a Jewess."</p>
+
+<p>"It is as good as Rachel Felix," Sherringham said.</p>
+
+<p>"The name's as good, but not the talent. The girl's splendidly stupid."</p>
+
+<p>"And more than half a Jewess? Don't you believe it!" Sherringham
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't believe she's a Jewess?" Biddy asked, still more interested in
+Miriam Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no&mdash;that she's stupid, really. If she is she'll be the first."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you may judge for yourself," Nash rejoined, "if you'll come
+to-morrow afternoon to Madame Carr&eacute;, Rue de Constantinople, <i>&agrave;
+l'entresol</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Carr&eacute;? Why, I've already a note from her&mdash;I found it this
+morning on my return to Paris&mdash;asking me to look in at five o'clock and
+listen to a <i>jeune Anglaise</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"That's my arrangement&mdash;I obtained the favour. The ladies want an
+opinion, and dear old Carr&eacute; has consented to see them and to give one.
+Maud Vavasour will recite, and the venerable artist will pass
+judgement."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;she says she'll
+do better with that&mdash;and she asks me because I'm English. I shall make a
+point of going."</p>
+
+<p>"And bring Dormer if you can: the audience will be better. Will you
+come, Dormer?" Mr. Nash continued, appealing to his friend&mdash;"will you
+come with me to hear an English amateur recite and an old French actress
+pitch into her?"</p>
+
+<p>Nick looked round from his talk with his mother<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> and Grace. "I'll go
+anywhere with you so that, as I've told you, I mayn't lose sight of
+you&mdash;may keep hold of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Mr. Nash, why is he so useful?" Lady Agnes took a cold freedom to
+inquire.</p>
+
+<p>"He steadies me, mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I wish you'd take <i>me</i>, Peter," Biddy broke out wistfully to her
+cousin.</p>
+
+<p>"To spend an hour with an old French actress? Do <i>you</i> want to go upon
+the stage?" the young man asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I want to see something&mdash;to know something."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Carr&eacute;'s wonderful in her way, but she's hardly company for a
+little English girl."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not little, I'm only too big; and <i>she</i> goes, the person you speak
+of."</p>
+
+<p>"For a professional purpose and with her good mother," smiled Mr. Nash.
+"I think Lady Agnes would hardly venture&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I've seen her good mother!" said Biddy as if she had her impression
+of what the worth of that protection might be.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but you haven't heard her. It's then that you measure her."</p>
+
+<p>Biddy was wistful still. "Is it the famous Honorine Carr&eacute;, the great
+celebrity?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;which she does sometimes still <i>dans le monde</i> as no one else
+<i>can</i>&mdash;- in my rooms."</p>
+
+<p>"Make her come then. We can go <i>there</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"One of these days!"</p>
+
+<p>"And the young lady&mdash;Miriam, Maud, Gladys&mdash;make her come too."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sherringham looked at Nash and the latter was bland. "Oh you'll have no
+difficulty. She'll jump at it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very good. I'll give a little artistic tea&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely to stop her short. The great model will find her very bad.
+Her judgements, as you probably know, are Rhadamanthine."</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunate creature!" said Biddy. "I think you're cruel."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind&mdash;I'll look after them," Sherringham laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"And how can Madame Carr&eacute; judge if the girl recites English?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's so intelligent that she could judge if she recited Chinese,"
+Peter declared.</p>
+
+<p>"That's true, but the <i>jeune Anglaise</i> recites also in French," said
+Gabriel Nash.</p>
+
+<p>"Then she isn't stupid."</p>
+
+<p>"And in Italian, and in several more tongues, for aught I know."</p>
+
+<p>Sherringham was visibly interested. "Very good&mdash;we'll put her through
+them all."</p>
+
+<p>"She must be <i>most</i> clever," Biddy went on yearningly.</p>
+
+<p>"She has spent her life on the Continent; she has wandered about with
+her mother; she has picked up things."</p>
+
+<p>"And is she a lady?" Biddy asked.</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Then they're rich&mdash;or ought to be," Sherringham suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Ought to be&mdash;ah there's the bitterness! The stockbroker had too short a
+go&mdash;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&mdash;this and another resource. Her husband, as she has often told
+me, had the artistic temperament: that's common, as you know, among <i>ces
+messieurs</i>. 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 <i>brocanteur</i>. 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&mdash;heaven help me!&mdash;I used to pick up rubbish which I could ill
+afford. It was a little phase&mdash;we have our little phases, haven't we?"
+Mr. Nash asked with childlike trust&mdash;"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> appears to be a great
+wanderer. She had other old pots, of other colours, red, yellow, black,
+or blue&mdash;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&mdash;less fragile I hope than the
+rest. May she not be overturned and smashed!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;for a
+person who was well born! I daresay he was a German."</p>
+
+<p>"His name must have been simply Roth, and the poor lady, to smarten it
+up, has put in another <i>o</i>," Sherringham ingeniously suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;for what connexion is <i>not</i> 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&mdash;and she's not like
+her mother&mdash;he was darkly and dangerously handsome. So I venture rapidly
+to reconstruct the situation."</p>
+
+<p>A silence, for the moment, had fallen on Lady<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> 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&mdash;where in the world's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"It must
+be on the banks of the Manzanares or the Guadalquivir"&mdash;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 <i>can</i>
+it be&mdash;so poor, so limited a form?"</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my honour it strikes me as rich and various! Do <i>you</i> think it's a
+poor and limited form, Nick?" Sherringham added, appealing to his
+kinsman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I think whatever Nash thinks. I've no opinion to-day but his."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;<i>j'ai &eacute;t&eacute; comme &ccedil;a.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"And you went then very often to the Th&eacute;&acirc;tre Fran&ccedil;ais, and it was there
+I saw you. I place you now."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I noticed none of the other spectators," Nash explained. "I
+had no attention but for the great Carr&eacute;&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what <i>I</i> told her," Sherringham returned.</p>
+
+<p>"She was very kind to me. She said: '<i>Vous me rendez des forces</i>.'"</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what she said to me!"</p>
+
+<p>"And we've remained very good friends."</p>
+
+<p>"So have we!" laughed Sherringham. "And such perfect art as hers&mdash;do you
+mean to say you don't consider <i>that</i> important, such a rare dramatic
+intelligence?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid you read the <i>feuilletons</i>. You catch their phrases"&mdash;Nash
+spoke with pity. "Dramatic intelligence is never rare; nothing's more
+common."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why have we so many shocking actors?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;those people generally&mdash;if they didn't do that poor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"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 Carr&eacute; wasn't an education of the taste, an enlargement
+of one's knowledge."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;not to say the whole piece: I speak more particularly of
+modern pieces&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"I know the complaint. It's all the fashion now. The <i>raffin&eacute;s</i> 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. "<i>Connu,
+connu</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>omnium gatherum</i> 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&mdash;all before eleven o'clock.
+Fancy putting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> 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&mdash;the painter or the novelist&mdash;whose
+governing forces should be the dinner and the suburban trains? The old
+dramatists didn't defer to them&mdash;not so much at least&mdash;and that's why
+they're less and less actable. If they're touched&mdash;the large loose
+men&mdash;it's only to be mutilated and trivialised. Besides, they had a
+simpler civilisation to represent&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you write novels, Mr. Nash?" Peter candidly asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I read them when they're extraordinarily good, and I don't go
+to plays. I read Balzac for instance&mdash;I encounter the admirable portrait
+of Val&eacute;rie Marneffe in <i>La Cousine Bette</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"And you contrast it with the poverty of Emile Augier's S&eacute;raphine in
+<i>Les Lionnes Pauvres</i>? I was awaiting you there. That's the <i>cheval de
+bataille</i> of you fellows."</p>
+
+<p>"What an extraordinary discussion! What dreadful authors!" Lady Agnes
+murmured to her son.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> But he was listening so attentively to the other
+young men that he made no response, and Peter Sherringham went on:</p>
+
+<p>"I've seen Madame Carr&eacute; in things of the modern repertory, which she has
+made as vivid to me, caused to abide as ineffaceably in my memory, as
+Val&eacute;rie Marneffe. She's the Balzac, as one may say, of actresses."</p>
+
+<p>"The miniaturist, as it were, of whitewashers!" Nash offered as a
+substitute.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Nash lightly weighed it. "She might be much more so than she ever
+will be."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps&mdash;if you take an interest in her!"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;shall I take an interest in her?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"And if she <i>is</i> nice?"</p>
+
+<p>"You advise it still less!" her brother exclaimed, laughing and putting
+his arm round her.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Agnes looked sombre&mdash;she might have been saying to herself: "Heaven
+help us, what chance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> 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&mdash;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&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>At this Lady Agnes broke out and interposed. "Pardon my reminding you
+that you're going to call on Julia."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, can't Nash also come to call on Julia? That's just what I
+want&mdash;that she should see him."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> indifferent; ready to preside with a smile even at a
+discussion of his own admissibility.</p>
+
+<p>"Nick will bring you. I've a little corner at the embassy," Sherringham
+continued.</p>
+
+<p>"You're very kind. You must bring <i>him</i> then to-morrow&mdash;Rue de
+Constantinople."</p>
+
+<p>"At five o'clock&mdash;don't be afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"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 Elys&eacute;es Nick Dormer, looking round, saw his friend had
+disappeared. Biddy had attached herself to Peter, and Grace couldn't
+have encouraged Mr. Nash.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a><a href="#toc">V</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Lady Agnes's idea had been that her son should go straight from the
+Palais de l'Industrie to the H&ocirc;tel 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+than making sure of his seat?&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+H&ocirc;tel de Hollande, clear as it had become to her now that there was a
+foreignness <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>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&mdash;as if he hadn't seen it a thousand times!&mdash;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 <i>fl&acirc;nerie</i>. However, he had been very nice: he had
+invited them all to dine with him that evening at a convenient caf&eacute;,
+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 <i>was</i> anything beneath his manner toward Biddy&mdash;! 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 <i>voiture de place</i>, that it would do no harm if
+she should get a new hat and that the search might be instituted that
+afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"A French hat, mamma?" said Grace. "Oh do wait till she gets home!"</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> 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&mdash;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&mdash;on
+which the cabman was directed to drive to that establishment.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> 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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;her
+life had been full of that&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> 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&mdash;the sign of a hope
+of catching them just as they came back from the Salon&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Who in the world's your comic friend?" Peter Sherringham was meanwhile
+asking of his kinsman as they walked together.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah there's something else you lost by going to Cambridge&mdash;you lost
+Gabriel Nash!"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Bless me, do you call that serious?"</p>
+
+<p>"He used to be so gay. He had a real genius for playing with ideas. He
+was a wonderful talker."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me he does very well now," said Peter Sherringham.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"I see you more than suspect that. Mayn't it be simply that he's too
+great an ass?"</p>
+
+<p>"That would be the whole&mdash;I shall see in time&mdash;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&mdash;his pronouncing it a coarse art?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Then your passion still burns?" Nick Dormer asked.</p>
+
+<p>"My passion&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"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
+Fran&ccedil;ais, your inveterate attendance at <i>premi&egrave;res</i>, the way you
+'follow' the young talents and the old."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;the representation of life:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> 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&mdash;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&mdash;ah he must have
+that!&mdash;has been highly trained. Ah it must <i>be</i> that! The things he can
+do in this effort at representation, with the dramatist to back him,
+seem to me innumerable&mdash;he can carry it to a point!&mdash;and I take great
+pleasure in observing them, in recognising and comparing them. It's an
+amusement like another&mdash;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&mdash;in common, I suppose, with the study
+of the other arts&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be ashamed of it," Nick returned&mdash;"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."</p>
+
+<p>"You evidently believe it will prevent my ever rising very high. But
+pastime for pastime is it any idler than yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Than mine?"</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> 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&mdash;who happens to be an <i>en
+disponibilit&eacute;</i> for the moment&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;he was so well on the way to it; and
+Sherringham, without heeding this charge, went on: "Let me add that,
+considering you <i>are</i> a painter, your portrait of the complicated Nash
+is lamentably dim."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove, you match him there! Isn't it an appendage and an attribute to
+escape kicking? How does he manage that?" Sherringham asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't the least idea&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;the scattered school on the
+hill was the tradition of the Dormers&mdash;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&mdash;its
+expropriated inhabitants, Lady Agnes and her daughters, adored it&mdash;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&mdash;though recalling at some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> points the uncle after whom he had
+been named&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> 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&mdash;he used to write letters to
+the <i>Times</i> in favour of them&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>The most important event in the life of this young man had been
+incomparably his success, under his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> father's eyes, more than two years
+before, in the sharp contest for Crockhurst&mdash;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&mdash;the burning question which has since
+burned out&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> 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&mdash;Sir Nicholas's voice had been
+wonderful for richness&mdash;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&mdash;the most analytic of the weekly papers was always
+talking about it&mdash;had enabled him to rescue the prospect from any shade
+of vagueness or of ambiguity.</p>
+
+<p>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 Th&eacute;&acirc;tre Fran&ccedil;ais as a sedative to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> 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&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a><a href="#toc">VI</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>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&mdash;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 <i>dame de comptoir</i> ducked and re-ducked, the people
+looked round, Peter and Nick got up, there was a shuffling of
+chairs&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> here? Oh dear, why didn't you have a private
+room?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;to have it over as soon as possible; and her <i>brusquerie</i>
+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&mdash;this
+was partly why he had been of late to see her so little&mdash;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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> 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&mdash;probably more
+the former than the latter&mdash;and of a certain prevision of doom, the
+influence of the idea that he should come to it, that he was
+predestined.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>all</i> 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 <i>was</i> to marry her. You could quarrel with your wife
+because there were compensations&mdash;for her; but you mightn't be prepared
+to offer these compensations as prepayment for the luxury of
+quarrelling.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> 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&mdash;being
+extremely slender&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Peter said he had not taken a private room because he knew Biddy's
+tastes; she liked to see the world&mdash;she had told him so&mdash;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 <i>cabinet</i>. He had brought no guest, no foreigner of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+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&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Scold him, Julia&mdash;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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He might have come after I came in," said Mrs. Dallow.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Julia, I'm going to see you to-night. I've been waiting for that,"
+Nick returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course <i>we</i> had no idea when you'd come in," said Lady Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so sorry. You must come to-morrow. I hate calls at night," Julia
+serenely added.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh that would be perfection!" cried Grace.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought we were all going somewhere&mdash;to the Hippodrome, Peter," Biddy
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh not all; just you and me!" laughed Peter.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going home to my bed. I've earned my rest," Lady Agnes sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't Peter take <i>us</i>?" demanded Grace. "Nick can take you home, mamma,
+if Julia won't receive him, and I can look perfectly after Peter and
+Biddy."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> 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&mdash;he had a
+private adumbration of that; expensive Parisian, perhaps not perfectly
+useful, things.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Nick looks it. <i>Merci, pas de vin</i>. It's just the thing for you,
+you know," Julia said to him.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure he knows it. He's immensely grateful. It's really very kind
+of you."</p>
+
+<p>"You do me a very great honour, Julia," Nick hastened to add.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be tiresome, please," that lady returned.</p>
+
+<p>"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. <i>Nous causerons de &ccedil;a</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, you've caught exactly the tone of Mr. Gabriel Nash,"
+Peter Sherringham declared on this.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's Mr. Gabriel Nash?" Mrs. Dallow asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Nick, is he a gentleman? Biddy says so," Grace Dormer interposed before
+this inquiry was answered.</p>
+
+<p>"It's to be supposed that any one Nick brings to lunch with us&mdash;!" Lady
+Agnes rather coldly sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah Grace, with your tremendous standard!" her son said; while Peter
+Sherringham explained to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> sister that Mr. Nash was Nick's new Mentor
+or oracle&mdash;whom, moreover, she should see if she would come and have tea
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh certainly, dear, you'd bore me," her brother rang out.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll do very well," said Nick. "You're thoroughly charming to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful for what?"</p>
+
+<p>"For thinking she can act when she can't," said the roguish Biddy.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, what people you all know! I hate Peter's theatrical people."</p>
+
+<p>"And aren't you going home, Julia?" Lady Agnes inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Home to the hotel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear, no, to Harsh&mdash;to see about everything."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm in the midst of telegrams. I don't know yet."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose there's no doubt they'll have him," Lady Agnes decided to
+pursue.</p>
+
+<p>"Who'll have whom?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, the local people and the party managers. I'm speaking of the
+question of my son's standing."</p>
+
+<p>"They'll have the person I want them to have, I daresay. There are so
+many people in it, in one way or another&mdash;it's dreadful. I like the way
+you sit there," Julia went on to Nick.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"So do I," he smiled back at her; and he thought she <i>was</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 Th&eacute;&acirc;tre Fran&ccedil;ais. 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&mdash;<i>Il ne Faut Jurer de Rien</i> and <i>Mademoiselle
+de la Seigli&egrave;re</i>. Peter was all willingness, but it was Julia who
+settled it, even to sending for the newspaper&mdash;he was by a rare accident
+unconscious of the evening's bill&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> 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 caf&eacute;; and he guessed it gave her a comfort to have left him
+sitting there with Mrs. Dallow.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the force of assuming they would. Julia had her differences&mdash;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"&mdash;and in a moment she was out of the place, with
+the people at the tables turning round again and the <i>caissi&egrave;re</i> 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> 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 Caf&eacute; Durand the Madeleine rose theatrical, a high artful
+<i>d&eacute;cor</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Anywhere you like. It's so warm we might drive instead of going
+indoors. We might go to the Bois. That would be agreeable."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but it wouldn't be walking. However, that doesn't matter. It's
+mild enough for anything&mdash;for sitting out like all these people. And
+I've never walked in Paris at night. It would amuse me."</p>
+
+<p>Nick hesitated. "So it might, but it isn't particularly recommended to
+ladies."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care for that if it happens to suit me."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well then, we'll walk to the Bastille if you like."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;that's respectable. If we must have something
+we'll have a <i>mad&egrave;re</i>&mdash;is that respectable? Not particularly? So much
+the better. What are those people having? <i>Bocks</i>? Couldn't we have
+<i>bocks</i>? Are they very low? Then I shall have one. I've been so
+wonderfully good&mdash;I've been staying at Versailles: <i>je me dois bien
+cela</i>."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what you said just now was a speech," Julia declared.</p>
+
+<p>"A speech?"</p>
+
+<p>"The 'rot,' the humbug of the hustings."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be very glad to help you anywhere," she went on.</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Julia calmly considered. "I don't do it badly."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you're so political!"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll try&mdash;I'll try. I've a great incentive," he admitted.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you have."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay she is, and quite right!" said Mrs. Dallow.</p>
+
+<p>"And she can't tell me a bit more than you can what she thinks, what she
+believes, what she wants."</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me, I can tell you perfectly. There's one thing I always
+immensely want&mdash;to keep out a Tory."</p>
+
+<p>"I see. That's a great philosophy."</p>
+
+<p>"It will do very well. And I desire the good of the country. I'm not
+ashamed of that."</p>
+
+<p>"And can you give me an idea of what it is&mdash;the good of the country?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know perfectly what it isn't. It isn't what the Tories want to do."</p>
+
+<p>"What do they want to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh it would take me long to tell you. All sorts of trash."</p>
+
+<p>"It would take you long, and it would take them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> longer! All they want
+to do is to prevent <i>us</i> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe in you," Mrs. Dallow replied to this, leaning back on
+her sofa.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Much you know me!" Julia protested; but he could see, through the
+dimness, that her face spoke differently.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have it in time, but I won't come to it," Nick went on.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't come less than you do."</p>
+
+<p>"When I say you'll have it I mean you've already got it. That's why I
+don't come."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;the simple idea that one ought to do something
+or other for one's country."</p>
+
+<p>"'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."</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid of what?"</p>
+
+<p>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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What did you do before?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The first time my father paid."</p>
+
+<p>"And the other time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Mr. Carteret."</p>
+
+<p>"Your expenses won't be at all large; on the contrary," said Julia.</p>
+
+<p>"They shan't be; I shall look out sharp for that. I shall have the great
+Hutchby."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Carteret will be delighted," said Julia.</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay, but I hate taking people's money."</p>
+
+<p>"That's nonsense&mdash;when it's for the country. Isn't it for <i>them</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm bound to say I should! I should expect a great
+deal&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"How can I miss it with <i>you</i>?" the young man smiled. She uttered a
+word, impatiently but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> indistinguishably, and he continued: "And even if
+I do it will have been immense fun."</p>
+
+<p>"It is immense fun," said Julia. "But the best fun is to win. If you
+don't&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"If I don't?" he repeated as she dropped.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never speak to you again."</p>
+
+<p>"How much you expect even when you don't pay!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh they'll fight it hard; they'll put up Kingsbury," said Nick,
+smoothing his hat. "They'll all come down&mdash;all that can get away. And
+Kingsbury has a very handsome wife."</p>
+
+<p>"She's not so handsome as your cousin," Julia smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear, no&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Come here to-morrow then&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be anything&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"If he doesn't aspire to serve the State."</p>
+
+<p>"Aspire to make his political fortune, do you mean? Oh bless me, yes,
+there are other things."</p>
+
+<p>"What other things that can compare with that?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, I for instance, I'm very fond of the arts."</p>
+
+<p>"Of the arts?" she echoed.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you never hear of them? I'm awfully fond of painting."</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_SECOND" id="BOOK_SECOND"></a>BOOK SECOND</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a><a href="#toc">VII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Peter Sherringham reminded Nick the next day that he had promised to be
+present at Madame Carr&eacute;'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&mdash;a rehearsal of the <i>com&eacute;die de salon</i>
+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 Carr&eacute; 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> other&mdash;the history of a mask,
+of a squeak, of a series of vain gestures.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>was</i> 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
+<i>com&eacute;dienne</i>, the light of the French stage in the early years of the
+century, of whose example and instruction Madame Carr&eacute; 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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> support. "So much depends&mdash;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&mdash;I
+don't know what!"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>you</i>!" He laughed at this,
+declared it was very well said and that if she could give Madame Carr&eacute;
+such a specimen as that&mdash;&mdash;! 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&mdash;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 Carr&eacute; 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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> 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&mdash;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: <i>"Ah la voix de
+C&eacute;lim&egrave;ne!"</i> C&eacute;lim&egrave;ne, 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 <i>belles dames</i> to whom she had
+just been endeavouring to communicate a few of the rudiments. <i>"Mais
+celles-l&agrave;, c'est une plaisanterie,"</i> she went on to Mrs. Rooth; "whereas
+you and your daughter, <i>ch&egrave;re madame</i>&mdash;I'm sure you are quite another
+matter."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>Madame Carr&eacute; gave one of her histrionic stares, throwing back her head.
+"That's three too many. The thing's to do something proper with one."</p>
+
+<p>"We're very much in earnest," continued Mrs. Rooth, who spoke excellent
+French.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad to hear it&mdash;<i>il n'y a que &ccedil;a. La t&ecirc;te est<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> bien</i>&mdash;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. "<i>Un beau
+regard</i>&mdash;it carries well." Madame Carr&eacute; 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&mdash;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 Carr&eacute;
+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 Carr&eacute;, on the sofa beside her, held her hand and
+emitted a perfect music of reassurance. "The nerves, the nerves&mdash;they're
+half our affair. Have as many as you like, if you've got something else
+too. <i>Voyons</i>&mdash;do you know anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know some pieces."</p>
+
+<p>"Some pieces of the <i>r&eacute;pertoire</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>Miriam Rooth stared as if she didn't understand. "I know some poetry."</p>
+
+<p>"English, French, Italian, German," said her mother.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Madame Carr&eacute; 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!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's only to show you how she has been educated."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, <i>ch&egrave;re madame</i>, there's no education that matters! I mean save the
+right one. Your daughter must have a particular form of speech, like me,
+like <i>ces messieurs</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"You see if I can speak French," said the girl, smiling dimly at her
+hostess. She appeared now almost to have collected herself.</p>
+
+<p>"You speak it in perfection."</p>
+
+<p>"And English just as well," said Miss Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"You oughtn't to be an actress&mdash;you ought to be a governess."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh don't tell us that: it's to escape from that!" pleaded Mrs. Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm very sure your daughter will escape from that," Peter Sherringham
+was moved to interpose.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh if <i>you</i> could help her!" said the lady with a world of longing.</p>
+
+<p>"She has certainly all the qualities that strike the eye," Peter
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>"You're <i>most</i> kind, sir!" Mrs. Rooth declared, elegantly draping
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>"She knows C&eacute;lim&egrave;ne; I've heard her do C&eacute;lim&egrave;ne," Gabriel Nash said to
+Madame Carr&eacute;".</p>
+
+<p>"And she knows Juliet, she knows Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra," added Mrs.
+Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Voyons</i>, my dear child, do you wish to work for the French stage or
+for the English?" the old actress demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Ours would have sore need of you, Miss Rooth," Sherringham gallantly
+threw off.</p>
+
+<p>"Could you speak to any one in London&mdash;could you introduce her?" her
+mother eagerly asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Dear madam, I must hear her first, and hear what Madame Carr&eacute; says."</p>
+
+<p>"She has a voice of rare beauty, and I understand voices," said Mrs.
+Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah then if she has intelligence she has every gift."</p>
+
+<p>"She has a most poetic mind," the old lady went on.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"And me too," Nick easily laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"It would indeed&mdash;a member of Parliament!" Nash declared.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I have the honour&mdash;&mdash;?" murmured Mrs. Rooth, looking gratified and
+mystified.</p>
+
+<p>Nick explained that she had no honour at all, and meanwhile Madame Carr&eacute;
+had been questioning the girl "<i>Ch&egrave;re madame</i>, 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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;upon what dangerous stormy sea? I've thought of it so anxiously."</p>
+
+<p>"Try here&mdash;try the French public: they're so much the most serious,"
+said Gabriel Nash.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah no, try the English: there's such a rare opening!" Sherringham urged
+in quick opposition.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh it isn't the public, dear gentlemen. It's the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> private side, the
+other people&mdash;it's the life, it's the moral atmosphere."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Je ne connais qu'une sc&egrave;ne,&mdash;la n&ocirc;tre</i>," Madame Carr&eacute; declared. "I'm
+assured by every one who knows that there's no other."</p>
+
+<p>"Very correctly assured," said Mr. Nash. "The theatre in our countries
+is puerile and barbarous."</p>
+
+<p>"There's something to be done for it, and perhaps mademoiselle's the
+person to do it," Sherringham contentiously suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah but, <i>en attendant</i>, what can it do for her?" Madame Carr&eacute; asked.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, if your part's marked out I congratulate you, mademoiselle!"&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"The purest tone&mdash;<i>qu'est-ce que c'est que &ccedil;a</i>?" Madame Carr&eacute; demanded
+in the finest manner of modern comedy.</p>
+
+<p>"We're very, <i>very</i> respectable," Mrs. Rooth went on, but now smiling
+and achieving lightness too.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What I want is to place my daughter where the conduct&mdash;and the picture
+of conduct in which she should take part&mdash;wouldn't be quite absolutely
+dreadful. Now, <i>ch&egrave;re madame</i>, how about all that; how about <i>conduct</i>
+in the French theatre&mdash;all the things she should see, the things she
+should hear, the things she should learn?"</p>
+
+<p>Her hostess took it, as Sherringham felt, <i>de tr&egrave;s-haut</i>. "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."</p>
+
+<p>"But there are characters, there are situations, which I don't think I
+should like to see <i>her</i> undertake."</p>
+
+<p>"There are many, no doubt, which she would do well to leave alone!"
+laughed the Frenchwoman.</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't like to see her represent a very bad woman&mdash;a <i>really</i> bad
+one," Mrs. Rooth serenely pursued.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah in England then, and in your theatre, every one's immaculately good?
+Your plays must be even more ingenious than I supposed!"</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't any plays," said Gabriel Nash.</p>
+
+<p>"People will write them for Miss Rooth&mdash;it will be a new era,"
+Sherringham threw in with wanton, or at least with combative, optimism.</p>
+
+<p>"Will <i>you</i>, sir&mdash;will you do something? A sketch of one of our grand
+English ideals?" the old lady asked engagingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I know what you do with our pieces&mdash;to show your superior virtue!"
+Madame Carr&eacute; cried before he had time to reply that he wrote nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+but diplomatic memoranda. "Bad women? <i>Je n'ai jou&eacute; que &ccedil;a, madame</i>.
+'Really' bad? I tried to make them real!"</p>
+
+<p>"I can say 'L'Aventuri&egrave;re,'" Miriam interrupted in a cold voice which
+seemed to hint at a want of participation in the maternal solicitudes.</p>
+
+<p>"Allow us the pleasure of hearing you then. Madame Carr&eacute; will give you
+the <i>r&eacute;plique</i>," said Peter Sherringham.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, my child; I can say it without the book," Madame Carr&eacute;
+responded. "Put yourself there&mdash;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 Carr&eacute; 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.</p>
+
+<p>"You mix things up, <i>ch&egrave;re madame</i>, 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! <i>Voil&agrave;, ch&egrave;re madame</i>, the answer I have
+for your scruples!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's admirable&mdash;admirable; and I am glad my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> friend Dormer here has had
+the great advantage of hearing you utter it!" Nash exclaimed with a free
+designation of Nick.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Rooth had listened to Madame Carr&eacute; 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&mdash;what
+indeed is more beautiful?"</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> level brows, was pale and regular&mdash;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 Carr&eacute; brought her to book,
+giving her the first line of the speech of Clorinde: "<i>Vous ne me fuyez
+pas, mon enfant, aujourd'hui</i>." 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. "<i>Elle est bien belle&mdash;ah &ccedil;a</i>," 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."</p>
+
+<p>"Like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"As the Tragic Muse."</p>
+
+<p>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 C&eacute;lie, 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
+Carr&eacute; sent back the ball without raising her hand, repeating the
+speeches of C&eacute;lie, 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 Carr&eacute; said: "I think you've a voice,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> <i>ma
+fille</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 Carr&eacute; 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 <i>d'une l&eacute;g&egrave;ret&eacute; &agrave; faire
+fr&eacute;mir.</i> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"But where? That's what I ask!" said Mrs. Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not here?" Sherringham threw out.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh here!" And the good lady shook her head with a world of sad
+significance.</p>
+
+<p>"Come and live in London and then I shall be able to paint your
+daughter," Nick Dormer interposed.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all it will take, my dear fellow?" asked Gabriel Nash.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, London's full of memories," Mrs. Rooth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> went on. "My father had a
+great house there&mdash;we always came up. But all that's over."</p>
+
+<p>"Study here and then go to London to appear," said Peter, feeling
+frivolous even as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"To appear in French?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, in the language of Shakespeare."</p>
+
+<p>"But we can't study that here."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Sherringham means that he will give you lessons," Madame Carr&eacute;
+explained. "Let me not fail to say it&mdash;he's an excellent critic."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know that&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Diable!" said the actress: "that's more than I can! By all means give
+us a specimen."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;rolled
+it loudly and proudly, tossed it and tumbled it about the room. Madame
+Carr&eacute; 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 Carr&eacute;, 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 Carr&eacute; passed no judgement, only
+dropping: "Perhaps you had better say something English." She suggested
+some little piece of verse&mdash;some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> fable if there were fables in English.
+She appeared but scantily surprised to hear that there were not&mdash;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&mdash;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 Carr&eacute; 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&mdash;bringing these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+benighted women here, paying with my person, stifling my just
+repugnance."</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>tableau-vivant</i>, 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 Carr&eacute; 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&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+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&mdash;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;&mdash;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, <i>notez bien</i>, Rachel wasn't a <i>grosse
+b&ecirc;te</i>: that's a gift if you like!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Rooth, who was evidently very proud of the figure her daughter had
+made&mdash;her daughter who for all one could tell affected their hostess
+precisely as a <i>grosse b&ecirc;te</i>&mdash;appealed to Madame Carr&eacute; rashly and
+serenely for a verdict; but fortunately this lady's voluble <i>bonne</i> 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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing I can see. She's loud and coarse."</p>
+
+<p>"She's very much afraid. You must allow for that."</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid of me, immensely, but not a bit afraid of her authors&mdash;nor of
+you!" Madame Carr&eacute; smiled.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you prejudiced by what that fellow Nash has told you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why prejudiced? He only told me she was very handsome."</p>
+
+<p>"And don't you think her so?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"The head's very noble," said Peter Sherringham. "And the voice, when
+she spoke English, had some sweet tones."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah your English&mdash;possibly! All I can say is that I listened to her
+conscientiously, and I didn't perceive in what she did a single
+<i>nuance</i>, a single inflexion or intention. But not one, <i>mon cher</i>. I
+don't think she's intelligent."</p>
+
+<p>"But don't they often seem stupid at first?"</p>
+
+<p>"Say always!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then don't some succeed&mdash;even when they're handsome?"</p>
+
+<p>"When they're handsome they always succeed&mdash;in one way or another."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't understand us English," said Peter Sherringham.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Carr&eacute; drank her tea; then she replied: "Marry her, my son, and
+give her diamonds. Make her an ambassadress; she'll look very well."</p>
+
+<p>"She interests you so little that you don't care to do anything for
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>"To do anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"To give her a few lessons."</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>sc&egrave;ne anglaise</i>.
+You did the English things best."</p>
+
+<p>"Did I do them well?" asked the girl.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You've a great deal to learn; but you've rude force. The main things
+<i>sont encore a d&eacute;gager</i>, but they'll come. You must work."</p>
+
+<p>"I think she has ideas," said Mrs. Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"She gets them from you," Madame Carr&eacute; replied.</p>
+
+<p>"I must say that if it's to be <i>our</i> theatre I'm relieved. I do think
+ours safer," the good lady continued.</p>
+
+<p>"Ours is dangerous, no doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you're more severe," said the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother's right," the actress smiled; "you have ideas."</p>
+
+<p>"But what shall we do then&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Work&mdash;work&mdash;work!" exclaimed the actress.</p>
+
+<p>"In English I can play Shakespeare. I want to play Shakespeare," Miriam
+made known.</p>
+
+<p>"That's fortunate, as in English you haven't any one else to play."</p>
+
+<p>"But he's so great&mdash;and he's so pure!" said Mrs. Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"That indeed seems the saving of you," Madame Carr&eacute; returned.</p>
+
+<p>"You think me actually pretty bad, don't you?" the girl demanded with
+her serious face.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mon Dieu, que vous dirai-je?</i> 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?"</p>
+
+<p>"How shall I find my voice?" asked Miriam Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"By trying. <i>Il n'y a que &ccedil;a</i>. Work like a horse,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> night and day.
+Besides, Mr. Sherringham, as he says, will help you."</p>
+
+<p>That gentleman, hearing his name, turned round and the girl appealed to
+him. "Will you help me really?"</p>
+
+<p>"To find her voice," said Madame Carr&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"The voice, when it's worth anything, comes from the heart; so I suppose
+that's where to look for it," Gabriel Nash suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Much you know; you haven't got any!" Miriam retorted with the first
+scintillation of gaiety she had shown on this occasion.</p>
+
+<p>"Any voice, my child?" Mr. Nash inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Any heart&mdash;or any manners!"</p>
+
+<p>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?"&mdash;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;&mdash;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"&mdash;perhaps after all only vulgarly&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Nash has rendered us the great service of introducing us to Madame
+Carr&eacute;, and I'm sure we're immensely indebted to him," Mrs. Rooth said to
+her daughter with an air affectionately corrective.</p>
+
+<p>"But what good does that do us?" the girl asked, smiling at the actress
+and gently laying her finger-tips upon her hand. "Madame Carr&eacute; listens
+to me with adorable patience, and then sends me about my business&mdash;ah in
+the prettiest way in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"Mademoiselle, you're not so rough; the tone of that's very <i>juste. A la
+bonne heure</i>; work&mdash;work!" the actress cried. "There was an inflexion
+there&mdash;or very nearly. Practise it till you've got it."</p>
+
+<p>"Come and practise it to <i>me</i>, if your mother will be so kind as to
+bring you," said Peter Sherringham.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you give lessons&mdash;do you understand?" Miriam asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm an old play-goer and I've an unbounded belief in my own judgement."</p>
+
+<p>"'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."</p>
+
+<p>"A few people are coming to tea with me to-morrow. Perhaps you'll come
+then at five o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>"It will remind me of the dear old times," said Mrs. Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you; I'll try and do better to-morrow," Miriam professed very
+sweetly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You do better every minute!" Sherringham returned&mdash;and he looked at
+their hostess in support of this declaration.</p>
+
+<p>"She's finding her voice," Madame Carr&eacute; acknowledged.</p>
+
+<p>"She's finding a friend!" Mrs. Rooth threw in.</p>
+
+<p>"And don't forget, when you come to London, my hope that you'll come and
+see <i>me</i>," Nick Dormer said to the girl. "To try and paint you&mdash;that
+would do me good!"</p>
+
+<p>"She's finding even two," said Madame Carr&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"You say that to make me drive you home; you know it will," Nash
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll all take you home; why not?" Sherringham asked.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Carr&eacute; 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. "<i>Ah la jeunesse</i>!" she sighed. "You'd always have
+that, my child, if you were the greatest goose on earth!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a><a href="#toc">VIII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>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 Carr&eacute;'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 H&ocirc;tel de la Garonne.</p>
+
+<p>On quitting Madame Carr&eacute; 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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sherringham said nothing to the girl about her performance or her
+powers; their talk was only of her manner of life with her mother&mdash;their
+travels, their <i>pensions</i>, 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 Carr&eacute; 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 <i>great</i> 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."</p>
+
+<p>The H&ocirc;tel 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'Op&eacute;ra and the Place de la Bourse. Sherringham had occasionally
+traversed the high dimness, but had never noticed the tall, stale
+<i>maison meubl&eacute;e</i>, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> and we haven't a
+sitting-room," the poor lady bravely explained. "We had to receive Mr.
+Nash at a caf&eacute;."</p>
+
+<p>Nick Dormer declared that he liked caf&eacute;s, and Miriam, looking at his
+cousin, dropped with a flash of passion the demand: "Do you wonder I
+should want to do something&mdash;so that we can stop living like pigs?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;even her mother's insinuating gentility failed to put the
+occasion on that footing&mdash;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&mdash;the sort of
+conversation that was likely to come off&mdash;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&mdash;there were several in addition to Julia and
+the Dormers; mainly the wives, with their husbands, of Sherringham's
+fellow-secretaries&mdash;scarcely one of whom he felt he might count upon for
+a modicum of gush when the girl should have finished.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Rooth gave a representation of Juliet drinking the potion,
+according to the system, as her mother explained, of the famous Signor
+Ruggieri&mdash;a scene of high fierce sound, of many cries and contortions:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+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&mdash;it
+must have come mainly from her mother, and he didn't believe in Signor
+Ruggieri&mdash;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 Carr&eacute; 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.</p>
+
+<p>His only new impression of the heroine of the scene was that of this
+same high assurance&mdash;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 <i>femmes du monde</i>, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> 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&mdash;she
+murmured: "Oh thank you so much. I never saw anything so beautiful, so
+grand."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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 <i>she</i> could attempt her head, that would be a chance
+indeed.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Miriam with a laugh as of high comedy. "I think I had
+rather not <i>passer par toute la famille</i>!" Then she added: "If your
+brother's an artist I don't understand how he's in Parliament."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh he isn't in Parliament now&mdash;we only hope he will be."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah I see."</p>
+
+<p>"And he isn't an artist either," Biddy felt herself conscientiously
+bound to state.</p>
+
+<p>"Then he isn't anything," said Miss Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;he's immensely clever."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah I see," Miss Rooth again replied. "Mr. Nash has puffed him up so."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know Mr. Nash," said Biddy, guilty of a little dryness as well
+as of a little misrepresentation, and feeling rather snubbed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you needn't wish to."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"My poor Julia, it isn't extremely fine; it isn't fine at all,"
+Sherringham returned with some irritation.</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me then. I thought that was why you invited us."</p>
+
+<p>"I imagined she was different," Peter said a little foolishly.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I do care for her too&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> 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&mdash;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&mdash;a tragic muse who was strident and
+pert&mdash;and yet wished his visitors would go away and leave him alone with
+her.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"It's only awkward if one isn't," Gabriel smiled.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but so few people are&mdash;enough to be talked about."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;and it may without more
+delay be communicated to the reader that she did&mdash;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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;literally <i>hurl&eacute;</i> in
+general&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you mean," Mrs. Dallow said. "I know nothing of any
+such people."</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't they under your feet wherever you turn&mdash;their performances,
+their portraits, their speeches, their autobiographies, their names,
+their manners, their ugly mugs, as the people say, and their idiotic
+pretensions?"</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay it depends on the places one goes to. If they're
+everywhere"&mdash;and she paused a moment&mdash;"I don't go everywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Immensely particular?" Mrs. Dallow repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I should say rather that her mother's so on her behalf.
+Particular about the sort of people they meet&mdash;the tone, the standard.
+I'm bound to say they're like <i>you</i>: they don't go everywhere. That
+spirit's not so common in the mob calling itself good society as not to
+deserve mention."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah don't say that to my friend Dormer!" Mr. Nash laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you and he such great friends?" Mrs. Dallow asked, meeting his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Great enough to make me hope we shall be greater."</p>
+
+<p>Again for a little she said nothing, but then went on: "Why shouldn't I
+say to him that she's vulgar?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because he admires her so much. He wants to paint her."</p>
+
+<p>"To paint her?"</p>
+
+<p>"To paint her portrait."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I see. I daresay she'd do for that."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Nash showed further amusement. "If that's your opinion of her you're
+not very complimentary to the art he aspires to practise."</p>
+
+<p>"He aspires to practise?" she echoed afresh.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you talked with him about it? Ah you must keep him up to it!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"I try to be," Nash smiled, "but I work in such difficult material."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"I work in life!"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Well take a walk&mdash;I should like that," Nash<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> replied. "I shall smoke a
+cigar at the caf&eacute; on the corner of the Place de l'Op&eacute;ra&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"To her rather than with her," he smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah she's very charming," Grace said.</p>
+
+<p>"She's very beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"And very clever," the girl continued.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by my fate?" Sherringham asked.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got them for life."</p>
+
+<p>"Why for life, when I now clearly and courageously recognise that she
+isn't good?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah but she'll become so," said Gabriel Nash.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think that?" Sherringham brought out with a candour that made
+his visitor laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> will&mdash;that's more to the purpose!" the latter declared as he went
+away.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> she didn't know how&mdash;but she does!" There was
+no suggestion of disappointment in this.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a colleague and his sociable wife&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>petits fours</i>, 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&mdash;if they were so poor as to have to count with that sort of
+privation. This supposition was softening,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> 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&mdash;there were moments when he was so plentifully tired of it&mdash;she
+broke out abruptly: "Confess you think me intolerably bad!"</p>
+
+<p>"Intolerably&mdash;no."</p>
+
+<p>"Only tolerably! I find that worse."</p>
+
+<p>"Every now and then you do something very right," Sherringham said.</p>
+
+<p>"How many such things did I do to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh three or four. I don't know that I counted very carefully."</p>
+
+<p>She raised her cup to her lips, looking at him over the rim of it&mdash;a
+proceeding that gave her eyes a strange expression. "It bores you and
+you think it disagreeable," she then said&mdash;"I mean a girl always talking
+about herself." He protested she could never bore him and she added: "Oh
+I don't want compliments&mdash;I want the hard, the precious truth. An
+actress has to talk about herself. What else can she talk about, poor
+vain thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"She can talk sometimes about other actresses."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;step by step&mdash;as I go;
+can't I?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's the way&mdash;that's the way," he gently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> enough returned. "When you
+see the things to do the art of doing them will come&mdash;if you hammer
+away. The great point's to see them."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and you don't think me clever enough for that."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you say so when I've asked you to come here on purpose?"</p>
+
+<p>"You've asked me to come, but I've had no success."</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary; every one thought you wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;and I know I'm dreadful&mdash;I wish you'd talk to me about
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"It's delightful to talk to you," Peter found himself saying.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it isn't, but it's kind"; and she looked away from him.</p>
+
+<p>Her voice had with this a quality which made him exclaim: "Every now and
+then you 'say' something&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;to know what one is, if one's a stick!"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You'll do what you want, evidently."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>will</i> succeed&mdash;I <i>will</i> 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&mdash;the theatre was always too
+expensive. If she could only go often&mdash;in Paris for instance every night
+for six months&mdash;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&mdash;that she could promise! She had never been acquainted with any
+one who could tell her anything&mdash;if it was good or bad or right or
+wrong&mdash;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 Carr&eacute; thought so;
+she thought it was horrid. Wasn't it perfectly divine, the way the old
+woman had said those verses, those speeches of C&eacute;lie? If she would only
+let her come and listen to her once in a while like that it was all she
+would ask. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> 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&mdash;he might ask the people next door. If Madame Carr&eacute;
+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&mdash;since that wasn't criticism,
+telling her her head was good. Of course her head was good&mdash;she needn't
+travel up to the <i>quartiers excentriques</i> 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 <i>femme du monde</i> 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&mdash;he thought it
+highly probable. "It would give on <i>my</i> nerves, the life I lead her,"
+Miriam continued; "but she's really a delicious woman."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> 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 Carr&eacute;'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&mdash;the technical one&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;that's what I want to do; I don't want to meddle in people's
+affairs. I can look out for myself&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"The bad ones?"</p>
+
+<p>"The bad women in the plays&mdash;like Madame Carr&eacute;. I'll do any vile
+creature."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you'll do best what you are"&mdash;and Sherringham laughed for the
+interest of it. "You're a strange girl."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Je crois bien</i>! 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&mdash;to parade one's body and one's soul?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Never, never&mdash;never till I'm pelted!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Then stay on here a bit. I'll take you to the theatres."</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> friend we've ever
+had&mdash;he's a great deal nicer than I thought."</p>
+
+<p>"So are you, mademoiselle," said Peter Sherringham.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I trust Mr. Sherringham&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I say, he's no brother of mine," Mr. Lovick protested
+good-naturedly.</p>
+
+<p>"They think he'll be so suggestive, he'll put us up to the right
+things," Mrs. Rooth went on.</p>
+
+<p>"It's just a little brother of mine&mdash;such a dear, amusing, clever boy,"
+Mrs. Lovick explained.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it makes it rather awkward," Mrs. Lovick amiably conceded. "He has
+gone on the stage, poor darling&mdash;but he acts rather well."</p>
+
+<p>"He tried for the diplomatic service, but he didn't precisely dazzle his
+examiners," Mr. Lovick further mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>"Edmund's very nasty about him. There are lots of gentlemen on the
+stage&mdash;he's not the first."</p>
+
+<p>"It's such a comfort to hear that," said Mrs. Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm much obliged to you. Has he got a theatre?" Miriam asked.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear young lady, he hasn't even got an engagement," replied the
+young man's terrible brother-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>"He hasn't been at it very long, but I'm sure he'll get on. He's
+immensely in earnest and very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care for his looks, but I should like his tips," Miriam
+liberally smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Not if I can help it I think!" But Mr. Lovick was so gaily rude that it
+wasn't embarrassing.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh sir, I'm sure you're fond of him," Mrs. Rooth remonstrated as the
+party passed together into the antechamber.</p>
+
+<p>"No, really, I like some of the others&mdash;four or five of them; but I
+don't like Arty."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll make it up to him, then; <i>we</i>'ll like him," Miriam answered with
+spirit; and her voice rang in the staircase&mdash;Sherringham attended them a
+little way&mdash;with a charm which her host had rather missed in her
+loudness of the day before.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a><a href="#toc">IX</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Nick Dormer found his friend Nash that evening at the place of their
+tryst&mdash;smoking a cigar, in the warm bright night, on the terrace of the
+caf&eacute; forming one of the angles of the Place de l'Op&eacute;ra. 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 <i>quartiers s&eacute;rieux</i>. 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&mdash;I go half a mile round to
+avoid it."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> one man's
+opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion's about a
+woman."</p>
+
+<p>"It was to help me to find out what I think of yourself," Nick returned.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>raised</i>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>"She's no worse than I then."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah she didn't try."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Very likely&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"What little system?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, do you call yourself simple?" Nick ejaculated.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;ah far from it!&mdash;but I really think I'm perfectly independent."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's always provoking!" Nick knowingly returned.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;<i>our boat</i>, naturally, for they may very often be just the thing
+that will sink another. If you won't get in people generally hate you."</p>
+
+<p>"Your metaphor's very lame," said Nick. "It's the overcrowded boat that
+goes to the bottom."</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And now of course you're at the head of the regenerate; for, in your
+turn"&mdash;Nick found the figure delightful&mdash;"you all form a select school
+of porpoises."</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit, and I know nothing about heads&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do lead your poor British wit a dance&mdash;I'm so sorry," Nash replied
+benignly. "But I'm very sincere. And I <i>have</i> tried to straighten out
+things a bit for myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why do you give people such a handle?"</p>
+
+<p>"Such a handle?"</p>
+
+<p>"For thinking you're an&mdash;for thinking you're a mere <i>farceur</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay it's my manner: they're so unused to any sort of candour."</p>
+
+<p>"Well then why don't you try another?" Nick asked.</p>
+
+<p>"One has the manner that one can, and mine moreover's a part of my
+little system."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah if you make so much of your little system you're no better than any
+one else," Nick returned as they went on.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't pretend to be better, for we're all miserable sinners; I only
+pretend to be bad in a pleasanter, brighter way&mdash;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?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> 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&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>"They think you so damned impudent," Nick freely explained.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh 'me!' Wasn't it just admitted that I don't in the least make you
+out?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> stupid as they. The only impudence is unprovoked, or
+even mere dull, aggression, and I indignantly protest that I'm never
+guilty of <i>that</i> clumsiness. Ah for what do they take one, with <i>their</i>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;when one's motives
+are so pure? By never, <i>never</i> making the concession, one may end by
+becoming a perceptible force for good."</p>
+
+<p>"What concession are you talking about, in God's name?" Nick demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that we're here all for dreariness. It's impossible to grant it
+sometimes if you wish to deny it ever."</p>
+
+<p>"And what do you mean then by dreariness? That's modern slang and
+terribly vague. Many good things are dreary&mdash;virtue and decency and
+charity, and perseverance and courage and honour."</p>
+
+<p>"Say at once that life's dreary, my dear fellow!" Gabriel Nash
+exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"That's on the whole my besetting impression."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Cest l&agrave; que je vous attends!</i> I'm precisely engaged in trying what can
+be done in taking it the other way. It's my little personal experiment.
+Life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> 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&mdash;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, <i>que diable</i>, 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&mdash;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&mdash;always to keep it up. That's what I do, my dear man&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think your style's a trifle affected?" Nick asked for further
+amusement.</p>
+
+<p>"That's always the charge against a personal manner: if you've any at
+all people think you've too much. Perhaps, perhaps&mdash;who can say? The
+lurking unexpressed is infinite, and affectation must have begun, long
+ago, with the first act of reflective expression&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> No
+doubt I'm rough still, but I'm in the right direction: I make it my
+business to testify for the fine."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah the fine&mdash;there it stands, over there!" said Nick Dormer. "I'm not
+so sure about yours&mdash;I don't know what I've got hold of. But Notre Dame
+<i>is</i> truth; Notre Dame <i>is</i> charm; on Notre Dame the distracted mind can
+rest. Come over with me and look at her!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"How it straightens things out and blows away one's vapours&mdash;anything
+that's <i>done</i>!" said Nick; while his companion exclaimed blandly and
+affectionately:</p>
+
+<p>"The dear old thing!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The great point's to do something, instead of muddling and questioning;
+and, by Jove, it makes me want to!"</p>
+
+<p>"Want to build a cathedral?" Nash inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, just that."</p>
+
+<p>"It's you who puzzle <i>me</i> then, my dear fellow. You can't build them out
+of words."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it the great poets do?" asked Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Their</i> words are ideas&mdash;their words are images, enchanting
+collocations and unforgettable signs. But the verbiage of parliamentary
+speeches&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Nick with a candid, reflective sigh, "you can rear a great
+structure of many things&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>They crossed to the farther side of the river, where the influence of
+the Gothic monument threw a distinction even over the Parisian
+smartnesses&mdash;the municipal rule and measure, the importunate
+symmetries,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> the "handsomeness" of everything, the extravagance of
+gaslight, the perpetual click on the neat bridges. In front of a quiet
+little caf&eacute; on the left bank Gabriel Nash said, "Let's sit down"&mdash;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, <i>quoi</i>! 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&mdash;that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is your business?"</p>
+
+<p>"The spectacle of the world."</p>
+
+<p>Nick laughed out. "And what do you do with that?"</p>
+
+<p>"What does any one do with spectacles? I look at it. I see."</p>
+
+<p>"You're full of contradictions and inconsistencies," Nick however
+objected. "You described yourself to me half an hour ago as an apostle
+of beauty."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;very likely; but that's just what I do. I go far&mdash;as
+far as my means permit me. Last year I heard of such a delightful little
+spot;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> 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&mdash;the sun making it warm in winter. As soon as I could I went
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I lay on the first green grass&mdash;I liked it."</p>
+
+<p>"If that sort of thing's all you accomplish you're not encouraging."</p>
+
+<p>"I accomplish my happiness&mdash;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&mdash;when I judge they won't hurt any one."</p>
+
+<p>"You're lucky to have money for your travelling expenses," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"You're always thinking too much of 'people.'"</p>
+
+<p>"They say I think too little," Gabriel smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I've agreed to stand for Harsh," said Nick with a roundabout
+transition.</p>
+
+<p>"It's you then who are lucky to have money."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't," Nick explained. "My expenses are to be paid."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you too must think of 'people.'"</p>
+
+<p>Nick made no answer to this, but after a moment said: "I wish very much
+you had more to show for it."</p>
+
+<p>"To show for what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your little system&mdash;the &aelig;sthetic life."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you're more affected than anything else," said Nick impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"You know it very well&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you've broken the scent with telling me you're going back to the
+House of Commons," said Nash.</p>
+
+<p>"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 &aelig;sthetic life?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know how to paint?" asked Nash.</p>
+
+<p>"Not in the least. No element of burlesque is therefore wanting to my
+position."</p>
+
+<p>"That makes no difference. I'm so glad."</p>
+
+<p>"So glad I don't know how?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I can do anything?" Nick inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"What does matter then?" Nick asked with his eyes on his companion.</p>
+
+<p>"To be on the right side&mdash;on the side of the 'fine.'"</p>
+
+<p>"There'll be precious little of the 'fine' if I produce nothing but
+daubs."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall nevertheless paint decently if I can," Nick presently said.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm almost sorry! It will make your case less clear, your example less
+grand."</p>
+
+<p>"My example will be grand enough, with the fight I shall have to make."</p>
+
+<p>"The fight? With whom?"</p>
+
+<p>"With myself first of all. I'm awfully against it."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah but you'll have me on the other side," Nash smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you'll have more than a handful to meet&mdash;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&mdash;such as it is; my great future&mdash;such as it has been
+supposed it may be."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I see, I see. It's splendid!" Nash exclaimed. "And Mrs. Dallow into the
+bargain," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mrs. Dallow if you like."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you in love with her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not in the least."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she is with you&mdash;so I understood."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that," said Nick Dormer with sudden sternness.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you are, you are!" his companion pronounced, judging apparently from
+this accent.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know <i>what</i> I am&mdash;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&mdash;I don't
+complain of it&mdash;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&mdash;my evil genius:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> 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&mdash;I'm stricken. <i>C'est V&eacute;nus
+toute enti&egrave;re &agrave; sa proie attach&eacute;e</i>&mdash;putting Venus for 'art.' It tears me
+to pieces as I may say."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely&mdash;it's an antidote. And at present you're another."</p>
+
+<p>"Another?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall control the dilution," said Nash. "Poor fellow&mdash;if you're
+elected!" he added.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Jolly to make him jump!" Nash suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"He'd jump indeed&mdash;come straight down on top of me. And then the
+grotesqueness of it&mdash;to <i>begin</i> all of a sudden at my age."</p>
+
+<p>"It's perfect indeed, it's too lovely a case," Nash raved.</p>
+
+<p>"Think how it sounds&mdash;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&mdash;and with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> the more commendable perseverance by reason
+of all the dreadful time he has lost. Orders, in view of this,
+respectfully solicited.'"</p>
+
+<p>"The nineteenth century's a sweeter time than I thought," said Nash.
+"It's the portrait then that haunts your dreams?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you could see. You must of course come immediately to my place
+in London."</p>
+
+<p>"Perfidious wretch, you're capable of having talent&mdash;which of course
+will spoil everything!" Gabriel wailed.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm too old and was too early perverted. It's too late to go
+through the mill."</p>
+
+<p>"You make <i>me</i> young! Don't miss your election at your peril. Think of
+the edification."</p>
+
+<p>"The edification&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of your throwing it all up the next moment."</p>
+
+<p>"That would be pleasant for Mr. Carteret," Nick brooded.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Carteret&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"A dear old family friend who'll wish to pay my agent's bill."</p>
+
+<p>"Serve him right for such depraved tastes."</p>
+
+<p>"You do me good," said Nick as he rose and turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't call me useless then."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"For the sake of all the muses then don't stand. For you <i>will</i> get in."</p>
+
+<p>"Very likely. At any rate I've promised."</p>
+
+<p>"You've promised Mrs. Dallow?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's her place&mdash;she'll <i>put</i> me in," Nick said.</p>
+
+<p>"Baleful woman! But I'll pull you out!" cried Gabriel Nash.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a><a href="#toc">X</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>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 H&ocirc;tel 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&mdash;enunciated by Gabriel Nash&mdash;that he was saddled with them.
+Remedies hovered before him, but these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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 H&ocirc;tel de la Garonne.</p>
+
+<p>As a consequence of this speculation he went back to Madame Carr&eacute; to ask
+her to reconsider her stern judgement and give the young English
+lady&mdash;to oblige him&mdash;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 Carr&eacute; never reconsidered when once she had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> 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&mdash;save that for that
+matter she had it already&mdash;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&mdash;the <i>jeune Anglaise</i> wasn't such a
+<i>grue</i>. This would take some courage, but it would also add to the
+amusement of his visit.</p>
+
+<p>He found her at home, but as soon as he had expressed his conviction she
+began: "Oh, your <i>jeune Anglaise</i>, 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&mdash;guess a little what!&mdash;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&mdash;have you an idea what people pay for
+them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Between artists, you know, there are easier conditions," Sherringham
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>her</i>. She does make me&mdash;I don't
+know how&mdash;and she sits there gaping at me with her big eyes. They look
+like open pockets!"</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay she'll profit by it," said Sherringham.</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay <i>you</i> 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&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>Madame Carr&eacute; paused a moment, listened and then cried: "Didn't I tell
+you?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 Carr&eacute; as if he had not been there; making no
+excuses and using no flattery; taking rather a tone of equal
+authority&mdash;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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> lived in a high wind of exhibition, of figuration&mdash;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&mdash;the discovery that she positively had no countenance of her own,
+but only the countenance of the occasion, a sequence, a variety&mdash;capable
+possibly of becoming immense&mdash;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&mdash;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 <i>b&ecirc;te</i> even when Sherringham, on their first meeting at
+Madame Carr&eacute;'s, said to Nick Dormer that she was the image of the Tragic
+Muse.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> 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 Carr&eacute;'s. It was doubtless that the girl's was
+fresh and strong and had a future in it, while poor Madame Carr&eacute;'s was
+worn and weary and had only a past.</p>
+
+<p>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
+Carr&eacute;, while she laughed&mdash;yet looked terrible too, with such high
+artifices of eye and gesture&mdash;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 <i>jeune Anglaise</i> was perhaps indeed rare, a new type, as Madame
+Carr&eacute; 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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When she had given herself a touch at the glass she turned round, with a
+rapid "<i>Ecoutez maintenant</i>!" and stood leaning a moment&mdash;slightly
+lowered and inclined backward, her hands behind her and supporting
+her&mdash;on the <i>console</i> before the mirror. She waited an instant, turning
+her eyes from one of her companions to the other as to take possession
+of them&mdash;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 Carr&eacute; 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.</p>
+
+<p>"How bad you make me seem to myself and if I were you how much better I
+should say it!" was Madame Carr&eacute;'s first criticism.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> 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
+<i>you</i> 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&mdash;they were things in which the <i>gros moyens</i> were
+of no avail.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah my poor child, your means are all <i>gros moyens</i>; you appear to have
+no others," Madame Carr&eacute; 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 <i>alourdir</i> everything you touch."</p>
+
+<p>Peter read into this judgement a deep irritation&mdash;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 <i>jeune Anglaise</i> and even a
+shade of importance. The latter remarked, serenely enough, that the
+things she wanted most to do were just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> those that were not for the
+<i>gros moyens</i>, the vulgar obvious dodges, the starts and shouts that any
+one could think of and that the <i>gros public</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Carr&eacute; 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&mdash;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&mdash;Madame Carr&eacute; was so far right&mdash;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&mdash;some reasonable, some ingenious, some strangely futile and
+some highly indiscreet; but all with the effect that, contrary to
+Peter's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> 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&mdash;all the crudity, the irony and intensity of a
+discussion of esoteric things&mdash;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 <i>cuisine</i>,
+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 Carr&eacute; 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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>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 Carr&eacute;'s, but it was apt in fact, when he found himself
+at close quarters with it, to appear an ado about nothing.</p>
+
+<p>If the old woman was hard it was not that many of her present
+conclusions about the <i>jeune Anglaise</i> 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&mdash;a prompt and easy sacrifice. It made our friend uncomfortable, as he
+had been made uncomfortable by certain <i>feuilletons</i>, 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>i</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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> the art itself? What an implication, if the criticism was
+tolerable only so long as it was worthless&mdash;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&mdash;those who, while pretending to write about the stage, wrote about
+everything else.</p>
+
+<p>It was as if Madame Carr&eacute;, 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 <i>will</i> 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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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 Carr&eacute;. "It's <i>my</i> affair of course. You'll take an interest in
+her for a month or two; she'll sit at your feet."</p>
+
+<p>The old actress had an admirable shrug. "Oh I'll knock her about&mdash;she
+seems stout enough!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a><a href="#toc">XI</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>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 caf&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"Objection? I've spent my life in caf&eacute;s! 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 <i>consommation</i> 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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;she won't borrow of <i>you</i>. We're rather better now&mdash;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&mdash;mamma was always up to her ears in books. They served her
+for food and drink. When<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> she had nothing to eat she began a novel in
+ten volumes&mdash;the old-fashioned ones; they lasted longest. She knows
+every <i>cabinet de lecture</i> 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 caf&eacute;s&mdash;the little, cheap, shabby caf&eacute;s too&mdash;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
+<i>comme il faut</i>. 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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;sitting beside mamma and
+watching people, their faces, their types, their movements. There's a
+great deal goes on in caf&eacute;s: people come to them to talk things over,
+their private<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> affairs, their complications; they have important
+meetings. Oh I've observed scenes between men and women&mdash;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&mdash;if I can get the
+situation. I'll tell you what it is sometime&mdash;I'll do it for you. Oh it
+is the book of life!"</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>sirop
+d'orgeat</i>. "I know what it will come to: Madame Carr&eacute; will want to keep
+me." This was one of the felicities she presently threw off.</p>
+
+<p>"To keep you?"</p>
+
+<p>"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 caf&eacute;
+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&mdash;such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> for instance as that she should at least amuse him.</p>
+
+<p>"It's very singular; I know nothing like it," he said&mdash;"your equal
+mastery of two languages."</p>
+
+<p>"Say of half-a-dozen," Miriam smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"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
+<i>baragouinage</i> of foreigners, to which we listen with such complacency.
+In fact your French is better than your English&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll work it with <i>you</i>. I like the way you speak."</p>
+
+<p>"You must speak beautifully; you must do something for the standard."</p>
+
+<p>"For the standard?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there isn't any after all." Peter had a drop. "It has gone to the
+dogs."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I'll bring it back. I know what you mean."</p>
+
+<p>"No one knows, no one cares; the sense is gone&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> And when one laments it people stare; they don't know
+what one means."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean the grand manner, certain pompous pronunciations, the style
+of the Kembles?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean any style that <i>is</i> 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, <i>que diable</i>! 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?'"</p>
+
+<p>"And do you?" asked Miriam full of interest.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor child, what else under the sun should they be? Isn't their
+whole art the affectation <i>par excellence</i>? 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."</p>
+
+<p>"Never, never, never!" the girl cried in a voice that made a dozen
+people look round.</p>
+
+<p>"I sometimes think it&mdash;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&mdash;indeed they've already reached it&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I've had it; it's very personal!" said Miriam knowingly.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> with it; but the direction's
+right, and it has the superiority that it's a human exhibition, not a
+mechanical one."</p>
+
+<p>"I can act just like an Italian," Miriam eagerly proclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather you acted like an Englishwoman if an Englishwoman would only
+act."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll show you!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you're not English," said Peter sociably, his arms on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon. You should hear mamma about our 'race.'"</p>
+
+<p>"You're a Jewess&mdash;I'm sure of that," he went on.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you must leave Madame Carr&eacute; as soon as you've got from her what
+she can give."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Peter accepted this statement with reservations, but he replied: "Put
+all that together and it makes you very sufficiently of Rachel's tribe."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care if I'm of her tribe artistically. I'm of the family of the
+artists&mdash;<i>je me fiche</i> of any other! I'm in the same style as that
+woman&mdash;I know it."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;I know all about all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+the great actors. But that won't prevent me from speaking divine
+English."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Did <i>they</i> write plays?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;the
+terrible competition. There are so many here&mdash;not that I'm afraid," she
+chattered on. "But we've got America and they haven't. America's a great
+place."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it fills their pockets!" Miriam cried.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>gros moyens</i>; all his delicacy perishes. However, they'll
+understand <i>you</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I shall be too affected," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;mine's instinct," Miriam contended.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;if the thing comes
+off. Madame Carr&eacute;'s does, because she has reflected. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Carr&eacute;'s very philosophic. I shall never be like her."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you won't&mdash;you'll be original. But you'll have your own
+ideas."</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay I shall have a good many of yours"&mdash;and she smiled at him
+across the table.</p>
+
+<p>They sat a moment looking at each other. "Don't go in for coquetry,"
+Peter then said. "It's a waste of time."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's civil!" the girl cried.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"In my favour?"</p>
+
+<p>"It does save time."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it saves too much. Don't you think the artist ought to have
+passions?"</p>
+
+<p>Peter had a pause; he thought an examination of this issue premature.
+"Flirtations are not passions," he replied. "No, you're simple&mdash;at least
+I suspect you are; for of course with a woman one would be clever to
+know."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Betray you? Do you mean about your recommending affectation?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, no; he recommends it himself. That is, he practises it, and on
+a scale!"</p>
+
+<p>"But he makes one hate it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"It's too odious, the way he talks about us!" Miriam cried assentingly.</p>
+
+<p>"About 'us'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Us poor actors."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the competition he dislikes," Peter laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I must reply with the <i>tu quoque</i>, though I've not that effect on you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand," said the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"You're an extraordinary young lady."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean I'm horrid. Well, I daresay I am. But I'm better when you know
+me."</p>
+
+<p>He made no direct rejoinder to this, but after a moment went on: "Your
+mother must repay that money. I'll give it her."</p>
+
+<p>"You had better give it <i>him</i>!" cried Miriam. "If once mamma has it&mdash;!"
+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."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm poor myself. That is, I'm very far from rich. But why receive
+favours&mdash;?" 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&mdash;he
+had not seen the pair three times&mdash;to regulate their intercourse with
+the rest of the world. But the girl instantly carried out his thought
+and more than his thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Favours from Mr. Nash? Oh he doesn't count!"</p>
+
+<p>The way she dropped these words&mdash;they would have been admirable on the
+stage&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>did</i>
+keep her! Sherringham accepted this&mdash;he had an adequate and indeed an
+analytic vision of Mrs. Rooth's conservatism; but he observed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> at the
+same time that his companion made no motion to rise. He made none
+either; he only said:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;as I suspect at
+least&mdash;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 <i>fond</i> or background, that I don't
+comprehend. You're an embroidery without a canvas."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't be everything, both a consummate actress and a flower of the
+field. You've got to choose."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him a moment. "I'm glad you think I'm so wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> of intervals. It's a kind of thing that's a labyrinth!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know what I am," she said sententiously.</p>
+
+<p>But her companion continued, following his own train. "Were you really
+so frightened the first day you went to Madame Carr&eacute;'s?"</p>
+
+<p>She stared, then with a flush threw back her head. "Do you think I was
+pretending?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think you always are. However, your vanity&mdash;if you had any!&mdash;would be
+natural."</p>
+
+<p>"I've plenty of that. I'm not a bit ashamed to own it."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd be capable of trying to 'do' the human peacock. But excuse the
+audacity and the crudity of my speculations&mdash;it only proves my interest.
+What is it that you know you are?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, an artist. Isn't that a canvas?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, an intellectual, but not a moral."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah it's everything! And I'm a good girl too&mdash;won't that do?"</p>
+
+<p>"It remains to be seen," Sherringham laughed. "A creature who's
+absolutely <i>all</i> an artist&mdash;I'm curious to see that."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely it has been seen&mdash;in lots of painters, lots of musicians."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but those arts are not personal like yours. I mean not so much so.
+There's something left for&mdash;what shall I call it?&mdash;for character."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up at her an instant&mdash;she seemed so "plastic"; and then rising
+too answered: "Delightful being, you've a hundred!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a><a href="#toc">XII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>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 <i>baignoire</i>) 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&mdash;an element in his life which
+altered the relations of things. He was not easy till he had found the
+right name for it&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> singer&mdash;<i>cela s'&eacute;tait vu</i>, 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&mdash;though not
+those whom the tradition had helped to go furthest&mdash;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 <i>jeune Anglaise</i>&mdash;a "lady"
+withal&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+perhaps exhibition enough. The attendance of the little party was,
+moreover, in most cases at the Th&eacute;&acirc;tre Fran&ccedil;ais; 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&mdash;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&mdash;your
+superstition that stays at home when the sun's high&mdash;to go your rounds
+with. The Fran&ccedil;ais is my second horse."</p>
+
+<p>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 Com&eacute;die her own display should be
+the most successful of all? That question danced attendance on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>entr'acte</i> too long, no <i>baignoire</i> 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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> 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&mdash;a plea of being too soft and bland for experience.</p>
+
+<p>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 H&ocirc;tel 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&mdash;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&mdash;she talked sweetly and discursively of so many
+things&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> But when the girl backed her up, as
+he phrased it to himself, he liked that even less.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>The early weeks of that summer&mdash;they went on indeed into August&mdash;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&mdash;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 Elys&eacute;es 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 Carr&eacute; was going to
+Vichy, but had not yet taken flight,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> which was a great advantage for
+Miriam, who could now solicit her attention with the consciousness that
+she had no engagements <i>en ville</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"I make her listen to me&mdash;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 <i>bouqueti&egrave;res</i> 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&mdash;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&mdash;with the penny bunch of violets she always stuck in the front of
+her dress&mdash;for whatever awaited her at Madame Carr&eacute;'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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> interview. He would send Madame Carr&eacute; her
+money&mdash;she was really most obliging&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;at least not
+always&mdash;not the experiments that spoil the material."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, after all, I'm not an actor myself," he could but impatiently
+sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>him</i> and
+his theories some day. Not to seem too inconsistent&mdash;for it was cruel to
+bewilder her when he had taken her up to enlighten&mdash;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
+Carr&eacute; held there were no <i>little</i> tricks, that everything had its
+importance as a means to a great end, and that if you were not willing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+to try to <i>approfondir</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>raffin&eacute;</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"You're worse than Madame Carr&eacute;; 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 <i>souffle</i>,
+before I get it. But <i>&agrave; la guerre comme &agrave; la guerre</i>! How can I read
+Shelley, however, when I don't understand him?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;without culture and taste
+and perception; but in that case you'll be nothing but a vulgar
+<i>cabotine</i>, and nothing will be of any consequence." He had a theory
+that the great lyric poets&mdash;he induced her to read, and recite as well,
+long passages of Wordsworth and Swinburne&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;Sherringham was completely of that opinion;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> but it
+struck him as no <i>b&ecirc;tise</i> to believe at the same time that
+intellect&mdash;leaving virtue for the moment out of the question&mdash;might be
+brought into fruitful relation with it. It would be a bigger thing if a
+better mind were projected upon it&mdash;projected without sacrificing the
+mind. So he lent his young friend books she never read&mdash;she was on
+almost irreconcilable terms with the printed page save for spouting
+it&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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 Com&eacute;die<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> Fran&ccedil;aise 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 Carr&eacute;'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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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 Carr&eacute; 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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> 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 Carr&eacute; 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&mdash;this was small
+relief&mdash;but that he himself was not.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;to say nothing of
+a view of many roofs and chimneys&mdash;a very uneven waxed floor, an empire
+clock, an <i>armoire &agrave; glace</i>, 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"&mdash;indeed she liked everything about him&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> 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&mdash;the
+earlier productions of M. Eug&egrave;ne Sue, the once-fashionable compositions
+of Madame Sophie Gay&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>She rather annoyed their visitor by the serenity of her confidence&mdash;for
+a reason he fully understood only later&mdash;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&mdash;to refer her to more common air. They were like
+the reverberation of some far-off tutored circle.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The connexion between the development of Miriam's genius and the
+necessity of an occasional excursion to the country&mdash;the charming
+country that lies in so many directions beyond the Parisian
+<i>banlieue</i>&mdash;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
+H&ocirc;tel 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> it was a splendid mobile mask. And the wearer of this high
+ornament had frankness and courage and variety&mdash;no end of the unusual
+and the unexpected. She had qualities that seldom went
+together&mdash;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 <i>there</i>, was accessible, almost
+belonged to him. He reflected ingeniously that he owed his escape to a
+peculiar cause&mdash;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 <i>impresario</i>, 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&mdash;he made a great point of the
+"serious"&mdash;with so slippery and ticklish a creature. The two ladies had
+only to stay in Paris, save their candle-ends and, as Madame Carr&eacute; 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 Carr&eacute;, who said to him, "<i>Vous devriez
+bien nous la laisser</i>."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span></p><p>"She <i>has</i> something then&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she very conceited?" Sherringham asked.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mauvais sujet!</i>" said Madame Carr&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;he smoked a cigar deferred till after
+the Channel in a compartment by himself&mdash;it had suddenly come over him
+that they were futile. Now that he had left the girl a subversive,
+unpremeditated heart-beat told him&mdash;it made him hold his breath a minute
+in the carriage&mdash;that he had after all not escaped. He <i>was</i> in love
+with her: he had been in love with her from the first hour.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_THIRD" id="BOOK_THIRD"></a>BOOK THIRD</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a><a href="#toc">XIII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;looking sweet participation but not
+interfering&mdash;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 <i>had</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Dallow was really too glad for any definite reflexion, even for
+personal exultation, the vanity of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> 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&mdash;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&mdash;it came to the same thing&mdash;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&mdash;it seemed an applausive murmur&mdash;and the swift roll of
+the vehicle.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The others had not yet come back, and Lady<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> 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&mdash;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&mdash;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, <i>that</i>'s what I call form: I
+don't know what you call it"&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;he saw the
+creased card he had sent her lying on one of the beautiful bare
+tables&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> But
+there was something else too&mdash;her sweet smothered words in his ear: "Oh
+my boy, my boy&mdash;oh your father, your father!" Neither the sense of
+pleasure nor that of pain, with Lady Agnes&mdash;as indeed with most of the
+persons with whom this history is concerned&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Sir Nicholas!" said Mrs. Dallow vaguely.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you make another speech?" Lady Agnes asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Did I?" Nick appealed.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know!"&mdash;and Julia spoke with her back turned, doing something
+to her hat before the glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh of course the confusion, the bewilderment!" said Lady Agnes in a
+tone rich in political reminiscence.</p>
+
+<p>"It was really immense fun," Mrs. Dallow went so far as to drop.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest Julia!" Lady Agnes deeply breathed. Then she added: "It was you
+who made it sure."</p>
+
+<p>"There are a lot of people coming to dinner," said Julia.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you'll have to speak again," Lady Agnes smiled at her son.</p>
+
+<p>"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!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that, Nick," said his mother gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid&mdash;he'll jabber like a magpie!" And Julia went out of the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> you've thanked Julia handsomely,"
+she presently remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why of course, mother."</p>
+
+<p>"She has done as much as if you hadn't been sure."</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't in the least sure&mdash;and she has done everything."</p>
+
+<p>"She has been too good&mdash;but <i>we</i>'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."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"He hears you, he watches you, he rejoices in you," Lady Agnes opined.</p>
+
+<p>This idea was oppressive to Nick&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course she is!" said Lady Agnes knowingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Her charming appearance is half the battle"&mdash;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:</p>
+
+<p>"A woman's always effective when she likes a person so much."</p>
+
+<p>It discomposed him to be described as a person<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> liked, and so much, and
+by a woman; and he simply said abruptly: "When are you going away?"</p>
+
+<p>"The first moment that's civil&mdash;to-morrow morning. <i>You</i>'ll stay on I
+hope."</p>
+
+<p>"Stay on? What shall I stay on for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why you might stay to express your appreciation."</p>
+
+<p>Nick considered. "I've everything to do."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought everything was done," said Lady Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's just why," her son replied, not very lucidly. "I want to
+do other things&mdash;quite other things. I should like to take the next
+train," And he looked at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"When there are people coming to dinner to meet you?"</p>
+
+<p>"They'll meet <i>you</i>&mdash;that's better."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;just as a
+family. It would please Julia to-day to feel that we <i>are</i> one. Do stay
+with her to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"How will that do&mdash;when she's alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"She won't be alone, with Mrs. Gresham."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Gresham doesn't count."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've never stayed much, and there have always been people. At any rate
+it's now different."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;if you call <i>that</i> different!" Nick got up at this and,
+without meeting her eyes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> 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&mdash;very often before, but during these last days
+more than ever&mdash;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&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>Nick turned round at this with an odd expression. "<i>Her</i> member&mdash;am I
+hers?"</p>
+
+<p>Lady Agnes had a pause&mdash;she had need of all her tact. "Well, if the
+place is hers and you represent the place&mdash;!" she began. But she went no
+further, for Nick had interrupted her with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"What a droll thing to 'represent,' when one thinks of it! And what does
+<i>it</i> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh well, the next time you shall have a great town," Lady Agnes
+returned, smiling and feeling that she <i>was</i> tactful.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you'd be serious to your mother"&mdash;and she went nearer him.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Nick, don't spoil your victory by your perversity!" she cried as she
+clasped her hands to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I went through it with great glee&mdash;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&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Out of it?" His mother stared. "Isn't the whole point that you're in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah <i>now</i> I'm only in the House of Commons."</p>
+
+<p>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!"&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> 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&mdash;rather a pretty phrase for
+Julia. She means <i>she</i> does everything for the place; <i>she</i>'s really
+their member and this house in which we stand their legislative chamber.
+Therefore the <i>lacunae</i> 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&mdash;Harsh is gorged. I represent the
+ideas of my party. That's what Julia says."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Why now?" Nick frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"She has shown you such sympathy, such devotion."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it for that she has shown it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you might <i>feel</i>&mdash;I can't tell you!" said Lady Agnes reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>He blushed at this, as if what he did feel was the reproach. "Must I
+marry her because you like her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I? Why we're <i>all</i> as fond of her as we can be."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;that I shall marry no woman
+I'm not unmistakably in love with."</p>
+
+<p>"And why are you not in love with Julia&mdash;charming, clever, generous as
+she is?" Lady Agnes laid her hands on him&mdash;she held him tight. "Dearest
+Nick, if you care anything in the world to make me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> happy you'll stay
+over here to-morrow and be nice to her."</p>
+
+<p>He waited an instant. "Do you mean propose to her?"</p>
+
+<p>"With a single word, with the glance of an eye, the movement of your
+little finger"&mdash;and she paused, looking intensely, imploringly up into
+his face&mdash;"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&mdash;you know she is!"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't talk of it, mother&mdash;it's too terrible an idea. And I can't talk
+of <i>her</i>, nor of what I think of her. You must leave that to me. I do
+her perfect justice."</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>him</i> pleasure.
+That's what I meant when I spoke just now of us all. It wasn't of Grace
+and Biddy I was thinking&mdash;fancy!&mdash;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&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>Nick Dormer stopped her with another kiss; he murmured "Mother, mother,
+mother!" as he bent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> 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:</p>
+
+<p>"You know it&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;yes, the very
+first! What freedom <i>is</i> there in being poor? How can you do anything
+without money, and what money can you make for yourself&mdash;what money will
+ever come to you? That's the crime&mdash;to throw away such an instrument of
+power, such a blessed instrument of good."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't everything to be rich, mother," said Nick, looking at the
+floor with a particular patience&mdash;that is with a provisional docility
+and his hands in his pockets. "And it isn't so fearful to be poor."</p>
+
+<p>"It's vile&mdash;it's abject. Don't I know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you in such acute want?" he smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," he easily went on, "there's other money in the world than
+Julia's. I might come by some of that."</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't I come in for Harsh?" asked Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh he's very canny. He likes to see people rich. <i>Then</i> he believes in
+them&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>Lady Agnes hesitated; then "You needn't insult Julia!" she replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Moreover, if I've <i>her</i> money I shan't want his," Nick unheedingly
+remarked.</p>
+
+<p>Again his mother waited before answering; after which she produced: "And
+pray wouldn't you wish to be independent?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're delightful, dear mother&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Work at politics? How does that make money, honourably?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't mean at politics."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean then?"&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"It seems a dream," he rather flatly returned.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;&mdash;?" 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> and what comfort I get
+from <i>that</i>! 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&mdash;I don't know what's the matter with her; no
+one will look at her, and she's so conceited with it&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;for it was the sort of thing
+into which in any case a woman enters more than a man&mdash;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&mdash;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
+<i>his</i> life, and in the recognition of them was no soreness of sacrifice
+and no consciousness of merit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;don't desert us."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't desert you&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Be great&mdash;be great. I'm old, I've lived, I've seen. Go in for a great
+material position. That will simplify everything else."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do what I can for you&mdash;anything, everything I can. Trust me&mdash;leave
+me alone," Nick went on.</p>
+
+<p>"And you'll stay over&mdash;you'll spend the day with her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll stay till she turns me out!"</p>
+
+<p>His mother had hold of his hand again now: she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"No more do I!"</p>
+
+<p>She looked about&mdash;there was so much to look at&mdash;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&mdash;of seeing the finest works every day! You'll
+have everything the world can give."</p>
+
+<p>"That's exactly what was just passing in my own mind. It's too much,"
+Nick reasoned.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be selfish!"</p>
+
+<p>"Selfish?" he echoed.</p>
+
+<p>"Unselfish then. You'll share it with us."</p>
+
+<p>"And with Julia a little, I hope," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"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:</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you talk so of poor Biddy? Why won't she marry?"</p>
+
+<p>"You had better ask Peter Sherringham," said Lady Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>"What has he to do with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"How odd of you not to know&mdash;when it's so plain how she thinks of him
+that it's a matter of common gossip."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, if you will&mdash;we've made it so, and she takes it as an angel. But
+Peter likes her."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>But Nick glossed it all over. "Biddy's so charming she'll easily marry
+some one else."</p>
+
+<p>"Never, if she loves him. However, Julia will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> bring it about&mdash;Julia
+will help her," his mother pursued more cheerfully. "That's what you'll
+do for us&mdash;that <i>she'll</i> do everything!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why then more than now?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Because we shall be yours."</p>
+
+<p>"You're mine already."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but she isn't. However, she's as good!" Lady Agnes exulted.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll turn me out of the house," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"Come and tell me when she does! But there she is&mdash;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&mdash;"she's waiting for you."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"We go home to-morrow, but Nick will stay a day or two," Lady Agnes said
+to them.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old Nick!" Grace ejaculated looking at her with intensity.</p>
+
+<p>"He's going to speak," she went on. "But don't mention it."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't mention it?" Biddy asked with a milder stare. "Hasn't he spoken
+enough, poor fellow?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean to Julia," Lady Agnes replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you understand, you goose?"&mdash;and Grace turned on her sister.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a><a href="#toc">XIV</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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 <i>en f&ecirc;te</i>: then one could see what a sympathetic old place it was.
+She hoped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> Nick was not dreadfully fagged&mdash;she feared Julia was
+completely done up. Julia, however, had transported her exhaustion to
+the grounds&mdash;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&mdash;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 <i>me</i> for being here." He made some protest and
+she added: "But I'm almost part of the house, you know&mdash;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 <i>are</i> 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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> case, with her air of being <i>r&eacute;pandue</i> at
+the expense of dingier belongings. Her figure was admired&mdash;that is it
+was sometimes mentioned&mdash;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 <i>menus</i>.
+Great ones, on the other hand, had no terrors for her&mdash;she had seen too
+many. No one had ever discovered whether any one else paid her. People
+only knew what <i>they</i> did.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>I am afraid, moreover, that I have no better excuse for him than the one
+he had touched on in that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>He had risen to the fray as he had risen to matches at school, for his
+boyishness could still take a pleasure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>alternative? He was rattled
+about so for a fortnight&mdash;Julia taking care of this&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>was</i> indeed his being so&mdash;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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>She had wrapped him up in something, he didn't know what&mdash;a sense of
+facility, an overpowering fragrance&mdash;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&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a><a href="#toc">XV</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>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&mdash;he had been whistling at first, but as he got
+nearer stopped&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"I came out to get away," she said when he had begun to walk with her.</p>
+
+<p>"Away from me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah that's impossible." Then she added: "The day's so very nice."</p>
+
+<p>"Lovely weather," Nick dropped. "You want to get away from Mrs. Gresham,
+I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>She had a pause. "From everything!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I want to get away too."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It has been such a racket. Listen to the dear birds."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;nothing so good as that."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a perverse stiffness at a moment when she probably but wanted
+to be soft&mdash;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. <i>He</i> 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&mdash;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&mdash;take a house or
+something or other.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll lend her a house," said Mrs. Dallow.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Julia, Julia!" Nick half groaned.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Mr. Hoppus's article."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right; then <i>I</i> shan't have to. You'll tell me about it." He
+uttered this without believing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> 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!"</p>
+
+<p>"People are talking about it. One has to know. It's the article of the
+month."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, kill me!" Mrs. Dallow returned.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"To the island," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll go with you&mdash;and I'll kill you there."</p>
+
+<p>"The things I say are the right things," Julia declared.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"There are some things that lead to nothing," said Mrs. Dallow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No doubt&mdash;no doubt. And how are you going to get over to your island?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't there a boat?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>Nick had paused to look round for the boat, but his hostess walked on
+without turning her head. "Can you row?" he then asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you know I can do everything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, to be sure. That's why I want to kill you. There's the boat."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall you drown me?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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 <i>ciceroni</i> once sacred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> to Vesta. It was
+circular, roofed with old tiles, surrounded by white columns and
+considerably dilapidated. George Dallow had taken an interest in it&mdash;it
+reminded him not in the least of Rome, but of other things he liked&mdash;and
+had amused himself with restoring it. "Give me your hand&mdash;sit there and
+I'll ferry you," Nick said.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary, it would be just to change the scene and the <i>pose</i>.
+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&mdash;I suppose you've noticed," Nick went on as they floated and
+he scarcely dipped the oars.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand you"&mdash;and Julia leaned back in the boat.</p>
+
+<p>He gave no further explanation than to ask in a minute: "Have you people
+to dinner to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe there are three or four, but I'll put them off if you like."</p>
+
+<p>"Must you <i>always</i> live in public, Julia?" he continued.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him a moment and he could see how she coloured. "We'll go
+home&mdash;I'll put them off."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah no, don't go home; it's too jolly here. Let them come, let them
+come, poor wretches!"</p>
+
+<p>"How little you know me," Julia presently broke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> out, "when, ever so
+many times, I've lived here for months without a creature!"</p>
+
+<p>"Except Mrs. Gresham, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"I have had to have the house going, I admit."</p>
+
+<p>"You're perfect, you're admirable, and I don't criticise you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand you!" she tossed back.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;the seat in the stern was most comfortable&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you like. I don't mind seeing how they keep it."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"It might do at least for you to explain what you mean." And Julia sat
+down.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean to pretend for half an hour that I don't represent the burgesses
+of Harsh. It's charming&mdash;it's very delicate work. Surely it has been
+retouched."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, is <i>this</i> your salon?" Nick smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you always talk of that? My salon's an invention of your
+own."</p>
+
+<p>"But isn't it the idea you're most working for?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;that you'll ever guess."</p>
+
+<p>Nick wandered about the room and looked at various things it
+contained&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"They're supposed to come over every day and look after them."</p>
+
+<p>"They must come over in force."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no one knows."</p>
+
+<p>"It's spick and span. How well you have everything done!"</p>
+
+<p>"I think you've some reason to say so," said Mrs. Dallow. Her parasol
+was now down and she was again rolling it tight.</p>
+
+<p>"But you're right about my not knowing you. Why were you so ready to do
+so much for me?"</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh if you don't know!" Julia quite desperately sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a question of being sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Well then if you're not sure&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Was it done for me as a friend, as a man?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're not a man&mdash;you're a child," his hostess declared with a face
+that was cold, though she had been smiling the moment before.</p>
+
+<p>"After all I was a good candidate," Nick went on.</p>
+
+<p>"What do I care for candidates?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"If you haven't discovered that I like you, you might as well."</p>
+
+<p>"Might as well discover it?"</p>
+
+<p>She was grave&mdash;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&mdash;a trifle
+awkwardly. "Might as well have hated me," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Nick, dear Nick&mdash;&mdash;!" 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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You've done it, you've done it," Nick repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want of me?" she appealed.</p>
+
+<p>"To stay with me&mdash;this way&mdash;always."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah not this way," she answered softly, but as if in pain and making an
+effort, with a certain force, to detach herself.</p>
+
+<p>"This way then&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"You're hard, and it's cruel!" she then exclaimed, shaking herself free.</p>
+
+<p>"Hard&mdash;cruel?"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"So little? It's with everything&mdash;with everything I have."</p>
+
+<p>"I've done it, you say? What do you accuse me of doing?" Her tears were
+already over.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;no, I didn't."</p>
+
+<p>"It's what I say&mdash;that you've always hated me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll make it up to you!" he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>She leaned on the doorway with her forehead against the lintel. "You
+don't even deny it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Contradict you <i>now</i>? I'll admit it, though it's rubbish, on purpose to
+live it down."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I'm so poor!" Nick murmured cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"I like that! Haven't I asked you to marry me? When did you ever ask
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Every day of my life! As I say, it's hard&mdash;for a proud woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you're too proud even to answer me."</p>
+
+<p>"We must think of it, we must talk of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Think of it? I've thought of it ever so much."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean together. There are many things in such a question."</p>
+
+<p>"The principal thing is beautifully to give me your word."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him afresh all strangely; then she threw off: "I wish I
+didn't adore you!" She went straight down the steps.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Untie the boat; we'll go on the water," Julia said.</p>
+
+<p>Nick was at the top of the steps, looking down at her. "Ah stay a
+little&mdash;<i>do</i> stay!" he pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll get in myself, I'll pull off," she simply answered.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> indifferent nature all
+about. Besides, what discovery had he made this morning but that he also
+was in love?</p>
+
+<p>"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
+<i>am</i> ambitious."</p>
+
+<p>"We must look at life in a large, bold way," he concurred while he
+rested his oars.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I mean. If I didn't think you could I wouldn't look at
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"I could what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do everything you ought&mdash;everything I imagine, I dream of. You <i>are</i>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>Nick looked at the water while she talked. "Will it always be so
+amusing?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Will what always be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why my career."</p>
+
+<p>"Shan't I make it so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then it will be yours&mdash;it won't be mine," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah don't say that&mdash;don't make me out that sort of woman! If they should
+say it's me I'd drown myself."</p>
+
+<p>"If they should say what's you?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, won't you do them? It's just what I count on."</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh I shall make you work, my dear!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah <i>that</i>&mdash;&mdash;!" she sounded in a tone that might come back to a man
+after years.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh it will be all right!" he made answer.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll like success as well as any one else. Don't tell me&mdash;you're not
+so ethereal!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I shall like success."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah don't speak of that," Nick murmured. "Only be nice to my mother. We
+shall make her supremely happy."</p>
+
+<p>"It wouldn't be for your mother I'd do it&mdash;yet I'm glad I like your
+people," Mrs. Dallow rectified. "Leave them to me!"</p>
+
+<p>"You're generous&mdash;you're noble," he stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother must live at Broadwood; she must have it for life. It's not
+at all bad."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah Julia," her companion replied, "it's well I love you!"</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> 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&mdash;you've forgotten Mr.
+Hoppus!"</p>
+
+<p>Nick wondered. "We left him in the temple of Vesta. Darling, I had other
+things to think of there."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll send for him," said Julia.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, can you think of him now?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I can&mdash;more than ever."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we go back for him?"&mdash;and he pulled up.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't vague at all. But you were in such a hurry to get away."</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't signify. I've another at home."</p>
+
+<p>"Another summer-house?" he more lightly suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"A copy of Mr. Hoppus."</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy, how you go in for him! Fancy having two!"</p>
+
+<p>"He sent me the number of the magazine, and the other's the one that
+comes every month."</p>
+
+<p>"Every month; I see"&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you suppose they come every day?" Julia went on.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who says it won't?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;some of them. It will in France; but somehow it won't
+here."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What are you talking about?" Mrs. Dallow demanded.</p>
+
+<p>He appeared unable to satisfy her on this point; instead of answering
+her directly he at any rate said: "Is Broadwood very charming?"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"George had ideas about a great many things."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"And don't you want to use it?"</p>
+
+<p>"We can go and stay with <i>them</i>," said Julia.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"As they regard you yourself as an angel they'll take it as natural of
+you to associate with your kind."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh <i>my</i> kind!" he quite wailed, looking at the cows.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"That night&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"When you came to the hotel with me after we had all dined at that place
+with Peter."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span></p><p>"What did I mean&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"About your caring so much for the fine arts. You seemed to want to
+frighten me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you have been frightened? I can't imagine what I had in my
+head: not now."</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>are</i> vague," said Julia with a little flush.</p>
+
+<p>"Not about the great thing."</p>
+
+<p>"The great thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"That I owe you everything an honest man has to offer. How can I care
+about the fine arts now?"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped with lighted eyes on him. "Is it because you think you <i>owe</i>
+it&mdash;" and she paused, still with the heightened colour in her cheek,
+then went on&mdash;"that you've spoken to me as you did there?" She tossed
+her head toward the lake.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I spoke to you because I couldn't help it."</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>are</i> vague!" And she walked on again.</p>
+
+<p>"You affect me differently from any other woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh other women&mdash;&mdash;! Why shouldn't you care about the fine arts now?"
+she added.</p>
+
+<p>"There'll be no time. All my days and my years will be none too much for
+what you expect of me."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't expect you to give up anything. I only expect you to do more."</p>
+
+<p>"To do more I must do less. I've no talent."</p>
+
+<p>"No talent?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean for painting."</p>
+
+<p>Julia pulled up again. "That's odious! You <i>have</i>&mdash;you must."</p>
+
+<p>He burst out laughing. "You're altogether delightful. But how little you
+know about it&mdash;about the honourable practice of any art!"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you call practice? You'll have all our things&mdash;you'll live in
+the midst of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I shall enjoy looking at them, being so near them."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say I've taken you away then."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span></p><p>"Taken me away&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;he was always talking."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I won't always talk," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"You may do as you like&mdash;they're yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Give them to the nation," Nick went on.</p>
+
+<p>"I like that! When we've done with them."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall have done with them when your Vandykes and Moronis have cured
+me of the delusion that I may be of <i>their</i> family. Surely that won't
+take long."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall paint <i>me</i>," said Julia.</p>
+
+<p>"Never, never, never!" He spoke in a tone that made his companion
+stare&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated. "You may go; I won't, please."</p>
+
+<p>"That's not what I want."</p>
+
+<p>"Oblige me by going. I'll wait here." With which she sat down on the
+bench attached to the little landing.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you basely desert me?" he asked, tenderly stopping her there.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Because I'm so happy."</p>
+
+<p>"May I tell mother then?"</p>
+
+<p>"You may tell her she shall have Broadwood."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a><a href="#toc">XVI</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;many topics&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the fields were
+so near that it was in the clean, still streets. Nick would never have
+thought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span> 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>When the door with the brass plate was opened and Mr. Chayter appeared
+in the middle distance&mdash;he always advanced just to the same spot, as a
+prime minister receives an ambassador&mdash;Nick felt anew that he would be
+wonderfully like Mr. Carteret if he had had an expression. He denied
+himself this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> 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&mdash;had Mr.
+Carteret finished his nap? He usually had not finished it, and this left
+Nick what he liked&mdash;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&mdash;almost the only one&mdash;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&mdash;an exuberance perhaps partly explained by the
+circumstance that Lord Bottomley was one of them.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>am</i>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span> 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&mdash;as it always did at Beauclere&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Nick sauntered about the church&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> of the difference had always been somebody's inability to "see
+his way" to accept the view of somebody else&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>All this would be a part of the suggestion of leisure that invariably
+descended upon him at Beauclere&mdash;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&mdash;a sort of apprehended revelation of his country. The dim annals
+of the place were sensibly, heavily in the air&mdash;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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> 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!</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;facts of achievement and endurance&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Nick always felt a great hypocrite as he listened to him, in spite of
+the old man's courtesy&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> 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&mdash;not discovering how
+natural that was&mdash;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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>Nick was always struck with the rare simplicity&mdash;it came out in his
+countenance&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> 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:</p>
+
+<p>"You may sit up to any hour you like. I only ask that you don't read in
+bed."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a><a href="#toc">XVII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;a fact the mention of which led Nick to make some not
+particularly sincere speech<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> about <i>his</i> being ready to write anything
+if Mr. Carteret were at all pressed.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah but your own budget&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>This led to the bestowal of a good deal of general advice on the
+mistakes to avoid at the beginning of a parliamentary career&mdash;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 <i>me</i>," he said to himself; "if he did he
+would see, he wouldn't think&mdash;&mdash;!" 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> years. This immense term
+had something fabulous and monstrous for Nick, who wondered whether it
+were the sort of thing his companion supposed <i>he</i> had gone in for. It
+was not strange Mr. Carteret should be different; he might originally
+have been more&mdash;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&mdash;it was his second seat&mdash;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&mdash;though of what
+might be urged on the other side he was perfectly aware&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"According to that I ought to take up my abode at Harsh."</p>
+
+<p>"In the measure of the convenient I shouldn't be sorry to see you do
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;for it's very good&mdash;till the last." He waited a little to see if
+Mr. Carteret would guess, and at first thought nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span> would come of
+this. But after resting his young-looking eyes on him for a moment the
+old man said:</p>
+
+<p>"I should indeed be very happy to hear that you've arranged to take a
+wife."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Dallow has been so good as to say she'll marry me," Nick returned.</p>
+
+<p>"That's very suitable. I should think it would answer."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Your dear father would have liked it."</p>
+
+<p>"So my mother says."</p>
+
+<p>"And <i>she</i> must be delighted."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Dallow, do you mean?" Nick asked.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"It was her they elected," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Julia's a real English lady and at the same time a very political
+woman," Nick remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"What does he trouble himself about?" Mr. Carteret asked with a certain
+gravity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He's in the diplomatic service; he's a secretary in Paris."</p>
+
+<p>"That may be serious," said the old man.</p>
+
+<p>"He takes a great interest in the theatre. I suppose you'll say that may
+be serious too," Nick laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"&mdash;and Mr. Carteret looked as if he scarcely understood. Then he
+continued; "Well, it can't hurt you."</p>
+
+<p>"It can't hurt me?"</p>
+
+<p>"If Mrs. Dallow takes an interest in your interests."</p>
+
+<p>"When a man's in my situation he feels as if nothing could hurt him."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"She's a very good woman," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"And I hope she's not poor." Mr. Carteret spoke exactly with the same
+blandness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No indeed, she's rich. Her husband, whom I knew and liked, left her a
+large fortune."</p>
+
+<p>"And on what terms does she enjoy it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't the least idea," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Carteret considered. "I see. It doesn't concern you. It needn't
+concern you," he added in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Nick thought of his mother at this, but he returned: "I daresay she can
+do what she likes with her money."</p>
+
+<p>"So can I, my dear young friend," said Mr. Carteret.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you had a little more."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't particularly care," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I'm so obliged to her for caring for me&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"That the rest doesn't count? Certainly it's nice of her to like you.
+But why shouldn't she? Other people do."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"I've no son "&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh she thinks me cleverer than I am."</p>
+
+<p>"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
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>don't prove so&mdash;&mdash;!" And he paused with his folded hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if I don't?" asked Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh it won't do&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"It's well for me such a person doesn't exist. I shouldn't easily have
+found a wife."</p>
+
+<p>"He would have gone to the altar with a little money in his pocket."</p>
+
+<p>"That would have been the least of his advantages, sir," Nick declared.</p>
+
+<p>"When are you to be married?" Mr. Carteret asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah that's the question. Julia won't yet say."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the old man without the least flourish, "you may consider
+that when it comes off I'll make you a settlement."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll appreciate it later&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> do you expect of me?" he
+inquired with a grave face.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;he
+should work in you. It has always given me a special feeling, if I may
+use the expression, about you."</p>
+
+<p>"The feelings are indeed not usual, dear Mr. Carteret, which take so
+munificent a form. But you do&mdash;oh you do&mdash;expect too much," Nick brought
+himself to say.</p>
+
+<p>"I expect you to repay me!" the old man returned gaily. "As for the
+form, I have it in my mind."</p>
+
+<p>"The form of repayment?"</p>
+
+<p>"The form of repayment!"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Agnes, do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah no; dear mother would like to publish it on the house-tops. She's so
+glad&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear boy, there's at this rate nothing to mention! What does Julia
+want to wait for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Till I like her better&mdash;that's what she says."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the way to make you like her worse," Mr. Carteret knowingly
+declared. "Hasn't she your affection?"</p>
+
+<p>"So much so that her delay makes me exceedingly unhappy."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Carteret looked at his young friend as if he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"She is, but I'm not. That's what she says about it. The trouble is she
+doesn't believe in me."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Carteret shone with his candour. "Doesn't she love you then?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I like the way you talk about other years!" Mr. Carteret cried. "You
+had better do it while I'm here to bless you."</p>
+
+<p>"She thinks I proposed to her because she got me in for Harsh," said
+Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm sure it would be a very pretty return."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah she doesn't believe in me," the young man repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I don't believe in <i>her</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that&mdash;don't say that. She's a very rare creature. But she's
+proud, shy, suspicious."</p>
+
+<p>"Suspicious of what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of everything. She thinks I'm not persistent."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, oh!"&mdash;Nick's host deprecated such freedom.</p>
+
+<p>"She can't believe I shall arrive at true eminence."</p>
+
+<p>"A good wife should believe what her husband believes," said Mr.
+Carteret.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah unfortunately"&mdash;and Nick took the words at a run&mdash;"I don't believe
+it either."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Carteret, who might have been watching an odd physical rush, spoke
+with a certain dryness. "Your dear father did."</p>
+
+<p>"I think of that&mdash;I think of that," Nick replied.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Does she expect you to take back your word?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I ask her. <i>She</i> never will. Therefore we're as good as
+tied."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah not willingly!" his visitor protested.</p>
+
+<p>"I've told you what I should like to do for you. See that the conditions
+come about promptly in which I <i>may</i>, do it. Are you sure you do
+everything to satisfy Mrs. Dallow?" Mr. Carteret continued.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"She can't help that!" the old man charmingly said.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand&mdash;since you tell me that even then she won't take
+back her word," said Mr. Carteret.</p>
+
+<p>"If she doesn't marry me I think she'll never marry again at all."</p>
+
+<p>"What then does she gain by delay?"</p>
+
+<p>"Simply this, as I make it out," said Nick&mdash;"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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"To change? What does she think you liable to do?"</p>
+
+<p>Nick had a pause. "I don't know!" he then said&mdash;not at all candidly.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Julia's safe&mdash;she's safe," Nick smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"If it were a question between you and another gentleman one might
+comprehend. But what does it mean, between you and nothing?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm much obliged to you, sir," Nick returned. "The trouble is that she
+doesn't know what she has got hold of."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, if you can't make it clear to her!"&mdash;and his friend showed the note
+of impatience.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth do you mean? Are you deceiving me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;it depends on what you think."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me; it's all right. I'm not frivolous; that I promise you I'm
+not."</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>have</i> deceived me if you are."</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right," Nick stammered with a blush.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember your name&mdash;carry it high."</p>
+
+<p>"I will&mdash;as high as possible."</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> public utterances,
+which had the cursed property of creating dreadful responsibilities and
+importunate credulities for him. If <i>he</i> 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?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll let you know as soon as she comes round," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"And you'll tell your mother," Mr. Carteret returned. "I shall like
+<i>her</i> to know."</p>
+
+<p>"It will be delightful news to her. But she's keen enough already."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that. I may mention now that she has written to me," the old man
+added.</p>
+
+<p>"So I suspected."</p>
+
+<p>"We've&mdash;a&mdash;corresponded on the subject," Mr. Carteret continued to
+confess. "My view of the advantageous character of such an alliance has
+entirely coincided with hers."</p>
+
+<p>"It was very good-natured of you then to leave me to speak first," said
+Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"I should have been disappointed if you hadn't.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> I don't like all you've
+told me. But don't disappoint me now."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Mr. Carteret!" Nick vaguely and richly sounded.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't disappoint <i>you</i>," that gentleman went on with a finer point
+while he looked at his big old-fashioned watch.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_FOURTH" id="BOOK_FOURTH"></a>BOOK FOURTH</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a><a href="#toc">XVIII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>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&mdash;not with his superiors but with himself&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;to be vigilant, eager, suspicious, selfish. He
+had not in fact been unamiable to others, for his affairs had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span> 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&mdash;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?</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span> 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 <i>bassesses</i> for those of the
+eighteenth century? hadn't he known others who had a secret passion for
+shuffleboard? His little weaknesses were intellectual&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<i>coquine</i>; 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 <i>was</i>
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> 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&mdash;but only with opening one's eyes very wide to
+do it. That was the fatal surprise&mdash;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&mdash;for instance at a foreign court&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>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&mdash;and it was not long&mdash;there were no more inches left.
+The last thing he expected the future ambassadress to have been was
+<i>fille de th&eacute;&acirc;tre</i>. 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&mdash;the ambassadress never in the world&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, <i>could</i> 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&mdash;his career&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> bribe to
+relinquishment? How could he think so without pretensions of the sort he
+pretended exactly not to flaunt?&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;that of her being of
+the inward mould for which the only consistency is the play of genius.
+Hadn't Madame Carr&eacute; declared at the last that she could "do anything"?
+It was true that if Madame Carr&eacute; 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&mdash;and such an error would be too like a truth.</p>
+
+<p>How, further, shall we exactly measure for him&mdash;Sherringham felt the
+discomfort of the advantage Miriam had of him&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> 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&mdash;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&mdash;that
+might work in all sorts of ways&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;that
+seemed to him definitely base&mdash;and he would have thought himself a
+blackguard if, even when a prey<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> 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 H&ocirc;tel 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah if you pity me tell me you've got her an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span> engagement!" Mrs. Rooth
+cried while she clasped her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I took a great deal of trouble; I wrote ever so many notes, sought
+introductions, talked with people&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"It's perfectly true. It's all done with money."</p>
+
+<p>"And how do they come by money?" Mrs. Rooth candidly asked.</p>
+
+<p>"When they're women people give it to them."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what people now?"</p>
+
+<p>"People who believe in them."</p>
+
+<p>"As you believe in Miriam?"</p>
+
+<p>Peter had a pause. "No, rather differently. A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span> poor man doesn't believe
+in anything the same way that a rich man does."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah don't call yourself poor!" groaned Mrs. Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"What good would it do me to be rich?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why you could take a theatre. You could do it all yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"And what good would that do me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah don't you delight in her genius?" demanded Mrs. Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"I delight in her mother. You think me more disinterested than I am,"
+Sherringham added with a certain soreness of irritation.</p>
+
+<p>"I know why you didn't write!" Mrs. Rooth declared archly.</p>
+
+<p>"You must go to London," Peter said without heeding this remark.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"The sooner you get away the better," our young man went on.</p>
+
+<p>"I know why you say that."</p>
+
+<p>"It's just what I'm explaining."</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't have held out if I hadn't been so sure of Miriam," said Mrs.
+Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you needn't hold out any longer."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't <i>you</i> trust her?" asked Sherringham's hostess.</p>
+
+<p>"Trust her?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I understand you; I don't know what you're talking
+about," Peter returned. "But it doesn't matter."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't it? Let yourself go. Why should you struggle?" the old woman
+agreeably inquired.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;and it was a relief to him to
+give audible voice to the reflexion&mdash;"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Delusive?"</p>
+
+<p>"Idle, unprofitable."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely a pure affection is its own beautiful reward," Mrs. Rooth
+pleaded with soft reasonableness.</p>
+
+<p>"In such a case how can it be pure?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you were talking of an English gentleman," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh my own Miriam!" Mrs. Rooth wailed.</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy, on the other hand, the complication when such a man marries a
+woman who's on the stage."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Rooth looked as if she were trying to follow. "Miriam isn't on the
+stage yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Go to London and she soon will be."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and then you'll have your excuse."</p>
+
+<p>"My excuse?"</p>
+
+<p>"For deserting us altogether."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Good acting? Ah what's the best acting <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>"As she is, with all her ambitions unassuaged?"</p>
+
+<p>"To marry <i>you</i>&mdash;might not that be an ambition?"</p>
+
+<p>"A very paltry one. Don't answer for her, don't attempt that," said
+Peter. "You can do much better."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think <i>you</i> can?" smiled Mrs. Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"But I've known great ladies who were artists. In English society
+there's always a field."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you didn't care for it."</p>
+
+<p>"She'd say, 'No I thank you, dear mamma.'"</p>
+
+<p>"My wonderful child!" Mrs. Rooth almost comprehendingly murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever proposed it to her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Proposed it?"</p>
+
+<p>"That she should give up trying."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Rooth hesitated, looking down. "Not for the reason you mean. We
+don't talk about love," she simpered.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"It's very puzzling!" the old woman artlessly sighed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He laughed again and then said: "Now don't tell me I'm not a good
+friend."</p>
+
+<p>"You are indeed&mdash;you're a very noble gentleman. That's just why a quiet
+life with you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It wouldn't be quiet for <i>me</i>!" he broke in. "And that's not what
+Miriam was made for."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Don't say that</i> for my precious one!" Mrs. Rooth quavered.</p>
+
+<p>"Go to London&mdash;go to London," her visitor repeated.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Dashwood?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;Mrs. Lovick."</p>
+
+<p>"I never heard of him."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;and she was
+so good as to intimate that it would be a pleasure to him to do so&mdash;he
+might give us, as she said, a tip."</p>
+
+<p>Peter achieved the effort to recollect. "Yes he comes back to me. He's
+an actor."</p>
+
+<p>"He's a gentleman too," said Mrs. Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"And you've met him, and he <i>has</i> given you a tip?"</p>
+
+<p>"As I say, he wants us to go to London."</p>
+
+<p>"I see, but even I can tell you that."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes," said Mrs. Rooth; "but <i>he</i> says he can help us."</p>
+
+<p>"Keep hold of him then, if he's in the business," Peter was all for
+that.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He's a perfect gentleman," said Mrs. Rooth. "He's immensely struck with
+Miriam."</p>
+
+<p>"Better and better. Keep hold of him."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm glad you don't object," she grimaced.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I object?"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't regard us as <i>all</i> your own?"</p>
+
+<p>"My own? Why, I regard you as the public's&mdash;the world's."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Why hesitate, gracious heaven?" But in the next breath Sherringham
+asked: "Where have they gone?"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't like it!" his hostess laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should it be a thing to be enthusiastic about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he's charming and <i>I</i> trust him."</p>
+
+<p>"So do I," said Sherringham.</p>
+
+<p>"They've gone to see Madame Carr&eacute;."</p>
+
+<p>"She has come back then?"</p>
+
+<p>"She was expected back last week. Miriam wants to show her how she has
+improved."</p>
+
+<p>"And <i>has</i> she improved?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can I tell&mdash;with my mother's heart?" asked Mrs. Rooth. "I don't
+judge; I only wait and pray. But Mr. Dashwood thinks she's wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a blessing. And when did he turn up?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;otherwise she'd have come to see us. She
+had just returned to Paris."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I've not yet seen her. I see Lovick," Peter added, "but he doesn't
+talk of his brother-in-law."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't, that day, like his tone about him,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"That wasn't very nice to me," Sherringham commented.</p>
+
+<p>"But when you had left us in black darkness what <i>were</i> our prospects?"</p>
+
+<p>"I see. It's all right. Go on."</p>
+
+<p>"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.
+<i>Voil&agrave;</i>!" said Mrs. Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"So that now&mdash;so far as <i>he</i> is concerned&mdash;Miss Rooth has prospects?"</p>
+
+<p>"He isn't a manager unfortunately," she qualified.</p>
+
+<p>"Where does he act?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I see; he <i>is</i> a perfect gentleman," said Sherringham.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you're jealous of him!"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Dashwood wants to take a theatre," said Mrs. Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"Then perhaps he's our man."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh if you'd help him!" she richly cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Help him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Help him to help us."</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's his <i>nom de th&eacute;&acirc;tre</i>&mdash;Basil Dashwood. Do you like it?" Mrs. Rooth
+wonderfully inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"You say that as Miriam might. Her talent's catching!"</p>
+
+<p>"She's always practising&mdash;always saying things over and over to seize
+the tone. I've her voice in my ears. He wants <i>her</i> not to have any."</p>
+
+<p>"Not to have any what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Any <i>nom de th&eacute;&acirc;tre</i>. He wants her to use her own; he likes it so much.
+He says it will do so well&mdash;you can't better it."</p>
+
+<p>"He's a capital adviser," said Sherringham, getting up. "I'll come back
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't ask you to wait for them&mdash;they may be so long," his hostess
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Will he come back with her?" Peter asked while he smoothed his hat.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Did they go on foot?" Sherringham continued.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes; they started in high spirits."</p>
+
+<p>"And is Mr. Basil Dashwood acquainted with Madame Carr&eacute;?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;if
+he can do anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right; that's the way!" Peter cheerfully rang out.</p>
+
+<p>"And she also wanted him to see what she can do for the great critic,"
+Mrs. Rooth added&mdash;"that terrible old woman in the red wig."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I should like to see too," Peter permitted himself to
+acknowledge.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh she has gone ahead; she's pleased with herself. 'Work, work, work,'
+said Madame Carr&eacute;.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span> Well, she has worked, worked, worked. That's what
+Mr. Dashwood is pleased with even more than with other things."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by other things?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh her genius and her fine appearance."</p>
+
+<p>"He approves of her fine appearance? I ask because you think he knows
+what will take."</p>
+
+<p>"I know why you ask!" Mrs. Rooth bravely mocked. "He says it will be
+worth hundreds of thousands to her."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the sort of thing I like to hear," Peter returned. "I'll come in
+to-morrow," he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"And shall you mind if Mr. Dash wood's here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Does he come every day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh they're always at it."</p>
+
+<p>"At it&mdash;&mdash;?" He was vague.</p>
+
+<p>"Why she acts to him&mdash;every sort of thing&mdash;and he says if it will do."</p>
+
+<p>"How many days has he been here then?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Rooth reflected. "Oh I don't know! Since he turned up they've
+passed so quickly."</p>
+
+<p>"So far from 'minding' it I'm eager to see him," Sherringham declared;
+"and I can imagine nothing better than what you describe&mdash;if he isn't an
+awful ass."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;how can we
+judge?" she appealed.</p>
+
+<p>He had a pause, his hand on the latch. "Oh, I'll tell you frankly what I
+think of him!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a><a href="#toc">XIX</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>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 H&ocirc;tel 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 Carr&eacute;. 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&mdash;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&mdash;since that was her errand&mdash;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 Carr&eacute;'s portress that her illustrious <i>locataire</i> was at
+home and that a lady and a gentleman had gone up some time before.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span> 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&mdash;one of the leaves of it, there being, as in most French doors, two
+of these&mdash;before which, within, a heavy curtain was suspended. Miriam
+was in the act of rolling out some speech from the English poetic
+drama&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"For I am sick and capable of fears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oppressed with wrongs and therefore full of fears."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>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 <i>King John</i>, 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 <i>femme de chambre</i> 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</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Then speak again; not all thy former tale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But this one word, whether thy tale be true."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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 Carr&eacute;, 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&mdash;"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!"</p>
+
+<p>He looked now and again at Madame Carr&eacute; and saw she had in her lap an
+open book, apparently a French prose version, brought by her visitors,
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span> 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"&mdash;the young stranger was of course Basil
+Dashwood&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Nature's gifts thou mayst with lilies boast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with the half-blown rose."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As the girl turned to her imagined child with this exquisite
+apostrophe&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did she get hold of that&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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 perception
+that ended by becoming frequent with him&mdash;that of the perfect presence
+of mind, unconfused, unhurried by emotion, that any artistic performance
+requires and that all, whatever the instrument, require in exactly the
+same degree: the application, in other words, clear and calculated,
+crystal-firm as it were, of the idea conceived in the glow of
+experience, of suffering, of joy. He was afterwards often to talk of
+this with Miriam, who, however, was never to be able to present him with
+a neat theory of the subject. She had no knowledge that it was publicly
+discussed; she only ranged herself in practice on the side of those who
+hold that at the moment of production the artist can't too much have his
+wits about him. When Peter named to her the opinion of those maintaining
+that at such a crisis the office of attention ceases to be filled she
+stared with surprise and then broke out: "Ah the poor idiots!" She
+eventually became, in her judgements, in impatience and the expression
+of contempt, very free and absolutely irreverent.</p>
+
+<p>"What a splendid scolding!" the new visitor exclaimed when, on the
+entrance of the Pope's legate, her companion closed the book on the
+scene. Peter pressed his lips to Madame Carr&eacute;'s finger-tips; the old
+actress got up and held out her arms to Miriam. The girl never took her
+eyes off Sherringham while she passed into that lady's embrace and
+remained there. They were full of their usual sombre fire, and it was
+always the case that they expressed too much anything they could express
+at all; but they were not defiant nor even triumphant now&mdash;they were
+only deeply explicative. They seemed to say,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span> "That's the sort of thing
+I meant; that's what I had in mind when I asked you to try to do
+something for me." Madame Carr&eacute; folded her pupil to her bosom, holding
+her there as the old marquise in a <i>com&eacute;die de m&oelig;urs</i> might in the last
+scene have held her god-daughter the <i>ing&eacute;nue</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got me an engagement?"&mdash;the young woman then appealed eagerly
+to her friend. "Yes, he has done something splendid for me," she went on
+to Madame Carr&eacute;, resting her hand caressingly on one of the actress's
+while the old woman discoursed with Mr. Dashwood, who was telling her in
+very pretty French that he was tremendously excited about Miss Rooth.
+Madame Carr&eacute; looked at him as if she wondered how he appeared when he
+was calm and how, as a dramatic artist, he expressed that condition.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, something splendid, for a beginning," Peter answered
+radiantly, recklessly; feeling now only that he would say anything and
+do anything to please her. He spent on the spot, in imagination, his
+last penny.</p>
+
+<p>"It's such a pity you couldn't follow it; you'd have liked it so much
+better," Mr. Dashwood observed to their hostess.</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't follow it? Do you take me for <i>une sotte</i>?" the celebrated
+artist cried. "I suspect I followed it <i>de plus pr&egrave;s que vous,
+monsieur</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you see the language is so awfully fine," Basil Dashwood replied,
+looking at his shoes.</p>
+
+<p>"The language? Why she rails like a fish-wife. Is that what you call
+language? Ours is another business."</p>
+
+<p>"If you understood, if you understood, you'd see all the greatness of
+it," Miriam declared. And then in another tone: "Such delicious
+expressions!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>On dit que c'est tr&egrave;s-fort</i>. But who can tell if you really say it?"
+Madame Carr&eacute; demanded.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ah, <i>par exemple</i>, I can!" Sherringham answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh you&mdash;you're a Frenchman."</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't he make it out if he weren't?" asked Basil Dashwood.</p>
+
+<p>The old woman shrugged her shoulders. "He wouldn't know."</p>
+
+<p>"That's flattering to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh you&mdash;don't you pretend to complain," Madame Carr&eacute; said. "I prefer
+<i>our</i> imprecations&mdash;those of Camille," she went on. "They have the
+beauty <i>des plus belles choses</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I can say them too," Miriam broke in.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Insolente</i>!" smiled Madame Carr&eacute;. "Camille doesn't squat down on the
+floor in the middle of them.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To me and to the state of my great grief<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let kings assemble,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Miriam quickly declaimed. "Ah if you don't feel the way she makes a
+throne of it!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's really tremendously fine, <i>ch&egrave;re madame</i>," Sherringham said.
+"There's nothing like it."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Vous &ecirc;tes insupportables</i>," the old woman answered. "Stay with us.
+I'll teach you Ph&egrave;dre."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah Ph&aelig;dra, Ph&aelig;dra!" Basil Dashwood vaguely ejaculated, looking more
+gentlemanly than ever.</p>
+
+<p>"You've learned all I've taught you, but where the devil have you
+learned what I haven't?" Madame Carr&eacute; went on.</p>
+
+<p>"I've worked&mdash;I have; you'd call it work&mdash;all through the bright, late
+summer, all through the hot, dull, empty days. I've battered down the
+door&mdash;I did hear it crash one day. But I'm not so very good yet. I'm
+only in the right direction."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Malicieuse</i>!" growled Madame Carr&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I can beat that," the girl went on.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Did you wake up one morning and find you had grown a pair of wings?"
+Peter asked. "Because that's what the difference amounts to&mdash;you really
+soar. Moreover, you're an angel," he added, charmed with her
+unexpectedness, the good nature of her forbearance to reproach him for
+not having written to her. And it seemed to him privately that she <i>was</i>
+angelic when in answer to this she said ever so blandly:</p>
+
+<p>"You know you read <i>King John</i> with me before you went away. I thought
+over immensely what you said. I didn't understand it much at the time&mdash;I
+was so stupid. But it all came to me later."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you could see yourself," Peter returned.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, I do. What sort of a dunce do you take me for? I didn't
+miss a vibration of my voice, a fold of my robe."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I didn't see you troubling about it," Peter handsomely insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"No one ever will. Do you think I'd ever show it?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ars celare artem</i>," Basil Dashwood jocosely dropped.</p>
+
+<p>"You must first have the art to hide," said Sherringham, wondering a
+little why Miriam didn't introduce her young friend to him. She was,
+however, both then and later perfectly neglectful of such cares, never
+thinking, never minding how other people got on together. When she found
+they didn't get on she jeered at them: that was the nearest she came to
+arranging for them. Our young man noted in her from the moment she felt
+her strength an immense increase of this good-humoured inattention to
+detail&mdash;all detail save that of her work, to which she was ready to
+sacrifice holocausts of feelings when the feelings were other people's.
+This conferred on her a large profanity, an absence of ceremony as to
+her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span> social relations, which was both amusing because it suggested that
+she would take what she gave, and formidable because it was inconvenient
+and you mightn't care to give what she would take.</p>
+
+<p>"If you haven't any art it's not quite the same as if you didn't hide
+it, is it?" Basil Dashwood ingeniously threw out.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right&mdash;say one of your clever things!" Miriam sweetly responded.</p>
+
+<p>"You're always acting," he declared in English and with a simple-minded
+laugh, while Sherringham remained struck with his expressing just what
+he himself had felt weeks before.</p>
+
+<p>"And when you've shown them your fish-wife, to your public <i>de l&agrave;-bas</i>,
+what will you do next?" asked Madame Carr&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do Juliet&mdash;I'll do Cleopatra."</p>
+
+<p>"Rather a big bill, isn't it?" Mr. Dashwood volunteered to Sherringham
+in a friendly but discriminating manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Constance and Juliet&mdash;take care you don't mix them," said Sherringham.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to be various. You once told me I had a hundred characters,"
+Miriam returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, <i>vous en &ecirc;tes l&agrave;</i>?" cried the old actress. "You may have a hundred
+characters, but you've only three plays. I'm told that's all there are
+in English."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam, admirably indifferent to this charge, appealed to Peter. "What
+arrangements have you made? What do the people want?"</p>
+
+<p>"The people at the theatre?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid they don't want <i>King John</i>, and I don't believe they hunger
+for <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>," Basil Dashwood suggested. "Ships and sieges
+and armies and pyramids, you know: we mustn't be too heavy."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh I hate scenery!" the girl sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Elle est superbe</i>," said Madame Carr&eacute;. "You must put those pieces on
+the stage: how will you do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh we know how to get up a play in London, Madame Carr&eacute;"&mdash;Mr. Dashwood
+was all geniality. "They put money on it, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"On it? But what do they put <i>in</i> it? Who'll interpret them? Who'll
+manage a style like that&mdash;the style of which the rhapsodies she has just
+repeated are a specimen? Whom have you got that one has ever heard of?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh you'll hear of a good deal when once she gets started," Dashwood
+cheerfully contended.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Carr&eacute; looked at him a moment; then, "I feel that you'll become
+very bad," she said to Miriam. "I'm glad I shan't see it."</p>
+
+<p>"People will do things for me&mdash;I'll make them," the girl declared. "I'll
+stir them up so that they'll have ideas."</p>
+
+<p>"What people, pray?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah terrible woman!" Peter theatrically groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"We translate your pieces&mdash;there will be plenty of parts," Basil
+Dashwood said.</p>
+
+<p>"Why then go out of the door to come in at the window?&mdash;especially if
+you smash it! An English arrangement of a French piece is a pretty woman
+with her back turned."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really want to keep her?" Sherringham asked of Madame
+Carr&eacute;&mdash;quite as if thinking for a moment that this after all might be
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>She bent her strange eyes on him. "No, you're all too queer together. We
+couldn't be bothered with you and you're not worth it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad it's 'together' that we're queer then&mdash;we can console each
+other."</p>
+
+<p>"If you only would; but you don't seem to! In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> short I don't understand
+you&mdash;I give you up. But it doesn't matter," said the old woman wearily,
+"for the theatre's dead and even you, <i>ma toute-belle</i>, won't bring it
+to life. Everything's going from bad to worse, and I don't care what
+becomes of you. You wouldn't understand us here and they won't
+understand you there, and everything's impossible, and no one's a whit
+the wiser, and it's not of the least consequence. Only when you raise
+your arms lift them just a little higher," Madame Carr&eacute; added.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother will be happier <i>chez nous</i>" said Miriam, throwing her arms
+straight up and giving them a noble tragic movement.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't be in the least in the right path till your mother's in
+despair."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, perhaps we can bring that about even in London," Sherringham
+patiently laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Mrs. Rooth&mdash;she's great fun," Mr. Dashwood as imperturbably
+dropped.</p>
+
+<p>Miriam transferred the dark weight of her gaze to him as if she were
+practising. "<i>You</i> won't upset her, at any rate." Then she stood with
+her beautiful and fatal mask before her hostess. "I want to do the
+modern too. I want to do <i>le drame</i>, with intense realistic effects."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you want to look like the portico of the Madeleine when it's
+draped for a funeral?" her instructress mocked. "Never, never. I don't
+believe you're various: that's not the way I see you. You're pure
+tragedy, with <i>de grands &eacute;clats de voix</i> in the great style, or you're
+nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Be beautiful&mdash;be only that," Peter urged with high interest. "Be only
+what you can be so well&mdash;something that one may turn to for a glimpse of
+perfection, to lift one out of all the vulgarities of the day."</p>
+
+<p>Thus apostrophised the girl broke out with one of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span> the speeches of
+Racine's Ph&aelig;dra, hushing her companions on the instant. "You'll be the
+English Rachel," said Basil Dashwood when she stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Acting in French!" Madame Carr&eacute; amended. "I don't believe in an English
+Rachel."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to work it out, what I shall be," Miriam concluded with a
+rich pensive effect.</p>
+
+<p>"You're in wonderfully good form to-day," Sherringham said to her; his
+appreciation revealing a personal subjection he was unable to conceal
+from his companions, much as he wished it.</p>
+
+<p>"I really mean to do everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; after all Garrick did."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shall be the Garrick of my sex."</p>
+
+<p>"There's a very clever author doing something for me; I should like you
+to see it," said Basil Dashwood, addressing himself equally to Miriam
+and to her diplomatic friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah if you've very clever authors&mdash;&mdash;!" And Madame Carr&eacute; spun the sound
+to the finest satiric thread.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be very happy to see it," Peter returned.</p>
+
+<p>This response was so benevolent that Basil Dashwood presently began:
+"May I ask you at what theatre you've made arrangements?"</p>
+
+<p>Sherringham looked at him a moment. "Come and see me at the embassy and
+I'll tell you." Then he added: "I know your sister, Mrs. Lovick."</p>
+
+<p>"So I supposed: that's why I took the liberty of asking such a
+question."</p>
+
+<p>"It's no liberty, but Mr. Sherringham doesn't appear to be able to tell
+you," said Miriam.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you know, it's a very curious world, all those theatrical people
+over there," Peter conceded.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah don't say anything against them when I'm one of them," Basil
+Dashwood laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I might plead the absence of information," Peter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span> returned, "as Miss
+Rooth has neglected to make us acquainted."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam vaguely smiled. "I know you both so little." But she presented
+them with a great stately air to each other, and the two men shook hands
+while Madame Carr&eacute; observed them.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tiens</i>! you gentlemen meet here for the first time? You do right to
+become friends&mdash;that's the best thing. Live together in peace and mutual
+confidence. <i>C'est de beaucoup le plus sage</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, for yoke-fellows," said Sherringham.</p>
+
+<p>He began the next moment to repeat to his new acquaintance some of the
+things he had been told in London; but their hostess stopped him off,
+waving the talk away with charming overdone stage horror and the young
+hands of the heroines of Marivaux. "Ah wait till you go&mdash;for that! Do
+you suppose I care for news of your mountebanks' booths?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a><a href="#toc">XX</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>As many people know, there are not, in the famous Th&eacute;&acirc;tre Fran&ccedil;ais, more
+than a dozen good seats accessible to ladies.[*] The stalls are
+forbidden them, the boxes are a quarter of a mile from the stage and the
+balcony is a delusion save for a few chairs at either end of its vast
+horseshoe. But there are two excellent <i>baignoires d'avant-sc&egrave;ne</i>, which
+indeed are by no means always to be had. It was, however, into one of
+them that, immediately after his return to Paris, Sherringham ushered
+Mrs. Rooth and her daughter, with the further escort of Basil Dashwood.
+He had chosen the evening of the reappearance of the celebrated
+Mademoiselle Voisin&mdash;she had been enjoying a <i>cong&eacute;</i> of three months&mdash;an
+actress whom Miriam had seen several times before and for whose method
+she professed a high though somewhat critical esteem. It was only for
+the return of this charming performer that Peter had been waiting to
+respond to Miriam's most ardent wish&mdash;that of spending an hour in the
+<i>foyer des artistes</i> of the great theatre. She was the person whom he
+knew best in the house of Moli&egrave;re; he could count on her to do them the
+honours some night when she was in the "bill," and to make the occasion
+sociable. Miriam had been impatient for it&mdash;she was so convinced that
+her eyes would be opened in the holy of holies; but wishing as
+particularly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span> as he did to participate in her impression he had made her
+promise she wouldn't taste of this experience without him&mdash;not let
+Madame Carr&eacute;, for instance, take her in his absence. There were
+questions the girl wished to put to Mademoiselle Voisin&mdash;questions
+which, having admired her from the balcony, she felt she was exactly the
+person to answer. She was more "in it" now, after all, than Madame
+Carr&eacute;, in spite of her slenderer talent: she was younger, fresher, more
+modern and&mdash;Miriam found the word&mdash;less academic. She was in fine less
+"<i>vieux jeu</i>." Peter perfectly foresaw the day when his young friend
+would make indulgent allowances for poor Madame Carr&eacute;, patronising her
+as an old woman of good intentions.</p>
+
+<p>[*: 1890]</p>
+
+<p>The play to-night was six months old, a large, serious, successful
+comedy by the most distinguished of authors, with a thesis, a chorus
+embodied in one character, a <i>sc&egrave;ne &agrave; faire</i> and a part full of
+opportunities for Mademoiselle Voisin. There were things to be said
+about this artist, strictures to be dropped as to the general quality of
+her art, and Miriam leaned back now, making her comments as if they cost
+her less, but the actress had knowledge and distinction and pathos, and
+our young lady repeated several times: "How quiet she is, how
+wonderfully quiet! Scarcely anything moves but her face and her voice.
+<i>Le geste rare</i>, but really expressive when it comes. I like that
+economy; it's the only way to make the gesture significant."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't admire the way she holds her arms," Basil Dash wood said: "like
+a <i>demoiselle de magasin</i> trying on a jacket."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she holds them at any rate. I daresay it's more than you do with
+yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, she holds them; there's no mistake about that. 'I hold them, I
+hope, <i>hein</i>?' she seems to say to all the house." The young English
+professional<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span> laughed good-humouredly, and Sherringham was struck with
+the pleasant familiarity he had established with their brave companion.
+He was knowing and ready and he said in the first <i>entr'acte</i>&mdash;they were
+waiting for the second to go behind&mdash;amusing perceptive things. "They
+teach them to be ladylike and Voisin's always trying to show that. 'See
+how I walk, see how I sit, see how quiet I am and how I have <i>le geste
+rare</i>. Now can you say I ain't a lady?' She does it all as if she had a
+class."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, to-night I'm her class," said Miriam.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I don't mean of actresses, but of <i>femmes du monde</i>. She shows them
+how to act in society."</p>
+
+<p>"You had better take a few lessons," Miriam retorted.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you should see Voisin in society," Peter interposed.</p>
+
+<p>"Does she go into it?" Mrs. Rooth demanded with interest.</p>
+
+<p>Her friend hesitated. "She receives a great many people."</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't they when they're nice?" Mrs. Rooth frankly wanted to
+know.</p>
+
+<p>"When the people are nice?" Miriam asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Now don't tell me she's not what one would wish," said Mrs. Rooth to
+Sherringham.</p>
+
+<p>"It depends on what that is," he darkly smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"What I should wish if she were my daughter," the old woman rejoined
+blandly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah wish your daughter to act as well as that and you'll do the handsome
+thing for her!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she <i>seems</i> to feel what she says," Mrs. Rooth piously risked.</p>
+
+<p>"She has some stiff things to say. I mean about her past," Basil
+Dashwood remarked. "The past&mdash;the dreadful past&mdash;on the stage!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Wait till the end, to see how she comes out. We must all be merciful!"
+sighed Mrs. Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"We've seen it before; you know what happens," Miriam observed to her
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>"I've seen so many I get them mixed."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they're all in queer predicaments. Poor old mother&mdash;what we show
+you!" laughed the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah it will be what <i>you</i> show me&mdash;something noble and wise!"</p>
+
+<p>"I want to do this; it's a magnificent part," said Miriam.</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't put it on in London&mdash;they wouldn't swallow it," Basil
+Dashwood declared.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't there things they do there to get over the difficulties?" the
+girl inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't get over what <i>she did</i>!"&mdash;her companion had a rueful
+grimace.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we must pay, we must expiate!" Mrs. Rooth moaned as the curtain
+rose again.</p>
+
+<p>When the second act was over our friends passed out of their <i>baignoire</i>
+into those corridors of tribulation where the bristling <i>ouvreuse</i>, like
+a pawnbroker driving a roaring trade, mounts guard upon piles of
+heterogeneous clothing, and, gaining the top of the fine staircase which
+forms the state entrance and connects the statued vestibule of the
+basement with the grand tier of boxes, opened an ambiguous door composed
+of little mirrors and found themselves in the society of the initiated.
+The janitors were courteous folk who greeted Sherringham as an
+acquaintance, and he had no difficulty in marshalling his little troop
+toward the foyer. They traversed a low, curving lobby, hung with
+pictures and furnished with velvet-covered benches where several
+unrecognised persons of both sexes looked at them without hostility, and
+arrived at an opening, on the right, from which, by a short flight of
+steps, there was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span> descent to one of the wings of the stage. Here
+Miriam paused, in silent excitement, like a young warrior arrested by a
+glimpse of the battle-field. Her vision was carried off through a lane
+of light to the point of vantage from which the actor held the house;
+but there was a hushed guard over the place and curiosity could only
+glance and pass.</p>
+
+<p>Then she came with her companions to a sort of parlour with a polished
+floor, not large and rather vacant, where her attention flew delightedly
+to a coat-tree, in a corner, from which three or four dresses were
+suspended&mdash;dresses she immediately perceived to be costumes in that
+night's play&mdash;accompanied by a saucer of something and a much-worn
+powder-puff casually left on a sofa. This was a familiar note in the
+general impression of high decorum which had begun at the threshold&mdash;a
+sense of majesty in the place. Miriam rushed at the powder-puff&mdash;there
+was no one in the room&mdash;snatched it up and gazed at it with droll
+veneration, then stood rapt a moment before the charming petticoats
+("That's Dunoyer's first underskirt," she said to her mother) while
+Sherringham explained that in this apartment an actress traditionally
+changed her gown when the transaction was simple enough to save the long
+ascent to her <i>loge</i>. He felt himself a cicerone showing a church to a
+party of provincials; and indeed there was a grave hospitality in the
+air, mingled with something academic and important, the tone of an
+institution, a temple, which made them all, out of respect and delicacy,
+hold their breath a little and tread the shining floors with discretion.</p>
+
+<p>These precautions increased&mdash;Mrs. Rooth crept about like a friendly but
+undomesticated cat&mdash;after they entered the foyer itself, a square,
+spacious saloon covered with pictures and relics and draped in official
+green velvet, where the <i>genius loci</i> holds a reception<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span> every night in
+the year. The effect was freshly charming to Peter; he was fond of the
+place, always saw it again with pleasure, enjoyed its honourable look
+and the way, among the portraits and scrolls, the records of a splendid
+history, the green velvet and the waxed floors, the <i>genius loci</i> seemed
+to be "at home" in the quiet lamplight. At the end of the room, in an
+ample chimney, blazed a fire of logs. Miriam said nothing; they looked
+about, noting that most of the portraits and pictures were
+"old-fashioned," and Basil Dashwood expressed disappointment at the
+absence of all the people they wanted most to see. Three or four
+gentlemen in evening dress circulated slowly, looking, like themselves,
+at the pictures, and another gentleman stood before a lady, with whom he
+was in conversation, seated against the wall. The foyer resembled in
+these conditions a ball-room, cleared for the dance, before the guests
+or the music had arrived.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh it's enough to see <i>this</i>; it makes my heart beat," said Miriam.
+"It's full of the vanished past, it makes me cry. I feel them here, all,
+the great artists I shall never see. Think of Rachel&mdash;look at her grand
+portrait there!&mdash;and how she stood on these very boards and trailed over
+them the robes of Hermione and Ph&egrave;dre." The girl broke out theatrically,
+as on the spot was right, not a bit afraid of her voice as soon as it
+rolled through the room; appealing to her companions as they stood under
+the chandelier and making the other persons present, who had already
+given her some attention, turn round to stare at so unusual a specimen
+of the English miss. She laughed, musically, when she noticed this, and
+her mother, scandalised, begged her to lower her tone. "It's all right.
+I produce an effect," said Miriam: "it shan't be said that I too haven't
+had my little success in the maison de Moli&egrave;re."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span> And Sherringham
+repeated that it was all right&mdash;the place was familiar with mirth and
+passion, there was often wonderful talk there, and it was only the
+setting that was still and solemn. It happened that this evening&mdash;there
+was no knowing in advance&mdash;the scene was not characteristically
+brilliant; but to confirm his assertion, at the moment he spoke,
+Mademoiselle Dunoyer, who was also in the play, came into the room
+attended by a pair of gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>She was the celebrated, the perpetual, the necessary <i>ing&eacute;nue</i>, who with
+all her talent couldn't have represented a woman of her actual age. She
+had the gliding, hopping movement of a small bird, the same air of
+having nothing to do with time, and the clear, sure, piercing note, a
+miracle of exact vocalisation. She chaffed her companions, she chaffed
+the room; she might have been a very clever little girl trying to
+personate a more innocent big one. She scattered her amiability
+about&mdash;showing Miriam how the children of Moli&egrave;re took their ease&mdash;and
+it quickly placed her in the friendliest communication with Peter
+Sherringham, who already enjoyed her acquaintance and who now extended
+it to his companions, and in particular to the young lady <i>sur le point
+d'entrer au th&eacute;&acirc;tre.</i></p>
+
+<p>"You deserve a happier lot," said the actress, looking up at Miriam
+brightly, as if to a great height, and taking her in; upon which
+Sherringham left them together a little and led Mrs. Rooth and young
+Dashwood to consider further some of the pictures.</p>
+
+<p>"Most delightful, most curious," the old woman murmured about
+everything; while Basil Dashwood exclaimed in the presence of most of
+the portraits: "But their ugliness&mdash;their ugliness: did you ever see
+such a collection of hideous people? And those who were supposed to be
+good-looking&mdash;the beauties of the past&mdash;they're worse than the others.
+Ah you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span> may say what you will, <i>nous sommes mieux que &ccedil;a</i>!" Sherringham
+suspected him of irritation, of not liking the theatre of the great
+rival nation to be thrust down his throat. They returned to Miriam and
+Mademoiselle Dunoyer, and Peter asked the actress a question about one
+of the portraits to which there was no name attached. She replied, like
+a child who had only played about the room, that she was <i>toute
+honteuse</i> not to be able to tell him the original: she had forgotten,
+she had never asked&mdash;"<i>Vous allez me trouver bien l&eacute;g&egrave;re</i>!" She appealed
+to the other persons present, who formed a gallery for her, and laughed
+in delightful ripples at their suggestions, which she covered with
+ridicule. She bestirred herself; she declared she would ascertain, she
+shouldn't be happy till she did, and swam out of the room, with the
+prettiest paddles, to obtain the information, leaving behind her a
+perfume of delicate kindness and gaiety. She seemed above all things
+obliging, and Peter pronounced her almost as natural off the stage as
+on. She didn't come back.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a><a href="#toc">XXI</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Whether he had prearranged it is more than I can say, but Mademoiselle
+Voisin delayed so long to show herself that Mrs. Rooth, who wished to
+see the rest of the play, though she had sat it out on another occasion,
+expressed a returning relish for her corner of the <i>baignoire</i> and gave
+her conductor the best pretext he could have desired for asking Basil
+Dashwood to be so good as to escort her back. When the young actor, of
+whose personal preference Peter was quite aware, had led Mrs. Rooth away
+with an absence of moroseness which showed that his striking resemblance
+to a gentleman was not kept for the footlights, the two others sat on a
+divan in the part of the room furthest from the entrance, so that it
+gave them a degree of privacy, and Miriam watched the coming and going
+of their fellow-visitors and the indefinite people, attached to the
+theatre, hanging about, while her companion gave a name to some of the
+figures, Parisian celebrities.</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy poor Dashwood cooped up there with mamma!" the girl exclaimed
+whimsically.</p>
+
+<p>"You're awfully cruel to him; but that's of course," said Sherringham.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me I'm as kind as you; you sent him off."</p>
+
+<p>"That was for your mother; she was tired."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh gammon! And why, if I <i>were</i> cruel, should it be of course?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you must destroy and torment and wear out&mdash;that's your nature.
+But you can't help your type, can you?"</p>
+
+<p>"My type?" she echoed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's bad, perverse, dangerous. It's essentially insolent."</p>
+
+<p>"And pray what's yours when you talk like that? Would you say such
+things if you didn't know the depths of my good nature?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your good nature all comes back to that," said Sherringham. "It's an
+abyss of ruin&mdash;for others. You've no respect. I'm speaking of the
+artistic character&mdash;in the direction and in the plentitude in which you
+have it. It's unscrupulous, nervous, capricious, wanton."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about respect. One can be good," Miriam mused and
+reasoned.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't matter so long as one's powerful," he returned. "We can't
+have everything, and surely we ought to understand that we must pay for
+things. A splendid organisation for a special end, like yours, is so
+rare and rich and fine that we oughtn't to grudge it its conditions."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you call its conditions?" Miriam asked as she turned and looked
+at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh the need to take its ease, to take up space, to make itself at home
+in the world, to square its elbows and knock, others about. That's large
+and free; it's the good nature you speak of. You must forage and ravage
+and leave a track behind you; you must live upon the country you
+traverse. And you give such delight that, after all, you're
+welcome&mdash;you're infinitely welcome!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you mean. I only care for the idea," the girl said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's exactly what I pretend&mdash;and we must all help you to it. You use
+us, you push us about, you break us up. We're your tables and chair, the
+simple furniture of your life."</p>
+
+<p>"Whom do you mean by 'we'?"</p>
+
+<p>Peter gave an ironic laugh. "Oh don't be afraid&mdash;there will be plenty of
+others!"</p>
+
+<p>She made no return to this, but after a moment broke out again. "Poor
+Dashwood immured with mamma&mdash;he's like a lame chair that one has put
+into the corner."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't break him up before he has served. I really believe something
+will come out of him," her companion went on. "However, you'll break me
+up first," he added, "and him probably never at all."</p>
+
+<p>"And why shall I honour you so much more?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I'm a better article and you'll feel that."</p>
+
+<p>"You've the superiority of modesty&mdash;I see."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm better than a young mountebank&mdash;I've vanity enough to say that."</p>
+
+<p>She turned on him with a flush in her cheek and a splendid dramatic
+face. "How you hate us! Yes, at bottom, below your little cold taste,
+you <i>hate</i> us!" she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>He coloured too, met her eyes, looked into them a minute, seemed to
+accept the imputation and then said quickly: "Give it up: come away with
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Come away with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Leave this place. Give it up."</p>
+
+<p>"You brought me here, you insisted it should be only you, and now you
+must stay," she declared with a head-shake and a high manner. "You
+should know what you want, dear Mr. Sherringham."</p>
+
+<p>"I do&mdash;I know now. Come away before you see her."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span></p><p>"Before&mdash;&mdash;?" she seemed to wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"She's success, this wonderful Voisin, she's triumph, she's full
+accomplishment: the hard, brilliant realisation of what I want to avert
+for you." Miriam looked at him in silence, the cold light still in her
+face, and he repeated: "Give it up&mdash;give it up."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes softened after a little; she smiled and then said: "Yes, you're
+better than poor Dashwood."</p>
+
+<p>"Give it up and we'll live for ourselves, in ourselves, in something
+that can have a sanctity."</p>
+
+<p>"All the same you do hate us," the girl went on.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to be conceited, but I mean that I'm sufficiently fine and
+complicated to tempt you. I'm an expensive modern watch with a wonderful
+escapement&mdash;therefore you'll smash me if you can."</p>
+
+<p>"Never&mdash;never!" she said as she got up. "You tell me the hour too well."
+She quitted her companion and stood looking at G&eacute;r&ocirc;me's fine portrait of
+the pale Rachel invested with the antique attributes of tragedy. The
+rise of the curtain had drawn away most of the company. Peter, from his
+bench, watched his friend a little, turning his eyes from her to the
+vivid image of the dead actress and thinking how little she suffered by
+the juxtaposition. Presently he came over and joined her again and she
+resumed: "I wonder if that's what your cousin had in his mind."</p>
+
+<p>"My cousin&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"What was his name? Mr. Dormer; that first day at Madame Carr&eacute;'s. He
+offered to paint my portrait."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember. I put him up to it."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he thinking of this?"</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt if he has ever seen it. I daresay I was."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, when we go to London he must do it," said Miriam.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh there's no hurry," Peter was moved to reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you want my picture?" asked the girl with one of her successful
+touches.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sure I want it from <i>him</i>. I don't know quite what he'd make of
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"He looked so clever&mdash;I liked him. I saw him again at your party."</p>
+
+<p>"He's a jolly good fellow; but what's one to say," Peter put to her, "of
+a painter who goes for his inspiration to the House of Commons?"</p>
+
+<p>"To the House of Commons?" she echoed.</p>
+
+<p>"He has lately got himself elected."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, what a pity! I wanted to sit for him. But perhaps he won't
+have me&mdash;as I'm not a member of Parliament."</p>
+
+<p>"It's my sister, rather, who has got him in."</p>
+
+<p>"Your sister who was at your house that day? What has she to do with
+it?" Miriam asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why she's his cousin just as I am. And in addition," Sherringham went
+on, "she's to be married to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Married&mdash;really?" She had a pause, but she continued. "So he paints
+<i>her</i>, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not much, probably. His talent in that line isn't what she esteems in
+him most."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't great, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't the least idea."</p>
+
+<p>"And in the political line?" the girl persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"I scarcely can tell. He's very clever."</p>
+
+<p>"He does paint decently, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam looked once more at G&eacute;r&ocirc;me's picture. "Fancy his going into the
+House of Commons! And your sister put him there?"</p>
+
+<p>"She worked, she canvassed."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you're a queer family!" she sighed, turning round at the sound of a
+step.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We're lost&mdash;here's Mademoiselle Voisin," said Sherringham.</p>
+
+<p>This celebrity presented herself smiling and addressing Miriam. "I acted
+for <i>you</i> to-night&mdash;I did my best."</p>
+
+<p>"What a pleasure to speak to you, to thank you!" the girl murmured
+admiringly. She was startled and dazzled.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't come to you before, but now I've got a rest&mdash;for half an
+hour," the actress went on. Gracious and passive, as if a little spent,
+she let Sherringham, without looking at him, take her hand and raise it
+to his lips. "I'm sorry I make you lose the others&mdash;they're so good in
+this act," she added.</p>
+
+<p>"We've seen them before and there's nothing so good as you," Miriam
+promptly returned.</p>
+
+<p>"I like my part," said Mademoiselle Voisin gently, smiling still at our
+young lady with clear, charming eyes. "One's always better in that
+case."</p>
+
+<p>"She's so bad sometimes, you know!" Peter jested to Miriam; leading the
+actress thus to glance at him, kindly and vaguely, in a short silence
+which you couldn't call on her part embarrassment, but which was still
+less affectation.</p>
+
+<p>"And it's so interesting to be here&mdash;so interesting!" Miriam protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you like our old house? Yes, we're very proud of it." And
+Mademoiselle Voisin smiled again at Sherringham all good-humouredly, but
+as if to say: "Well, here I am, and what do you want of me? Don't ask me
+to invent it myself, but if you'll tell me I'll do it." Miriam admired
+the note of discreet interrogation in her voice&mdash;the slight suggestion
+of surprise at their "old house" being liked. This performer was an
+astonishment from her seeming still more perfect on a nearer view&mdash;which
+was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span> not, the girl had an idea, what performers usually did. This was
+very encouraging to her&mdash;it widened the programme of a young lady about
+to embrace the scenic career. To have so much to show before the
+footlights and yet to have so much left when you came off&mdash;that was
+really wonderful. Mademoiselle Voisin's eyes, as one looked into them,
+were still more agreeable than the distant spectator would have
+supposed; and there was in her appearance an extreme finish which
+instantly suggested to Miriam that she herself, in comparison, was big
+and rough and coarse.</p>
+
+<p>"You're lovely to-night&mdash;you're particularly lovely," Sherringham said
+very frankly, translating Miriam's own impression and at the same time
+giving her an illustration of the way that, in Paris at least, gentlemen
+expressed themselves to the stars of the drama. She thought she knew her
+companion very well and had been witness of the degree to which, in such
+general conditions, his familiarity could increase; but his address to
+the slim, distinguished, harmonious woman before them had a different
+quality, the note of a special usage. If Miriam had had an apprehension
+that such directness might be taken as excessive it was removed by the
+manner in which Mademoiselle Voisin returned:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh one's always well enough when one's made up; one's always exactly
+the same." That served as an example of the good taste with which a star
+of the drama could receive homage that was wanting in originality.
+Miriam determined on the spot that this should be the way <i>she</i> would
+ever receive it. The grace of her new acquaintance was the greater as
+the becoming bloom to which she alluded as artificial was the result of
+a science so consummate that it had none of the grossness of a mask. The
+perception of all this was exciting to our young aspirant, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span> her
+excitement relieved itself in the inquiry, which struck her as rude as
+soon as she had uttered it:</p>
+
+<p>"You acted for 'me'? How did you know? What am I to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Sherringham has told me about you. He says we're nothing
+beside you&mdash;that you're to be the great star of the future. I'm proud
+that you've seen me."</p>
+
+<p>"That of course is what I tell every one," Peter acknowledged a trifle
+awkwardly to Miriam.</p>
+
+<p>"I can believe it when I see you. <i>Je vous ai bien observ&eacute;e</i>," the
+actress continued in her sweet conciliatory tone.</p>
+
+<p>Miriam looked from one of her interlocutors to the other as if there
+were joy for her in this report of Sherringham's remarks&mdash;joy
+accompanied and partly mitigated, however, by a quicker vision of what
+might have passed between a secretary of embassy and a creature so
+exquisite as Mademoiselle Voisin. "Ah you're wonderful people&mdash;a most
+interesting impression!" she yearningly sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"I was looking for you; he had prepared me. We're such old friends!"
+said the actress in a tone courteously exempt from intention: upon which
+Sherringham, again taking her hand, raised it to his lips with a
+tenderness which her whole appearance seemed to bespeak for her, a sort
+of practical consideration and carefulness of touch, as if she were an
+object precious and frail, an instrument for producing rare sounds, to
+be handled, like a legendary violin, with a recognition of its value.</p>
+
+<p>"Your dressing-room is so pretty&mdash;show her your dressing-room," he went
+on.</p>
+
+<p>"Willingly, if she'll come up. <i>Vous savez que c'est une mont&eacute;e."</i></p>
+
+<p>"It's a shame to inflict it on <i>you</i>," Miriam objected.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>Comment donc?</i> If it will interest you in the least!" They exchanged
+civilities, almost caresses, trying which could have the nicest manner
+to the other. It was the actress's manner that struck Miriam most; it
+denoted such a training, so much taste, expressed such a ripe conception
+of urbanity.</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder she acts well when she has that tact&mdash;feels, perceives, is so
+remarkable, <i>mon Dieu, mon Dieu!"</i> the girl said to herself as they
+followed their conductress into another corridor and up a wide, plain
+staircase. The staircase was spacious and long and this part of the
+establishment sombre and still, with the gravity of a college or a
+convent. They reached another passage lined with little doors, on each
+of which the name of a comedian was painted, and here the aspect became
+still more monastic, like that of a row of solitary cells. Mademoiselle
+Voisin led the way to her own door all obligingly and as if wishing to
+be hospitable; she dropped little subdued, friendly attempts at
+explanation on the way. At her threshold the monasticism stopped&mdash;Miriam
+found herself in a wonderfully upholstered nook, a nest of lamplight and
+delicate cretonne. Save for its pair of long glasses it might have been
+a tiny boudoir, with a water-colour drawing of value in each of its
+panels of stretched stuff, with its crackling fire and its charming
+order. It was intensely bright and extremely hot, singularly pretty and
+exempt from litter. Nothing lay about, but a small draped doorway led
+into an inner sanctuary. To Miriam it seemed royal; it immediately made
+the art of the comedian the most distinguished thing in the world. It
+was just such a place as they <i>should</i> have for their intervals if they
+were expected to be great artists. It was a result of the same evolution
+as Mademoiselle Voisin herself&mdash;not that our young lady found this
+particular term at hand to express her idea. But her mind was flooded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>
+with an impression of style, of refinement, of the long continuity of a
+tradition. The actress said, <i>"Voil&agrave;, c'est tout!"</i> as if it were little
+enough and there were even something clumsy in her having brought them
+so far for nothing, and in their all sitting there waiting and looking
+at each other till it was time for her to change her dress. But to
+Miriam it was occupation enough to note what she did and said: these
+things and her whole person and carriage struck our young woman as
+exquisite in their adaptation to the particular occasion. She had had an
+idea that foreign actresses were rather of the <i>cabotin</i> order, but her
+hostess suggested to her much more a princess than a <i>cabotine</i>. She
+would do things as she liked and do them straight off: Miriam couldn't
+fancy her in the gropings and humiliations of rehearsal. Everything in
+her had been sifted and formed, her tone was perfect, her amiability
+complete, and she might have been the charming young wife of a secretary
+of state receiving a pair of strangers of distinction. The girl observed
+all her movements. And then, as Sherringham had said, she was
+particularly lovely. But she suddenly told this gentleman that she must
+put him <i>&agrave; la porte</i>&mdash;she wanted to change her dress. He retired and
+returned to the foyer, where Miriam was to rejoin him after remaining
+the few minutes more with Mademoiselle Voisin and coming down with her.
+He waited for his companion, walking up and down and making up his mind;
+and when she presently came in he said to her:</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't go back for the rest of the play. Stay here." They now had
+the foyer virtually to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to stay here. I like it better," She moved back to the
+chimney-piece, from above which the cold portrait of Rachel looked down,
+and as he accompanied her he went on:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I meant what I said just now."</p>
+
+<p>"What you said to Voisin?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; to you. Give it up and live with <i>me."</i></p>
+
+<p>"Give it up?" She turned her stage face on him.</p>
+
+<p>"Give it up and I'll marry you to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a happy time to ask it!" she said with superior amusement. "And
+this is a good place!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very good indeed, and that's why I speak: it's a place to make one
+choose&mdash;it puts it all before one."</p>
+
+<p>"To make <i>you</i> choose, you mean. I'm much obliged, but that's not my
+choice," laughed Miriam.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall be anything you like except this."</p>
+
+<p>"Except what I most want to be? I <i>am</i> much obliged."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you care for me? Haven't you any gratitude?" Sherringham
+insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"Gratitude for kindly removing the blest cup from my lips? I want to be
+what <i>she</i> is&mdash;I want it more than ever."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah what she is&mdash;!" He took it impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean I can't? Well see if I can't. Tell me more about her&mdash;tell
+me everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you seen for yourself and, knowing things as you do, can't you
+judge?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's strange, she's mysterious," Miriam allowed, looking at the fire.
+"She showed us nothing&mdash;nothing of her real self."</p>
+
+<p>"So much the better, all things considered."</p>
+
+<p>"Are there all sorts of other things in her life? That's what I
+believe," the girl went on, raising her eyes to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't tell you what there is in the life of such a woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Imagine&mdash;when she's so perfect!" she exclaimed thoughtfully. "Ah she
+kept me off&mdash;she kept me off! Her charming manner is in itself a kind
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span> contempt. It's an abyss&mdash;it's the wall of China. She has a hard
+polish, an inimitable surface, like some wonderful porcelain that costs
+more than you'd think."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to become like that?" Sherringham asked.</p>
+
+<p>"If I could I should be enchanted. One can always try."</p>
+
+<p>"You must act better than she," he went on.</p>
+
+<p>"Better? I thought you wanted me to give it up."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah I don't know what I want," he cried, "and you torment me and turn me
+inside out! What I want is you yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh don't worry," said Miriam&mdash;now all kindly. Then she added that
+Mademoiselle Voisin had invited her to "call"; to which Sherringham
+replied with a certain dryness that she would probably not find that
+necessary. This made the girl stare and she asked: "Do you mean it won't
+do on account of mamma's prejudices?"</p>
+
+<p>"Say this time on account of mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean because she has lovers?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her lovers are none of our business."</p>
+
+<p>"None of mine, I see. So you've been one of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"No such luck!"</p>
+
+<p>"What a pity!" she richly wailed. "I should have liked to see that. One
+must see everything&mdash;to be able to do everything." And as he pressed for
+what in particular she had wished to see she replied: "The way a woman
+like that receives one of the old ones."</p>
+
+<p>Peter gave a groan at this, which was at the same time partly a laugh,
+and, turning away to drop on a bench, ejaculated: "You'll do&mdash;you'll
+do!"</p>
+
+<p>He sat there some minutes with his elbows on his knees and his face in
+his hands. His friend remained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span> looking at the portrait of Rachel, after
+which she put to him: "Doesn't such a woman as that receive&mdash;receive
+every one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Every one who goes to see her, no doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"And who goes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lots of men&mdash;clever men, eminent men."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah what a charming life! Then doesn't she go out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not what we Philistines mean by that&mdash;not into society, never. She
+never enters a lady's drawing-room."</p>
+
+<p>"How strange, when one's as distinguished as that; except that she must
+escape a lot of stupidities and <i>corv&eacute;es</i>. Then where does she learn
+such manners?"</p>
+
+<p>"She teaches manners, <i>&agrave; ses heures</i>: she doesn't need to learn them."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh she has given me ideas! But in London actresses go into society,"
+Miriam continued.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh into ours, such as it is. In London <i>nous m&ecirc;lons les genres</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"And shan't I go&mdash;I mean if I want?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have every facility to bore yourself. Don't doubt it."</p>
+
+<p>"And doesn't she feel excluded?" Miriam asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Excluded from what? She has the fullest life."</p>
+
+<p>"The fullest?"</p>
+
+<p>"An intense artistic life. The cleverest men in Paris talk over her work
+with her; the principal authors of plays discuss with her subjects and
+characters and questions of treatment. She lives in the world of art."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah the world of art&mdash;how I envy her! And you offer me Dashwood!"</p>
+
+<p>Sherringham rose in his emotion. "I 'offer' you&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>Miriam burst out laughing. "You look so droll!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span> You offer me yourself,
+then, instead of all these things."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child, I also am a very clever man," he said, trying to sink
+his consciousness of having for a moment stood gaping.</p>
+
+<p>"You are&mdash;you are; I delight in you. No ladies at all&mdash;no <i>femmes comme
+il faut?"</i> she began again.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah what do <i>they</i> matter? Your business is the artistic life!" he broke
+out with inconsequence, irritated, moreover, at hearing her sound that
+trivial note again.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a dear&mdash;your charming good sense comes back to you! What do you
+want of me, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want you for myself&mdash;not for others; and now, in time, before
+anything's done."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, then, did you bring me here? Everything's done&mdash;I feel it
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"I know the way you should look at it&mdash;if you do look at it at all,"
+Sherringham conceded.</p>
+
+<p>"That's so easy! I thought you liked the stage so," Miriam artfully
+added.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you want me to be a great swell?"</p>
+
+<p>"And don't you want <i>me</i> to be?"</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>will</i> be&mdash;you'll share my glory."</p>
+
+<p>"So will you share mine."</p>
+
+<p>"The husband of an actress? Yes, I see myself that!" Peter cried with a
+frank ring of disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a silly position, no doubt. But if you're too good for it why talk
+about it? Don't you think I'm important?" she demanded. Her companion
+met her eyes and she suddenly said in a different tone: "Ah why should
+we quarrel when you've been so kind, so generous? Can't we always be
+friends&mdash;the truest friends?"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice sank to the sweetest cadence and her eyes were grateful and
+good as they rested on him. She sometimes said things with such
+perfection that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span> they seemed dishonest, but in this case he was stirred
+to an expressive response. Just as he was making it, however, he was
+moved to utter other words: "Take care, here's Dashwood!" Mrs. Rooth's
+tried attendant was in the doorway. He had come back to say that they
+really must relieve him.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_FIFTH" id="BOOK_FIFTH"></a>BOOK FIFTH</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a><a href="#toc">XXII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Dallow came up to London soon after the meeting of Parliament; she
+made no secret of the fact that she was fond of "town" and that in
+present conditions it would of course not have become less attractive to
+her. But she prepared to retreat again for the Easter vacation, not to
+go back to Harsh, but to pay a couple of country visits. She did not,
+however, depart with the crowd&mdash;she never did anything with the
+crowd&mdash;but waited till the Monday after Parliament rose; facing with
+composure, in Great Stanhope Street, the horrors, as she had been taught
+to consider them, of a Sunday out of the session. She had done what she
+could to mitigate them by asking a handful of "stray men" to dine with
+her that evening. Several members of this disconsolate class sought
+comfort in Great Stanhope Street in the afternoon, and them for the most
+part she also invited to return at eight o'clock. There were accordingly
+almost too many people at dinner; there were even a couple of wives.
+Nick Dormer was then present, though he had not been in the afternoon.
+Each of the other persons had said on coming in, "So you've not
+gone&mdash;I'm awfully glad." Mrs. Dallow had replied, "No, I've not gone,"
+but she had in no case added that she was glad, nor had she offered an
+explanation. She never offered explanations; she always assumed that no
+one could invent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span> them so well as those who had the florid taste to
+desire them.</p>
+
+<p>And in this case she was right, since it is probable that few of her
+visitors failed to say to themselves that her not having gone would have
+had something to do with Dormer. That could pass for an explanation with
+many of Mrs. Dallow's friends, who as a general thing were not morbidly
+analytic; especially with those who met Nick as a matter of course at
+dinner. His figuring at this lady's entertainments, being in her house
+whenever a candle was lighted, was taken as a sign that there was
+something rather particular between them. Nick had said to her more than
+once that people would wonder why they didn't marry; but he was wrong in
+this, inasmuch as there were many of their friends to whom it wouldn't
+have occurred that his position could be improved. That they were
+cousins was a fact not so evident to others as to themselves, in
+consequence of which they appeared remarkably intimate. The person
+seeing clearest in the matter was Mrs. Gresham, who lived so much in the
+world that being left now and then to one's own company had become her
+idea of true sociability. She knew very well that if she had been
+privately engaged to a young man as amiable as Nick Dormer she would
+have managed that publicity shouldn't play such a part in their
+intercourse; and she had her secret scorn for the stupidity of people
+whose conception of Nick's relation to Julia rested on the fact that he
+was always included in her parties. "If he never was there they might
+talk," she said to herself. But Mrs. Gresham was supersubtle. To her it
+would have appeared natural that her friend should celebrate the
+parliamentary recess by going down to Harsh and securing the young man's
+presence there for a fortnight; she recognised Mrs. Dallow's actual plan
+as a comparatively<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span> poor substitute&mdash;the project of spending the
+holidays in other people's houses, to which Nick had also promised to
+come. Mrs. Gresham was romantic; she wondered what was the good of mere
+snippets and snatches, the chances that any one might have, when large,
+still days <i>&agrave; deux</i> were open to you&mdash;chances of which half the sanctity
+was in what they excluded. However, there were more unsettled matters
+between Mrs. Dallow and her queer kinsman than even Mrs. Gresham's fine
+insight could embrace. She was not on the Sunday evening before Easter
+among the guests in Great Stanhope Street; but if she had been Julia's
+singular indifference to observation would have stopped short of
+encouraging her to remain in the drawing-room, along with Nick, after
+the others had gone. I may add that Mrs. Gresham's extreme curiosity
+would have emboldened her as little to do so. She would have taken for
+granted that the pair wished to be alone together, though she would have
+regarded this only as a snippet. The company had at all events stayed
+late, and it was nearly twelve o'clock when the last of them, standing
+before the fire in the room they had quitted, broke out to his
+companion:</p>
+
+<p>"See here, Julia, how long do you really expect me to endure this kind
+of thing?" Julia made him no answer; she only leaned back in her chair
+with her eyes upon his. He met her gaze a moment; then he turned round
+to the fire and for another moment looked into it. After this he faced
+his hostess again with the exclamation: "It's so foolish&mdash;it's so
+damnably foolish!"</p>
+
+<p>She still said nothing, but at the end of a minute she spoke without
+answering him. "I shall expect you on Tuesday, and I hope you'll come by
+a decent train."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by a decent train?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I mean I hope you'll not leave it till the last thing before dinner, so
+that we can have a little walk or something."</p>
+
+<p>"What's a little walk or something? Why, if you make such a point of my
+coming to Griffin, do you want me to come at all?"</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated an instant; then she returned; "I knew you hated it!"</p>
+
+<p>"You provoke me so," said Nick. "You try to, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"And Severals is still worse. You'll get out of that if you can," Mrs.
+Dallow went on.</p>
+
+<p>"If I can? What's to prevent me?"</p>
+
+<p>"You promised Lady Whiteroy. But of course that's nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care a straw for Lady Whiteroy."</p>
+
+<p>"And you promised me. But that's less still."</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> foolish&mdash;it's quite idiotic," said Nick with his hands in his
+pockets and his eyes on the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>There was another silence, at the end of which Julia remarked: "You
+might have answered Mr. Macgeorge when he spoke to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Macgeorge&mdash;what has he to do with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has to do with your getting on a little. If you think that's the
+way&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>Nick broke into a laugh. "I like lessons in getting on&mdash;in other words I
+suppose you mean in urbanity&mdash;from you, Julia!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not from me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you can do nothing base. You're incapable of putting on a
+flattering manner to get something by it: therefore why should you
+expect me to? You're unflattering&mdash;that is, you're austere&mdash;in
+proportion as there may be something to be got."</p>
+
+<p>She sprang from her chair, coming toward him. "There's only one thing I
+want in the world&mdash;you know very well."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you want it so much that you won't even take it when it's pressed
+on you. How long do you seriously expect me to bear it?" Nick repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"I never asked you to do anything base," she said as she stood in front
+of him. "If I'm not clever about throwing myself into things it's all
+the more reason you should be."</p>
+
+<p>"If you're not clever, my dear Julia&mdash;?" Nick, close to her, placed his
+hands on her shoulders and shook her with a mixture of tenderness and
+passion. "You're clever enough to make me furious, sometimes!"</p>
+
+<p>She opened and closed her fan looking down at it while she submitted to
+his mild violence. "All I want is that when a man like Mr. Macgeorge
+talks to you you shouldn't appear bored to death. You used to be so
+charming under those inflictions. Now you appear to take no interest in
+anything. At dinner to-night you scarcely opened your lips; you treated
+them all as if you only wished they'd go."</p>
+
+<p>"I did wish they'd go. Haven't I told you a hundred times what I think
+of your salon?"</p>
+
+<p>"How then do you want me to live?" she asked. "Am I not to have a
+creature in the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"As many creatures as you like. Your freedom's complete and, as far as
+I'm concerned, always will be. Only when you challenge me and overhaul
+me&mdash;not justly, I think&mdash;I must confess the simple truth, that there are
+many of your friends I don't delight in."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh <i>your</i> idea of pleasant people!" Julia lamented. "I should like once
+for all to know what it really is."</p>
+
+<p>"I can tell you what it really isn't: it isn't Mr. Macgeorge. He's a
+being almost grotesquely limited."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He'll be where you'll never be&mdash;unless you change."</p>
+
+<p>"To be where Mr. Macgeorge is not would be very much my desire.
+Therefore why should I change?" Nick demanded. "However, I hadn't the
+least intention of being rude to him, and I don't think I was," he went
+on. "To the best of my ability I assume a virtue if I haven't it; but
+apparently I'm not enough of a comedian."</p>
+
+<p>"If you haven't it?" she echoed. "It's when you say things like that
+that you're so dreadfully tiresome. As if there were anything that you
+haven't or mightn't have!"</p>
+
+<p>Nick turned away from her; he took a few impatient steps in the room,
+looking at the carpet, his hands always in his pockets. Then he came
+back to the fire with the observation: "It's rather hard to be found so
+wanting when one has tried to play one's part so beautifully." He paused
+with his eyes on her own and then went on with a vibration in his voice:
+"I've imperilled my immortal soul, or at least bemuddled my
+intelligence, by all the things I don't care for that I've tried to do,
+and all the things I detest that I've tried to be, and all the things I
+never can be that I've tried to look as if I were&mdash;all the appearances
+and imitations, the pretences and hypocrisies in which I've steeped
+myself to the eyes; and at the end of it (it serves me right!) my reward
+is simply to learn that I'm still not half humbug enough!"</p>
+
+<p>Julia looked away from him as soon as he had spoken these words; she
+attached her eyes to the clock behind him and observed irrelevantly:
+"I'm very sorry, but I think you had better go. I don't like you to stay
+after midnight."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah what you like and what you don't like, and where one begins and the
+other ends&mdash;all that's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span> an impenetrable mystery!" the young man
+declared. But he took no further notice of her allusion to his
+departure, adding in a different tone: "'A man like Mr. Macgeorge'! When
+you say a thing of that sort in a certain, particular way I should
+rather like to suffer you to perish."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Dallow stared; it might have seemed for an instant that she was
+trying to look stupid. "How can I help it if a few years hence he's
+certain to be at the head of any Liberal Government?"</p>
+
+<p>"We can't help it of course, but we can help talking about it," Nick
+smiled. "If we don't mention it it mayn't be noticed."</p>
+
+<p>"You're trying to make me angry. You're in one of your vicious moods,"
+she returned, blowing out on the chimney-piece a guttering candle.</p>
+
+<p>"That I'm exasperated I've already had the honour very positively to
+inform you. All the same I maintain that I was irreproachable at dinner.
+I don't want you to think I shall always be as good as that."</p>
+
+<p>"You looked so out of it; you were as gloomy as if every earthly hope
+had left you, and you didn't make a single contribution to any
+discussion that took place. Don't you think I observe you?" she asked
+with an irony tempered by a tenderness unsuccessfully concealed.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah my darling, what you observe&mdash;!" Nick cried with a certain
+bitterness of amusement. But he added the next moment more seriously, as
+if his tone had been disrespectful: "You probe me to the bottom, no
+doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't come either to Griffin or to Severals if you don't want
+to."</p>
+
+<p>"Give them up yourself; stay here with me!"</p>
+
+<p>She coloured quickly as he said this, and broke out: "Lord, how you hate
+political houses!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"How can you say that when from February to August I spend every blessed
+night in one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and hate that worst of all."</p>
+
+<p>"So do half the people who are in it. You, my dear, must have so many
+things, so many people, so much <i>mise-en-sc&egrave;ne</i> and such a perpetual
+spectacle to live," Nick went on. "Perpetual motion, perpetual visits,
+perpetual crowds! If you go into the country you'll see forty people
+every day and be mixed up with them all day. The idea of a quiet
+fortnight in town, when by a happy if idiotic superstition everybody
+goes out of it, disconcerts and frightens you. It's the very time, it's
+the very place, to do a little work and possess one's soul."</p>
+
+<p>This vehement allocution found her evidently somewhat unprepared; but
+she was sagacious enough, instead of attempting for the moment a general
+rejoinder, to seize on a single phrase and say: "Work? What work can you
+do in London at such a moment as this?"</p>
+
+<p>Nick considered. "I might tell you I want to get up a lot of subjects,
+to sit at home and read blue-books; but that wouldn't be quite what I
+mean."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean you want to paint?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's it, since you gouge it out of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you make such a mystery about it? You're at perfect liberty,"
+Julia said.</p>
+
+<p>She put out her hand to rest it on the mantel-shelf, but her companion
+took it on the way and held it in both his own. "You're delightful,
+Julia, when you speak in that tone&mdash;then I know why it is I love you.
+But I can't do anything if I go to Griffin, if I go to Severals."</p>
+
+<p>"I see&mdash;I see," she answered thoughtfully and kindly.</p>
+
+<p>"I've scarcely been inside of my studio for months,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span> and I feel quite
+homesick for it. The idea of putting in a few quiet days there has taken
+hold of me: I rather cling to it."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems so odd your having a studio!" Julia dropped, speaking so
+quickly that the words were almost incomprehensible.</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't it sound absurd, for all the good it does me, or I do <i>in</i> it?
+Of course one can produce nothing but rubbish on such terms&mdash;without
+continuity or persistence, with just a few days here and there. I ought
+to be ashamed of myself, no doubt; but even my rubbish interests me.
+'<i>Guenille si l'on veut, ma guenille m'est ch&egrave;re</i>.' But I'll go down to
+Harsh with you in a moment, Julia," Nick pursued: "that would do as well
+if we could be quiet there, without people, without a creature; and I
+should really be perfectly content. You'd beautifully sit for me; it
+would be the occasion we've so often wanted and never found."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head slowly and with a smile that had a meaning for him.
+"Thank you, my dear; nothing would induce me to go to Harsh with you."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her hard. "What's the matter whenever it's a question of
+anything of that sort? Are you afraid of me?" She pulled her hand from
+him quickly, turning away; but he went on: "Stay with me here then, when
+everything's so right for it. We shall do beautifully&mdash;have the whole
+place, have the whole day, to ourselves. Hang your engagements!
+Telegraph you won't come. We'll live at the studio&mdash;you'll sit to me
+every day. Now or never's our chance&mdash;when shall we have so good a one?
+Think how charming it will be! I'll make you wish awfully that I may do
+something."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't get out of Griffin&mdash;it's impossible," Julia said, moving
+further away and with her back presented to him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Then you <i>are</i> afraid of me&mdash;simply!"</p>
+
+<p>She turned straight round, very pale. "Of course I am. You're welcome to
+know it."</p>
+
+<p>He went toward her, and for a moment she seemed to make another slight
+movement of retreat. This, however, was scarcely perceptible, and there
+was nothing to alarm in the tone of reasonable entreaty in which he
+spoke as he stood there. "Put an end, Julia, to our absurd situation&mdash;it
+really can't go on. You've no right to expect a man to be happy or
+comfortable in so false a position. We're spoken of odiously&mdash;of that we
+may be sure; and yet what good have we of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Spoken of? Do I care for that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean you're indifferent because there are no grounds? That's
+just why I hate it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you're talking about!" she returned with sharp
+disdain.</p>
+
+<p>"Be my wife to-morrow&mdash;be my wife next week. Let us have done with this
+fantastic probation and be happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me now&mdash;come back to-morrow. I'll write to you." She had the air
+of pleading with him at present, pleading as he pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't resign yourself to the idea of one's looking 'out of it'!"
+Nick laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Come to-morrow, before lunch," she went on.</p>
+
+<p>"To be told I must wait six months more and then be sent about my
+business? Ah, Julia, Julia!" the young man groaned.</p>
+
+<p>Something in this simple lament&mdash;it sounded natural and perfectly
+unstudied&mdash;seemed straightway to make a great impression on her. "You
+shall wait no longer," she said after a short silence.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by no longer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Give me about five weeks&mdash;say till the Whitsuntide recess."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Five weeks are a great deal," smiled Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"There are things to be done&mdash;you ought to understand."</p>
+
+<p>"I only understand how I love you."</p>
+
+<p>She let herself go&mdash;"Dearest Nick!"&mdash;and he caught her and kept her in
+his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"I've your promise then for five weeks hence to a day?" he demanded as
+she at last released herself.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll settle that&mdash;the exact day; there are things to consider and to
+arrange. Come to luncheon to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll come early&mdash;I'll come at one," he said; and for a moment they
+stood all deeply and intimately taking each other in.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I <i>want</i> to wait, any more than you?" she asked in
+congruity with this.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't feel so much out of it now!" he declared by way of answer.
+"You'll stay of course now&mdash;you'll give up your visits?"</p>
+
+<p>She had hold of the lappet of his coat; she had kept it in her hand even
+while she detached herself from his embrace. There was a white flower in
+his buttonhole that she looked at and played with a moment before she
+said; "I've a better idea&mdash;you needn't come to Griffin. Stay in your
+studio&mdash;do as you like&mdash;paint dozens of pictures."</p>
+
+<p>"Dozens? Barbarian!" Nick wailed.</p>
+
+<p>The epithet apparently had an endearing suggestion for her; it at any
+rate led her to let him possess himself of her head and, so holding it,
+kiss her&mdash;led her to say: "What on earth do I want but that you should
+do absolutely as you please and be as happy as you can?"</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her in another place at this; but he put it to her; "What
+dreadful proposition is coming now?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'll go off and do up my visits and come back."</p>
+
+<p>"And leave me alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be affected! You know you'll work much better without me. You'll
+live in your studio&mdash;I shall be well out of the way."</p>
+
+<p>"That's not what one wants of a sitter. How can I paint you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You can paint me all the rest of your life. I shall be a perpetual
+sitter."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I could paint you without looking at you"&mdash;and his lighted
+face shone down on her. "You do excuse me then from those dreary
+places?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can I insist after what you said about the pleasure of keeping
+these days?" she admirably&mdash;it was so all sincerely&mdash;asked.</p>
+
+<p>"You're the best woman on earth&mdash;though it does seem odd you should rush
+away as soon as our little business is settled."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall make it up. I know what I'm about. And now go!" She ended by
+almost pushing him out of the room.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a><a href="#toc">XXIII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>It was certainly singular, in the light of other matters, that on
+sitting down in his studio after she had left town Nick should not, as
+regards the effort to project plastically some beautiful form, have felt
+more chilled by the absence of a friend who was such an embodiment of
+beauty. She was away and he missed her and longed for her, and yet
+without her the place was more filled with what he wanted to find in it.
+He turned into it with confused feelings, the strongest of which was a
+sense of release and recreation. It looked blighted and lonely and
+dusty, and his old studies, as he rummaged them out, struck him even as
+less inspired than the last time he had ventured to face them. But amid
+this neglected litter, in the colourless and obstructed light of a high
+north window which needed washing, he came nearer tasting the
+possibility of positive happiness: it appeared to him that, as he had
+said to Julia, he was more in possession of his soul. It was frivolity
+and folly, it was puerility, to spend valuable hours pottering over the
+vain implements of an art he had relinquished; and a certain shame that
+he had felt in presenting his plea to Julia that Sunday night arose from
+the sense not of what he clung to, but of what he had given up. He had
+turned his back on serious work, so that pottering was now all he could
+aspire to. It couldn't be fruitful, it couldn't be anything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span> but
+ridiculous, almost ignoble; but it soothed his nerves, it was in the
+nature of a secret dissipation. He had never suspected he should some
+day have nerves on his own part to count with; but this possibility had
+been revealed to him on the day it became clear that he was letting
+something precious go. He was glad he had not to justify himself to the
+critical, for this might have been a delicate business. The critical
+were mostly absent; and besides, shut up all day in his studio, how
+should he ever meet them? It was the place in the world where he felt
+furthest away from his constituents. That was a part of the
+pleasure&mdash;the consciousness that for the hour the coast was clear and
+his mind independent. His mother and his sister had gone to Broadwood:
+Lady Agnes&mdash;the phrase sounds brutal but represents his state of
+mind&mdash;was well out of the way. He had written to her as soon as Julia
+left town&mdash;he had apprised her of the fact that his wedding-day was
+fixed: a relief for poor Lady Agnes to a period of intolerable
+mystification, of dark, dumb wondering and watching. She had said her
+say the day of the poll at Harsh; she was too proud to ask and too
+discreet to "nag"; so she could only wait for something that didn't
+come. The unconditioned loan of Broadwood had of course been something
+of a bribe to patience: she had at first felt that on the day she should
+take possession of that capital house Julia would indeed seem to have
+entered the family. But the gift had confirmed expectations just enough
+to make disappointment more bitter; and the discomfort was greater in
+proportion as she failed to discover what was the matter. Her daughter
+Grace was much occupied with this question, and brought it up for
+discussion in a manner irritating to her ladyship, who had a high theory
+of being silent about it, but who, however, in the long run, was more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span>
+unhappy when, in consequence of a reprimand, the girl suggested no
+reasons at all than when she suggested stupid ones. It eased Lady Agnes
+a little to advert to the mystery when she could have the air of not
+having begun.</p>
+
+<p>The letter Nick received from her the first day of Passion Week in reply
+to his important communication was the only one he read at that moment;
+not counting of course the several notes Mrs. Dallow addressed to him
+from Griffin. There were letters piled up, as he knew, in Calcutta
+Gardens, which his servant had strict orders not to bring to the studio.
+Nick slept now in the bedroom attached to this retreat; got things, as
+he wanted them, from Calcutta Gardens; and dined at his club, where a
+stray surviving friend or two, seeing him prowl about the library in the
+evening, was free to impute to such eccentricity some subtly political
+basis. When he thought of his neglected letters he remembered Mr.
+Carteret's convictions on the subject of not "getting behind"; they made
+him laugh, in the slightly sonorous painting-room, as he bent over one
+of the old canvases that he had ventured to turn to the light. He was
+fully determined, however, to master his correspondence before going
+down, the last thing before Parliament should reassemble, to spend
+another day at Beauclere. Mastering his correspondence meant, in Nick's
+mind, breaking open envelopes; writing answers was scarcely involved in
+the idea. But Mr. Carteret would never guess that. Nick was not moved
+even to write to him that the affair with Julia was on the point of
+taking the form he had been so good as to desire: he reserved the
+pleasure of this announcement for a personal interview.</p>
+
+<p>The day before Good Friday, in the morning, his stillness was broken by
+a rat-tat-tat on the outer door of his studio, administered apparently
+by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span> knob of a walking-stick. His servant was out and he went to the
+door, wondering who his visitor could be at such a time, especially of
+the rather presuming class. The class was indicated by the visitor's
+failure to look for the bell&mdash;since there <i>was</i> a bell, though it
+required a little research. In a moment the mystery was solved: the
+gentleman who stood smiling at him from the threshold could only be
+Gabriel Nash. Nick had not seen this whimsical personage for several
+months, and had had no news of him beyond a general intimation that he
+was following his fancy in foreign parts. His old friend had
+sufficiently prepared him, at the time of their reunion in Paris, for
+the idea of the fitful in intercourse; and he had not been ignorant, on
+his return from Paris, that he should have had an opportunity to miss
+him if he had not been too busy to take advantage of it. In London,
+after the episode at Harsh, Gabriel had not reappeared: he had redeemed
+none of the pledges given the night they walked together to Notre Dame
+and conversed on important matters. He was to have interposed in Nick's
+destiny, but he had not interposed; he was to have pulled him hard and
+in the opposite sense from Julia, but there had been no pulling; he was
+to have saved him, as he called it, and yet Nick was lost. This
+circumstance indeed formed his excuse: the member for Harsh had rushed
+so wantonly to perdition. Nick had for the hour seriously wished to keep
+hold of him: he valued him as a salutary influence. Yet on coming to his
+senses after his election our young man had recognised that Nash might
+very well have reflected on the thanklessness of such a slippery
+subject&mdash;might have held himself released from his vows. Of course it
+had been particularly in the event of a Liberal triumph that he had
+threatened to make himself felt; the effect of a brand plucked from the
+burning would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span> so much greater if the flames were already high. Yet
+Nick had not kept him to the letter of this pledge, and had so fully
+admitted the right of a thorough connoisseur, let alone a faithful
+friend, to lose patience with him that he was now far from greeting his
+visitor with a reproach. He felt much more thrown on his defence.</p>
+
+<p>Gabriel, however, forbore at first to attack him. He brought in only
+blandness and benevolence and a great content at having obeyed the
+mystic voice&mdash;it was really a remarkable case of second sight&mdash;which had
+whispered him that the recreant comrade of his prime was in town. He had
+just come back from Sicily after a southern winter, according to a
+custom frequent with him, and had been moved by a miraculous prescience,
+unfavourable as the moment might seem, to go and ask for Nick in
+Calcutta Gardens, where he had extracted from his friend's servant an
+address not known to all the world. He showed Nick what a mistake it had
+been to fear a dull arraignment, and how he habitually ignored all
+lapses and kept up the standard only by taking a hundred fine things for
+granted. He also abounded more than ever in his own sense, reminding his
+relieved listener how no recollection of him, no evocation of him in
+absence, could ever do him justice. You couldn't recall him without
+seeming to exaggerate him, and then acknowledged, when you saw him, that
+your exaggeration had fallen short. He emerged out of vagueness&mdash;his
+Sicily might have been the Sicily of <i>A Winter's Tale</i>&mdash;and would
+evidently be reabsorbed in it; but his presence was positive and
+pervasive enough. He was duly "intense" while he lasted. His connexions
+were with beauty, urbanity and conversation, as usual, but they made up
+a circle you couldn't find in the Court Guide. Nick had a sense that he
+knew "a lot of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span> esthetic people," but he dealt in ideas much more than
+in names and addresses. He was genial and jocose, sunburnt and
+romantically allusive. It was to be gathered that he had been living for
+many days in a Saracenic tower where his principal occupation was to
+watch for the flushing of the west. He had retained all the serenity of
+his opinions and made light, with a candour of which the only defect was
+apparently that it was not quite enough a conscious virtue, of many of
+the objects of common esteem. When Nick asked him what he had been doing
+he replied, "Oh living, you know"; and the tone of the words offered
+them as the story of a great deed. He made a long visit, staying to
+luncheon and after luncheon, so that the little studio heard all at once
+a greater quantity of brave talk than in the several previous years of
+its history. With much of our tale left to tell it is a pity that so
+little of this colloquy may be reported here; since, as affairs took
+their course, it marked really&mdash;if the question be of noting the exact
+point&mdash;a turn of the tide in Nick Dormer's personal situation. He was
+destined to remember the accent with which Nash exclaimed, on his
+drawing forth sundry specimens of amateurish earnestness:</p>
+
+<p>"I say&mdash;I say&mdash;I say!"</p>
+
+<p>He glanced round with a heightened colour. "They're pretty bad, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh you're a deep one," Nash went on.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you call your conduct that of a man of honour?"</p>
+
+<p>"Scarcely perhaps. But when no one has seen them&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's your villainy. <i>C'est de l'exquis, du pur exquis</i>. Come, my dear
+fellow, this is very serious&mdash;it's a bad business," said Gabriel Nash.
+Then he added almost with austerity: "You'll be so good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span> as to place
+before me every patch of paint, every sketch and scrap, that this room
+contains."</p>
+
+<p>Nick complied in great good humour. He turned out his boxes and drawers,
+shovelled forth the contents of bulging portfolios, mounted on chairs to
+unhook old canvases that had been severely "skied." He was modest and
+docile and patient and amused, above all he was quite thrilled&mdash;thrilled
+with the idea of eliciting a note of appreciation so late in the day. It
+was the oddest thing how he at present in fact found himself imputing
+value to his visitor&mdash;attributing to him, among attributions more
+confused, the dignity of judgement, the authority of knowledge. Nash was
+an ambiguous character but an excellent touchstone. The two said very
+little for a while, and they had almost half an hour's silence, during
+which, after our young man had hastily improvised an exhibition, there
+was only a puffing of cigarettes. Gabriel walked about, looking at this
+and that, taking up rough studies and laying them down, asking a
+question of fact, fishing with his umbrella, on the floor, amid a pile
+of unarranged sketches. Nick accepted jocosely the attitude of suspense,
+but there was even more of it in his heart than in his face. So few
+people had seen his young work&mdash;almost no one who really counted. He had
+been ashamed of it, never showing it to bring on a conclusion, since a
+conclusion was precisely what he feared. He whistled now while he let
+his companion take time. He rubbed old panels with his sleeve and dabbed
+wet sponges on surfaces that had sunk. It was a long time since he had
+felt so gay, strange as such an assertion sounds in regard to a young
+man whose bridal-day had at his urgent solicitation lately been fixed.
+He had stayed in town to be alone with his imagination, and suddenly,
+paradoxically, the sense of that result had arrived with poor Nash.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Nicholas Dormer," this personage remarked at last, "for grossness of
+immorality I think I've never seen your equal."</p>
+
+<p>"That sounds so well," Nick returned, "that I hesitate to risk spoiling
+it by wishing it explained."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you recognise in <i>any</i> degree the grand idea of duty?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I don't grasp it with a certain firmness I'm a deadly failure, for I
+was quite brought up on it," Nick said.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you're indeed the wretchedest failure I know. Life is ugly, after
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"Do I gather that you yourself recognise obligations of the order you
+allude to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you 'gather'?" Nash stared. "Why, aren't they the very flame of my
+faith, the burden of my song?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, duty is doing, and I've inferred that you think rather
+poorly of doing&mdash;that it spoils one's style."</p>
+
+<p>"Doing wrong, assuredly."</p>
+
+<p>"But what do you call right? What's your canon of certainty there?" Nick
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The conscience that's in us&mdash;that charming, conversible, infinite
+thing, the intensest thing we know. But you must treat the oracle
+civilly if you wish to make it speak. You mustn't stride into the temple
+in muddy jack-boots and with your hat on your head, as the Puritan
+troopers tramped into the dear old abbeys. One must do one's best to
+find out the right, and your criminality appears to be that you've not
+taken the commonest trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"I hadn't you to ask," smiled Nick. "But duty strikes me as doing
+something in particular. If you're too afraid it may be the wrong thing
+you may let everything go."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Being is doing, and if doing is duty being is duty. Do you follow?"</p>
+
+<p>"At a very great distance."</p>
+
+<p>"To be what one <i>may</i> be, really and efficaciously," Nash went on, "to
+feel it and understand it, to accept it, adopt it, embrace it&mdash;that's
+conduct, that's life."</p>
+
+<p>"And suppose one's a brute or an ass, where's the efficacy?"</p>
+
+<p>"In one's very want of intelligence. In such cases one's out of it&mdash;the
+question doesn't exist; one simply becomes a part of the duty of others.
+The brute, the ass," Nick's visitor developed, "neither feels nor
+understands, nor accepts nor adopts. Those fine processes in themselves
+classify us. They educate, they exalt, they preserve; so that to profit
+by them we must be as perceptive as we can. We must recognise our
+particular form, the instrument that each of us&mdash;each of us who carries
+anything&mdash;carries in his being. Mastering this instrument, learning to
+play it in perfection&mdash;that's what I call duty, what I call conduct,
+what I call success."</p>
+
+<p>Nick listened with friendly attention and the air of general assent was
+in his face as he said: "Every one has it then, this individual pipe?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Every one,' my dear fellow, is too much to say, for the world's full
+of the crudest <i>remplissage</i>. The book of life's padded, ah but
+padded&mdash;a deplorable want of editing! I speak of every one who's any
+one. Of course there are pipes and pipes&mdash;little quavering flutes for
+the concerted movements and big <i>cornets-&agrave;-piston</i> for the great solos."</p>
+
+<p>"I see, I see. And what might your instrument be?"</p>
+
+<p>Nash hesitated not a moment; his answer was radiantly there. "To speak
+to people just as I'm speaking to you. To prevent for instance a great
+wrong being done."</p>
+
+<p>"A great wrong&mdash;?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;to the human race. I talk&mdash;I talk; I say the things other people
+don't, the things they can't the things they won't," Gabriel went on
+with his inimitable candour.</p>
+
+<p>"If it's a question of mastery and perfection you certainly have them,"
+his companion replied.</p>
+
+<p>"And you haven't, alas; that's the pity of it, that's the scandal.
+That's the wrong I want to set right before it becomes too public a
+shame. If I called you just now grossly immoral it's on account of the
+spectacle you present&mdash;a spectacle to be hidden from the eye of
+ingenuous youth: that of a man neglecting his own fiddle to blunder away
+on that of one of his fellows. We can't afford such mistakes, we can't
+tolerate such licence."</p>
+
+<p>"You think then I <i>have</i> a fiddle?"&mdash;and our young man, in spite of
+himself, attached to the question a quaver of suspense finer, doubtless,
+than any that had ever passed his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"A regular Stradivarius! All these things you've shown me are remarkably
+interesting. You've a talent of a wonderfully pure strain."</p>
+
+<p>"I say&mdash;I say&mdash;I say!" Nick exclaimed, hovering there with his hands in
+his pockets and a blush on his lighted face, while he repeated with a
+change of accent Nash's exclamation of half an hour before.</p>
+
+<p>"I like it, your talent; I measure it, I appreciate it, I insist upon
+it," that critic went on between the whiffs of his cigarette. "I have to
+be awfully wise and good to do so, but fortunately I am. In such a case
+that's my duty. I shall make you my business for a while. Therefore," he
+added piously; "don't say I'm unconscious of the moral law."</p>
+
+<p>"A Stradivarius?" said Nick interrogatively and with his eyes wide open.
+The thought in his mind was of how different this seemed from his having
+gone to Griffin.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a><a href="#toc">XXIV</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>His counsellor had plenty of further opportunity to develop this and
+other figurative remarks, for he not only spent several of the middle
+hours of the day at the studio, but came back in the evening&mdash;the pair
+had dined together at a little foreign pothouse in Soho, revealed to
+Nick on this occasion&mdash;and discussed the great question far into the
+night. The great question was whether, on the showing of those examples
+of his ability with which the scene of their discourse was now densely
+bestrewn, Nick Dormer would be justified in "really going in" for the
+practice of pictorial art. This may strike many readers of his history
+as a limited and even trivial inquiry, with little of the heroic or the
+romantic in it; but it was none the less carried to the finest point by
+our impassioned young men. Nick suspected Nash of exaggerating his
+encouragement in order to play a malign trick on the political world at
+whose expense it was his fond fancy to divert himself&mdash;without indeed
+making that organisation perceptibly totter&mdash;and reminded him that his
+present accusation of immorality was strangely inconsistent with the
+wanton hope expressed by him in Paris, the hope that the Liberal
+candidate at Harsh would be returned. Nash replied, first, "Oh I hadn't
+been in this place then!" but he defended himself later and more
+effectually by saying that it was not of Nick's having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span> got elected he
+complained: it was of his visible hesitancy to throw up his seat. Nick
+begged that he wouldn't mention this, and his gallantry failed to render
+him incapable of saying: "The fact is I haven't the nerve for it." They
+talked then for a while of what he <i>could</i> do, not of what he couldn't;
+of the mysteries and miracles of reproduction and representation; of the
+strong, sane joys of the artistic life. Nick made afresh, with more
+fulness, his great confession, that his private ideal of happiness was
+the life of a great painter of portraits. He uttered his thought on that
+head so copiously and lucidly that Nash's own abundance was stilled and
+he listened almost as if he had been listening to something
+new&mdash;difficult as it was to conceive a point of view for such a matter
+with which he was unacquainted.</p>
+
+<p>"There it is," said Nick at last&mdash;"there's the naked, preposterous
+truth: that if I were to do exactly as I liked I should spend my years
+reproducing the more or less vacuous countenances of my fellow-mortals.
+I should find peace and pleasure and wisdom and worth, I should find
+fascination and a measure of success in it&mdash;out of the din and the dust
+and the scramble, the world of party labels, party cries, party bargains
+and party treacheries: of humbuggery, hypocrisy and cant. The cleanness
+and quietness of it, the independent effort to do something, to leave
+something which shall give joy to man long after the howling has died
+away to the last ghost of an echo&mdash;such a vision solicits me in the
+watches of night with an almost irresistible force."</p>
+
+<p>As he dropped these remarks he lolled on a big divan with one of his
+long legs folded up, while his visitor stopped in front of him after
+moving about the room vaguely and softly, almost on tiptoe, so as not to
+interrupt him. "You speak," Nash said, "with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span> the special and dreadful
+eloquence that rises to a man's lips when he has practically, whatever
+his theory may be, renounced the right and dropped hideously into the
+wrong. Then his regret for the right, a certain exquisite appreciation
+of it, puts on an accent I know well how to recognise."</p>
+
+<p>Nick looked up at him a moment. "You've hit it if you mean by that that
+I haven't resigned my seat and that I don't intend to."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you took it only to give it up. Don't you remember our talk
+in Paris?"</p>
+
+<p>"I like to be a part of the spectacle that amuses you," Nick returned,
+"but I could scarcely have taken so much trouble as that for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it then an absurd comedy, the life you lead?"</p>
+
+<p>"Comedy or tragedy&mdash;I don't know which; whatever it is I appear to be
+capable of it to please two or three people."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you <i>can</i> take trouble?" said Nash.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, for the woman I'm to marry."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh you're to marry?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's what has come on since we met in Paris," Nick explained, "and it
+makes just the difference."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah my poor friend," smiled Gabriel, much arrested, "no wonder you've an
+eloquence, an accent!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pity I have them in the wrong place. I'm expected to have them
+in the House of Commons."</p>
+
+<p>"You will when you make your farewell speech there&mdash;to announce that you
+chuck it up. And may I venture to ask who's to be your wife?" the
+visitor pursued.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Dallow has kindly consented to accept that yoke. I think you saw
+her in Paris."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah yes: you spoke of her to me, and I remember asking you even then if
+you were in love with her."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't then," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>Nash had a grave pause. "And are you now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"That would be better&mdash;if it wasn't worse."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing could be better," Nick declared. "It's the best thing that can
+happen to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," his friend continued, "you must let me very respectfully
+approach this lady. You must let me bring her round."</p>
+
+<p>"Bring her round to what?"</p>
+
+<p>"To everything. Talk her over."</p>
+
+<p>"Talk her under!" Nick laughed&mdash;but making his joke a little as to gain
+time. He remembered the effect this adviser had produced on Julia&mdash;an
+effect that scantly ministered to the idea of another meeting. Julia had
+had no occasion to allude again to Nick's imperturbable friend; he had
+passed out of her life at once and for ever; but there flickered up a
+quick memory of the contempt he had led her to express, together with a
+sense of how odd she would think it her intended should have thrown over
+two pleasant visits to cultivate such company.</p>
+
+<p>"Over to a proper pride in what you may do," Nash returned&mdash;"what you
+may do above all if she'll help you."</p>
+
+<p>"I scarcely see how she can help me," said Nick with an air of thinking.</p>
+
+<p>"She's extremely handsome as I remember her. You could do great things
+with <i>her</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, there's the rub," Nick went on. "I wanted her to sit for me this
+week, but she wouldn't hear of it."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Elle a bien tort</i>. You should attack some fine strong type. Is Mrs.
+Dallow in London?" Nash inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"For what do you take her? She's paying visits."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Then I've a model for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Then <i>you</i> have&mdash;?" Nick stared. "What has that to do with Mrs.
+Dallow's being away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't it give you more time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh the time flies!" sighed Nick with a spontaneity that made his
+companion again laugh out&mdash;a demonstration in which for a moment he
+himself rather ruefully joined.</p>
+
+<p>"Does she like you to paint?" that personage asked with one of his
+candid intonations.</p>
+
+<p>"So she says."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, do something fine to show her."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather show it to you," Nick confessed.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, I see it from here&mdash;if you do your duty. Do you
+remember the Tragic Muse?" Nash added for explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"The Tragic Muse?"</p>
+
+<p>"That girl in Paris, whom we heard at the old actress's and afterwards
+met at the charming entertainment given by your cousin&mdash;isn't he?&mdash;the
+secretary of embassy."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Peter's girl! Of course I remember her."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't call her Peter's; call her rather mine," Nash said with easy
+rectification. "I invented her. I introduced her. I revealed her."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you on the contrary ridiculed and repudiated her."</p>
+
+<p>"As a fine, handsome young woman surely not&mdash;I seem to myself to have
+been all the while rendering her services. I said I disliked tea-party
+ranters, and so I do; but if my estimate of her powers was below the
+mark she has more than punished me."</p>
+
+<p>"What has she done?" Nick asked.</p>
+
+<p>"She has become interesting, as I suppose you know."</p>
+
+<p>"How should I know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you must see her, you must paint her,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span> Nash returned. "She tells
+me something was said about it that day at Madame Carr&eacute;'s."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I remember&mdash;said by Peter."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it will please Mr. Sherringham&mdash;you'll be glad to do that. I
+suppose you know all he has done for Miriam?" Gabriel pursued.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit, I know nothing about Peter's affairs," Nick said, "unless it
+be in general that he goes in for mountebanks and mimes and that it
+occurs to me I've heard one of my sisters mention&mdash;the rumour had come
+to her&mdash;that he has been backing Miss Rooth."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Rooth delights to talk of his kindness; she's charming when she
+speaks of it. It's to his good offices that she owes her appearance
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"Here?" Nick's interest rose. "Is she in London?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>D'o&ugrave; tombez-vous</i>? I thought you people read the papers."</p>
+
+<p>"What should I read, when I sit&mdash;sometimes&mdash;through the stuff they put
+into them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I see that&mdash;that your engagement at your own variety-show,
+with its interminable 'turns,' keeps you from going to the others. Learn
+then," said Gabriel Nash, "that you've a great competitor and that
+you're distinctly not, much as you may suppose it, <i>the</i> rising
+comedian. The Tragic Muse is the great modern personage. Haven't you
+heard people speak of her, haven't you been taken to see her?"</p>
+
+<p>Nick bethought himself. "I daresay I've heard of her, but with a good
+many other things on my mind I had forgotten it."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I can imagine what has been on your mind. She remembers you
+at any rate; she repays neglect with sympathy. She wants," said Nash,
+"to come and see you."</p>
+
+<p>"'See' me?" It was all for Nick now a wonder.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"To be seen by you&mdash;it comes to the same thing. She's really worth
+seeing; you must let me bring her; you'll find her very suggestive. That
+idea that you should paint her&mdash;she appears to consider it a sort of
+bargain."</p>
+
+<p>"A bargain?" Our young man entered, as he believed, into the humour of
+the thing. "What will she give me?"</p>
+
+<p>"A splendid model. She <i>is</i> splendid."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh then bring her," said Nick.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a><a href="#toc">XXV</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Nash brought her, the great modern personage, as he had described her,
+the very next day, and it took his friend no long time to test his
+assurance that Miriam Rooth was now splendid. She had made an impression
+on him ten months before, but it had haunted him only a day, soon
+overlaid as it had been with other images. Yet after Nash had talked of
+her a while he recalled her better; some of her attitudes, some of her
+looks and tones began to hover before him. He was charmed in advance
+with the notion of painting her. When she stood there in fact, however,
+it seemed to him he had remembered her wrong; the brave, free, rather
+grand creature who instantly filled his studio with such an unexampled
+presence had so shaken off her clumsiness, the rudeness and crudeness
+that had made him pity her, a whole provincial and "second-rate" side.
+Miss Rooth was light and bright and direct to-day&mdash;direct without being
+stiff and bright without being garish. To Nick's perhaps inadequately
+sophisticated mind the model, the actress were figures of a vulgar
+setting; but it would have been impossible to show that taint less than
+this extremely natural yet extremely distinguished aspirant to
+distinction. She was more natural even than Gabriel Nash&mdash;"nature" was
+still Nick's formula for his amusing old friend&mdash;and beside her he
+appeared almost commonplace.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nash recognised her superiority with a frankness honourable to both of
+them&mdash;testifying in this manner to his sense that they were all three
+serious beings, worthy to deal with fine realities. She attracted crowds
+to her theatre, but to his appreciation of such a fact as that,
+important doubtless in its way, there were the limits he had already
+expressed. What he now felt bound in all integrity to register was his
+perception that she had, in general and quite apart from the question of
+the box-office, a remarkable, a very remarkable, artistic nature. He
+allowed that she had surprised him here; knowing of her in other days
+mainly that she was hungry to adopt an overrated profession he had not
+imputed to her the normal measure of intelligence. Now he saw&mdash;he had
+had some talks with her&mdash;that she was capable almost of a violent play
+of mind; so much so that he was sorry for the embarrassment it would be
+to her. Nick could imagine the discomfort of having anything in the
+nature of a mind to arrange for in such conditions. "She's a woman of
+the best intentions, really of the best," Nash explained kindly and
+lucidly, almost paternally, "and the quite rare head you can see for
+yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam, smiling as she sat on an old Venetian chair, held aloft, with
+the noblest effect, that quarter of her person to which this patronage
+was extended, remarking to her host that, strange as it might appear,
+she had got quite to like poor Mr. Nash: she could make him go about
+with her&mdash;it was a relief to her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"When I take him she has perfect peace," the girl said; "then she can
+stay at home and see the interviewers. She delights in that and I hate
+it, so our friend here is a great comfort. Of course a <i>femme de
+th&eacute;&acirc;tre</i> is supposed to be able to go out alone, but there's a kind of
+'smartness,' an added <i>chic</i>, in having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span> some one. People think he's my
+'companion '; I'm sure they fancy I pay him. I'd pay him, if he'd take
+it&mdash;and perhaps he will yet!&mdash;rather than give him up, for it doesn't
+matter that he's not a lady. He <i>is</i> one in tact and sympathy, as you
+see. And base as he thinks the sort of thing I do he can't keep away
+from the theatre. When you're celebrated people will look at you who
+could never before find out for themselves why they should."</p>
+
+<p>"When you're celebrated you grow handsomer; at least that's what has
+happened to you, though you were pretty too of old," Gabriel placidly
+argued. "I go to the theatre to look at your head; it gives me the
+greatest pleasure. I take up anything of that sort as soon as I find it.
+One never knows how long it may last."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you attributing that uncertainty to my appearance?" Miriam
+beautifully asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear no, to my own pleasure, the first precious bloom of it," Nash went
+on. "Dormer at least, let me tell you in justice to him, hasn't waited
+till you were celebrated to want to see you again&mdash;he stands there
+open-eyed&mdash;for the simple reason that he hadn't the least idea of your
+renown. I had to announce it to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you seen me act?" Miriam put, without reproach, to her host.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go to-night," he handsomely declared.</p>
+
+<p>"You have your terrible House, haven't you? What do they call it&mdash;the
+demands of public life?" Miriam continued: in answer to which Gabriel
+explained that he had the demands of private life as well, inasmuch as
+he was in love&mdash;he was on the point of being married. She listened to
+this with participation; then she said: "Ah then do bring your&mdash;what do
+they call her in English? I'm always afraid of saying something
+improper&mdash;your <i>future</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span> I'll send you a box, under the circumstances;
+you'll like that better." She added that if he were to paint her he
+would have to see her often on the stage, wouldn't he? to profit by the
+<i>optique de la sc&egrave;ne</i>&mdash;what did they call <i>that</i> in English?&mdash;studying
+her and fixing his impression. But before he had time to meet this
+proposition she asked him if it disgusted him to hear her speak like
+that, as if she were always posing and thinking about herself, living
+only to be looked at, thrusting forward her person. She already often
+got sick of doing so, but <i>&agrave; la guerre comme &agrave; la guerre</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the fine artistic nature, you see&mdash;a sort of divine disgust
+breaking out in her," Nash expounded.</p>
+
+<p>"If you want to paint me 'at all at all' of course. I'm struck with the
+way I'm taking that for granted," the girl decently continued. "When Mr.
+Nash spoke of it to me I jumped at the idea. I remembered our meeting in
+Paris and the kind things you said to me. But no doubt one oughtn't to
+jump at ideas when they represent serious sacrifices on the part of
+others."</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't she speak well?" Nash demanded of Nick. "Oh she'll go far!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a great privilege to me to paint you: what title in the world have
+I to pretend to such a model?" Nick replied to Miriam. "The sacrifice is
+yours&mdash;a sacrifice of time and good nature and credulity. You come, in
+your bright beauty and your genius, to this shabby place where I've
+nothing worth speaking of to show, not a guarantee to offer you; and I
+wonder what I've done to deserve such a gift of the gods."</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't <i>he</i> speak well?"&mdash;and Nash appealed with radiance to their
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>She took no notice of him, only repeating to Nick that she hadn't
+forgotten his friendly attitude in Paris; and when he answered that he
+surely had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span> done very little she broke out, first resting her eyes on
+him with a deep, reasonable smile and then springing up quickly; "Ah
+well, if I must justify myself I liked you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy my appearing to challenge you!" laughed Nick in deprecation. "To
+see you again is to want tremendously to try something. But you must
+have an infinite patience, because I'm an awful duffer."</p>
+
+<p>She looked round the walls. "I see what you've done&mdash;<i>bien des choses</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"She understands&mdash;she understands," Gabriel dropped. And he added to
+their visitor: "Imagine, when he might do something, his choosing a life
+of shams! At bottom he's like you&mdash;a wonderful artistic nature."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have patience," said the girl, smiling at Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, my children, I leave you&mdash;the peace of the Lord be with you."
+With which words Nash took his departure.</p>
+
+<p>The others chose a position for the young woman's sitting after she had
+placed herself in many different attitudes and different lights; but an
+hour had elapsed before Nick got to work&mdash;began, on a large canvas, to
+"knock her in," as he called it. He was hindered even by the fine
+element of agitation, the emotion of finding himself, out of a clear
+sky, confronted with such a subject and launched in such a task. What
+could the situation be but incongruous just after he had formally
+renounced all manner of "art"?&mdash;the renunciation taking effect not a bit
+the less from the whim he had all consciously treated himself to <i>as</i> a
+whim (the last he should ever descend to!) the freak of a fortnight's
+relapse into a fingering of old sketches for the purpose, as he might
+have said, of burning them up, of clearing out his studio and
+terminating his lease. There were both<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span> embarrassment and inspiration in
+the strange chance of snatching back for an hour a relinquished joy: the
+jump with which he found he could still rise to such an occasion took
+away his breath a little, at the same time that the idea&mdash;the idea of
+what one might make of such material&mdash;touched him with an irresistible
+wand. On the spot, to his inner vision, Miriam became a rich result,
+drawing a hundred formative forces out of their troubled sleep, defying
+him where he privately felt strongest and imposing herself triumphantly
+in her own strength. He had the good fortune, without striking matches,
+to see her, as a subject, in a vivid light, and his quick attempt was as
+exciting as a sudden gallop&mdash;he might have been astride, in a boundless
+field, of a runaway horse.</p>
+
+<p>She was in her way so fine that he could only think how to "do" her:
+that hard calculation soon flattened out the consciousness, lively in
+him at first, that she was a beautiful woman who had sought him out of
+his retirement. At the end of their first sitting her having done so
+appeared the most natural thing in the world: he had a perfect right to
+entertain her there&mdash;explanations and complications were engulfed in the
+productive mood. The business of "knocking her in" held up a lamp to her
+beauty, showed him how much there was of it and that she was infinitely
+interesting. He didn't want to fall in love with her&mdash;that <i>would</i> be a
+sell, he said to himself&mdash;and she promptly became much too interesting
+for it. Nick might have reflected, for simplification's sake, as his
+cousin Peter had done, but with more validity, that he was engaged with
+Miss Rooth in an undertaking which didn't in the least refer to
+themselves, that they were working together seriously and that decent
+work quite gainsaid sensibility&mdash;the humbugging sorts alone had to help
+themselves out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span> with it. But after her first sitting&mdash;she came, poor
+girl, but twice&mdash;the need of such exorcisms passed from his spirit: he
+had so thoroughly, so practically taken her up. As to whether his
+visitor had the same bright and still sense of co-operation to a
+definite end, the sense of the distinctively technical nature of the
+answer to every question to which the occasion might give birth, that
+mystery would be lighted only were it open to us to regard this young
+lady through some other medium than the mind of her friends. We have
+chosen, as it happens, for some of the great advantages it carries with
+it, the indirect vision; and it fails as yet to tell us&mdash;what Nick of
+course wondered about before he ceased to care, as indeed he intimated
+to her&mdash;why a budding celebrity should have dreamed of there being
+something for her in so blighted a spot. She should have gone to one of
+the regular people, the great people: they would have welcomed her with
+open arms. When Nick asked her if some of the R.A.'s hadn't expressed a
+wish for a crack at her she replied: "Oh dear no, only the tiresome
+photographers; and fancy <i>them</i> in the future. If mamma could only do
+<i>that</i> for me!" And she added with the charming fellowship for which she
+was conspicuous at these hours: "You know I don't think any one yet has
+been quite so much struck with me as you."</p>
+
+<p>"Not even Peter Sherringham?" her host jested while he stepped back to
+judge of the effect of a line.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Mr. Sherringham's different. You're an artist."</p>
+
+<p>"For pity's sake don't say that!" he cried. "And as regards <i>your</i> art I
+thought Peter knew more than any one."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you're severe," said Miriam.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Severe&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because that's what the poor dear thinks. But he does know a lot&mdash;he
+has been a providence to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why hasn't he come over to see you act?"</p>
+
+<p>She had a pause. "How do you know he hasn't come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I take for granted he'd have called on me if he had."</p>
+
+<p>"Does he like you very much?" the girl asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I like <i>him</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"He's a gentleman&mdash;<i>pour cela</i>," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, for that!" Nick went on absently, labouring hard.</p>
+
+<p>"But he's afraid of me&mdash;afraid to see me."</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't he think you good enough?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary&mdash;he believes I shall carry him away and he's in a
+terror of my doing it."</p>
+
+<p>"He ought to like that," said Nick with conscious folly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I mean when I say he's not an artist. However, he declares
+he does like it, only it appears to be not the right thing for him. Oh
+the right thing&mdash;he's ravenous for that. But it's not for me to blame
+him, since I am too. He's coming some night, however. Then," she added
+almost grimly, "he shall have a dose."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Peter!" Nick returned with a compassion none the less real because
+it was mirthful: the girl's tone was so expressive of easy unscrupulous
+power.</p>
+
+<p>"He's such a curious mixture," she luxuriously went on; "sometimes I
+quite lose patience with him. It isn't exactly trying to serve both God
+and Mammon, but it's muddling up the stage and the world. The world be
+hanged! The stage, or anything of that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span> sort&mdash;I mean one's artistic
+conscience, one's true faith&mdash;comes first."</p>
+
+<p>"Brava, brava! you do me good," Nick murmured, still amused, beguiled,
+and at work. "But it's very kind of you, when I was in this absurd state
+of ignorance, to impute to me the honour of having been more struck with
+you than any one else," he continued after a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I confess I don't quite see&mdash;when the shops were full of my
+photographs."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I'm so poor&mdash;I don't go into shops," he explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you very poor?"</p>
+
+<p>"I live on alms."</p>
+
+<p>"And don't they pay you&mdash;the government, the ministry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear young lady, for what?&mdash;for shutting myself up with beautiful
+women?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you've others then?" she extravagantly groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"They're not so kind as you, I confess."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll buy it from you&mdash;what you're doing: I'll pay you well when it's
+done," said the girl. "I've got money now. I make it, you know&mdash;a good
+lot of it. It's too delightful after scraping and starving. Try it and
+you'll see. Give up the base, bad world."</p>
+
+<p>"But isn't it supposed to be the base, bad world that pays?"</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely; make it pay without mercy&mdash;knock it silly, squeeze it dry.
+That's what it's meant for&mdash;to pay for art. Ah if it wasn't for that!
+I'll bring you a quantity of photographs to-morrow&mdash;you must let me come
+back to-morrow: it's so amusing to have them, by the hundred, all for
+nothing, to give away. That's what takes mamma most: she can't get over
+it. That's luxury and glory; even at Castle Nugent they didn't do that.
+People<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span> used to sketch me, but not so much as mamma <i>veut bien le dire</i>;
+and in all my life I never had but one poor little carte-de-visite, when
+I was sixteen, in a plaid frock, with the banks of a river, at three
+francs the dozen."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI"></a><a href="#toc">XXVI</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>It was success, the member for Harsh felt, that had made her finer&mdash;the
+full possession of her talent and the sense of the recognition of it.
+There was an intimation in her presence (if he had given his mind to it)
+that for him too the same cause would produce the same effect&mdash;that is
+would show him how being launched in the practice of an art makes
+strange and prompt revelations. Nick felt clumsy beside a person who
+manifestly, now, had such an extraordinary familiarity with the esthetic
+point of view. He remembered too the clumsiness that had been in his
+visitor&mdash;something silly and shabby, pert rather than proper, and of
+quite another value than her actual smartness, as London people would
+call it, her well-appointedness and her evident command of more than one
+manner. Handsome as she had been the year before, she had suggested
+sordid lodgings, bread and butter, heavy tragedy and tears; and if then
+she was an ill-dressed girl with thick hair who wanted to be an actress,
+she was already in these few weeks a performer who could even produce an
+impression of not performing. She showed what a light hand she could
+have, forbore to startle and looked as well, for unprofessional life, as
+Julia: which was only the perfection of her professional character.</p>
+
+<p>This function came out much in her talk, for there were many little
+bursts of confidence as well as many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span> familiar pauses as she sat there;
+and she was ready to tell Nick the whole history of her <i>d&eacute;but</i>&mdash;the
+chance that had suddenly turned up and that she had caught, with a
+fierce leap, as it passed. He missed some of the details in his
+attention to his own task, and some of them he failed to understand,
+attached as they were to the name of Mr. Basil Dashwood, which he heard
+for the first time. It was through Mr. Dashwood's extraordinary
+exertions that a hearing&mdash;a morning performance at a London theatre&mdash;had
+been obtained for her. That had been the great step, for it had led to
+the putting on at night of the play, at the same theatre, in place of a
+wretched thing they were trying (it was no use) to keep on its feet, and
+to her engagement for the principal part. She had made a hit in it&mdash;she
+couldn't pretend not to know that; but she was already tired of it,
+there were so many other things she wanted to do; and when she thought
+it would probably run a month or two more she fell to cursing the odious
+conditions of artistic production in such an age. The play was a more or
+less idiotised version of a new French piece, a thing that had taken in
+Paris at a third-rate theatre and was now proving itself in London good
+enough for houses mainly made up of ten-shilling stalls. It was Dashwood
+who had said it would go if they could get the rights and a fellow to
+make some changes: he had discovered it at a nasty little place she had
+never been to, over the Seine. They had got the rights, and the fellow
+who had made the changes was practically Dashwood himself; there was
+another man in London, Mr. Gushmore&mdash;Miriam didn't know if Nick had
+heard of him (Nick hadn't) who had done some of it. It had been awfully
+chopped down, to a mere bone, with the meat all gone; but that was what
+people in London seemed to like. They were very innocent&mdash;thousands of
+little dogs amusing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span> themselves with a bone. At any rate she had made
+something, she had made a figure, of the woman&mdash;a dreadful stick, with
+what Dashwood had muddled her into; and Miriam added in the complacency
+of her young expansion: "Oh give me fifty words any time and the ghost
+of a situation, and I'll set you up somebody. Besides, I mustn't abuse
+poor Yolande&mdash;she has saved us," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yolande'&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Our ridiculous play. That's the name of the impossible woman. She has
+put bread into our mouths and she's a loaf on the shelf for the future.
+The rights are mine."</p>
+
+<p>"You're lucky to have them," said Nick a little vaguely, troubled about
+his sitter's nose, which was somehow Jewish without the convex arch.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed I am. He gave them to me. Wasn't it charming?"</p>
+
+<p>"'He' gave them&mdash;Mr. Dashwood?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, no&mdash;where should poor Dashwood have got them? He hasn't a
+penny in the world. Besides, if he had got them he'd have kept them. I
+mean your blessed cousin."</p>
+
+<p>"I see&mdash;they're a present from Peter."</p>
+
+<p>"Like many other things. Isn't he a dear? If it hadn't been for him the
+shelf would have remained bare. He bought the play for this country and
+America for four hundred pounds, and on the chance: fancy! There was no
+rush for it, and how could he tell? And then he gracefully pressed it on
+me. So I've my little capital. Isn't he a duck? You've nice cousins."</p>
+
+<p>Nick assented to the proposition, only inserting an amendment to the
+effect that surely Peter had nice cousins too, and making, as he went on
+with his work, a tacit, preoccupied reflexion or two; such as that it
+must be pleasant to render little services like that to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span> youth, beauty
+and genius&mdash;he rather wondered how Peter could afford them&mdash;and that,
+"duck" as he was, Miss Rooth's benefactor was rather taken for granted.
+<i>Sic vos non vobis</i> softly sounded in his brain. This community of
+interests, or at least of relations, quickened the flight of time, so
+that he was still fresh when the sitting came to an end. It was settled
+Miriam should come back on the morrow, to enable her artist to make the
+most of the few days of the parliamentary recess; and just before she
+left him she asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Then you <i>will</i> come to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Without fail. I hate to lose an hour of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll place you. It will be my affair."</p>
+
+<p>"You're very kind"&mdash;he quite rose to it. "Isn't it a simple matter for
+me to take a stall? This week I suppose they're to be had."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll send you a box," said Miriam. "You shall do it well. There are
+plenty now."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I be lost, all alone, in the grandeur of a box?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you bring your friend?"</p>
+
+<p>"My friend?"</p>
+
+<p>"The lady you're engaged to."</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately she's out of town."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam looked at him in the grand manner. "Does she leave you alone like
+that?"</p>
+
+<p>"She thought I should like it&mdash;I should be more free to paint. You see I
+am."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, perhaps it's good for <i>me</i>. Have you got her portrait?" Miriam
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"She doesn't like me to paint her."</p>
+
+<p>"Really? Perhaps then she won't like you to paint me."</p>
+
+<p>"That's why I want to be quick!" laughed Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"Before she knows it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shell know it to-morrow. I shall write to her."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The girl faced him again portentously. "I see you're afraid of her." But
+she added: "Mention my name; they'll give you the box at the office."</p>
+
+<p>Whether or no Nick were afraid of Mrs. Dallow he still waved away this
+bounty, protesting that he would rather take a stall according to his
+wont and pay for it. Which led his guest to declare with a sudden
+flicker of passion that if he didn't do as she wished she would never
+sit to him again.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah then you have me," he had to reply. "Only I <i>don't</i> see why you
+should give me so many things."</p>
+
+<p>"What in the world have I given you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why an idea." And Nick looked at his picture rather ruefully. "I don't
+mean to say though that I haven't let it fall and smashed it."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah an idea&mdash;that <i>is</i> a great thing for people in our line. But you'll
+see me much better from the box and I'll send you Gabriel Nash." She got
+into the hansom her host's servant had fetched for her, and as Nick
+turned back into his studio after watching her drive away he laughed at
+the conception that they were in the same "line."</p>
+
+<p>He did share, in the event, his box at the theatre with Nash, who talked
+during the <i>entr'actes</i> not in the least about the performance or the
+performer, but about the possible greatness of the art of the
+portraitist&mdash;its reach, its range, its fascination, the magnificent
+examples it had left us in the past: windows open into history, into
+psychology, things that were among the most precious possessions of the
+human race. He insisted above all on the interest, the importance of
+this great peculiarity of it, that unlike most other forms it was a
+revelation of two realities, the man whom it was the artist's conscious
+effort to reveal and the man&mdash;the interpreter&mdash;expressed in the very
+quality and temper of that effort. It offered a double vision, the
+strongest dose of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span> life that art could give, the strongest dose of art
+that life could give. Nick Dormer had already become aware of having two
+states of mind when listening to this philosopher; one in which he
+laughed, doubted, sometimes even reprobated, failed to follow or accept,
+and another in which his old friend seemed to take the words out of his
+mouth, to utter for him, better and more completely, the very things he
+was on the point of saying. Gabriel's saying them at such moments
+appeared to make them true, to set them up in the world, and to-night he
+said a good many, especially as to the happiness of cultivating one's
+own garden, growing there, in stillness and freedom, certain strong,
+pure flowers that would bloom for ever, bloom long after the rank weeds
+of the hour were withered and blown away.</p>
+
+<p>It was to keep Miriam Rooth in his eye for his current work that Nick
+had come to the play; and she dwelt there all the evening, being
+constantly on the stage. He was so occupied in watching her face&mdash;for he
+now saw pretty clearly what he should attempt to make of it&mdash;that he was
+conscious only in a secondary degree of the story she illustrated, and
+had in regard to her acting a surprised sense that she was
+extraordinarily quiet. He remembered her loudness, her violence in
+Paris, at Peter Sherringham's, her wild wails, the first time, at Madame
+Carr&eacute;'s; compared with which her present manner was eminently temperate
+and modern. Nick Dormer was not critical at the theatre; he believed
+what he saw and had a pleasant sense of the inevitable; therefore he
+wouldn't have guessed what Gabriel Nash had to tell him&mdash;that for this
+young woman, with her tragic cast and her peculiar attributes, her
+present performance, full of actuality, of light fine indications and at
+moments of pointed touches of comedy, was a rare <i>tour de force</i>. It
+went on altogether<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span> in a register he hadn't supposed her to possess and
+in which, as he said, she didn't touch her capital, doing it all with
+her wonderful little savings. It conveyed to him that she was capable of
+almost anything.</p>
+
+<p>In one of the intervals they went round to see her; but for Nick this
+purpose was partly defeated by the extravagant transports, as they
+struck him, of Mrs. Rooth, whom they found sitting with her daughter and
+who attacked him with a hundred questions about his dear mother and his
+charming sisters. She had volumes to say about the day in Paris when
+they had shown her the kindness she should never forget. She abounded
+also in admiration of the portrait he had so cleverly begun, declaring
+she was so eager to see it, however little he might as yet have
+accomplished, that she should do herself the honour to wait upon him in
+the morning when Miriam came to sit.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm acting for you to-night," the girl more effectively said before he
+returned to his place.</p>
+
+<p>"No, that's exactly what you're not doing," Nash interposed with one of
+his happy sagacities. "You've stopped acting, you've reduced it to the
+least that will do, you simply are&mdash;you're just the visible image, the
+picture on the wall. It keeps you wonderfully in focus. I've never seen
+you so beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam stared at this; then it could be seen that she coloured. "What a
+luxury in life to have everything explained! He's the great explainer,"
+she herself explained to Nick.</p>
+
+<p>He shook hands with her for good-night. "Well then, we must give him
+lots to do."</p>
+
+<p>She came to his studio in the morning, but unaccompanied by her mother,
+in allusion to whom she simply said, "Mamma wished to come but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span> I
+wouldn't let her." They proceeded promptly to business. The girl
+divested herself of her hat and coat, taking the position already
+determined. After they had worked more than an hour with much less talk
+than the day before, Nick being extremely absorbed and Miriam wearing in
+silence an air of noble compunction for the burden imposed on him, at
+the end of this period of patience, pervaded by a holy calm, our young
+lady suddenly got up and exclaimed, "I say, I must see it!"&mdash;with which,
+quickly, she stepped down from her place and came round to the canvas.
+She had at Nick's request not looked at his work the day before. He fell
+back, glad to rest, and put down his palette and brushes.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ah bien, c'est tap&eacute;</i>!" she cried as she stood before the easel. Nick
+was pleased with her ejaculation, he was even pleased with what he had
+done; he had had a long, happy spurt and felt excited and sanctioned.
+Miriam, retreating also a little, sank into a high-backed, old-fashioned
+chair that stood two or three yards from the picture and reclined in it,
+her head on one side, looking at the rough resemblance. She made a
+remark or two about it, to which Nick replied, standing behind her and
+after a moment leaning on the top of the chair. He was away from his
+work and his eyes searched it with a shy fondness of hope. They rose,
+however, as he presently became conscious that the door of the large
+room opposite him had opened without making a sound and that some one
+stood upon the threshold. The person on the threshold was Julia Dallow.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he was aware Nick wished he had posted a letter to her the
+night before. He had written only that morning. There was nevertheless
+genuine joy in the words with which he bounded toward her&mdash;"Ah my dear
+Julia, what a jolly surprise!"&mdash;for her unannounced descent spoke to
+him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span> above all of an irresistible desire to see him again sooner than
+they had arranged. She had taken a step forward, but she had done no
+more, stopping short at the sight of the strange woman, so divested of
+visiting-gear that she looked half-undressed, who lounged familiarly in
+the middle of the room and over whom Nick had been still more familiarly
+hanging. Julia's eyes rested on this embodied unexpectedness, and as
+they did so she grew pale&mdash;so pale that Nick, observing it,
+instinctively looked back to see what Miriam had done to produce such an
+effect. She had done nothing at all, which was precisely what was
+embarrassing; she only stared at the intruder, motionless and superb.
+She seemed somehow in easy possession of the place, and even at that
+instant Nick noted how handsome she looked; so that he said to himself
+inaudibly, in some deeper depth of consciousness, "How I should like to
+paint her that way!" Mrs. Dallow's eyes moved for a single moment to her
+friend's; then they turned away&mdash;away from Miriam, ranging over the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got a sitter, but you mustn't mind that; we're taking a rest. I'm
+delighted to see you"&mdash;he was all cordiality. He closed the door of the
+studio behind her; his servant was still at the outer door, which was
+open and through which he saw Julia's carriage drawn up. This made her
+advance a little further, but still she said nothing; she dropped no
+answer even when Nick went on with a sense of awkwardness: "When did you
+come back? I hope nothing has gone wrong. You come at a very interesting
+moment," he continued, aware as soon as he had spoken of something in
+his words that might have made her laugh. She was far from laughing,
+however; she only managed to look neither at him nor at Miriam and to
+say, after a little, when he had repeated his question about her
+return:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I came back this morning&mdash;I came straight here."</p>
+
+<p>"And nothing's wrong, I hope?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no&mdash;everything's all right," she returned very quickly and without
+expression. She vouchsafed no explanation of her premature descent and
+took no notice of the seat Nick offered her; neither did she appear to
+hear him when he begged her not to look yet at the work on the easel&mdash;it
+was in such a dreadful state. He was conscious, as he phrased it, that
+this request gave to Miriam's position, directly in front of his canvas,
+an air of privilege which her neglect to recognise in any way Mrs.
+Dallow's entrance or her importance did nothing to correct. But that
+mattered less if the appeal failed to reach Julia's intelligence, as he
+judged, seeing presently how deeply she was agitated. Nothing mattered
+in face of the sense of danger taking possession of him after she had
+been in the room a few moments. He wanted to say, "What's the
+difficulty? Has anything happened?" but he felt how little she would
+like him to utter words so intimate in presence of the person she had
+been rudely startled to find between them. He pronounced Miriam's name
+to her and her own to Miriam, but Julia's recognition of the ceremony
+was so slight as to be scarcely perceptible. Miriam had the air of
+waiting for something more before she herself made a sign; and as
+nothing more came she continued to say nothing and not to budge. Nick
+added a remark to the effect that Julia would remember to have had the
+pleasure of meeting her the year before&mdash;in Paris, that day at old
+Peter's; to which Mrs. Dallow made answer, "Ah yes," without any
+qualification, while she looked down at some rather rusty studies on
+panels ranged along the floor and resting against the base of the wall.
+Her discomposure was a clear pain to herself; she had had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span> a shock of
+extreme violence, and Nick saw that as Miriam showed no symptom of
+offering to give up her sitting her stay would be of the briefest. He
+wished that young woman would do something&mdash;say she would go, get up,
+move about; as it was she had the appearance of watching from her point
+of vantage the other's upset. He made a series of inquiries about
+Julia's doings in the country, to two or three of which she gave answers
+monosyllabic and scarcely comprehensible, only turning her eyes round
+and round the room as in search of something she couldn't find&mdash;of an
+escape, of something that was not Miriam. At last she said&mdash;it was at
+the end of a very few minutes:</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't come to stay&mdash;when you're so busy. I only looked in to see if
+you were here. Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"It's charming of you to have come. I'm so glad you've seen for yourself
+how well I'm occupied," Nick replied, not unconscious of how red he was.
+This made Mrs. Dallow look at him while Miriam considered them both.
+Julia's eyes had a strange light he had never seen before&mdash;a flash of
+fear by which he was himself frightened. "Of course I'll see you later,"
+he added in awkward, in really misplaced gaiety while she reached the
+door, which she opened herself, getting out with no further attention to
+Miriam. "I wrote to you this morning&mdash;you've missed my letter," he
+repeated behind her, having already given her this information. The door
+of the studio was very near that of the house, but before she had
+reached the street the visitors' bell was set ringing. The passage was
+narrow and she kept in advance of Nick, anticipating his motion to open
+the street-door. The bell was tinkling still when, by the action of her
+own hand, a gentleman on the step stood revealed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ah my dear, don't go!" Nick heard pronounced in quick, soft dissuasion
+and in the now familiar accents of Gabriel Nash. The rectification
+followed more quickly still, if that were a rectification which so
+little improved the matter: "I beg a thousand pardons&mdash;I thought you
+were Miriam."</p>
+
+<p>Gabriel gave way and Julia the more sharply pursued her retreat. Her
+carriage, a victoria with a pair of precious heated horses, had taken a
+turn up the street, but the coachman had already seen his mistress and
+was rapidly coming back. He drew near; not so fast, however, but that
+Gabriel Nash had time to accompany Mrs. Dallow to the edge of the
+pavement with an apology for the freedom into which he had blundered.
+Nick was at her other hand, waiting to put her into the carriage and
+freshly disconcerted by the encounter with Nash, who somehow, as he
+stood making Julia an explanation that she didn't listen to, looked less
+eminent than usual, though not more conscious of difficulties. Our young
+man coloured deeper and watched the footman spring down as the victoria
+drove up; he heard Nash say something about the honour of having met
+Mrs. Dallow in Paris. Nick wanted him to go into the house; he damned
+inwardly his lack of delicacy. He desired a word with Julia alone&mdash;as
+much alone as the two annoying servants would allow. But Nash was not
+too much discouraged to say: "You came for a glimpse of the great model?
+Doesn't she sit? That's what I wanted too, this morning&mdash;just a look,
+for a blessing on the day. Ah but you, madam&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Julia had sprung into her corner while he was still speaking and had
+flashed out to the coachman a "Home!" which of itself set the horses in
+motion. The carriage went a few yards, but while Gabriel, with an
+undiscouraged bow, turned away, Nick<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span> Dormer, his hand on the edge of
+the hood, moved with it.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't like it, but I'll explain," he tried to say for its occupant
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Explain what?" she asked, still very pale and grave, but in a voice
+that showed nothing. She was thinking of the servants&mdash;she could think
+of them even then.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh it's all right. I'll come in at five," Nick returned, gallantly
+jocular, while she was whirled away.</p>
+
+<p>Gabriel had gone into the studio and Nick found him standing in
+admiration before Miriam, who had resumed the position in which she was
+sitting. "Lord, she's good to-day! Isn't she good to-day?" he broke out,
+seizing their host by the arm to give him a particular view. Miriam
+looked indeed still handsomer than before, and she had taken up her
+attitude again with a splendid, sphinx-like air of being capable of
+keeping it for ever. Nick said nothing, but went back to work with a
+tingle of confusion, which began to act after he had resumed his palette
+as a sharp, a delightful stimulus. Miriam spoke never a word, but she
+was doubly grand, and for more than an hour, till Nick, exhausted,
+declared he must stop, the industrious silence was broken only by the
+desultory discourse of their friend.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII"></a><a href="#toc">XXVII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Nick went to Great Stanhope Street at five o'clock and learned, rather
+to his surprise, that Julia was not at home&mdash;to his surprise because he
+had told her he would come at that hour, and he attributed to her, with
+a certain simplicity, an eager state of mind in regard to his
+explanation. Apparently she was not eager; the eagerness was his own&mdash;he
+was eager to explain. He recognised, not without a certain consciousness
+of magnanimity in doing so, that there had been some reason for her
+quick withdrawal from his studio or at any rate for her extreme
+discomposure there. He had a few days before put in a plea for a snatch
+of worship in that sanctuary and she had accepted and approved it; but
+the worship, when the curtain happened to blow back, showed for that of
+a magnificent young woman, an actress with disordered hair, who wore in
+a singular degree the appearance of a person settled for many hours. The
+explanation was easy: it dwelt in the simple truth that when one was
+painting, even very badly and only for a moment, one had to have models.
+Nick was impatient to give it with frank, affectionate lips and a full,
+pleasant admission that it was natural Julia should have been startled;
+and he was the more impatient that, though he would not in the least
+have expected her to like finding a strange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[380]</a></span> woman intimately installed
+with him, she had disliked it even more than would have seemed probable
+or natural. That was because, not having heard from him about the
+matter, the impression was for the moment irresistible with her that a
+trick had been played her. But three minutes with him alone would make
+the difference.</p>
+
+<p>They would indeed have a considerable difference to make, Nick
+reflected, as minutes much more numerous elapsed without bringing Mrs.
+Dallow home. For he had said to the butler that he would come in and
+wait&mdash;though it was odd she should not have left a message for him: she
+would doubtless return from one moment to the other. He had of course
+full licence to wait anywhere he preferred; and he was ushered into
+Julia's particular sitting-room and supplied with tea and the evening
+papers. After a quarter of an hour, however, he gave little attention to
+these beguilements, thanks to his feeling still more acutely that since
+she definitely knew he was coming she might have taken the trouble to be
+at home. He walked up and down and looked out of the window, took up her
+books and dropped them again, and then, as half an hour had elapsed,
+became aware he was really sore. What could she be about when, with
+London a thankless void, she was of course not paying visits? A footman
+came in to attend to the fire, whereupon Nick questioned him as to the
+manner in which she was possibly engaged. The man disclosed the fact
+that his mistress had gone out but a quarter of an hour before Nick's
+arrival, and, as if appreciating the opportunity for a little decorous
+conversation, gave him still more information than he invited. From this
+it appeared that, as Nick knew, or could surmise, she had the evening
+before, from the country, wired for the victoria to meet her in the
+morning at Paddington and then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[381]</a></span> gone straight from the station to the
+studio, while her maid, with her luggage, proceeded in a cab to Great
+Stanhope Street. On leaving the studio, however, she had not come
+directly home; she had chosen this unusual season for an hour's drive in
+the Park. She had finally re-entered her house, but had remained
+upstairs all day, seeing no one and not coming down to luncheon. At four
+o'clock she had ordered the brougham for four forty-five, and had got
+into it punctually, saying, "To the Park!" as she did so.</p>
+
+<p>Nick, after the footman had left him, made what he could of Julia's
+sudden passion for the banks of the Serpentine, forsaken and foggy now,
+inasmuch as the afternoon had come on grey and the light was waning. She
+usually hated the Park and hated a closed carriage. He had a gruesome
+vision of her, shrunken into a corner of her brougham and veiled as if
+in consequence of tears, revolving round the solitude of the Drive. She
+had of course been deeply displeased and was not herself; the motion of
+the carriage soothed her, had an effect on her nerves. Nick remembered
+that in the morning, at his door, she had appeared to be going home; so
+she had plunged into the drearier resort on second thoughts and as she
+noted herself near it. He lingered another half-hour, walked up and down
+the room many times and thought of many things. Had she misunderstood
+him when he said he would come at five? Couldn't she be sure, even if
+she had, that he would come early rather than late, and mightn't she
+have left a message for him on the chance? Going out that way a few
+minutes before he was to come had even a little the air of a thing done
+on purpose to offend him; as if she had been so displeased that she had
+taken the nearest occasion of giving him a sign she meant to break with
+him. But were these the things Julia did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[382]</a></span> and was that the way she did
+them&mdash;his fine, proud, delicate, generous Julia?</p>
+
+<p>When six o'clock came poor Nick felt distinctly resentful; but he stayed
+ten minutes longer on the possibility that she would in the morning have
+understood him to mention that hour. The April dusk began to gather and
+the unsociability of her behaviour, especially if she were still
+rumbling round the Park, became absurd. Anecdotes came back to him,
+vaguely remembered, heard he couldn't have said when or where, of poor
+artists for whom life had been rendered difficult by wives who wouldn't
+allow them the use of the living female model and who made scenes if
+they encountered on the staircase such sources of inspiration. These
+ladies struck him as vulgar and odious persons, with whom it seemed
+grotesque that Julia should have anything in common. Of course she was
+not his wife yet, and of course if she were he should have washed his
+hands of every form of activity requiring the services of the sitter;
+but even these qualifications left him with a power to wince at the way
+in which the woman he was so sure he loved just escaped ranking herself
+with the Philistines.</p>
+
+<p>At a quarter past six he rang a bell and told the servant who answered
+it that he was going and that Mrs. Dallow was to be informed as soon as
+she came in that he had expected to find her and had waited an hour and
+a quarter. But he had just reached the doorstep of departure when her
+brougham, emerging from the evening mist, stopped in front of the house.
+Nick stood there hanging back till she got out, allowing the servants
+only to help her. She saw him&mdash;she was less veiled than his mental
+vision of her; but this didn't prevent her pausing to give an order to
+the coachman, a matter apparently requiring some discussion. When she
+came to the door her visitor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[383]</a></span> remarked that he had been waiting an
+eternity; to which she replied that he must make no grievance of
+that&mdash;she was too unwell to do him justice. He immediately professed
+regret and sympathy, adding, however, that in that case she had much
+better not have gone out. She made no answer to this&mdash;there were three
+servants in the hall who looked as if they might understand at least
+what was not said to them; only when he followed her in she asked if his
+idea had been to stay longer.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, if you're not too ill to see me."</p>
+
+<p>"Come in then," Julia said, turning back after having gone to the foot
+of the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>This struck him immediately as a further restriction of his visit: she
+wouldn't readmit him to the drawing-room or to her boudoir; she would
+receive him in the impersonal apartment downstairs where she saw people
+on business. What did she want to do to him? He was prepared by this
+time for a scene of jealousy, since he was sure he had learned to read
+her character justly in feeling that if she had the appearance of a cold
+woman a forked flame in her was liable on occasion to break out. She was
+very still, but from time to time she would fire off a pistol. As soon
+as he had closed the door she said without sitting down:</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay you saw I didn't like that at all."</p>
+
+<p>"My having a sitter in that professional way? I was very much annoyed at
+it myself," Nick answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Why were <i>you</i> annoyed? She's very handsome," Mrs. Dallow perversely
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know you had looked at her!" Nick laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Julia had a pause. "Was I very rude?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh it was all right; it was only awkward for me because you didn't
+know," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"I did know; that's why I came."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[384]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"How do you mean? My letter couldn't have reached you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know anything about your letter," Julia cast about her for a
+chair and then seated herself on the edge of a sofa with her eyes on the
+floor.</p>
+
+<p>"She sat to me yesterday; she was there all the morning; but I didn't
+write to tell you. I went at her with great energy and, absurd as it may
+seem to you, found myself very tired afterwards. Besides, in the evening
+I went to see her act."</p>
+
+<p>"Does she act?" asked Mrs. Dallow.</p>
+
+<p>"She's an actress: it's her profession. Don't you remember her that day
+at Peter's in Paris? She's already a celebrity; she has great talent;
+she's engaged at a theatre here and is making a sensation. As I tell
+you, I saw her last night."</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't tell me," Julia returned, looking up at him with a face of
+which the intense, the tragic sadness startled him.</p>
+
+<p>He had been standing before her, but at this he instantly sat down
+close, taking her passive hand. "I want to, please; otherwise it must
+seem so odd to you. I knew she was coming when I wrote to you the day
+before yesterday. But I didn't tell you then because I didn't know how
+it would turn out, and I didn't want to exult in advance over a poor
+little attempt that might come to nothing. Moreover, it was no use
+speaking of the matter at all unless I told you exactly how it had come
+about," Nick went on, explaining kindly and copiously. "It was the
+result of a visit unexpectedly paid me by Gabriel Nash."</p>
+
+<p>"That man&mdash;the man who spoke to me?" Her memory of him shuddered into
+life.</p>
+
+<p>"He did what he thought would please you, but I daresay it didn't. You
+met him in Paris and didn't like him; so I judged best to hold my tongue
+about him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[385]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do <i>you</i> like him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very much."</p>
+
+<p>"Great heaven!" Julia ejaculated, almost under her breath.</p>
+
+<p>"The reason I was annoyed was because, somehow, when you came in, I
+suddenly had the air of having got out of those visits and shut myself
+up in town to do something that I had kept from you. And I have been
+very unhappy till I could explain."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't explain&mdash;you can't explain," Mrs Dallow declared, turning on
+her companion eyes which, in spite of her studied stillness, expressed
+deep excitement. "I knew it&mdash;I knew everything; that's why I came."</p>
+
+<p>"It was a sort of second-sight&mdash;what they call a brainwave," Nick
+smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I felt uneasy, I felt a kind of call; it came suddenly, yesterday. It
+was irresistible; nothing could have kept me this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"That's very serious, but it's still more delightful. You mustn't go
+away again," said Nick. "We must stick together&mdash;forever and ever."</p>
+
+<p>He put his arm round her, but she detached herself as soon as she felt
+its pressure. She rose quickly, moving away, while, mystified, he sat
+looking up at her as she had looked a few moments before at him. "I've
+thought it all over; I've been thinking of it all day," she began.
+"That's why I didn't come in."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think of it too much; it isn't worth it."</p>
+
+<p>"You like it more than anything else. You do&mdash;you can't deny it," she
+went on.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child, what are you talking about?" Nick asked, gently...</p>
+
+<p>"That's what you like&mdash;doing what you were this morning; with women
+lolling, with their things off, to be painted, and people like that
+man."</p>
+
+<p>Nick slowly got up, hesitating. "My dear Julia, apart from the surprise
+this morning, do you object to the living model?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit, for you."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the inconvenience then, since in my studio they're only for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"You love it, you revel in it; that's what you want&mdash;the only thing you
+want!" Julia broke out.</p>
+
+<p>"To have models, lolling undressed women, do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I felt, what I knew," she went on&mdash;"what came over me and
+haunted me yesterday so that I couldn't throw it off. It seemed to me
+that if I could see it with my eyes and have the perfect proof I should
+feel better, I should be quiet. And now I <i>am</i> quiet&mdash;after a struggle
+of some hours, I confess. I <i>have</i> seen; the whole thing's before me and
+I'm satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not&mdash;to me neither the whole thing nor half of it is before me.
+What exactly are you talking about?" Nick demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"About what you were doing this morning. That's your innermost
+preference, that's your secret passion."</p>
+
+<p>"A feeble scratch at something serious? Yes, it was almost serious," he
+said. "But it was an accident, this morning and yesterday: I got on less
+wretchedly than I intended."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you've immense talent," Julia returned with a dreariness that
+was almost droll.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, I might have had. I've plucked it up: it's too late for it to
+flower. My dear Julia, I'm perfectly incompetent and perfectly
+resigned."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you looked so this morning, when you hung over her. Oh she'll
+bring back your talent!"</p>
+
+<p>"She's an obliging and even an intelligent creature, and I've no doubt
+she would if she could," Nick conceded. "But I've received from you all
+the help<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[386]</a></span> any woman's destined to give me. No one can do for me again
+what you've done."</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't try it again; I acted in ignorance. Oh I've thought it all
+out!" Julia declared. And then with a strange face of anguish resting on
+his own: "Before it's too late&mdash;before it's too late!"</p>
+
+<p>"Too late for what?"</p>
+
+<p>"For you to be free&mdash;for you to be free. And for me&mdash;for me to be free
+too. You hate everything I like!" she flashed out. "Don't pretend, don't
+pretend!" she went on as a sound of protest broke from him.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you so awfully <i>wanted</i> me to paint," he gasped, flushed and
+staring.</p>
+
+<p>"I do&mdash;I do. That's why you must be free, why we must part?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why we must part&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I've turned it well over. I've faced the hard truth. It wouldn't do
+at all!" Julia rang out.</p>
+
+<p>"I like the way you talk of it&mdash;as if it were a trimming for your
+dress!" Nick retorted with bitterness. "Won't it do for you to be loved
+and cherished as well as any woman in England?"</p>
+
+<p>She turned away from him, closing her eyes as not to see something
+dangerous. "You mustn't give anything up for me. I should feel it all
+the while and I should hate it. I'm not afraid of the truth, but you
+are."</p>
+
+<p>"The truth, dear Julia? I only want to know it," Nick insisted. "It
+seems to me in fact just what I've got hold of. When two persons are
+united by the tenderest affection and are sane and generous and just, no
+difficulties that occur in the union their life makes for them are
+insurmountable, no problems are insoluble."</p>
+
+<p>She appeared for a moment to reflect upon this: it was spoken in a tone
+that might have touched her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[387]</a></span> Yet at the end of the moment, lifting her
+eyes, she brought out: "I hate art, as you call it. I thought I did, I
+knew I did; but till this morning I didn't know how much."</p>
+
+<p>"Bless your dear soul, <i>that</i> wasn't art," Nick pleaded. "The real thing
+will be a thousand miles away from us; it will never come into the
+house, <i>soyez tranquille</i>. It knows where to look in and where to flee
+shrieking. Why then should you worry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I want to understand, I want to know what I'm doing. You're an
+artist: you are, you are!" Julia cried, accusing him passionately.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor Julia, it isn't so easy as that, nor a character one can take
+on from one day to the other. There are all sorts of things; one must be
+caught young and put through the mill&mdash;one must see things as they are.
+There are very few professions that goes with. There would be sacrifices
+I never can make."</p>
+
+<p>"Well then, there are sacrifices for both of us, and I can't make them
+either. I daresay it's all right for you, but for me it would be a
+terrible mistake. When I think I'm doing a certain thing I mustn't do
+just the opposite," she kept on as for true lucidity. "There are things
+I've thought of, the things I like best; and they're not what you mean.
+It would be a great deception, and it's not the way I see my life, and
+it would be misery if we don't understand."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with eyes not lighted by her words. "If we don't
+understand what?"</p>
+
+<p>"That we're utterly different&mdash;that you're doing it all for <i>me</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"And is that an objection to me&mdash;what I do for you?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"You do too much. You're awfully good, you're generous, you're a dear,
+oh yes&mdash;a dear. But that doesn't make me believe in it. I didn't at
+bottom,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[388]</a></span> from the first&mdash;that's why I made you wait, why I gave you your
+freedom. Oh I've suspected you," Julia continued, "I had my ideas. It's
+all right for you, but it won't do for me: I'm different altogether. Why
+should it always be put upon me when I hate it? What have I done? I was
+drenched with it before." These last words, as they broke forth, were
+attended with a quick blush; so that Nick could as quickly discern in
+them the uncalculated betrayal of an old irritation, an old shame
+almost&mdash;her late husband's flat, inglorious taste for pretty things, his
+indifference to every chance to play a public part. This had been the
+humiliation of her youth, and it was indeed a perversity of fate that a
+new alliance should contain for her even an oblique demand for the same
+spirit of accommodation, impose on her the secret bitterness of the same
+concessions. As Nick stood there before her, struggling sincerely with
+the force that he now felt to be strong in her, the intense resolution
+to break with him, a force matured in a few hours, he read a riddle that
+hitherto had baffled him, saw a great mystery become simple. A personal
+passion for him had all but thrown her into his arms (the sort of thing
+that even a vain man&mdash;and Nick was not especially vain&mdash;might hesitate
+to recognise the strength of); held in check at moments, with a strain
+of the cord that he could still feel vibrate, by her deep, her rare
+ambition, and arrested at the last only just in time to save her
+calculations. His present glimpse of the immense extent of these
+calculations didn't make him think her cold or poor; there was in fact a
+positive strange heat in them and they struck him rather as grand and
+high. The fact that she could drop him even while she longed for
+him&mdash;drop him because it was now fixed in her mind that he wouldn't
+after all serve her resolve to be associated, so far as a woman could,
+with great affairs; that she could postpone,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[389]</a></span> and postpone to an
+uncertainty, the satisfaction of an aching tenderness and plan for the
+long run&mdash;this exhibition of will and courage, of the larger scheme that
+possessed her, commanded his admiration on the spot. He paid the heavy
+price of the man of imagination; he was capable of far excursions of the
+spirit, disloyalties to habit and even to faith, he was open to rare
+communications. He ached, on his side, for the moment, to convince her
+that he would achieve what he wouldn't, for the vision of his future she
+had tried to entertain shone before him as a bribe and a challenge. It
+struck him there was nothing he couldn't work for enough with her to be
+so worked with by her. Presently he said:</p>
+
+<p>"You want to be sure the man you marry will be prime minister of
+England. But how can you be really sure with any one?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can be really sure some men won't!" Julia returned.</p>
+
+<p>"The only safe thing perhaps would be to-marry Mr. Macgeorge," he
+suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly not even him."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a prime minister yourself," Nick made answer. "To hold fast to
+you as I hold, to be determined to be of your party&mdash;isn't that
+political enough, since you're the incarnation of politics?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah how you hate them!" she wailed again. "I saw that when I saw you
+this morning. The whole place reeked of your aversion."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child, the greatest statesmen have had their distractions. What
+do you make of my hereditary talent? That's a tremendous force."</p>
+
+<p>"It wouldn't carry you far." Then she terribly added, "You must be a
+great artist." He tossed his head at the involuntary contempt of this,
+but she went on: "It's beautiful of you to want to give up anything, and
+I like you for it. I shall always like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[390]</a></span> you. We shall be friends, and I
+shall always take an interest&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>But he stopped her there, made a movement which interrupted her phrase,
+and she suffered him to hold her hand as if she were not afraid of him
+now. "It isn't only for you," he argued gently; "you're a great deal,
+but you're not everything. Innumerable vows and pledges repose upon my
+head. I'm inextricably committed and dedicated. I was brought up in the
+temple like an infant Samuel; my father was a high-priest and I'm a
+child of the Lord. And then the life itself&mdash;when <i>you</i> speak of it I
+feel stirred to my depths; it's like a herald's trumpet. Fight <i>with</i>
+me, Julia&mdash;not against me! Be on my side and we shall do everything. It
+is uplifting to be a great man before the people&mdash;to be loved by them,
+to be followed by them. An artist isn't&mdash;never, never. Why <i>should</i> he
+be? Don't forget how clever I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh if it wasn't for that!" she panted, pale with the effort to resist
+his tone. Then she put it to him: "Do you pretend that if I were to die
+to-morrow you'd stay in the House?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you were to die? God knows! But you do singularly little justice to
+my incentives," he pursued. "My political career's everything to my
+mother."</p>
+
+<p>This but made her say after a moment: "Are you afraid of your mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, immensely; for she represents ever so many possibilities of
+disappointment and distress. She represents all my father's as well as
+all her own, and in them my father tragically lives again. On the other
+hand I see him in bliss, as I see my mother, over our marriage and our
+life of common aspirations&mdash;though of course that's not a consideration
+that I can expect to have power with you."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head slowly, even smiling with her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[391]</a></span> recovered calmness and
+lucidity. "You'll never hold high office."</p>
+
+<p>"But why not take me as I am?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I'm abominably keen about that sort of thing&mdash;I must recognise
+my keenness. I must face the ugly truth. I've been through the worst;
+it's all settled."</p>
+
+<p>"The worst, I suppose, was when you found me this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh that was all right&mdash;for you."</p>
+
+<p>"You're magnanimous, Julia; but evidently what's good enough for me
+isn't good enough for you." Nick spoke with bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like you enough&mdash;that's the obstacle," she held herself in hand
+to say.</p>
+
+<p>"You did a year ago; you confessed to it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, a year ago was a year ago. Things are changed to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"You're very fortunate&mdash;to be able to throw away a real devotion," Nick
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>She had her pocket-handkerchief in her hand, and at this she quickly
+pressed it to her lips as to check an exclamation. Then for an instant
+she appeared to be listening to some sound from outside. He interpreted
+her movement as an honourable impulse to repress the "Do you mean the
+devotion I was witness of this morning?" But immediately afterwards she
+said something very different: "I thought I heard a ring. I've
+telegraphed for Mrs. Gresham."</p>
+
+<p>He wondered. "Why did you do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I want her."</p>
+
+<p>He walked to the window, where the curtains had not been drawn, and saw
+in the dusk a cab at the door. When he turned back he went on: "Why
+won't you trust me to make you like me, as you call it, better? If I
+make you like me as well as I like you it will be about enough, I
+think."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[392]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh I like you enough for <i>your</i> happiness. And I don't throw away a
+devotion," Mrs. Dallow continued. "I shall be constantly kind to you. I
+shall be beautiful to you."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll make me lose a fortune," Nick after a moment said.</p>
+
+<p>It brought a slight convulsion, instantly repressed, into her face. "Ah
+you may have all the money you want!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mean yours," he answered with plenty of expression of his own.
+He had determined on the instant, since it might serve, to tell her what
+he had never breathed to her before. "Mr. Carteret last year promised me
+a pot of money on the day we should be man and wife. He has thoroughly
+set his heart on it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry to disappoint Mr. Carteret," said Julia. "I'll go and see
+him. I'll make it all right," she went on. "Then your work, you know,
+will bring you an income. The great men get a thousand just for a head."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm only joking," Nick returned with sombre eyes that contradicted this
+profession. "But what things you deserve I should do!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean striking likenesses?"</p>
+
+<p>He watched her a moment. "You do hate it! Pushed to that point, it's
+curious," he audibly mused.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean you're joking about Mr. Carteret's promise?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;the promise is real, but I don't seriously offer it as a reason."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall go to Beauclere," Julia said. "You're an hour late," she added
+in a different tone; for at that moment the door of the room was thrown
+open and Mrs. Gresham, the butler pronouncing her name, ushered in.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah don't impugn my punctuality&mdash;it's my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[393]</a></span> character!" the useful lady
+protested, putting a sixpence from the cabman into her purse. Nick went
+off at this with a simplified farewell&mdash;went off foreseeing exactly what
+he found the next day, that the useful lady would have received orders
+not to budge from her hostess's side. He called on the morrow, late in
+the afternoon, and Julia saw him liberally, in the spirit of her
+assurance that she would be "beautiful" to him, that she had not thrown
+away his devotion; but Mrs. Gresham remained, with whatever delicacies
+of deprecation, a spectator of her liberality. Julia looked at him
+kindly, but her companion was more benignant still; so that what Nick
+did with his own eyes was not to appeal to her to see him a moment
+alone, but to solicit, in the name of this luxury, the second occupant
+of the drawing-room. Mrs. Gresham seemed to say, while Julia said so
+little, "I understand, my poor friend, I know everything&mdash;she has told
+me only <i>her</i> side, but I'm so competent that I know yours too&mdash;and I
+enter into the whole thing deeply. But it would be as much as my place
+is worth to accommodate you." Still, she didn't go so far as to give him
+an inkling of what he learned on the third day and what he had not gone
+so far as to suspect&mdash;that the two ladies had made rapid arrangements
+for a scheme of foreign travel. These arrangements had already been
+carried out when, at the door of the house in Great Stanhope Street, the
+announcement was made him that the subtle creatures had started that
+morning for Paris.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[394]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII"></a><a href="#toc">XXVIII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>They spent on their way to Florence several days in Paris, where Peter
+Sherringham had as much free talk with his sister as it often befell one
+member of their family to have with another. He enjoyed, that is, on two
+different occasions, half an hour's gossip with her in her sitting-room
+at the hotel. On one of these he took the liberty of asking her whether
+or no, decidedly, she meant to marry Nick Dormer. Julia expressed to him
+that she appreciated his curiosity, but that Nick and she were nothing
+more than relations and good friends. "He tremendously wants it," Peter
+none the less observed; to which she simply made answer, "Well then, he
+may want!"</p>
+
+<p>After this, for a while, they sat as silent as if the subject had been
+quite threshed out between them. Peter felt no impulse to penetrate
+further, for it was not a habit of the Sherringhams to talk with each
+other of their love-affairs; and he was conscious of the particular
+deterrent that he and Julia entertained in general such different
+sentiments that they could never go far together in discussion. He liked
+her and was sorry for her, thought her life lonely and wondered she
+didn't make a "great" marriage. Moreover he pitied her for being without
+the interests and consolations he himself had found substantial: those
+of the intellectual, the studious order he considered these to be, not
+knowing how much she supposed she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[395]</a></span> reflected and studied and what an
+education she had found in her political aspirations, viewed by him as
+scarce more a personal part of her than the livery of her servants or
+the jewels George Dallow's money had bought. Her relations with Nick
+struck him as queer, but were fortunately none of his business. No
+business of Julia's was sufficiently his to justify him in an attempt to
+understand it. That there should have been a question of her marrying
+Nick was the funny thing rather than that the question should have been
+dropped. He liked his clever cousin very well as he was&mdash;enough for a
+vague sense that he might be spoiled by alteration to a brother-in-law.
+Moreover, though not perhaps distinctly conscious of this, Peter pressed
+lightly on Julia's doings from a tacit understanding that in this case
+she would let him off as easily. He couldn't have said exactly what it
+was he judged it pertinent to be let off from: perhaps from irritating
+inquiry as to whether he had given any more tea-parties for gross young
+women connected with the theatre.</p>
+
+<p>Peter's forbearance, however, brought him not quite all the security he
+prefigured. After an interval he indeed went so far as to ask Julia if
+Nick had been wanting in respect to her; but this was an appeal intended
+for sympathy, not for other intervention. She answered: "Dear no&mdash;though
+he's very provoking." Thus Peter guessed that they had had a quarrel in
+which it didn't concern him to meddle: he added her epithet and her
+flight from England together, and they made up to his perception one of
+the little magnified embroilments which do duty for the real in
+superficial lives. It was worse to provoke Julia than not, and Peter
+thought Nick's doing so not particularly characteristic of his
+versatility for good. He might wonder why she didn't marry the member
+for Harsh if the subject had pressingly come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[396]</a></span> up between them; but he
+wondered still more why Nick didn't marry that gentleman's great backer.
+Julia said nothing again, as if to give him a chance to address her some
+challenge that would save her from gushing; but as his impulse appeared
+to be to change the subject, and as he changed it only by silence, she
+was reduced to resuming presently:</p>
+
+<p>"I should have thought you'd have come over to see your friend the
+actress."</p>
+
+<p>"Which of my friends? I know so many actresses," Peter pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>"The woman you inflicted on us in this place a year ago&mdash;the one who's
+in London now."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Miriam Rooth? I should have liked to come over, but I've been tied
+fast. Have you seen her there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I've seen her."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you like her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all."</p>
+
+<p>"She has a lovely voice," Peter hazarded after a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know anything about her voice&mdash;I haven't heard it."</p>
+
+<p>"But she doesn't act in pantomime, does she?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know anything about her acting. I saw her in private&mdash;at Nick
+Dormer's studio."</p>
+
+<p>"At Nick's&mdash;?" He was interested now.</p>
+
+<p>"What was she doing there?"</p>
+
+<p>"She was sprawling over the room and&mdash;rather insolently&mdash;staring at me."</p>
+
+<p>If Mrs. Dallow had wished to "draw" her brother she must at this point
+have suspected she succeeded, in spite of his care to divest his tone of
+all emotion. "Why, does he know her so well? I didn't know."</p>
+
+<p>"She's sitting to him for her portrait&mdash;at least she was then."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[397]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, I remember&mdash;I put him up to that. I'm greatly interested. Is
+the portrait good?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't the least idea&mdash;I didn't look at it. I daresay it's like,"
+Julia threw off.</p>
+
+<p>"But how in the world"&mdash;and Peter's interest grew franker&mdash;"does Nick
+find time to paint?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. That horrid man brought her."</p>
+
+<p>"Which horrid man?"&mdash;he spoke as if they had their choice.</p>
+
+<p>"The one Nick thinks so clever&mdash;the vulgar little man who was at your
+place that day and tried to talk to me. I remember he abused theatrical
+people to me&mdash;as if I cared anything about them. But he has apparently
+something to do with your girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I recollect him&mdash;I had a discussion with him," Peter patiently said.</p>
+
+<p>"How could you? I must go and dress," his sister went on more
+importantly.</p>
+
+<p>"He <i>was</i> clever, remarkably. Miss Rooth and her mother were old friends
+of his, and he was the first person to speak of them to me."</p>
+
+<p>"What a distinction! I thought him disgusting!" cried Julia, who was
+pressed for time and who had now got up.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh you're severe," said Peter, still bland; but when they separated she
+had given him something to think of.</p>
+
+<p>That Nick was painting a beautiful actress was no doubt in part at least
+the reason why he was provoking and why his most intimate female friend
+had come abroad. The fact didn't render him provoking to his kinsman:
+Peter had on the contrary been quite sincere when he qualified it as
+interesting. It became indeed on reflexion so interesting that it had
+perhaps almost as much to do with Sherringham's now prompt rush over to
+London as it had to do with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[398]</a></span> Julia's coming away. Reflexion taught him
+further that the matter was altogether a delicate one and suggested that
+it was odd he should be mixed up with it in fact when, as Julia's own
+affair, he had but wished to keep out of it. It might after all be his
+affair a little as well&mdash;there was somehow a still more pointed
+implication of that in his sister's saying to him the next day that she
+wished immensely he would take a fancy to Biddy Dormer. She said more:
+she said there had been a time when she believed he <i>had</i> done
+so&mdash;believed too that the poor child herself had believed the same.
+Biddy was far away the nicest girl she knew&mdash;the dearest, sweetest,
+cleverest, <i>best</i>, and one of the prettiest creatures in England, which
+never spoiled anything. She would make as charming a wife as ever a man
+had, suited to any position, however high, and&mdash;Julia didn't mind
+mentioning it, since her brother would believe it whether she mentioned
+it or no&mdash;was so predisposed in his favour that he would have no trouble
+at all. In short she herself would see him through&mdash;she'd answer for it
+that he'd have but to speak. Biddy's life at home was horrid; she was
+very sorry for her&mdash;the child was worthy of a better fate. Peter
+wondered what constituted the horridness of Biddy's life, and gathered
+that it mainly arose from the fact of Julia's disliking Lady Agnes and
+Grace and of her profiting comfortably by that freedom to do so which
+was a fruit of her having given them a house she had perhaps not felt
+the want of till they were in possession of it. He knew she had always
+liked Biddy, but he asked himself&mdash;this was the rest of his wonder&mdash;why
+she had taken to liking her so extraordinarily just now. He liked her
+himself&mdash;he even liked to be talked to about her and could believe
+everything Julia said: the only thing that had mystified him was her
+motive for suddenly saying it. He had assured her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[399]</a></span> he was perfectly
+sensible of her goodness in so plotting out his future, but was also
+sorry if he had put it into any one's head&mdash;most of all into the girl's
+own&mdash;that he had ever looked at Biddy with a covetous eye. He wasn't in
+the least sure she would make a good wife, but liked her quite too much
+to wish to put any such mystery to the test. She was certainly not
+offered them for cruel experiments. As it happened, really, he wasn't
+thinking of marrying any one&mdash;he had ever so many grounds for neglecting
+that. Of course one was never safe against accidents, but one could at
+least take precautions, and he didn't mind telling her that there were
+several he had taken.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you mean, but it seems to me quite the best
+precaution would be to care for a charming, steady girl like Biddy. Then
+you'd be quite in shelter, you'd know the worst that can happen to you,
+and it wouldn't be bad." The objection he had made to this plea is not
+important, especially as it was not quite candid; it need only be
+mentioned that before the pair parted Julia said to him, still in
+reference to their young friend: "Do go and see her and be nice to her;
+she'll save you disappointments."</p>
+
+<p>These last words reverberated for him&mdash;there was a shade of the
+portentous in them and they seemed to proceed from a larger knowledge of
+the subject than he himself as yet possessed. They were not absent from
+his memory when, in the beginning of May, availing himself, to save
+time, of the night-service, he crossed from Paris to London. He arrived
+before the breakfast-hour and went to his sister's house in Great
+Stanhope Street, where he always found quarters, were she in town or
+not. When at home she welcomed him, and in her absence the relaxed
+servants hailed him for the chance he gave them to recover their "form."
+In either case<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[400]</a></span> his allowance of space was large and his independence
+complete. He had obtained permission this year to take in scattered
+snatches rather than as a single draught the quantum of holiday to which
+he was entitled; and there was, moreover, a question of his being
+transferred to another capital&mdash;in which event he believed he might
+count on a month or two in England before proceeding to his new post.</p>
+
+<p>He waited, after breakfast, but a very few minutes before jumping into a
+hansom and rattling away to the north. A part of his waiting indeed
+consisted of a fidgety walk up Bond Street, during which he looked at
+his watch three or four times while he paused at shop windows for fear
+of being a little early. In the cab, as he rolled along, after having
+given an address&mdash;Balaklava Place, Saint John's Wood&mdash;the fear he might
+be too early took curiously at moments the form of a fear that he should
+be too late: a symbol of the inconsistencies of which his spirit at
+present was full. Peter Sherringham was nervously formed, too nervously
+for a diplomatist, and haunted with inclinations and indeed with designs
+which contradicted each other. He wanted to be out of it and yet dreaded
+not to be in it, and on this particular occasion the sense of exclusion
+was an ache. At the same time he was not unconscious of the impulse to
+stop his cab and make it turn round and drive due south. He saw himself
+launched in the breezy fact while morally speaking he was hauled up on
+the hot sand of the principle, and he could easily note how little these
+two faces of the same idea had in common. However, as the consciousness
+of going helped him to reflect, a principle was a poor affair if it
+merely became a fact. Yet from the hour it did turn to action the action
+<i>had</i> to be the particular one in which he was engaged; so that he was
+in the absurd position of thinking his conduct wiser<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[401]</a></span> for the reason
+that it was directly opposed to his intentions.</p>
+
+<p>He had kept away from London ever since Miriam Rooth came over;
+resisting curiosity, sympathy, importunate haunting passion, and
+considering that his resistance, founded, to be salutary, on a general
+scheme of life, was the greatest success he had yet achieved. He was
+deeply occupied with plucking up the feeling that attached him to her,
+and he had already, by various little ingenuities, loosened some of its
+roots. He had suffered her to make her first appearance on any stage
+without the comfort of his voice or the applause of his hand; saying to
+himself that the man who could do the more could do the less and that
+such an act of fortitude was a proof he should keep straight. It was not
+exactly keeping straight to run over to London three months later and,
+the hour he arrived, scramble off to Balaklava Place; but after all he
+pretended only to be human and aimed in behaviour only at the heroic,
+never at the monstrous. The highest heroism was obviously three parts
+tact. He had not written to his young friend that he was coming to
+England and would call upon her at eleven o'clock in the morning,
+because it was his secret pride that he had ceased to correspond with
+her. Sherringham took his prudence where he could find it, and in doing
+so was rather like a drunkard who should flatter himself he had forsworn
+liquor since he didn't touch lemonade.</p>
+
+<p>It is a sign of how far he was drawn in different directions at once
+that when, on reaching Balaklava Place and alighting at the door of a
+small detached villa of the type of the "retreat," he learned that Miss
+Rooth had but a quarter of an hour before quitted the spot with her
+mother&mdash;they had gone to the theatre, to rehearsal, said the maid who
+answered the bell he had set tinkling behind a stuccoed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[402]</a></span> garden-wall:
+when at the end of his pilgrimage he was greeted by a disappointment he
+suddenly found himself relieved and for the moment even saved.
+Providence was after all taking care of him and he submitted to
+Providence. He would still be watched over doubtless, even should he
+follow the two ladies to the theatre, send in his card and obtain
+admission to the scene of their experiments. All his keen taste for
+these matters flamed up again, and he wondered what the girl was
+studying, was rehearsing, what she was to do next. He got back into his
+hansom and drove down the Edgware Road. By the time he reached the
+Marble Arch he had changed his mind again, had determined to let Miriam
+alone for that day. It would be over at eight in the evening&mdash;he hardly
+played fair&mdash;and then he should consider himself free. Instead of
+pursuing his friends he directed himself upon a shop in Bond Street to
+take a place for their performance. On first coming out he had tried, at
+one of those establishments strangely denominated "libraries," to get a
+stall, but the people to whom he applied were unable to accommodate
+him&mdash;they hadn't a single seat left. His actual attempt, at another
+library, was more successful: there was no question of obtaining a
+stall, but he might by a miracle still have a box. There was a
+wantonness in paying for a box at a play on which he had already
+expended four hundred pounds; but while he was mentally measuring this
+abyss an idea came into his head which flushed the extravagance with the
+hue of persuasion.</p>
+
+<p>Peter came out of the shop with the voucher for the box in his pocket,
+turned into Piccadilly, noted that the day was growing warm and fine,
+felt glad that this time he had no other strict business than to leave a
+card or two on official people, and asked himself where he should go if
+he didn't go after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[403]</a></span> Miriam. Then it was that he found himself attaching
+a lively desire and imputing a high importance to the possible view of
+Nick Dormer's portrait of her. He wondered which would be the natural
+place at that hour of the day to look for the artist. The House of
+Commons was perhaps the nearest one, but Nick, inconsequent and
+incalculable though so many of his steps, probably didn't keep the
+picture there; and, moreover, it was not generally characteristic of him
+to be in the natural place. The end of Peter's debate was that he again
+entered a hansom and drove to Calcutta Gardens. The hour was early for
+calling, but cousins with whom one's intercourse was mainly a
+conversational scuffle would accept it as a practical illustration of
+that method. And if Julia wanted him to be nice to Biddy&mdash;which was
+exactly, even if with a different view, what he wanted himself&mdash;how
+could he better testify than by a visit to Lady Agnes&mdash;he would have in
+decency to go to see her some time&mdash;at a friendly, fraternising hour
+when they would all be likely to be at home?</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, as it turned out, they were none of them at home, so that
+he had to fall back on neutrality and the butler, who was, however, more
+luckily, an old friend. Her ladyship and Miss Dormer were absent from
+town, paying a visit; and Mr. Dormer was also away, or was on the point
+of going away for the day. Miss Bridget was in London, but was out;
+Peter's informant mentioned with earnest vagueness that he thought she
+had gone somewhere to take a lesson. On Peter's asking what sort of
+lesson he meant he replied: "Oh I think&mdash;a&mdash;the a-sculpture, you know,
+sir." Peter knew, but Biddy's lesson in "a-sculpture"&mdash;it sounded on the
+butler's lips like a fashionable new art&mdash;struck him a little as a
+mockery of the helpful spirit in which he had come to look her up. The
+man had an air of participating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[404]</a></span> respectfully in his disappointment and,
+to make up for it, added that he might perhaps find Mr. Dormer at his
+other address. He had gone out early and had directed his servant to
+come to Rosedale Road in an hour or two with a portmanteau: he was going
+down to Beauclere in the course of the day, Mr. Carteret being
+ill&mdash;perhaps Mr. Sherringham didn't know it. Perhaps too Mr. Sherringham
+would catch him in Rosedale Road before he took his train&mdash;he was to
+have been busy there for an hour. This was worth trying, and Peter
+immediately drove to Rosedale Road; where in answer to his ring the door
+was opened to him by Biddy Dormer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[405]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX"></a><a href="#toc">XXIX</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>When that young woman saw him her cheek exhibited the prettiest,
+pleased, surprised red he had ever observed there, though far from
+unacquainted with its living tides, and she stood smiling at him with
+the outer dazzle in her eyes, still making him no motion to enter. She
+only said, "Oh Peter!" and then, "I'm all alone."</p>
+
+<p>"So much the better, dear Biddy. Is that any reason I shouldn't come
+in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear no&mdash;do come in. You've just missed Nick; he has gone to the
+country&mdash;half an hour ago." She had on a large apron and in her hand
+carried a small stick, besmeared, as his quick eye saw, with
+modelling-clay. She dropped the door and fled back before him into the
+studio, where, when he followed her, she was in the act of flinging a
+damp cloth over a rough head, in clay, which, in the middle of the room,
+was supported on a high wooden stand. The effort to hide what she had
+been doing before he caught a glimpse of it made her redder still and
+led to her smiling more, to her laughing with a confusion of shyness and
+gladness that charmed him. She rubbed her hands on her apron, she pulled
+it off, she looked delightfully awkward, not meeting Peter's eye, and
+she said: "I'm just scraping here a little&mdash;you mustn't mind me. What I
+do is awful, you know. <i>Please</i>, Peter, don't look, I've been coming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[406]</a></span>
+here lately to make my little mess, because mamma doesn't particularly
+like it at home. I've had a lesson or two from a lady who exhibits, but
+you wouldn't suppose it to see what I do. Nick's so kind; he lets me
+come here; he uses the studio so little; I do what I want, or rather
+what I can. What a pity he's gone&mdash;he'd have been so glad. I'm really
+alone&mdash;I hope you don't mind. Peter, <i>please</i> don't look."</p>
+
+<p>Peter was not bent on looking; his eyes had occupation enough in Biddy's
+own agreeable aspect, which was full of a rare element of domestication
+and responsibility. Though she had, stretching her bravery, taken
+possession of her brother's quarters, she struck her visitor as more at
+home and more herself than he had ever seen her. It was the first time
+she had been, to his notice, so separate from her mother and sister. She
+seemed to know this herself and to be a little frightened by it&mdash;just
+enough to make him wish to be reassuring. At the same time Peter also,
+on this occasion, found himself touched with diffidence, especially
+after he had gone back and closed the door and settled down to a regular
+call; for he became acutely conscious of what Julia had said to him in
+Paris and was unable to rid himself of the suspicion that it had been
+said with Biddy's knowledge. It wasn't that he supposed his sister had
+told the girl she meant to do what she could to make him propose to her:
+that would have been cruel to her&mdash;if she liked him enough to
+consent&mdash;in Julia's perfect uncertainty. But Biddy participated by
+imagination, by divination, by a clever girl's secret, tremulous
+instincts, in her good friend's views about her, and this probability
+constituted for Sherringham a sort of embarrassing publicity. He had
+impressions, possibly gross and unjust, in regard to the way women move
+constantly together amid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[407]</a></span> such considerations and subtly
+intercommunicate, when they don't still more subtly dissemble, the hopes
+or fears of which persons of the opposite sex form the subject.
+Therefore poor Biddy would know that if she failed to strike him in the
+right light it wouldn't be for want of an attention definitely called to
+her claims. She would have been tacitly rejected, virtually condemned.
+He couldn't without an impulse of fatuity endeavour to make up for this
+to her by consoling kindness; he was aware that if any one knew it a man
+would be ridiculous who should take so much as that for granted. But no
+one would know it: he oddly enough in this calculation of security left
+Biddy herself out. It didn't occur to him that she might have a secret,
+small irony to spare for his ingenious and magnanimous effort to show
+her how much he liked her in reparation to her for not liking her more.
+This high charity coloured at any rate the whole of his visit to
+Rosedale Road, the whole of the pleasant, prolonged chat that kept him
+there more than an hour. He begged the girl to go on with her work, not
+to let him interrupt it; and she obliged him at last, taking the cloth
+off the lump of clay and giving him a chance to be delightful by
+guessing that the shapeless mass was intended, or would be intended
+after a while, for Nick. He saw she was more comfortable when she began
+again to smooth it and scrape it with her little stick, to manipulate it
+with an ineffectual air of knowing how; for this gave her something to
+do, relieved her nervousness and permitted her to turn away from him
+when she talked.</p>
+
+<p>He walked about the room and sat down; got up and looked at Nick's
+things; watched her at moments in silence&mdash;which made her always say in
+a minute that he was not to pass judgement or she could do nothing;
+observed how her position before her high<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[408]</a></span> stand, her lifted arms, her
+turns of the head, considering her work this way and that, all helped
+her to be pretty. She repeated again and again that it was an immense
+pity about Nick, till he was obliged to say he didn't care a straw for
+Nick and was perfectly content with the company he found. This was not
+the sort of tone he thought it right, given the conditions, to take; but
+then even the circumstances didn't require him to pretend he liked her
+less than he did. After all she was his cousin; she would cease to be so
+if she should become his wife; but one advantage of her not entering
+into that relation was precisely that she would remain his cousin. It
+was very pleasant to find a young, bright, slim, rose-coloured kinswoman
+all ready to recognise consanguinity when one came back from cousinless
+foreign lands. Peter talked about family matters; he didn't know, in his
+exile, where no one took an interest in them, what a fund of latent
+curiosity about them he treasured. It drew him on to gossip accordingly
+and to feel how he had with Biddy indefeasible properties in
+common&mdash;ever so many things as to which they'd always understand each
+other <i>&agrave; demi-mot</i>. He smoked a cigarette because she begged him&mdash;people
+always smoked in studios and it made her feel so much more an artist.
+She apologised for the badness of her work on the ground that Nick was
+so busy he could scarcely ever give her a sitting; so that she had to do
+the head from photographs and occasional glimpses. They had hoped to be
+able to put in an hour that morning, but news had suddenly come that Mr.
+Carteret was worse, and Nick had hurried down to Beauclere. Mr. Carteret
+was very ill, poor old dear, and Nick and he were immense friends. Nick
+had always been charming to him. Peter and Biddy took the concerns of
+the houses of Dormer and Sherringham in order, and the young man felt
+after a little as if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[409]</a></span> they were as wise as a French <i>conseil de famille</i>
+and settling what was best for every one. He heard all about Lady Agnes;
+he showed an interest in the detail of her existence that he had not
+supposed himself to possess, though indeed Biddy threw out intimations
+which excited his curiosity, presenting her mother in a light that might
+call on his sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think she has been very happy or very pleased of late," the
+girl said. "I think she has had some disappointments, poor dear mamma;
+and Grace has made her go out of town for three or four days in the hope
+of a little change. They've gone down to see an old lady, Lady St.
+Dunstans, who never comes to London now and who, you know&mdash;she's
+tremendously old&mdash;was papa's godmother. It's not very lively for Grace,
+but Grace is such a dear she'll do anything for mamma. Mamma will go
+anywhere, no matter at what risk of discomfort, to see people she can
+talk with about papa."</p>
+
+<p>Biddy added in reply to a further question that what her mother was
+disappointed about was&mdash;well, themselves, her children and all their
+affairs; and she explained that Lady Agnes wanted all kinds of things
+for them that didn't come, that they didn't get or seem likely to get,
+so that their life appeared altogether a failure. She wanted a great
+deal, Biddy admitted; she really wanted everything, for she had thought
+in her happier days that everything was to be hers. She loved them all
+so much and was so proud too: she couldn't get over the thought of their
+not being successful. Peter was unwilling to press at this point, for he
+suspected one of the things Lady Agnes wanted; but Biddy relieved him a
+little by describing her as eager above all that Grace should get
+married.</p>
+
+<p>"That's too unselfish of her," he pronounced, not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[410]</a></span> caring at all for
+Grace. "Cousin Agnes ought to keep her near her always, if Grace is so
+obliging and devoted."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh mamma would give up anything of that sort for our good; she wouldn't
+sacrifice us that way!" Biddy protested. "Besides, I'm the one to stay
+with mamma; not that I can manage and look after her and do everything
+so well as Grace. But, you know, I <i>want</i> to," said Biddy with a liquid
+note in her voice&mdash;and giving her lump of clay a little stab for
+mendacious emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"But doesn't your mother want the rest of you to get married&mdash;Percival
+and Nick and you?" Peter asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh she has given up Percy. I don't suppose she thinks it would do. Dear
+Nick of course&mdash;that's just what she does want."</p>
+
+<p>He had a pause. "And you, Biddy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I daresay. But that doesn't signify&mdash;I never shall."</p>
+
+<p>Peter got up at this; the tone of it set him in motion and he took a
+turn round the room. He threw off something cheap about her being too
+proud; to which she replied that that was the only thing for a girl to
+be to get on.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by getting on?"&mdash;and he stopped with his hands in his
+pockets on the other side of the studio.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean crying one's eyes out!" Biddy unexpectedly exclaimed; but she
+drowned the effect of this pathetic paradox in a laugh of clear
+irrelevance and in the quick declaration: "Of course it's about Nick
+that she's really broken-hearted."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with Nick?" he went on with all his diplomacy.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Peter, what's the matter with Julia?" Biddy quavered softly back to
+him, her eyes suddenly frank<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[411]</a></span> and mournful. "I daresay you know what we
+all hoped, what we all supposed from what they told us. And now they
+won't!" said the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Biddy, I know. I had the brightest prospect of becoming your
+brother-in-law: wouldn't that have been it&mdash;or something like that? But
+it's indeed visibly clouded. What's the matter with them? May I have
+another cigarette?" Peter came back to the wide, cushioned bench where
+he had previously lounged: this was the way they took up the subject he
+wanted most to look into. "Don't they know how to love?" he speculated
+as he seated himself again.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems a kind of fatality!" Biddy sighed.</p>
+
+<p>He said nothing for some moments, at the end of which he asked if his
+companion were to be quite alone during her mother's absence. She
+replied that this parent was very droll about that: would never leave
+her alone and always thought something dreadful would happen to her. She
+had therefore arranged that Florence Tressilian should come and stay in
+Calcutta Gardens for the next few days&mdash;to look after her and see she
+did no wrong. Peter inquired with fulness into Florence Tressilian's
+identity: he greatly hoped that for the success of Lady Agnes's
+precautions she wasn't a flighty young genius like Biddy. She was
+described to him as tremendously nice and tremendously clever, but also
+tremendously old and tremendously safe; with the addition that Biddy was
+tremendously fond of her and that while she remained in Calcutta Gardens
+they expected to enjoy themselves tremendously. She was to come that
+afternoon before dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"And are you to dine at home?" said Peter.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly; where else?"</p>
+
+<p>"And just you two alone? Do you call that enjoying yourselves
+tremendously?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[412]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It will do for me. No doubt I oughtn't in modesty to speak for poor
+Florence."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't fair to her; you ought to invite some one to meet her."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean you, Peter?" the girl asked, turning to him quickly and
+with a look that vanished the instant he caught it.</p>
+
+<p>"Try me. I'll come like a shot."</p>
+
+<p>"That's kind," said Biddy, dropping her hands and now resting her eyes
+on him gratefully. She remained in this position as if under a charm;
+then she jerked herself back to her work with the remark: "Florence will
+like that immensely."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm delighted to please Florence&mdash;your description of her's so
+attractive!" Sherringham laughed. And when his companion asked him if he
+minded there not being a great feast, because when her mother went away
+she allowed her a fixed amount for that sort of thing and, as he might
+imagine, it wasn't millions&mdash;when Biddy, with the frankness of their
+pleasant kinship, touched anxiously on this economic point
+(illustrating, as Peter saw, the lucidity with which Lady Agnes had had
+in her old age to learn to recognise the occasions when she could be
+conveniently frugal) he answered that the shortest dinners were the
+best, especially when one was going to the theatre. That was his case
+to-night, and did Biddy think he might look to Miss Tressilian to go
+with them? They'd have to dine early&mdash;he wanted not to miss a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"The theatre&mdash;Miss Tressilian?" she stared, interrupted and in suspense
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"Would it incommode you very much to dine say at 7.15 and accept a place
+in my box? The finger of Providence was in it when I took a box an hour
+ago. I particularly like your being free to go&mdash;if you are free."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[413]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She began almost to rave with pleasure. "Dear Peter, how good you are!
+They'll have it at any hour. Florence will be so glad."</p>
+
+<p>"And has Florence seen Miss Rooth?"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Rooth?" the girl repeated, redder than before. He felt on the spot
+that she had heard of the expenditure of his time and attention on that
+young lady. It was as if she were conscious of how conscious he would
+himself be in speaking of her, and there was a sweetness in her
+allowance for him on that score. But Biddy was more confused for him
+than he was for himself. He guessed in a moment how much she had thought
+over what she had heard; this was indicated by her saying vaguely, "No,
+no, I've not seen her." Then she knew she was answering a question he
+hadn't asked her, and she went on: "We shall be too delighted. I saw
+her&mdash;perhaps you remember&mdash;in your rooms in Paris. I thought her so
+wonderful then! Every one's talking of her here. But we don't go to the
+theatre much, you know: we don't have boxes offered us except when <i>you</i>
+come. Poor Nick's too much taken up in the evening. I've wanted awfully
+to see her. They say she's magnificent."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," Peter was glad to be able honestly to answer. "I haven't
+seen her."</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't seen her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never, Biddy. I mean on the stage. In private often&mdash;yes," he
+conscientiously added.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Biddy exclaimed, bending her face on Nick's bust again. She asked
+him no question about the new star, and he offered her no further
+information. There were things in his mind pulling him different ways,
+so that for some minutes silence was the result of the conflict. At last
+he said, after an hesitation caused by the possibility that she was
+ignorant of the fact he had lately elicited from Julia,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[414]</a></span> though it was
+more probable she might have learned it from the same source:</p>
+
+<p>"Am I perhaps indiscreet in alluding to the circumstance that Nick has
+been painting Miss Rooth's portrait?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're not indiscreet in alluding to it to me, because I know it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there's no secret nor mystery about it?"</p>
+
+<p>Biddy just considered. "I don't think mamma knows it."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you've been keeping it from her because she wouldn't like it?"</p>
+
+<p>"We're afraid she may think papa wouldn't have liked it."</p>
+
+<p>This was said with an absence of humour at which Peter could but show
+amusement, though he quickly recovered himself, repenting of any
+apparent failure of respect to the high memory of his late celebrated
+relative. He threw off rather vaguely: "Ah yes, I remember that great
+man's ideas," and then went on: "May I ask if you know it, the fact
+we're talking of, through Julia or through Nick?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know it from both of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Then if you're in their confidence may I further ask if this
+undertaking of Nick's is the reason why things seem to be at an end
+between them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I don't think she likes it," Biddy had to say.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it good?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I don't mean the picture&mdash;she hasn't seen it. But his having done
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Does she dislike it so much that that's why she won't marry him?"</p>
+
+<p>Biddy gave up her work, moving away from it to look at it. She came and
+sat down on the long bench on which Sherringham had placed himself. Then
+she broke out: "Oh Peter, it's a great trouble&mdash;it's a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[415]</a></span> very great
+trouble; and I can't tell you, for I don't understand it."</p>
+
+<p>"If I ask you," he said, "it's not to pry into what doesn't concern me;
+but Julia's my sister, and I can't after all help taking some interest
+in her life. She tells me herself so little. She doesn't think me
+worthy."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah poor Julia!" Biddy wailed defensively. Her tone recalled to him that
+Julia had at least thought him worthy to unite himself to Bridget
+Dormer, and inevitably betrayed that the girl was thinking of that also.
+While they both thought of it they sat looking into each other's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Nick, I'm sure, doesn't treat <i>you</i> that way; I'm sure he confides in
+you; he talks to you about his occupations, his ambitions," Peter
+continued. "And you understand him, you enter into them, you're nice to
+him, you help him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Nick's life&mdash;it's very dear to me," Biddy granted.</p>
+
+<p>"That must be jolly for him."</p>
+
+<p>"It makes <i>me</i> very happy."</p>
+
+<p>Peter uttered a low, ambiguous groan; then he cried with irritation;
+"What the deuce is the matter with them then? Why can't they hit it off
+together and be quiet and rational and do what every one wants them to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Peter, it's awfully complicated!" the girl sighed with sagacity.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that Nick's in love with her?"</p>
+
+<p>"In love with Julia?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, with Miriam Rooth."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head slowly, then with a smile which struck him as one of
+the sweetest things he had ever seen&mdash;it conveyed, at the expense of her
+own prospects, such a shy, generous little mercy of reassurance&mdash;"He
+isn't, Peter," she brought out. "Julia<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[416]</a></span> thinks it trifling&mdash;all that
+sort of thing," she added "She wants him to go in for different
+honours."</p>
+
+<p>"Julia's the oddest woman. I mean I thought she loved him," Peter
+explained. "And when you love a person&mdash;!" He continued to make it out,
+leaving his sentence impatiently unfinished, while Biddy, with lowered
+eyes, sat waiting&mdash;it so interested her&mdash;to learn what you did when you
+loved a person. "I can't conceive her giving him up. He has great
+ability, besides being such a good fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"It's for his happiness, Peter&mdash;that's the way she reasons," Biddy set
+forth. "She does it for an idea; she has told me a great deal about it,
+and I see the way she feels."</p>
+
+<p>"You try to, Biddy, because you're such a dear good-natured girl, but I
+don't believe you do in the least," he took the liberty of replying.
+"It's too little the way you yourself would feel. Julia's idea, as you
+call it, must be curious."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it is, Peter," Biddy mournfully admitted. "She won't risk not
+coming out at the top."</p>
+
+<p>"At the top of what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh of everything." Her tone showed a trace of awe of such high views.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely one's at the top of everything when one's in love."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," said the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you doubt it?" Peter asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I've never been in love and I never shall be."</p>
+
+<p>"You're as perverse, in your way, as Julia," he returned to this. "But I
+confess I don't understand Nick's attitude any better. He seems to me,
+if I may say so, neither fish nor flesh."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh his attitude's very noble, Peter; his state of mind's wonderfully
+interesting," Biddy pleaded. "Surely <i>you</i> must be in favour of art,"
+she beautifully said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[417]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It made him look at her a moment. "Dear Biddy, your little digs are as
+soft as zephyrs."</p>
+
+<p>She coloured, but she protested. "My little digs? What do you mean?
+Aren't you in favour of art?"</p>
+
+<p>"The question's delightfully simple. I don't know what you're talking
+about. Everything has its place. A parliamentary life," he opined,
+"scarce seems to me the situation for portrait-painting."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what Nick says."</p>
+
+<p>"You talk of it together a great deal?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Nick's very good to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Clever Nick! And what do you advise him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh to <i>do</i> something."</p>
+
+<p>"That's valuable," Peter laughed. "Not to give up his sweetheart for the
+sake of a paint-pot, I hope?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never, never, Peter! It's not a question of his giving up," Biddy
+pursued, "for Julia has herself shaken free. I think she never really
+felt safe&mdash;she loved him, but was afraid of him. Now she's only
+afraid&mdash;she has lost the confidence she tried to have. Nick has tried to
+hold her, but she has wrested herself away. Do you know what she said to
+me? She said, 'My confidence has gone for ever.'"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know she was such a prig!" Julia's brother commented. "They're
+queer people, verily, with water in their veins instead of blood. You
+and I wouldn't be like that, should we?&mdash;though you <i>have</i> taken up such
+a discouraging position about caring for a fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"I care for art," poor Biddy returned.</p>
+
+<p>"You do, to some purpose"&mdash;and Peter glanced at the bust.</p>
+
+<p>"To that of making you laugh at me."</p>
+
+<p>But this he didn't heed. "Would you give a good man up for 'art'?"</p>
+
+<p>"A good man? What man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, say me&mdash;if I wanted to marry you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[418]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She had the briefest of pauses. "Of course I would&mdash;in a moment. At any
+rate I'd give up the House of Commons," she amended. "That's what Nick's
+going to do now&mdash;only you mustn't tell any one."</p>
+
+<p>Peter wondered. "He's going to chuck up his seat?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think his mind is made up to it. He has talked me over&mdash;we've had
+some deep discussions. Yes, I'm on the side of art!" she ardently said.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean in order to paint&mdash;to paint that girl?" Peter went on.</p>
+
+<p>"To paint every one&mdash;that's what he wants. By keeping his seat he hasn't
+kept Julia, and she was the thing he cared for most in public life. When
+he has got out of the whole thing his attitude, as he says, will be at
+least clear. He's tremendously interesting about it, Peter," Biddy
+declared; "has talked to me wonderfully&mdash;has won me over. Mamma's
+heart-broken; telling <i>her</i> will be the hardest part."</p>
+
+<p>"If she doesn't know," he asked, "why then is she heart-broken?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh at the hitch about their marriage&mdash;she knows that. Their marriage
+has been so what she wanted. She thought it perfection. She blames Nick
+fearfully. She thinks he held the whole thing in his hand and that he
+has thrown away a magnificent opportunity."</p>
+
+<p>"And what does Nick say to her?"</p>
+
+<p>"He says, 'Dear old mummy!'"</p>
+
+<p>"That's good," Peter pronounced.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what will become of her when this other blow arrives,"
+Biddy went on. "Poor Nick wants to please her&mdash;he does, he does. But, as
+he says, you can't please every one and you must before you die please
+yourself a little."</p>
+
+<p>Nick's kinsman, whose brother-in-law he was to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[419]</a></span> have been, sat looking
+at the floor; the colour had risen to his face while he listened. Then
+he sprang up and took another turn about the room. His companion's
+artless but vivid recital had set his blood in motion. He had taken
+Nick's political prospects very much for granted, thought of them as
+definite and almost dazzling. To learn there was something for which he
+was ready to renounce such honours, and to recognise the nature of that
+bribe, affected our young man powerfully and strangely. He felt as if he
+had heard the sudden blare of a trumpet, yet felt at the same time as if
+he had received a sudden slap in the face. Nick's bribe was "art"&mdash;the
+strange temptress with whom he himself had been wrestling and over whom
+he had finally ventured to believe that wisdom and training had won a
+victory. There was something in the conduct of his old friend and
+playfellow that made all his reasonings small. So unexpected, so
+courageous a choice moved him as a reproach and a challenge. He felt
+ashamed of having placed himself so unromantically on his guard, and
+rapidly said to himself that if Nick could afford to allow so much for
+"art" he might surely exhibit some of the same confidence. There had
+never been the least avowed competition between the cousins&mdash;their lines
+lay too far apart for that; but they nevertheless rode their course in
+sight of each other, and Peter had now the impression of suddenly seeing
+Nick Dormer give his horse the spur, bound forward and fly over a wall.
+He was put on his mettle and hadn't to look long to spy an obstacle he
+too might ride at. High rose his curiosity to see what warrant his
+kinsman might have for such risks&mdash;how he was mounted for such exploits.
+He really knew little about Nick's talent&mdash;so little as to feel no right
+to exclaim "What an ass!" when Biddy mentioned the fact which the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[420]</a></span>
+existence of real talent alone could redeem from absurdity. All his
+eagerness to see what Nick had been able to make of such a subject as
+Miriam Rooth came back to him: though it was what mainly had brought him
+to Rosedale Road he had forgotten it in the happy accident of his
+encounter with the girl. He was conscious that if the surprise of a
+revelation of power were in store for him Nick would be justified more
+than he himself would feel reinstated in self-respect; since the courage
+of renouncing the forum for the studio hovered before him as greater
+than the courage of marrying an actress whom one was in love with: the
+reward was in the latter case so much more immediate. Peter at any rate
+asked Biddy what Nick had done with his portrait of Miriam. He hadn't
+seen it anywhere in rummaging about the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's here somewhere, but I don't know," she replied, getting up
+to look vaguely round her.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you seen it? Hasn't he shown it to you?"</p>
+
+<p>She rested her eyes on him strangely a moment, then turned them away
+with a mechanical air of still searching. "I think it's in the room, put
+away with its face to the wall."</p>
+
+<p>"One of those dozen canvases with their backs to us?"</p>
+
+<p>"One of those perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you tried to see?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't touched them"&mdash;and Biddy had a colour.</p>
+
+<p>"Hasn't Nick had it out to show you?"</p>
+
+<p>"He says it's in too bad a state&mdash;it isn't finished&mdash;it won't do."</p>
+
+<p>"And haven't you had the curiosity to turn it round for yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>The embarrassed look in her face deepened under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[421]</a></span> his insistence and it
+seemed to him that her eyes pleaded with him a moment almost to tears.
+"I've had an idea he wouldn't like it."</p>
+
+<p>Her visitor's own desire, however, had become too sharp for easy
+forbearance. He laid his hand on two or three canvases which proved, as
+he extricated them, to be either blank or covered with rudimentary
+forms. "Dear Biddy, have you such intense delicacy?" he asked, pulling
+out something else.</p>
+
+<p>The inquiry was meant in familiar kindness, for Peter was struck even to
+admiration with her having a sense of honour that all girls haven't. She
+must in this particular case have longed for a sight of Nick's work&mdash;the
+work that had brought about such a crisis in his life. But she had
+passed hours in his studio alone without permitting herself a stolen
+peep; she was capable of that if she believed it would please him. Peter
+liked a charming girl's being capable of that&mdash;he had known charming
+girls who wouldn't in the least have been&mdash;and his question was really a
+form of homage. Biddy, however, apparently discovered some light mockery
+in it, and she broke out incongruously:</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't wanted so much to see it! I don't care for her so much as
+that!"</p>
+
+<p>"So much as what?" He couldn't but wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care for his actress&mdash;for that vulgar creature. I don't like
+her!" said Biddy almost startlingly.</p>
+
+<p>Peter stared. "I thought you hadn't seen her."</p>
+
+<p>"I saw her in Paris&mdash;twice. She was wonderfully clever, but she didn't
+charm me."</p>
+
+<p>He quickly considered, saying then all kindly: "I won't inflict the
+thing on you in that case&mdash;we'll leave it alone for the present." Biddy
+made no reply to this at first, but after a moment went straight over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[422]</a></span>
+to the row of stacked canvases and exposed several of them to the light.
+"Why did you say you wished to go to the theatre to-night?" her
+companion continued.</p>
+
+<p>Still she was silent; after which, with her back turned to him and a
+little tremor in her voice while she drew forth successively her
+brother's studies, she made answer: "For the sake of your company,
+Peter! Here it is, I think," she added, moving a large canvas with some
+effort. "No, no, I'll hold it for you. Is that the light?"</p>
+
+<p>She wouldn't let him take it; she bade him stand off and allow her to
+place it in the right position. In this position she carefully presented
+it, supporting it at the proper angle from behind and showing her head
+and shoulders above it. From the moment his eyes rested on the picture
+Peter accepted this service without protest. Unfinished, simplified and
+in some portions merely suggested, it was strong, vivid and assured, it
+had already the look of life and the promise of power. Peter felt all
+this and was startled, was strangely affected&mdash;he had no idea Nick moved
+with that stride. Miriam, seated, was represented in three-quarters,
+almost to her feet. She leaned forward with one of her legs crossed over
+the other, her arms extended and foreshortened, her hands locked
+together round her knee. Her beautiful head was bent a little,
+broodingly, and her splendid face seemed to look down at life. She had a
+grand appearance of being raised aloft, with a wide regard, a survey
+from a height of intelligence, for the great field of the artist, all
+the figures and passions he may represent. Peter asked himself where his
+kinsman had learned to paint like that. He almost gasped at the
+composition of the thing and at the drawing of the difficult arms. Biddy
+abstained from looking round the corner of the canvas as she held it;
+she only watched, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[423]</a></span> Peter's eyes, for this gentleman's impression of
+it. That she easily caught, and he measured her impression&mdash;her
+impression of <i>his</i> impression&mdash;when he went after a few minutes to
+relieve her. She let him lift the thing out of her grasp; he moved it
+and rested it, so that they could still see it, against the high back of
+a chair. "It's tremendously good," he then handsomely pronounced.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear, dear Nick," Biddy murmured, looking at it now.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor, poor Julia!" Peter was prompted to exclaim in a different tone.
+His companion made no rejoinder to this, and they stood another minute
+or two side by side and in silence, gazing at the portrait. At last he
+took up his hat&mdash;he had no more time, he must go. "Will you come
+to-night all the same?" he asked with a laugh that was somewhat awkward
+and an offer of a hand-shake.</p>
+
+<p>"All the same?" Biddy seemed to wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"Why you say she's a terrible creature," Peter completed with his eyes
+on the painted face.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh anything for art!" Biddy smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, at seven o'clock then." And Sherringham departed, leaving the
+girl alone with the Tragic Muse and feeling with a quickened rush the
+beauty of that young woman as well as, all freshly, the peculiar
+possibilities of Nick.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[424]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXX" id="XXX"></a><a href="#toc">XXX</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>It was not till after the noon of the next day that he was to see Miriam
+Rooth. He wrote her a note that evening, to be delivered to her at the
+theatre, and during the performance she sent round to him a card with
+"All right, come to luncheon to-morrow" scrawled on it in pencil.</p>
+
+<p>When he presented himself at Balaklava Place he learned that the two
+ladies had not come in&mdash;they had gone again early to rehearsal; but they
+had left word that he was to be pleased to wait, they would appear from
+one moment to the other. It was further mentioned to him, as he was
+ushered into the drawing-room, that Mr. Dashwood was in possession of
+that ground. This circumstance, however, Peter barely noted: he had been
+soaring so high for the past twelve hours that he had almost lost
+consciousness of the minor differences of earthly things. He had taken
+Biddy Dormer and her friend Miss Tressilian home from the play and after
+leaving them had walked about the streets, had roamed back to his
+sister's house, in a state of exaltation the intenser from his having
+for the previous time contained himself, thinking it more decorous and
+considerate, less invidious and less blatant, not to "rave." Sitting
+there in the shade of the box with his companions he had watched Miriam
+in attentive but inexpressive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[425]</a></span> silence, glowing and vibrating inwardly,
+yet for these fine, deep reasons not committing himself to the spoken
+rapture. Delicacy, it appeared to him, should rule the hour; and indeed
+he had never had a pleasure less alloyed than this little period of
+still observation and repressed ecstasy. Miriam's art lost nothing by
+it, and Biddy's mild nearness only gained. This young lady was virtually
+mute as well&mdash;wonderingly, dauntedly, as if she too associated with the
+performer various other questions than that of her mastery of her art.
+To this mastery Biddy's attitude was a candid and liberal tribute: the
+poor girl sat quenched and pale, as if in the blinding light of a
+comparison by which it would be presumptuous even to be annihilated. Her
+subjection, however, was a gratified, a charmed subjection: there was
+beneficence in such beauty&mdash;the beauty of the figure that moved before
+the footlights and spoke in music&mdash;even if it deprived one of hope.
+Peter didn't say to her in vulgar elation and in reference to her
+whimsical profession of dislike at the studio, "Well, do you find our
+friend so disagreeable now?" and she was grateful to him for his
+forbearance, for the tacit kindness of which the idea seemed to be: "My
+poor child, I'd prefer you if I could; but&mdash;judge for yourself&mdash;how can
+I? Expect of me only the possible. Expect that certainly, but only
+that." In the same degree Peter liked Biddy's sweet, hushed air of
+judging for herself, of recognising his discretion and letting him off
+while she was lost in the illusion, in the convincing picture of the
+stage. Miss Tressilian did most of the criticism: she broke out
+cheerfully and sonorously from time to time, in reference to the
+actress, "Most striking certainly," or "She <i>is</i> clever, isn't she?" She
+uttered a series of propositions to which her companions found it
+impossible to respond. Miss Tressilian was disappointed in nothing but
+their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[426]</a></span> enjoyment: they didn't seem to think the exhibition as amusing as
+she.</p>
+
+<p>Walking away through the ordered void of Lady Agnes's quarter, with the
+four acts of the play glowing again before him in the smokeless London
+night, Peter found the liveliest thing in his impression the certitude
+that if he had never seen Miriam before and she had had for him none of
+the advantages of association, he would still have recognised in her
+performance the richest interest the theatre had ever offered him. He
+floated in the felicity of it, in the general encouragement of a sense
+of the perfectly <i>done</i>, in the almost aggressive bravery of still
+larger claims for an art which could so triumphantly, so exquisitely
+render life. "Render it?" he said to himself. "Create it and reveal it,
+rather; give us something new and large and of the first order!" He had
+<i>seen</i> Miriam now; he had never seen her before; he had never seen her
+till he saw her in her conditions. Oh her conditions&mdash;there were many
+things to be said about them; they were paltry enough as yet, inferior,
+inadequate, obstructive, as compared with the right, full, finished
+setting of such a talent; but the essence of them was now, irremovably,
+in our young man's eyes, the vision of how the uplifted stage and the
+listening house transformed her. That idea of her having no character of
+her own came back to him with a force that made him laugh in the empty
+street: this was a disadvantage she reduced so to nothing that obviously
+he hadn't known her till to-night. Her character was simply to hold you
+by the particular spell; any other&mdash;the good nature of home, the
+relation to her mother, her friends, her lovers, her debts, the practice
+of virtues or industries or vices&mdash;was not worth speaking of. These
+things were the fictions and shadows; the representation was the deep
+substance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[427]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Peter had as he went an intense vision&mdash;he had often had it before&mdash;of
+the conditions still absent, the great and complete ones, those which
+would give the girl's talent a superior, a discussable stage. More than
+ever he desired them, mentally invoked them, filled them out in
+imagination, cheated himself with the idea that they were possible. He
+saw them in a momentary illusion and confusion: a great academic,
+artistic theatre, subsidised and unburdened with money-getting, rich in
+its repertory, rich in the high quality and the wide array of its
+servants, rich above all in the authority of an impossible
+administrator&mdash;a manager personally disinterested, not an actor with an
+eye to the main chance; pouring forth a continuity of tradition,
+striving for perfection, laying a splendid literature under
+contribution. He saw the heroine of a hundred "situations," variously
+dramatic and vividly real; he saw comedy and drama and passion and
+character and English life; he saw all humanity and history and poetry,
+and then perpetually, in the midst of them, shining out in the high
+relief of some great moment, an image as fresh as an unveiled statue. He
+was not unconscious that he was taking all sorts of impossibilities and
+miracles for granted; but he was under the conviction, for the time,
+that the woman he had been watching three hours, the incarnation of the
+serious drama, would be a new and vivifying force. The world was just
+then so bright to him that even Basil Dashwood struck him at first as a
+conceivable agent of his dream.</p>
+
+<p>It must be added that before Miriam arrived the breeze that filled
+Sherringham's sail began to sink a little. He passed out of the
+eminently "let" drawing-room, where twenty large photographs of the
+young actress bloomed in the desert; he went into the garden by a glass
+door that stood open, and found<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[428]</a></span> Mr. Dashwood lolling on a bench and
+smoking cigarettes. This young man's conversation was a different
+music&mdash;it took him down, as he felt; showed him, very sensibly and
+intelligibly, it must be confessed, the actual theatre, the one they
+were all concerned with, the one they would have to make the miserable
+best of. It was fortunate that he kept his intoxication mainly to
+himself: the Englishman's habit of not being effusive still prevailed
+with him after his years of exposure to the foreign infection. Nothing
+could have been less exclamatory than the meeting of the two men, with
+its question or two, its remark or two, about the new visitor's arrival
+in London; its off-hand "I noticed you last night, I was glad you turned
+up at last" on one side and its attenuated "Oh yes, it was the first
+time; I was very much interested" on the other. Basil Dashwood played a
+part in Yolande and Peter had not failed to take with some comfort the
+measure of his aptitude. He judged it to be of the small order, as
+indeed the part, which was neither that of the virtuous nor that of the
+villainous hero, restricted him to two or three inconspicuous effects
+and three or four changes of dress. He represented an ardent but
+respectful young lover whom the distracted heroine found time to pity a
+little and even to rail at; but it was impressed upon his critic that he
+scarcely represented young love. He looked very well, but Peter had
+heard him already in a hundred contemporary pieces; he never got out of
+rehearsal. He uttered sentiments and breathed vows with a nice voice,
+with a shy, boyish tremor, but as if he were afraid of being chaffed for
+it afterwards; giving the spectator in the stalls the sense of holding
+the prompt-book and listening to a recitation. He made one think of
+country-houses and lawn-tennis and private theatricals; than which there
+couldn't be,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[429]</a></span> to Peter's mind, a range of association more disconnected
+from the actor's art.</p>
+
+<p>Dashwood knew all about the new thing, the piece in rehearsal; he knew
+all about everything&mdash;receipts and salaries and expenses and newspaper
+articles, and what old Baskerville said and what Mrs. Ruffler thought:
+matters of superficial concern to his fellow-guest, who wondered, before
+they had sight of Miriam, if she talked with her "walking-gentleman"
+about them by the hour, deep in them and finding them not vulgar and
+boring but the natural air of her life and the essence of her
+profession. Of course she did&mdash;she naturally would; it was all in the
+day's work and he might feel sure she wouldn't turn up her nose at the
+shop. He had to remind himself that he didn't care if she didn't, that
+he would really think worse of her if she should. She certainly was in
+deep with her bland playmate, talking shop by the hour: he could see
+this from the fellow's ease of attitude, the air of a man at home and
+doing the honours. He divined a great intimacy between the two young
+artists, but asked himself at the same time what he, Peter Sherringham,
+had to say about it. He didn't pretend to control Miriam's intimacies,
+it was to be supposed; and if he had encouraged her to adopt a
+profession rich in opportunities for comradeship it was not for him to
+cry out because she had taken to it kindly. He had already descried a
+fund of utility in Mrs. Lovick's light brother; but it irritated him,
+all the same, after a while, to hear the youth represent himself as
+almost indispensable. He was practical&mdash;there was no doubt of that; and
+this idea added to Peter's paradoxical sense that as regards the matters
+actually in question he himself had not this virtue. Dashwood had got
+Mrs. Rooth the house; it happened by a lucky chance that Laura Lumley,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[430]</a></span>
+to whom it belonged&mdash;Sherringham would know Laura Lumley?&mdash;wanted to get
+rid, for a mere song, of the remainder of the lease. She was going to
+Australia with a troupe of her own. They just stepped into it; it was
+good air&mdash;the best sort of London air to live in, to sleep in, for
+people of their trade. Peter came back to his wonder at what Miriam's
+personal relations with this deucedly knowing gentleman might be, and
+was again able to assure himself that they might be anything in the
+world she liked, for any stake he, the familiar of the Foreign Office,
+had in them. Dashwood told him of all the smart people who had tried to
+take up the new star&mdash;the way the London world had already held out its
+hand; and perhaps it was Sherringham's irritation, the crushed sentiment
+I just mentioned, that gave a little heave in the exclamation, "Oh
+that&mdash;that's all rubbish: the less of that the better!" At this Mr.
+Dashwood sniffed a little, rather resentful; he had expected Peter to be
+pleased with the names of the eager ladies who had "called"&mdash;which
+proved how low a view he took of his art. Our friend explained&mdash;it is to
+be hoped not pedantically&mdash;that this art was serious work and that
+society was humbug and imbecility; also that of old the great comedians
+wouldn't have known such people. Garrick had essentially his own circle.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I suppose they didn't 'call' in the old narrow-minded time," said
+Basil Dashwood.</p>
+
+<p>"Your profession didn't call. They had better company&mdash;that of the
+romantic gallant characters they represented. They lived with <i>them</i>, so
+it was better all round." And Peter asked himself&mdash;for that clearly
+struck the young man as a dreary period&mdash;if <i>he</i> only, for Miriam, in
+her new life and among the futilities of those who tried to lionise her,
+expressed the artistic idea. This at least,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[431]</a></span> Sherringham reflected, was
+a situation that could be improved.</p>
+
+<p>He learned from his companion that the new play, the thing they were
+rehearsing, was an old play, a romantic drama of thirty years before,
+very frequently revived and threadbare with honourable service. Dashwood
+had a part in it, but there was an act in which he didn't appear, and
+this was the act they were doing that morning. Yolande had done all
+Yolande could do; the visitor was mistaken if he supposed Yolande such a
+tremendous hit. It had done very well, it had run three months, but they
+were by no means coining money with it. It wouldn't take them to the end
+of the season; they had seen for a month past that they would have to
+put on something else. Miss Rooth, moreover, wanted a new part; she was
+above all impatient to show her big range. She had grand ideas; she
+thought herself very good-natured to repeat the same stuff for three
+months. The young man lighted another cigarette and described to his
+listener some of Miss Rooth's ideas. He abounded in information about
+her&mdash;about her character, her temper, her peculiarities, her little
+ways, her manner of producing some of her effects. He spoke with
+familiarity and confidence, as if knowing more about her than any one
+else&mdash;as if he had invented or discovered her, were in a sense her
+proprietor or guarantor. It was the talk of the shop, both with a native
+sharpness and a touching young candour; the expansion of the commercial
+spirit when it relaxes and generalises, is conscious of safety with
+another member of the guild.</p>
+
+<p>Peter at any rate couldn't help protesting against the lame old
+war-horse it was proposed to bring into action, who had been ridden to
+death and had saved a thousand desperate fields; and he exclaimed on
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[432]</a></span> strange passion of the good British public for sitting again and
+again through expected situations, watching for speeches they had heard
+and surprises that struck the hour. Dashwood defended the taste of
+London, praised it as loyal, constant, faithful; to which his
+interlocutor retorted with some vivacity that it was faithful to sad
+trash. He justified this sally by declaring the play in rehearsal sad
+trash, clumsy mediocrity with all its convenience gone, and that the
+fault was the want of life in the critical sense of the public, which
+was ignobly docile, opening its mouth for its dose like the pupils of
+Dotheboys Hall; not insisting on something different, on a fresh brew
+altogether. Dashwood asked him if he then wished their friend to go on
+playing for ever a part she had repeated more than eighty nights on end:
+he thought the modern "run" was just what he had heard him denounce in
+Paris as the disease the theatre was dying of. This imputation Peter
+quite denied, wanting to know if she couldn't change to something less
+stale than the greatest staleness of all. Dashwood opined that Miss
+Rooth must have a strong part and that there happened to be one for her
+in the before-mentioned venerable novelty. She had to take what she
+could get&mdash;she wasn't a person to cry for the moon. This was a
+stop-gap&mdash;she would try other things later; she would have to look round
+her; you couldn't have a new piece, one that would do, left at your door
+every day with the milk. On one point Sherringham's mind might be at
+rest: Miss Rooth was a woman who would do every blessed thing there was
+to do. Give her time and she would walk straight through the repertory.
+She was a woman who would do this&mdash;she was a woman who would do that:
+her spokesman employed this phrase so often that Peter, nervous, got up
+and threw an unsmoked cigarette away. Of course she was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[433]</a></span> woman; there
+was no need of his saying it a hundred times.</p>
+
+<p>As for the repertory, the young man went on, the most beautiful girl in
+the world could give but what she had. He explained, after their visitor
+sat down again, that the noise made by Miss Rooth was not exactly what
+this admirer appeared to suppose. Sherringham had seen the house the
+night before and would recognise that, though good, it was very far from
+great. She had done very well, it was all right, but she had never gone
+above a point which Dashwood expressed in pounds sterling, to the
+edification of his companion, who vaguely thought the figure high. Peter
+remembered that he had been unable to get a stall, but Dashwood insisted
+that "Miriam" had not leaped into commanding fame: that was a thing that
+never happened in fact&mdash;it happened only in grotesque works of fiction.
+She had attracted notice, unusual notice for a woman whose name, the day
+before, had never been heard of: she was recognised as having, for a
+novice, extraordinary cleverness and confidence&mdash;in addition to her
+looks, of course, which were the thing that had really fetched the
+crowd. But she hadn't been the talk of London; she had only been the
+talk of Gabriel Nash. He wasn't London, more was the pity. He knew the
+esthetic people&mdash;the worldly, semi-smart ones, not the frumpy, sickly
+lot who wore dirty drapery; and the esthetic people had run after her.
+Mr. Dashwood sketchily instructed the pilgrim from Paris as to the
+different sects in the great religion of beauty, and was able to give
+him the particular "note" of the critical clique to which Miriam had
+begun so quickly to owe it that she had a vogue. The information made
+our friend feel very ignorant of the world, very uninitiated and buried
+in his little professional hole. Dashwood warned him that it would be a
+long time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[434]</a></span> before the general public would wake up to Miss Rooth, even
+after she had waked up to herself; she would have to do some really big
+thing first. <i>They</i> knew it was in her, the big thing&mdash;Peter and he and
+even poor Nash&mdash;because they had seen her as no one else had; but London
+never took any one on trust&mdash;it had to be cash down. It would take their
+young lady two or three years to pay out her cash and get her
+equivalent. But of course the equivalent would be simply a gold-mine.
+Within its limits, however, certainly, the mark she had made was already
+quite a fairy-tale: there was magic in the way she had concealed from
+the first her want of experience. She absolutely made you think she had
+a lot of it, more than any one else. Mr. Dashwood repeated several times
+that she was a cool hand&mdash;a deucedly cool hand, and that he watched her
+himself, saw ideas come to her, saw her have different notions, and more
+or less put them to the test, on different nights. She was always
+alive&mdash;she liked it herself. She gave him ideas, long as he had been on
+the stage. Naturally she had a great deal to learn, no end even of quite
+basic things; a cosmopolite like Sherringham would understand that a
+girl of that age, who had never had a friend but her mother&mdash;her mother
+was greater fun than ever now&mdash;naturally <i>would</i> have. Sherringham
+winced at being dubbed a "cosmopolite" by his young entertainer, just as
+he had winced a moment before at hearing himself lumped in esoteric
+knowledge with Dashwood and Gabriel Nash; but the former of these
+gentlemen took no account of his sensibility while he enumerated a few
+of the elements of the "basic." He was a mixture of acuteness and
+innocent fatuity; and Peter had to recognise in him a rudiment or two of
+criticism when he said that the wonderful thing in the girl was that she
+learned so fast&mdash;learned something every night, learned from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[435]</a></span> the same
+old piece a lot more than any one else would have learned from twenty.
+"That's what it is to be a genius," Peter concurred. "Genius is only the
+art of getting your experience fast, of stealing it, as it were; and in
+this sense Miss Rooth's a regular brigand." Dashwood condoned the
+subtlety and added less analytically, "Oh she'll do!" It was exactly in
+these simple words, addressed to her, that her other admirer had phrased
+the same truth; yet he didn't enjoy hearing them on his neighbour's
+lips: they had a profane, patronising sound and suggested displeasing
+equalities.</p>
+
+<p>The two men sat in silence for some minutes, watching a fat robin hop
+about on the little seedy lawn; at the end of which they heard a vehicle
+stop on the other side of the garden-wall and the voices of occupants
+alighting. "Here they come, the dear creatures," said Basil Dashwood
+without moving; and from where they sat Peter saw the small door in the
+wall pushed open. The dear creatures were three in number, for a
+gentleman had added himself to Mrs. Rooth and her daughter. As soon as
+Miriam's eyes took in her Parisian friend she fell into a large, droll,
+theatrical attitude and, seizing her mother's arm, exclaimed
+passionately: "Look where he sits, the author of all my woes&mdash;cold,
+cynical, cruel!" She was evidently in the highest spirits; of which Mrs.
+Rooth partook as she cried indulgently, giving her a slap, "Oh get
+along, you gypsy!"</p>
+
+<p>"She's always up to something," Dashwood laughed as Miriam, radiant and
+with a conscious stage tread, glided toward Sherringham as if she were
+coming to the footlights. He rose slowly from his seat, looking at her
+and struck with her beauty: he had been impatient to see her, yet in the
+act his impatience had had a disconcerting check.</p>
+
+<p>He had had time to note that the man who had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[436]</a></span> come in with her was
+Gabriel Nash, and this recognition brought a low sigh to his lips as he
+held out his hand to her&mdash;a sigh expressive of the sudden sense that his
+interest in her now could only be a gross community. Of course that
+didn't matter, since he had set it, at the most, such rigid limits; but
+he none the less felt vividly reminded that it would be public and
+notorious, that inferior people would be inveterately mixed up with it,
+that she had crossed the line and sold herself to the vulgar, making him
+indeed only one of an equalised multitude. The way Nash turned up there
+just when he didn't want to see him proved how complicated a thing it
+was to have a friendship with a young woman so clearly booked for
+renown. He quite forgot that the intruder had had this object of
+interest long before his own first view of it and had been present at
+that passage, which he had in a measure brought about. Had Sherringham
+not been so cut out to make trouble of this particular joy he might have
+found some adequate assurance that their young hostess distinguished him
+in the way in which, taking his hand in both of hers, she looked up at
+him and murmured, "Dear old master!" Then as if this were not
+acknowledgment enough she raised her head still higher and, whimsically,
+gratefully, charmingly, almost nobly, kissed him on the lips before the
+other men, before the good mother whose "Oh you honest creature!" made
+everything regular.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[437]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI"></a><a href="#toc">XXXI</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>If he was ruffled by some of her conditions there was thus comfort and
+consolation to be drawn from others, beside the essential
+fascination&mdash;so small the doubt of that now&mdash;of the young lady's own
+society. He spent the afternoon, they all spent the afternoon, and the
+occasion reminded him of pages in <i>Wilhelm Meister</i>. He himself could
+pass for Wilhelm, and if Mrs. Rooth had little resemblance to Mignon,
+Miriam was remarkably like Philina. The movable feast awaiting
+them&mdash;luncheon, tea, dinner?&mdash;was delayed two or three hours; but the
+interval was a source of gaiety, for they all smoked cigarettes in the
+garden and Miriam gave striking illustrations of the parts she was
+studying. Peter was in the state of a man whose toothache has suddenly
+stopped&mdash;he was exhilarated by the cessation of pain. The pain had been
+the effort to remain in Paris after the creature in the world in whom he
+was most interested had gone to London, and the balm of seeing her now
+was the measure of the previous soreness.</p>
+
+<p>Gabriel Nash had, as usual, plenty to say, and he talked of Nick's
+picture so long that Peter wondered if he did it on purpose to vex him.
+They went in and out of the house; they made excursions to see what form
+the vague meal was taking; and Sherringham got half an hour alone, or
+virtually alone, with the mistress of his unsanctioned passion&mdash;drawing
+her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[438]</a></span> publicly away from the others and making her sit with him in the
+most sequestered part of the little gravelled grounds. There was summer
+enough for the trees to shut out the adjacent villas, and Basil Dashwood
+and Gabriel Nash lounged together at a convenient distance while Nick's
+whimsical friend dropped polished pebbles, sometimes audibly splashing,
+into the deep well of the histrionic simplicity. Miriam confessed that
+like all comedians they ate at queer hours; she sent Dashwood in for
+biscuits and sherry&mdash;she proposed sending him round to the grocer's in
+the Circus Road for superior wine. Peter judged him the factotum of the
+little household: he knew where the biscuits were kept and the state of
+the grocer's account. When he himself congratulated her on having so
+useful an inmate she said genially, but as if the words disposed of him,
+"Oh he's awfully handy." To this she added, "You're not, you know";
+resting the kindest, most pitying eyes on him. The sensation they gave
+him was as sweet as if she had stroked his cheek, and her manner was
+responsive even to tenderness. She called him "Dear master" again and
+again, and still often "<i>Cher ma&icirc;tre</i>," and appeared to express
+gratitude and reverence by every intonation.</p>
+
+<p>"You're doing the humble dependent now," he said: "you do it
+beautifully, as you do everything." She replied that she didn't make it
+humble enough&mdash;she couldn't; she was too proud, too insolent in her
+triumph. She liked that, the triumph, too much, and she didn't mind
+telling him she was perfectly happy. Of course as yet the triumph was
+very limited; but success was success, whatever its quantity; the dish
+was a small one but had the right taste. Her imagination had already
+bounded beyond the first phase unexpectedly great as this had been: her
+position struck her as modest compared with the probably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[439]</a></span> future now
+vivid to her. Peter had never seen her so soft and sympathetic; she had
+insisted in Paris that her personal character was that of the good
+girl&mdash;she used the term in a fine loose way&mdash;and it was impossible to be
+a better girl than she showed herself this pleasant afternoon. She was
+full of gossip and anecdote and drollery; she had exactly the air he
+would have wished her to have&mdash;that of thinking of no end of things to
+tell him. It was as if she had just returned from a long journey and had
+had strange adventures and made wonderful discoveries. She began to
+speak of this and that, then broke off to speak of something else; she
+talked of the theatre, of the "critics," and above all of London, of the
+people she had met and the extraordinary things they said to her, of the
+parts she was going to take up, of lots of new ideas that had come to
+her about the art of comedy. She wanted to do comedy now&mdash;to do the
+comedy of London life. She was delighted to find that seeing more of the
+world suggested things to her; they came straight from the fact, from
+nature, if you could call it nature; she was thus convinced more than
+ever that the artist ought to <i>live</i> so as to get on with his business,
+gathering ideas and lights from experience&mdash;ought to welcome any
+experience that would give him lights. But work of course <i>was</i>
+experience, and everything in one's life that was good was work. That
+was the jolly thing in the actor's trade&mdash;it made up for other elements
+that were odious: if you only kept your eyes open nothing could happen
+to you that wouldn't be food for observation and grist to your mill,
+showing you how people looked and moved and spoke, cried and grimaced,
+writhed and dissimulated, in given situations. She saw all round her
+things she wanted to "do"&mdash;London bristled with them if you had eyes to
+see. She was fierce to know why people didn't take them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[440]</a></span> up, put them
+into plays and parts, give one a chance with them; she expressed her
+sharp impatience of the general literary <i>b&eacute;tise</i>. She had never been
+chary of this particular displeasure, and there were moments&mdash;it was an
+old story and a subject of frank raillery to Sherringham&mdash;when to hear
+her you might have thought there was no cleverness anywhere but in her
+own splendid impatience. She wanted tremendous things done that she
+might use them, but she didn't pretend to say exactly what they were to
+be, nor even approximately how they were to be handled: her ground was
+rather that if <i>she</i> only had a pen&mdash;it was exasperating to have to
+explain! She mainly contented herself with the view that nothing had
+really been touched: she felt that more and more as she saw more of
+people's goings-on.</p>
+
+<p>Peter went to her theatre again that evening and indeed made no scruple
+of going every night for a week. Rather perhaps I should say he made a
+scruple, but a high part of the pleasure of his life during these
+arbitrary days was to overcome it. The only way to prove he could
+overcome it was to go; and he was satisfied, after he had been seven
+times, not only with the spectacle on the stage but with his perfect
+independence. He knew no satiety, however, with the spectacle on the
+stage, which induced for him but a further curiosity. Miriam's
+performance was a thing alive, with a power to change, to grow, to
+develop, to beget new forms of the same life. Peter contributed to it in
+his amateurish way and watched with solicitude the effect of his care
+and the fortune of his hints. He talked it over in Balaklava Place,
+suggested modifications and variations worth trying. She professed
+herself thankful for any refreshment that could be administered to her
+interest in <i>Yolande</i>, and with an energy that showed large resource
+touched up her part and drew several new airs from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[441]</a></span> it. Peter's
+liberties bore on her way of uttering certain speeches, the intonations
+that would have more beauty or make the words mean more. She had her
+ideas, or rather she had her instincts, which she defended and
+illustrated, with a vividness superior to argument, by a happy pictorial
+phrase or a snatch of mimicry; but she was always for trying; she liked
+experiments and caught at them, and she was especially thankful when
+some one gave her a showy reason, a plausible formula, in a case where
+she only stood on an intuition. She pretended to despise reasons and to
+like and dislike at her sovereign pleasure; but she always honoured the
+exotic gift, so that Sherringham was amused with the liberal way she
+produced it, as if she had been a naked islander rejoicing in a present
+of crimson cloth.</p>
+
+<p>Day after day he spent most of his time in her society, and Miss Laura
+Lumley's recent habitation became the place in London to which his
+thoughts and his steps were most attached. He was highly conscious of
+his not now carrying out that principle of abstention he had brought to
+such maturity before leaving Paris; but he contented himself with a much
+cruder justification of this lapse than he would have thought adequate
+in advance. It consisted simply in the idea that to be identified with
+the first fresh exploits of a young genius was a delightful experience.
+What was the harm of it when the genius was real? His main security was
+thus that his relations with Miriam had been placed under the protection
+of that idea of approved extravagance. In this department they made a
+very creditable figure and required much less watching and pruning than
+when it had been his effort to adjust them to a worldly plan. He had in
+fine a sense of real wisdom when he pronounced it surely enough that
+this momentary intellectual participation in the girl's dawning fame was
+a charming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[442]</a></span> thing. Charming things were not frequent enough in a busy
+man's life to be kicked out of the way. Balaklava Place, looked at in
+this philosophic way, became almost idyllic: it gave Peter the
+pleasantest impression he had ever had of London.</p>
+
+<p>The season happened to be remarkably fine; the temperature was high, but
+not so high as to keep people from the theatre. Miriam's "business"
+visibly increased, so that the question of putting on the second play
+underwent some revision. The girl persisted, showing in her persistence
+a temper of which Peter had already caught some sharp gleams. It was
+plain that through her career she would expect to carry things with a
+high hand. Her managers and agents wouldn't find her an easy victim or a
+calculable force; but the public would adore her, surround her with the
+popularity that attaches to a good-natured and free-spoken princess, and
+her comrades would have a kindness for her because she wouldn't be
+selfish. They too would, besides representing her body-guard, form in a
+manner a portion of her affectionate public. This was the way her friend
+read the signs, liking her whimsical tolerance of some of her vulgar
+playfellows almost well enough to forgive their presence in Balaklava
+Place, where they were a sore trial to her mother, who wanted her to
+multiply her points of contact only with the higher orders. There were
+hours when Peter seemed to make out that her principal relation to the
+proper world would be to have within two or three years a grand battle
+with it resulting in its taking her, should she let it have her at all,
+absolutely on her own terms: a picture which led our young man to ask
+himself with a helplessness that was not exempt, as he perfectly knew,
+from absurdity, what part <i>he</i> should find himself playing in such a
+contest and if it would be reserved to him to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[443]</a></span> the more ridiculous as
+a peacemaker or as a heavy backer.</p>
+
+<p>"She might know any one she would, and the only person she appears to
+take any pleasure in is that dreadful Miss Rover," Mrs. Rooth whimpered
+to him more than once&mdash;leading him thus to recognise in the young lady
+so designated the principal complication of Balaklava Place. Miss Rover
+was a little actress who played at Miriam's theatre, combining with an
+unusual aptitude for delicate comedy a less exceptional absence of
+rigour in private life. She was pretty and quick and brave, and had a
+fineness that Miriam professed herself already in a position to estimate
+as rare. She had no control of her inclinations, yet sometimes they were
+wholly laudable, like the devotion she had formed for her beautiful
+colleague, whom she admired not only as an ornament of the profession
+but as a being altogether of a more fortunate essence. She had had an
+idea that real ladies were "nasty," but Miriam was not nasty, and who
+could gainsay that Miriam was a real lady? The girl justified herself to
+her patron from Paris, who had found no fault with her; she knew how
+much her mother feared the proper world wouldn't come in if they knew
+that the improper, in the person of pretty Miss Rover, was on the
+ground. What did she care who came and who didn't, and what was to be
+gained by receiving half the snobs in London? People would have to take
+her exactly as they found her&mdash;that they would have to learn; and they
+would be much mistaken if they thought her capable of turning snob too
+for the sake of their sweet company. She didn't pretend to be anything
+but what she meant to be, the best general actress of her time; and what
+had that to do with her seeing or not seeing a poor ignorant girl who
+had loved&mdash;well, she needn't say what Fanny had done. They had met in
+the way<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[444]</a></span> of business; she didn't say she would have run after her. She
+had liked her because she wasn't a slick, and when Fanny Rover had asked
+her quite wistfully if she mightn't come and see her and like her she
+hadn't bristled with scandalised virtue. Miss Rover wasn't a bit more
+stupid or more ill-natured than any one else; it would be time enough to
+shut the door when she should become so.</p>
+
+<p>Peter commended even to extravagance the liberality of such comradeship;
+said that of course a woman didn't go into that profession to see how
+little she could swallow. She was right to live with the others so long
+as they were at all possible, and it was for her and only for her to
+judge how long that might be. This was rather heroic on his part, for
+his assumed detachment from the girl's personal life still left him a
+margin for some forms of uneasiness. It would have made in his spirit a
+great difference for the worse that the woman he loved, and for whom he
+wished no baser lover than himself, should have embraced the prospect of
+consorting only with the cheaper kind. It was all very well, but Fanny
+Rover was simply a rank <i>cabotine</i>, and that sort of association was an
+odd training for a young woman who was to have been good enough&mdash;he
+couldn't forget that, but kept remembering it as if it might still have
+a future use&mdash;to be his admired wife. Certainly he ought to have thought
+of such things before he permitted himself to become so interested in a
+theatrical nature. His heroism did him service, however, for the hour;
+it helped him by the end of the week to feel quite broken in to Miriam's
+little circle. What helped him most indeed was to reflect that she would
+get tired of a good many of its members herself in time; for if it was
+not that they were shocking&mdash;very few of them shone with that intense
+light&mdash;they could yet be thoroughly trusted in the long run to bore
+you.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[445]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was a lovely Sunday in particular, spent by him almost all in
+Balaklava Place&mdash;he arrived so early&mdash;when, in the afternoon, every sort
+of odd person dropped in. Miriam held a reception in the little garden
+and insisted on all the company's staying to supper. Her mother shed
+tears to Peter, in the desecrated house, because they had accepted,
+Miriam and she, an invitation&mdash;and in Cromwell Road too&mdash;for the
+evening. Miriam had now decreed they shouldn't go&mdash;they would have so
+much better fun with their good friends at home. She was sending off a
+message&mdash;it was a terrible distance&mdash;by a cabman, and Peter had the
+privilege of paying the messenger. Basil Dashwood, in another vehicle,
+proceeded to an hotel known to him, a mile away, for supplementary
+provisions, and came back with a cold ham and a dozen of champagne. It
+was all very Bohemian and dishevelled and delightful, very supposedly
+droll and enviable to outsiders; and Miriam told anecdotes and gave
+imitations of the people she would have met if she had gone out, so that
+no one had a sense of loss&mdash;the two occasions were fantastically united.
+Mrs. Rooth drank champagne for consolation, though the consolation was
+imperfect when she remembered she might have drunk it, though not quite
+so much perhaps, in Cromwell Road.</p>
+
+<p>Taken in connection with the evening before, the day formed for our
+friend the most complete exhibition of his young woman he had yet
+enjoyed. He had been at the theatre, to which the Saturday night
+happened to have brought the very fullest house she had played to, and
+he came early to Balaklava Place, to tell her once again&mdash;he had told
+her half-a-dozen times the evening before&mdash;that with the excitement of
+her biggest audience she had surpassed herself, acted with remarkable
+intensity. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[446]</a></span> pleased her to hear this, and the spirit with which she
+interpreted the signs of the future and, during an hour he spent alone
+with her, Mrs. Rooth being upstairs and Basil Dashwood luckily absent,
+treated him to twenty specimens of feigned passion and character, was
+beyond any natural abundance he had yet seen in a woman. The impression
+could scarcely have been other if she had been playing wild snatches to
+him at the piano: the bright up-darting flame of her talk rose and fell
+like an improvisation on the keys. Later, the rest of the day, he could
+as little miss the good grace with which she fraternised with her
+visitors, finding always the fair word for each&mdash;the key to a common
+ease, the right turn to keep vanity quiet and make humility brave. It
+was a wonderful expenditure of generous, nervous life. But what he read
+in it above all was the sense of success in youth, with the future loose
+and big, and the action of that charm on the faculties. Miriam's limited
+past had yet pinched her enough to make emancipation sweet, and the
+emancipation had come at last in an hour. She had stepped into her magic
+shoes, divined and appropriated everything they could help her to,
+become in a day a really original contemporary. He was of course not
+less conscious of that than Nick Dormer had been when in the cold light
+of his studio this more detached observer saw too how she had altered.</p>
+
+<p>But the great thing to his mind, and during these first days the
+irresistible seduction of the theatre, was that she was a rare
+revelation of beauty. Beauty was the principle of everything she did and
+of the way she unerringly did it&mdash;an exquisite harmony of line and
+motion and attitude and tone, what was at once most general and most
+special in her performance. Accidents and instincts played together to
+this end and constituted something that was independent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[447]</a></span> of her talent
+or of her merit in a given case, and which as a value to Peter's
+imagination was far superior to any merit and any talent. He could but
+call it a felicity and an importance incalculable, and but know that it
+connected itself with universal values. To see this force in operation,
+to sit within its radius and feel it shift and revolve and change and
+never fail, was a corrective to the depression, the humiliation, the
+bewilderment of life. It transported our troubled friend from the vulgar
+hour and the ugly fact; drew him to something that had no warrant but
+its sweetness, no name nor place save as the pure, the remote, the
+antique. It was what most made him say to himself "Oh hang it, what does
+it matter?" when he reflected that an <i>homme s&eacute;rieux</i>, as they said in
+Paris, rather gave himself away, as they said in America, by going every
+night to the same sordid stall at which all the world might stare. It
+was what kept him from doing anything but hover round Miriam&mdash;kept him
+from paying any other visits, from attending to any business, from going
+back to Calcutta Gardens. It was a spell he shrank intensely from
+breaking and the cause of a hundred postponements, confusions, and
+absurdities. It put him in a false position altogether, but it made of
+the crooked little stucco villa in Saint John's Wood a place in the
+upper air, commanding the prospect; a nest of winged liberties and
+ironies far aloft above the huddled town. One should live at altitudes
+when one could&mdash;they braced and simplified; and for a happy interval he
+never touched the earth.</p>
+
+<p>It was not that there were no influences tending at moments to drag him
+down&mdash;an abasement from which he escaped only because he was up so high.
+We have seen that Basil Dashwood could affect him at times as a chunk of
+wood tied to his ankle&mdash;this through the circumstance that he made
+Miriam's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[448]</a></span> famous conditions, those of the public exhibition of her
+genius, seem small and prosaic; so that Peter had to remind himself how
+much this smallness was perhaps involved in their being at all. She
+carried his imagination off into infinite spaces, whereas she carried
+Dashwood's only into the box-office and the revival of plays that were
+barbarously bad. The worst was its being so open to him to see that a
+sharp young man really in the business might know better than he.
+Another vessel of superior knowledge&mdash;he talked, that is, as if he knew
+better than any one&mdash;was Gabriel Nash, who lacked no leisure for
+hatefully haunting Balaklava Place, or in other words appeared to enjoy
+the same command of his time as Peter Sherringham. The pilgrim from
+Paris regarded him with mingled feelings, for he had not forgotten the
+contentious character of their first meeting or the degree to which he
+had been moved to urge upon Nick Dormer's consideration that his
+talkative friend was probably one of the most eminent of asses. This
+personage turned up now as an admirer of the charming creature he had
+scoffed at, and there was much to exasperate in the smooth gloss of his
+inconsistency, at which he never cast an embarrassed glance. He
+practised indeed such loose license of regard to every question that it
+was difficult, in vulgar parlance, to "have" him; his sympathies hummed
+about like bees in a garden, with no visible plan, no economy in their
+flight. He thought meanly of the modern theatre and yet had discovered a
+fund of satisfaction in the most promising of its exponents; and Peter
+could more than once but say to him that he should really, to keep his
+opinions at all in hand, attach more value to the stage or less to the
+interesting a tress. Miriam took her perfect ease at his expense and
+treated him as the most abject of her slaves: all of which was worth
+seeing as an exhibition, on Nash's part, of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[449]</a></span> beautifully
+imperturbable. When Peter all too grossly pronounced him "damned"
+impudent he always felt guilty later on of an injustice&mdash;Nash had so
+little the air of a man with something to gain. He was aware
+nevertheless of a certain itching in his boot-toe when his
+fellow-visitor brought out, and for the most part to Miriam herself, in
+answer to any charge of tergiversation, "Oh it's all right; it's the
+voice, you know&mdash;the enchanting voice!" Nash meant by this, as indeed he
+more fully set forth, that he came to the theatre or to the villa simply
+to treat his ear to the sound&mdash;the richest then to be heard on earth, as
+he maintained&mdash;issuing from Miriam's lips. Its richness was quite
+independent of the words she might pronounce or the poor fable they
+might subserve, and if the pleasure of hearing her in public was the
+greater by reason of the larger volume of her utterance it was still
+highly agreeable to see her at home, for it was there the strictly
+mimetic gift he freely conceded to her came out most. He spoke as if she
+had been formed by the bounty of nature to be his particular recreation,
+and as if, being an expert in innocent joys, he took his pleasure
+wherever he found it.</p>
+
+<p>He was perpetually in the field, sociable, amiable, communicative,
+inveterately contradicted but never confounded, ready to talk to any one
+about anything and making disagreement&mdash;of which he left the
+responsibility wholly to others&mdash;a basis of harmony. Every one knew what
+he thought of the theatrical profession, and yet who could say he didn't
+regard, its members as embodiments of comedy when he touched with such a
+hand the spring of their foibles?&mdash;touched it with an art that made even
+Peter laugh, notwithstanding his attitude of reserve where this
+interloper was concerned. At any rate, though he had committed himself
+as to their general fatuity he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[450]</a></span> put up with their company, for the sake
+of Miriam's vocal vibrations, with a practical philosophy that was all
+his own. And she frankly took him for her supreme, her incorrigible
+adorer, masquerading as a critic to save his vanity and tolerated for
+his secret constancy in spite of being a bore. He was meanwhile really
+not a bore to Peter, who failed of the luxury of being able to regard
+him as one. He had seen too many strange countries and curious things,
+observed and explored too much, to be void of illustration. Peter had a
+sense that if he himself was in the <i>grandes espaces</i> Gabriel had
+probably, as a finer critic, a still wider range. If among Miriam's
+associates Mr. Dashwood dragged him down, the other main sharer of his
+privilege challenged him rather to higher and more fantastic flights. If
+he saw the girl in larger relations than the young actor, who mainly saw
+her in ill-written parts, Nash went a step further and regarded her,
+irresponsibly and sublimely, as a priestess of harmony, a figure with
+which the vulgar ideas of success and failure had nothing to do. He
+laughed at her "parts," holding that without them she would still be
+great. Peter envied him his power to content himself with the pleasures
+he could get; Peter had a shrewd impression that contentment wouldn't be
+the final sweetener of his own repast.</p>
+
+<p>Above all Nash held his attention by a constant element of easy
+reference to Nick Dormer, who, as we know, had suddenly become much more
+interesting to his kinsman. Peter found food for observation, and in
+some measure for perplexity, in the relations of all these clever people
+with each other. He knew why his sister, who had a personal impatience
+of unapplied ideas, had not been agreeably affected by Miriam's prime
+patron and had not felt happy about the attribution of value to "such
+people" by the man she was to marry. This was a side on which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[451]</a></span> he had no
+desire to resemble Julia, for he needed no teaching to divine that Nash
+must have found her accessible to no light&mdash;none even about himself. He,
+Peter, would have been sorry to have to confess he couldn't more or less
+understand him. He understood furthermore that Miriam, in Nick's studio,
+might very well have appeared to Julia a formidable force. She was
+younger and would have "seen nothing," but she had quite as much her own
+resources and was beautiful enough to have made Nick compare her with
+the lady of Harsh even if he had been in love with that benefactress&mdash;a
+pretension as to which her brother, as we know, entertained doubts.</p>
+
+<p>Peter at all events saw for many days nothing of his cousin, though it
+might have been said that Nick participated by implication at least in
+the life of Balaklava Place. Had he given Julia tangible grounds and was
+his unexpectedly fine rendering of Miriam an act of virtual infidelity?
+In that case to what degree was the girl to be regarded as an accomplice
+in his defection, and what was the real nature of Miriam's esteem for
+her new and (as he might be called) distinguished ally? These questions
+would have given Peter still more to think about had he not flattered
+himself he had made up his mind that they concerned Nick and his sitter
+herself infinitely more than they concerned any one else. That young
+lady meanwhile was personally before him, so that he had no need to
+consult for his pleasure his fresh recollection of the portrait. But he
+thought of this striking production each time he thought of his so
+good-looking kinsman's variety of range. And that happened often, for in
+his hearing Miriam often discussed the happy artist and his
+possibilities with Gabriel Nash, and Nash broke out about them to all
+who might hear. Her own tone on the subject was uniform: she kept it on
+record to a degree slightly irritating that Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[452]</a></span> Dormer had been
+unforgettably&mdash;Peter particularly noted "unforgettably"&mdash;kind to her.
+She never mentioned Julia's irruption to Julia's brother; she only
+referred to the portrait, with inscrutable amenity, as a direct
+consequence of this gentleman's fortunate suggestion that first day at
+Madame Carr&eacute;'s. Nash showed, however, such a disposition to dwell
+sociably and luminously on the peculiarly interesting character of what
+he called Dormer's predicament and on the fine suspense it was fitted to
+kindle in the breast of the truly discerning, that Peter wondered, as I
+have already hinted, if this insistence were not a subtle perversity, a
+devilish little invention to torment a man whose jealousy was
+presumable. Yet his fellow-pilgrim struck him as on the whole but
+scantly devilish and as still less occupied with the prefigurement of so
+plain a man's emotions. Indeed he threw a glamour of romance over Nick;
+tossed off toward him such illuminating yet mystifying references that
+they operated quite as a bait to curiosity, invested with amusement the
+view of the possible, any wish to follow out the chain of events. He
+learned from Gabriel that Nick was still away, and he then felt he could
+almost submit to instruction, to initiation. The loose charm of these
+days was troubled, however&mdash;it ceased to be idyllic&mdash;when late on the
+evening of the second Sunday he walked away with Nash southward from
+Saint John's Wood. For then something came out.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[453]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[454]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_SIX" id="BOOK_SIX"></a>BOOK SIX</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXII" id="XXXII"></a><a href="#toc">XXXII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>It mattered not so much what the doctors thought&mdash;and Sir Matthew Hope,
+the greatest of them all, had been down twice in one week&mdash;as that Mr.
+Chayter, the omniscient butler, declared with all the authority of his
+position and his experience that Mr. Carteret was very bad indeed. Nick
+Dormer had a long talk with him&mdash;it lasted six minutes&mdash;the day he
+hurried to Beauclere in response to a telegram. It was Mr. Chayter who
+had taken upon himself to telegraph in spite of the presence in the
+house of Mr. Carteret's nearest relation and only surviving sister, Mrs.
+Lendon. This lady, a large, mild, healthy woman with a heavy tread, a
+person who preferred early breakfasts, uncomfortable chairs and the
+advertisement-sheet of the <i>Times</i>, had arrived the week before and was
+awaiting the turn of events. She was a widow and occupied in Cornwall a
+house nine miles from a station, which had, to make up for this
+inconvenience as she had once told Nick, a fine old herbaceous garden.
+She was extremely fond of an herbaceous garden&mdash;her main consciousness
+was of herbaceous possibilities. Nick had often seen her&mdash;she had always
+come to Beauclere once or twice a year. Her sojourn there made no great
+difference; she was only an "Urania dear" for Mr. Carteret to look
+across the table at when, on the close of dinner, it was time for her to
+retire. She went out of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[455]</a></span> room always as if it were after some one
+else; and on the gentlemen's "joining" her later&mdash;the junction was not
+very close&mdash;she received them with an air of gratified surprise.</p>
+
+<p>Chayter honoured Nick with a regard which approached, though not
+improperly competing with it, the affection his master had placed on the
+same young head, and Chayter knew a good many things. Among them he knew
+his place; but it was wonderful how little that knowledge had rendered
+him inaccessible to other kinds. He took upon himself to send for Nick
+without speaking to Mrs. Lendon, whose influence was now a good deal
+like that of some large occasional piece of furniture introduced on a
+contingency. She was one of the solid conveniences that a comfortable
+house would have, but you couldn't talk with a mahogany sofa or a
+folding screen. Chayter knew how much she had "had" from her brother,
+and how much her two daughters had each received on marriage; and he was
+of the opinion that it was quite enough, especially considering the
+society in which they&mdash;you could scarcely call it&mdash;moved. He knew beyond
+this that they would all have more, and that was why he hesitated little
+about communicating with Nick. If Mrs. Lendon should be ruffled at the
+intrusion of a young man who neither was the child of a cousin nor had
+been formally adopted, Chayter was parliamentary enough to see that the
+forms of debate were observed. He had indeed a slightly compassionate
+sense that Mrs. Lendon was not easily ruffled. She was always down an
+extraordinary time before breakfast&mdash;Chayter refused to take it as in
+the least admonitory&mdash;but usually went straight into the garden as if to
+see that none of the plants had been stolen in the night, and had in the
+end to be looked for by the footman in some out-of-the-way spot behind
+the shrubbery,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[456]</a></span> where, plumped upon the ground, she was mostly doing
+something "rum" to a flower.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Carteret himself had expressed no wishes. He slept most of the
+time&mdash;his failure at the last had been sudden, but he was rheumatic and
+seventy-seven&mdash;and the situation was in Chayter's hands. Sir Matthew
+Hope had opined even on a second visit that he would rally and go on, in
+rudimentary comfort, some time longer; but Chayter took a different and
+a still more intimate view. Nick was embarrassed: he scarcely knew what
+he was there for from the moment he could give his good old friend no
+conscious satisfaction. The doctors, the nurses, the servants, Mrs.
+Lendon, and above all the settled equilibrium of the square thick house,
+where an immutable order appeared to slant through the polished windows
+and tinkle in the quieter bells, all these things represented best the
+kind of supreme solace to which the master was most accessible.</p>
+
+<p>It was judged best that for the first day Nick should not be introduced
+into the darkened room. This was the decision of the two decorous
+nurses, of whom the visitor had had a glimpse and who, with their black
+uniforms and fresh faces of business, suggested the barmaid emulating
+the nun. He was depressed and restless, felt himself in a false
+position, and thought it lucky Mrs. Lendon had powers of placid
+acceptance. They were old acquaintances: she treated him formally,
+anxiously, but it was not the rigour of mistrust. It was much more an
+expression of remote Cornish respect for young abilities and
+distinguished connexions, inasmuch as she asked him rather yearningly
+about Lady Agnes and about Lady Flora and Lady Elizabeth. He knew she
+was kind and ungrudging, and his main regret was for his meagre
+knowledge and poor responses in regard to his large blank aunts. He sat
+in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[457]</a></span> garden with newspapers and looked at the lowered blinds in Mr.
+Carteret's windows; he wandered round the abbey with cigarettes and
+lightened his tread and felt grave, wishing everything might be over. He
+would have liked much to see Mr. Carteret again, but had no desire that
+Mr. Carteret should see him. In the evening he dined with Mrs. Lendon,
+and she talked to him at his request and as much as she could about her
+brother's early years, his beginnings of life. She was so much younger
+that they appeared to have been rather a tradition of her own youth; but
+her talk made Nick feel how tremendously different Mr. Carteret had been
+at that period from what he, Nick, was to-day. He had published at the
+age of thirty a little volume, thought at the time wonderfully clever,
+called <i>The Incidence of Rates</i>; but Nick had not yet collected the
+material for any such treatise. After dinner Mrs. Lendon, who was in
+merciless full dress, retired to the drawing-room, where at the end of
+ten minutes she was followed by Nick, who had remained behind only
+because he thought Chayter would expect it. Mrs. Lendon almost shook
+hands with him again and then Chayter brought in coffee. Almost in no
+time afterwards he brought in tea, and the occupants of the drawing-room
+sat for a slow half-hour, during which the lady looked round at the
+apartment with a sigh and said: "Don't you think poor Charles had
+exquisite taste?"</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately the "local man" was at this moment ushered in. He had been
+upstairs and he smiled himself in with the remark: "It's quite
+wonderful, quite wonderful." What was wonderful was a marked improvement
+in the breathing, a distinct indication of revival. The doctor had some
+tea and chatted for a quarter of an hour in a way that showed what a
+"good" manner and how large an experience<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[458]</a></span> a local man could have. When
+he retired Nick walked out with him. The doctor's house was near by and
+he had come on foot. He left the visitor with the assurance that in all
+probability Mr. Carteret, who was certainly picking up, would be able to
+see him on the morrow. Our young man turned his steps again to the abbey
+and took a stroll about it in the starlight. It never looked so huge as
+when it reared itself into the night, and Nick had never felt more fond
+of it than on this occasion, more comforted and confirmed by its beauty.
+When he came back he was readmitted by Chayter, who surveyed him in
+respectful deprecation of the frivolity which had led him to attempt to
+help himself through such an evening in such a way.</p>
+
+<p>He went to bed early and slept badly, which was unusual with him; but it
+was a pleasure to him to be told almost as soon as he appeared that Mr.
+Carteret had asked for him. He went in to see him and was struck with
+the change in his appearance. He had, however, spent a day with him just
+after the New Year and another at the beginning of March, and had then
+noted in him the menace of the final weakness. A week after Julia
+Dallow's departure for the Continent he had again devoted several hours
+to the place and to the intention of telling his old friend how the
+happy event had been brought to naught&mdash;the advantage he had been so
+good as to desire for him and to make the condition of a splendid gift.
+Before this, for a few days, he had been keeping back, to announce it
+personally, the good news that Julia had at last set their situation in
+order: he wanted to enjoy the old man's pleasure&mdash;so sore a trial had
+her arbitrary behaviour been for a year. If she had offered Mr. Carteret
+a conciliatory visit before Christmas, had come down from London one day
+to lunch with him, this had but contributed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[459]</a></span> make him subsequently
+exhibit to poor Nick, as the victim of her elegant perversity, a great
+deal of earnest commiseration in a jocose form. Upon his honour, as he
+said, she was as clever and "specious" a woman&mdash;this was his odd
+expression&mdash;as he had ever seen in his life. The merit of her behaviour
+on that occasion, as Nick knew, was that she had not been specious at
+her lover's expense: she had breathed no doubt of his public purpose and
+had had the strange grace to say that in truth she was older than he, so
+that it was only fair to give his affections time to mature. But when
+Nick saw their hopeful host after the rupture at which we have been
+present he found him in no state to deal with worries: he was seriously
+ailing, it was the beginning of worse things and not a time to put his
+attention to the stretch. After this excursion Nick had gone back to
+town saddened by his patient's now unmistakably settled decline, but
+rather relieved that he had had himself to make no confession. It had
+even occurred to him that the need for making one at all might never
+come up. Certainly it wouldn't if the ebb of Mr. Carteret's strength
+should continue unchecked. He might pass away in the persuasion that
+everything would happen as he wished it, though indeed without enriching
+Nick on his wedding-day to the tune he had promised. Very likely he had
+made legal arrangements in virtue of which his bounty would take effect
+in case of the right event and in that case alone. At present Nick had a
+bigger, an uglier truth to tell&mdash;the last three days had made the
+difference; but, oddly enough, though his responsibility had increased
+his reluctance to speak had vanished: he was positively eager to clear
+up a situation over which it was not consistent with his honour to leave
+a shade.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor had been right on coming in after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[460]</a></span> dinner; it was clear in
+the morning that they had not seen the last of Mr. Carteret's power of
+picking up. Chayter, who had waited on him, refused austerely to change
+his opinion with every change in his master's temperature; but the
+nurses took the cheering view that it would do their charge good for Mr.
+Dormer to sit with him a little. One of them remained in the room in the
+deep window-seat, and Nick spent twenty minutes by the bedside. It was
+not a case for much conversation, but his helpless host seemed still to
+like to look at him. There was life in his kind old eyes, a stir of
+something that would express itself yet in some further wise provision.
+He laid his liberal hand on Nick's with a confidence that showed how
+little it was really disabled. He said very little, and the nurse had
+recommended that the visitor himself should not overflow in speech; but
+from time to time he murmured with a faint smile: "To-night's division,
+you know&mdash;you mustn't miss it." There was probably to be no division
+that night, as happened, but even Mr. Carteret's aberrations were
+parliamentary. Before Nick withdrew he had been able to assure him he
+was rapidly getting better and that such valuable hours, the young man's
+own, mustn't be wasted. "Come back on Friday if they come to the second
+reading." These were the words with which Nick was dismissed, and at
+noon the doctor said the invalid was doing very well, but that Nick had
+better leave him quiet for that day. Our young man accordingly
+determined to go up to town for the night, and even, should he receive
+no summons, for the next day. He arranged with Chayter that he should be
+telegraphed to if Mr. Carteret were either better or worse.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh he can't very well be worse, sir," Chayter replied inexorably; but
+he relaxed so far as to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[461]</a></span> remark that of course it wouldn't do for Nick
+to neglect the House.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh the House!"&mdash;Nick was ambiguous and avoided the butler's eye. It
+would be easy enough to tell Mr. Carteret, but nothing would have
+sustained him in the effort to make a clean breast to Chayter.</p>
+
+<p>He might equivocate about the House, but he had the sense of things to
+be done awaiting him in London. He telegraphed to his servant and spent
+that night in Rosedale Road. The things to be done were apparently to be
+done in his studio: his servant met him there with a large bundle of
+letters. He failed that evening to stray within two miles of
+Westminster, and the legislature of his country reassembled without his
+support. The next morning he received a telegram from Chayter, to whom
+he had given Rosedale Road as an address. This missive simply informed
+him that Mr. Carteret wished to see him; it seemed a sign that he was
+better, though Chayter wouldn't say so. Nick again accordingly took his
+place in the train to Beauclere. He had been there very often, but it
+was present to him that now, after a little, he should go only once
+more&mdash;for a particular dismal occasion. All that was over, everything
+that belonged to it was over. He learned on his arrival&mdash;he saw Mrs.
+Lendon immediately&mdash;that his old friend had continued to pick up. He had
+expressed a strong and a perfectly rational desire to talk with his
+expected visitor, and the doctor had said that if it was about anything
+important they should forbear to oppose him. "He says it's about
+something very important," Mrs. Lendon remarked, resting shy eyes on him
+while she added that she herself was now sitting with her dear brother.
+She had sent those wonderful young ladies out to see the abbey. Nick
+paused with her outside Mr. Carteret's door. He wanted to say something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[462]</a></span>
+rather intimate and all soothing to her in return for her homely
+charity&mdash;give her a hint, for which she was far from looking, that
+practically he had now no interest in her brother's estate. This was of
+course impossible; her lack of irony, of play of mind, gave him no
+pretext, and such a reference would be an insult to her simple
+discretion. She was either not thinking of his interest at all, or was
+thinking of it with the tolerance of a nature trained to a hundred
+decent submissions. Nick looked a little into her mild, uninvestigating
+eyes, and it came over him supremely that the goodness of these people
+was singularly pure: they were a part of what was cleanest and sanest
+and dullest in humanity. There had been just a little mocking inflexion
+in Mrs. Lendon's pleasant voice; but it was dedicated to the young
+ladies in the black uniforms&mdash;she could perhaps be humorous about
+<i>them</i>&mdash;and not to the theory of the "importance" of Nick's interview
+with her brother. His arrested desire to let her know he was not greedy
+translated itself into a vague friendliness and into the abrupt, rather
+bewildering words: "I can't tell you half the good I think of you." As
+he passed into Mr. Carteret's room it occurred to him that she would
+perhaps interpret this speech as an acknowledgment of obligation&mdash;of her
+good nature in not keeping him away from the rich old man.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[463]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIII" id="XXXIII"></a><a href="#toc">XXXIII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>The rich old man was propped up on pillows, and in this attitude,
+beneath the high, spare canopy of his bed, presented himself to Nick's
+picture-seeking vision as a figure in a clever composition or a "story."
+He had gathered strength, though this strength was not much in his
+voice; it was mainly in his brighter eyes and his air of being pleased
+with himself. He put out his hand and said, "I daresay you know why I
+sent for you"; on which Nick sank into the seat he had occupied the day
+before, replying that he had been delighted to come, whatever the
+reason. Mr. Carteret said nothing more about the division or the second
+reading; he only murmured that they were keeping the newspapers for him.
+"I'm rather behind&mdash;I'm rather behind," he went on; "but two or three
+quiet mornings will make it all right. You can go back to-night, you
+know&mdash;you can easily go back." This was the only thing not quite
+straight that Nick found in him&mdash;his making light of his young friend's
+flying to and fro. The young friend sat looking at him with a sense that
+was half compunction and half the idea of the rare beauty of his face,
+to which, strangely, the waste of illness now seemed to have restored
+something of its youth. Mr. Carteret was evidently conscious that this
+morning he shouldn't be able to go on long, so that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[464]</a></span> must be
+practical and concise. "I daresay you know&mdash;you've only to remember," he
+continued.</p>
+
+<p>"I needn't tell you what a pleasure it is to me to see you&mdash;there can be
+no better reason than that," was what Nick could say.</p>
+
+<p>"Hasn't the year come round&mdash;the year of that foolish arrangement?"</p>
+
+<p>Nick thought a little, asking himself if it were really necessary to
+disturb his companion's earnest faith. Then the consciousness of the
+falsity of his own position surged over him again and he replied: "Do
+you mean the period for which Mrs. Dallow insisted on keeping me
+dangling? Oh <i>that's</i> over!" he almost gaily brought out.</p>
+
+<p>"And are you married&mdash;has it come off?" the old man asked eagerly. "How
+long have I been ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"We're uncomfortable, unreasonable people, not deserving of your
+interest. We're not married," Nick said.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I haven't been ill so long?" his host quavered with vague relief.</p>
+
+<p>"Not very long&mdash;but things <i>are</i> different," he went on.</p>
+
+<p>The old man's eyes rested on his&mdash;he noted how much larger they
+appeared. "You mean the arrangements are made&mdash;the day's at hand?"</p>
+
+<p>"There are no arrangements," Nick smiled. "But why should it trouble
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"What then will you do&mdash;without arrangements?" The inquiry was plaintive
+and childlike.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall do nothing&mdash;there's nothing to be done. We're not to be
+married&mdash;it's all off," said poor Nick. Then he added: "Mrs. Dallow has
+gone abroad."</p>
+
+<p>The old man, motionless among his pillows, gave a long groan. "Ah I
+don't like that."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[465]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No more do I, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter? It was so good&mdash;so good."</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't good enough for Julia," Nick declared.</p>
+
+<p>"For Julia? Is Julia so great as that? She told me she had the greatest
+regard for you. You're good enough for the best, my dear boy," Mr.
+Carteret pursued.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know me: I <i>am</i> disappointing. She had, I believe, a great
+regard for me, but I've forfeited her good opinion."</p>
+
+<p>The old man stared at this cynical announcement: he searched his
+visitor's face for some attenuation of the words. But Nick apparently
+struck him as unashamed, and a faint colour coming into his withered
+cheek indicated his mystification and alarm. "Have you been unfaithful
+to her?" he still considerately asked.</p>
+
+<p>"She thinks so&mdash;it comes to the same thing. As I told you a year ago,
+she doesn't believe in me."</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to have made her&mdash;you ought to have made her," said Mr.
+Carteret. Nick was about to plead some reason when he continued: "Do you
+remember what I told you I'd give you if you did? Do you remember what I
+told you I'd give you on your wedding-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"You expressed the most generous intentions; and I remember them as much
+as a man may do who has no wish to remind you of them."</p>
+
+<p>"The money's there&mdash;I've put it aside."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't earned it&mdash;I haven't earned a penny of it. Give it to those
+who deserve it more," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand, I don't understand," Mr. Carteret whimpered, the
+tears of weakness in his eyes. His face flushed and he added: "I'm not
+good for much discussion; I'm very much disappointed."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[466]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I think I may say it's not my fault&mdash;I've done what I can," Nick
+declared.</p>
+
+<p>"But when people are in love they do more than that."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh it's all over!" said our young man; not caring much now, for the
+moment, how disconcerted his companion might be, so long as he disabused
+him of the idea that they were partners to a bargain. "We've tormented
+each other and we've tormented you&mdash;and that's all that has come of it."</p>
+
+<p>His companion's eyes seemed to stare at strange things. "Don't you care
+for what I'd have done for you&mdash;shouldn't you have liked it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course one likes kindness&mdash;one likes money. But it's all over," Nick
+repeated. Then he added: "I fatigue you, I knock you up, with telling
+you these troubles. I only do so because it seems to me right you should
+know. But don't be worried&mdash;everything's for the best."</p>
+
+<p>He patted the pale hand reassuringly, inclined himself affectionately,
+but Mr. Carteret was not easily soothed. He had practised lucidity all
+his life, had expected it of others and had never given his assent to an
+indistinct proposition. He was weak, yet not too weak to recognise that
+he had formed a calculation now vitiated by a wrong factor&mdash;put his name
+to a contract of which the other side had not been carried out. More
+than fifty years of conscious success pressed him to try to understand;
+he had never muddled his affairs and he couldn't muddle them now. At the
+same time he was aware of the necessity of economising his effort, and
+he would gather that inward force, patiently and almost cunningly, for
+the right question and the right induction. He was still able to make
+his agitation reflective, and it could still consort with his high hopes
+of Nick that he should find himself regarding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[467]</a></span> mere vague, verbal
+comfort, words in the air, as an inadequate guarantee. So after he had
+attached his dim vision to his young friend's face a moment he brought
+out: "Have you done anything bad?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing worse than usual," Nick laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah everything should have been better than usual."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it hasn't been that&mdash;that I must say."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you sometimes think of your father?" Mr. Carteret continued.</p>
+
+<p>Nick had a decent pause. "<i>You</i> make me think of him&mdash;you've always that
+pleasant effect."</p>
+
+<p>"His name would have lived&mdash;it mustn't be lost."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but the competition to-day is terrible," Nick returned.</p>
+
+<p>His host considered this as if he found a serious flaw in it; after
+which he began again: "I never supposed you a trifler."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm determined not to be."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought her charming. Don't you love Mrs. Dallow?" Mr. Carteret
+profoundly asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't put it to me so to-day, for I feel sore and injured. I don't
+think she has treated me well."</p>
+
+<p>"You should have held her&mdash;you shouldn't have let her go," the old man
+returned with unexpected fire.</p>
+
+<p>His visitor flushed at this, so strange was it to receive a lesson in
+energy from a dying octogenarian. Yet after an instant Nick answered
+with due modesty: "I haven't been clever enough, no doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that, don't say that&mdash;!" Mr. Carteret shrunk from the
+thought. "Don't think I can allow you any easing-off of that sort. I
+know how well you've done. You're taking your place. Several gentlemen
+have told me. Hasn't she felt a scruple, knowing my settlement on you to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[468]</a></span>depend&mdash;&mdash;?" he pursued.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh she hasn't known&mdash;hasn't known anything about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand; though I think you explained somewhat a year
+ago"&mdash;the poor gentleman gave it up. "I think she wanted to speak to
+me&mdash;of any intentions I might have in regard to you&mdash;the day she was
+here. Very nicely, very properly she'd have done it, I'm sure. I think
+her idea was that I ought to make any settlement quite independent of
+your marrying her or not marrying her. But I tried to convey to her&mdash;I
+don't know whether she understood me&mdash;that I liked her too much for
+that, I wanted too much to make sure of her."</p>
+
+<p>"To make sure of me, you mean," said Nick. "And now after all you see
+you haven't."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, perhaps it was that," sighed the old man confusedly.</p>
+
+<p>"All this is very bad for you&mdash;we'll talk again," Nick urged.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no&mdash;let us finish it now. I like to know what I'm doing. I shall
+rest better when I do know. There are great things to be done; the
+future will be full&mdash;the future will be fine," Mr. Carteret wandered.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me be distinct about this for Julia: that if we hadn't been
+sundered her generosity to me would have been complete&mdash;she'd have put
+her great fortune absolutely at my disposal," Nick said after a moment.
+"Her consciousness of all that naturally carries her over any particular
+distress in regard to what won't come to me now from another source."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah don't lose it!" the old man painfully pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>"It's in your hands, sir," Nick returned.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean Mrs. Dallow's fortune. It will be of the highest utility. That
+was what your father missed."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall miss more than my father did," said Nick.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[469]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Shell come back to you&mdash;I can't look at you and doubt that."</p>
+
+<p>Nick smiled with a slow headshake. "Never, never, never! You look at me,
+my grand old friend, but you don't see me. I'm not what you think."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it&mdash;what is it? <i>Have</i> you been bad?" Mr. Carteret panted.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; I'm not bad. But I'm different."</p>
+
+<p>"Different&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Different from my father. Different from Mrs. Dallow. Different from
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah why do you perplex me?" the old man moaned. "You've done something."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to perplex you, but I have done something," said Nick,
+getting up.</p>
+
+<p>He had heard the door open softly behind him and Mrs. Lendon come
+forward with precautions. "What has he done&mdash;what has he done?" quavered
+Mr. Carteret to his sister. She, however, after a glance at the patient,
+motioned their young friend away and, bending over the bed, replied, in
+a voice expressive at that moment of an ample provision of vital
+comfort:</p>
+
+<p>"He has only excited you, I'm afraid, a little more than is good for
+you. Isn't your dear old head a little too high?" Nick regarded himself
+as justly banished, and he quitted the room with a ready acquiescence in
+any power to carry on the scene of which Mrs. Lendon might find herself
+possessed. He felt distinctly brutal as he heard his host emit a weak
+exhalation of assent to some change of position. But he would have
+reproached himself more if he had wished less to guard against the
+acceptance of an equivalent for duties unperformed. Mr. Carteret had had
+in his mind, characteristically, the idea of a fine high contract, and
+there was something more to be said about that.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[470]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nick went out of the house and stayed away for two or three hours, quite
+ready to regard the place as quieter and safer without him. He haunted
+the abbey as usual and sat a long time in its simplifying stillness,
+turning over many things. He came back again at the luncheon-hour,
+through the garden, and heard, somewhat to his surprise and greatly to
+his relief, that his host had composed himself promptly enough after
+their agitating interview. Mrs. Lendon talked at luncheon much as if she
+expected her brother to be, as she said, really quite fit again. She
+asked Nick no awkward question; which was uncommonly good of her, he
+thought, considering that she might have said, "What in the world were
+you trying to get out of him?" She only reported to our young man that
+the invalid had every hope of a short interview about half-past seven, a
+<i>very</i> short one: this gentle emphasis was Mrs. Lendon's single tribute
+to the critical spirit. Nick divined that Mr. Carteret's desire for
+further explanations was really strong and had been capable of
+sustaining him through a bad morning, capable even of helping him&mdash;it
+would have been a secret and wonderful momentary conquest of
+weakness&mdash;to pass it off for a good one. He wished he might make a
+sketch of him, from the life, as he had seen him after breakfast; he had
+a conviction he could make a strong one, which would be a precious
+memento. But he shrank from proposing this&mdash;the dear man might think it
+unparliamentary. The doctor had called while Nick was out, and he came
+again at five o'clock without that inmate's seeing him. The latter was
+busy in his room at that hour: he wrote a short letter which took him a
+long time. But apparently there had been no veto on a resumption of
+talk, for at half-past seven his friend sent for him. The nurse at the
+door said, "Only a moment, I hope, sir?" but took him in and then
+withdrew.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[471]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The prolonged daylight was in the room and its occupant again
+established on his pile of pillows, but with his head a little lower.
+Nick sat down by him and expressed the hope of not having upset him in
+the morning; but the old man, with fixed, enlarged eyes, took up their
+conversation exactly where they had left it. "What have you done&mdash;what
+have you done? Have you associated yourself with some other woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; I don't think she can accuse me of that."</p>
+
+<p>"Well then she'll come back to you if you take the right way with her."</p>
+
+<p>It might have been droll to hear the poor gentleman, in his situation,
+give his views on the right way with women; but Nick was not moved to
+enjoy that diversion. "I've taken the wrong way. I've done something
+that must spoil my prospects in that direction for ever. I've written a
+letter," the visitor went on; but his companion had already interrupted
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"You've written a letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"To my constituents, informing them of my determination to resign my
+seat."</p>
+
+<p>"To resign your seat?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've made up my mind, after no end of reflexion, dear Mr. Carteret, to
+work on quite other lines. I've a plan of becoming a painter. So I've
+given up the idea of a political life."</p>
+
+<p>"A painter?" Mr. Carteret seemed to turn whiter. "I'm going in for the
+portrait in oils. It sounds absurd, I know, and I'm thus specific only
+to show you I don't in the least expect you to count on me." The invalid
+had continued to stare at first; then his eyes slowly closed and he lay
+motionless and blank. "Don't let it trouble you now; it's a long story
+and rather a poor one; when you get better I'll tell you all about it.
+Well talk it over amicably and I'll bring you to my view," Nick went on
+hypocritically.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[472]</a></span> He had laid his hand again on the hand beside him; it
+felt cold, and as the old man remained silent he had a moment of
+exaggerated fear.</p>
+
+<p>"This is dreadful news"&mdash;and Mr. Carteret opened his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly it must seem so to you, for I've always kept from you&mdash;I was
+ashamed, and my present confusion is a just chastisement&mdash;the great
+interest I have always taken in the&mdash;&mdash;!" But Nick broke down with a
+gasp, to add presently, with an intention of the pleasant and a sense of
+the foolish: "In the pencil and the brush." He spoke of his current
+confusion, though his manner might have been thought to show it but
+little. He was himself surprised at his brazen assurance and had to
+recognise that at the point things had come to now he was profoundly
+obstinate and quiet.</p>
+
+<p>"The pencil&mdash;the brush? They're not the weapons of a gentleman," Mr.
+Carteret pronounced.</p>
+
+<p>"I was sure that would be your feeling. I repeat that I mention them
+only because you once said you intended to do something for me, as the
+phrase is, and I thought you oughtn't to do it in ignorance."</p>
+
+<p>"My ignorance was better. Such knowledge isn't good for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, my dear old friend," Nick kept it bravely up. "When you're
+better you'll see it differently."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never be better now."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah no," Nick insisted; "it will really do you good after a little.
+Think it over quietly and you'll be glad I've stopped humbugging."</p>
+
+<p>"I loved you&mdash;I loved you as my son," the old man wailed.</p>
+
+<p>He sank on his knee beside the bed and leaned over him tenderly. "Get
+better, get better, and I'll be your son for the rest of your life."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[473]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Poor Dormer&mdash;poor Dormer!" Mr. Carteret continued to lament.</p>
+
+<p>"I admit that if he had lived I probably shouldn't have done it," said
+Nick. "I daresay I should have deferred to his prejudices even though
+thinking them narrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you turn against your father?" his host asked, making, to disengage
+his arm from the young man's touch, an effort betraying the irritation
+of conscious weakness. Nick got up at this and stood a moment looking
+down at him while he went on: "Do you give up your name, do you give up
+your country?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I do something good my country may like it." Nick spoke as if he had
+thought that out.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you regard them as equal, the two glories?"</p>
+
+<p>"Here comes your nurse to blow me up and turn me out," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse had come in, but Mr. Carteret directed to her an audible dry,
+courteous "Be so good as to wait till I send for you," which arrested
+her in the large room at some distance from the bed and then had the
+effect of making her turn on her heel with a professional laugh. She
+clearly judged that an old gentleman with the fine manner of his prime
+might still be trusted to take care of himself. When she had gone that
+personage addressed to his visitor the question for which his deep
+displeasure lent him strength. "Do you pretend there's a nobler life
+than a high political career?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think the noble life's doing one's work well. One can do it very ill
+and be very base and mean in what you call a high political career. I
+haven't been in the House so many months without finding that out. It
+contains some very small souls."</p>
+
+<p>"You should stand against them&mdash;you should expose them!" stammered Mr.
+Carteret.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[474]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Stand against them, against one's own party!"</p>
+
+<p>The old man contended a moment with this and then broke out: "God
+forgive you, are you a Tory, are you a Tory?"</p>
+
+<p>"How little you understand me!" laughed Nick with a ring of bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>"Little enough&mdash;little enough, my boy. Have you sent your electors your
+dreadful letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet; but it's all ready and I shan't change my mind."</p>
+
+<p>"You will&mdash;you will. You'll think better of it. You'll see your duty,"
+said the invalid almost coaxingly.</p>
+
+<p>"That seems very improbable, for my determination, crudely and abruptly
+as, to my great regret, it comes to you here, is the fruit of a long and
+painful struggle. The difficulty is that I see my duty just in this
+other effort."</p>
+
+<p>"An effort? Do you call it an effort to fall away, to sink far down, to
+give up every effort? What does your mother say, heaven help her?" Mr.
+Carteret went on before Nick could answer the other question.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't told her yet."</p>
+
+<p>"You're ashamed, you're ashamed!" Nick only looked out of the west
+window now&mdash;he felt his ears turn hot. "Tell her it would have been
+sixty thousand. I had the money all ready."</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't tell her that," said Nick, redder still.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor woman&mdash;poor dear woman!" Mr. Carteret woefully cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes indeed&mdash;she won't like it."</p>
+
+<p>"Think it all over again; don't throw away a splendid future!" These
+words were uttered with a final flicker of passion&mdash;Nick had never heard
+such an accent on his old friend's lips. But he next began to murmur,
+"I'm tired&mdash;I'm very tired," and sank back with a groan and with closed
+lips. His guest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[475]</a></span> gently assured him that he had but too much cause to be
+exhausted and that the worst was over now. He smoothed his pillows for
+him and said he must leave him, would send in the nurse. "Come back,
+come back," Mr. Carteret pleaded against that; "come back and tell me
+it's a horrible dream."</p>
+
+<p>Nick did go back very late that evening; his host had sent a message to
+his room. But one of the nurses was on the ground this time and made
+good her opposition watch in hand. The sick-room was shrouded and
+darkened; the shaded candle left the bed in gloom. Nick's interview with
+his venerable friend was the affair of but a moment; the nurse
+interposed, impatient and not understanding. She heard Nick say that he
+had posted his letter now and their companion flash out with an acerbity
+still savouring of the sordid associations of a world he had not done
+with: "Then of course my settlement doesn't take effect!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh that's all right," Nick answered kindly; and he went off next
+morning by the early train&mdash;his injured host was still sleeping. Mrs.
+Lendon's habits made it easy for her to be present in matutinal bloom at
+the young man's hasty breakfast, and she sent a particular remembrance
+to Lady Agnes and (when he should see them) to the Ladies Flora and
+Elizabeth. Nick had a prevision of the spirit in which his mother at
+least would now receive hollow compliments from Beauclere.</p>
+
+<p>The night before, as soon as he had quitted Mr. Carteret, the old man
+said to the nurse that he wished Mr. Chayter instructed to go and fetch
+Mr. Mitton the first thing in the morning. Mr. Mitton was the leading
+solicitor at Beauclere.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[476]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIV" id="XXXIV"></a><a href="#toc">XXXIV</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>The really formidable thing for Nick had been to tell his mother: a
+truth of which he was so conscious that he had the matter out with her
+the very morning he returned from Beauclere. She and Grace had come back
+the afternoon before from their own enjoyment of rural hospitality, and,
+knowing this&mdash;she had written him her intention from the country&mdash;he
+drove straight from the station to Calcutta Gardens. There was a little
+room on the right of the house-door known as his own room; but in which
+of a morning, when he was not at home, Lady Agnes sometimes wrote her
+letters. These were always numerous, and when she heard our young man's
+cab she happened to be engaged with them at the big brass-mounted bureau
+that had belonged to his father, where, amid a margin of works of
+political reference, she seemed to herself to make public affairs feel
+the point of her elbow.</p>
+
+<p>She came into the hall to meet her son and to hear about their
+benefactor, and Nick went straight back into the room with her and
+closed the door. It would be in the evening paper and she would see it,
+and he had no right to allow her to wait for that. It proved indeed a
+terrible hour; and when ten minutes later Grace, who had learned
+upstairs her brother's return, went down for further news of him she
+heard from the hall a sound of voices that made her first pause<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[477]</a></span> and
+then retrace her steps on tiptoe. She mounted to the drawing-room and
+crept about there, palpitating, looking at moments into the dull street
+and wondering what on earth had taken place. She had no one to express
+her wonder to, for Florence Tressilian had departed and Biddy after
+breakfast betaken herself, in accordance with a custom now inveterate,
+to Rosedale Road. Her mother was unmistakably and passionately crying&mdash;a
+fact tremendous in its significance, for Lady Agnes had not often been
+brought so low. Nick had seen her cry, but this almost awful spectacle
+had seldom been offered to Grace, and it now convinced her that some
+dreadful thing had happened.</p>
+
+<p>That was of course in order, after Nick's mysterious quarrel with Julia,
+which had made his mother so ill and was at present followed up with new
+horrors. The row, as Grace mentally phrased it, had had something to do
+with the rupture of the lovers&mdash;some deeper depth of disappointment had
+begun to yawn. Grace asked herself if they were talking about Broadwood;
+if Nick had demanded that in the conditions so unpleasantly altered Lady
+Agnes should restore that awfully nice house to its owner. This was very
+possible, but why should he so suddenly have broken out about it? And,
+moreover, their mother, though sore to bleeding about the whole
+business&mdash;for Broadwood, in its fresh comfort, was too
+delightful&mdash;wouldn't have met this pretension with tears: hadn't she
+already so perversely declared that they couldn't decently continue to
+make use of the place? Julia had said that of course they must go on,
+but Lady Agnes was prepared with an effective rejoinder to that. It
+didn't consist of words&mdash;it was to be austerely practical, was to
+consist of letting Julia see, at the moment she should least expect it,
+that they quite wouldn't go on. Lady Agnes was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[478]</a></span> ostensibly waiting for
+this moment&mdash;the moment when her renunciation would be most impressive.</p>
+
+<p>Grace was conscious of how she had for many days been moving with her
+mother in darkness, deeply stricken by Nick's culpable&mdash;oh he was
+culpable!&mdash;loss of his prize, but feeling an obscure element in the
+matter they didn't grasp, an undiscovered explanation that would perhaps
+make it still worse, though it might make <i>them</i>, poor things, a little
+better. He had explained nothing, he had simply said, "Dear mother, we
+don't hit it off, after all; it's an awful bore, but we don't"&mdash;as if
+that were in the dire conditions an adequate balm for two aching hearts.
+From Julia naturally no flood of light was to be looked for&mdash;Julia
+<i>never</i> humoured curiosity&mdash;and, though she very often did the thing you
+wouldn't suppose, she was not unexpectedly apologetic in this case.
+Grace recognised that in such a position it would savour of apology for
+her to disclose to Lady Agnes her grounds for having let Nick off; and
+she wouldn't have liked to be the person to suggest to Julia that any
+one looked for anything from her. Neither of the disunited pair blamed
+the other or cast an aspersion, and it was all very magnanimous and
+superior and impenetrable and exasperating. With all this Grace had a
+suspicion that Biddy knew something more, that for Biddy the tormenting
+curtain had been lifted.</p>
+
+<p>Biddy had come and gone in these days with a perceptible air of
+detachment from the tribulations of home. It had made her, fortunately,
+very pretty&mdash;still prettier than usual: it sometimes happened that at
+moments when Grace was most angry she had a faint sweet smile which
+might have been drawn from some source of occult consolation. It was
+perhaps in some degree connected with Peter Sherringham's visit, as to
+which the girl had not been superstitiously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[479]</a></span> silent. When Grace asked
+her if she had secret information and if it pointed to the idea that
+everything would be all right in the end, she pretended to know
+nothing&mdash;What should she know? she asked with the loveliest arch of
+eyebrows over an unblinking candour&mdash;and begged her sister not to let
+Lady Agnes believe her better off than themselves. She contributed
+nothing to their gropings save a much better patience, but she went with
+noticeable regularity, on the pretext of her foolish modelling, to
+Rosedale Road. She was frankly on Nick's side; not going so far as to
+say he had been right, but saying distinctly how sure she was that,
+whatever had happened, he couldn't have helped it, not a mite. This was
+striking, because, as Grace knew, the younger of the sisters had been
+much favoured by Julia and wouldn't have sacrificed her easily. It
+associated itself in the irritated mind of the elder with Biddy's
+frequent visits to the studio and made Miss Dormer ask herself if the
+crisis in Nick's and Julia's business had not somehow been linked to
+that unnatural spot.</p>
+
+<p>She had gone there two or three times while Biddy was working, gone to
+pick up any clue to the mystery that might peep out. But she had put her
+hand on nothing more&mdash;it wouldn't have occurred to her to say nothing
+less&mdash;than the so dreadfully pointed presence of Gabriel Nash. She once
+found that odd satellite, to her surprise, paying a visit to her
+sister&mdash;he had come for Nick, who was absent; she remembered how they
+had met in Paris and how little he had succeeded with them. When she had
+asked Biddy afterwards how she could receive him that way Biddy had
+replied that even she, Grace, would have some charity for him if she
+could hear how fond he was of poor Nick. He had talked to her only of
+Nick&mdash;of nothing else. Grace had observed how she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[480]</a></span> spoke of Nick as
+injured, and had noted the implication that some one else, ceasing to be
+fond of him, was thereby condemned in Biddy's eyes. It seemed to Grace
+that some one else had at least a right not to like some of his friends.
+The studio struck her as mean and horrid; and so far from suggesting to
+her that it could have played a part in making Nick and Julia fall out
+she only felt how little its dusty want of consequence, could count, one
+way or the other, for Julia. Grace, who had no opinions on art, saw no
+merit whatever in those "impressions" on canvas from Nick's hand with
+which the place was bestrewn. She didn't at all wish her brother to have
+talent in that direction, yet it was secretly humiliating to her that he
+hadn't more.</p>
+
+<p>Nick meanwhile felt a pang of almost horrified penitence, in the little
+room on the right of the hall, the moment after he had made his mother
+really understand he had thrown up his scat and that it would probably
+be in the evening papers. That she would take this very ill was an idea
+that had pressed upon him hard enough, but she took it even worse than
+he had feared. He measured, in the look she gave him when the full truth
+loomed upon her, the mortal cruelty of her distress; her face was like
+that of a passenger on a ship who sees the huge bows of another vessel
+towering close out of the fog. There are visions of dismay before which
+the best conscience recoils, and though Nick had made his choice on all
+the grounds there were a few minutes in which he would gladly have
+admitted that his wisdom was a dark mistake. His heart was in his
+throat, he had gone too far; he had been ready to disappoint his
+mother&mdash;he had not been ready to destroy her.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Agnes, I hasten to add, was not destroyed; she made, after her
+first drowning gasp, a tremendous scene of opposition, in the face of
+which her son<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[481]</a></span> could only fall back on his intrenchments. She must know
+the worst, he had thought: so he told her everything, including the
+little story of the forfeiture of his "expectations" from Mr. Carteret.
+He showed her this time not only the face of the matter, but what lay
+below it; narrated briefly the incident in his studio which had led to
+Julia Dallow's deciding she couldn't after all put up with him. This was
+wholly new to Lady Agnes, she had had no clue to it, and he could
+instantly see how it made the event worse for her, adding a hideous
+positive to an abominable negative. He noted now that, distressed and
+distracted as she had been by his rupture with Julia, she had still held
+to the faith that their engagement would come on again; believing
+evidently that he had a personal empire over the mistress of Harsh which
+would bring her back. Lady Agnes was forced to recognise this empire as
+precarious, to forswear the hope of a blessed renewal from the moment
+the question was of base infatuations on his own part. Nick confessed to
+an infatuation, but did his best to show her it wasn't base; that it
+wasn't&mdash;since Julia had had faith in his loyalty&mdash;for the person of the
+young lady who had been discovered posturing to him and whom he had seen
+but half-a-dozen times in his life. He endeavoured to recall to his
+mother the identity of this young lady, he adverted to the occasion in
+Paris when they all had seen her together. But Lady Agnes's mind and
+memory were a blank on the subject of Miss Miriam Rooth and she wanted
+to hear nothing whatever about her: it was enough that she was the cause
+of their ruin and a part of his pitiless folly. She needed to know
+nothing of her to allude to her as if it were superfluous to give a
+definite name to the class to which she belonged.</p>
+
+<p>But she gave a name to the group in which Nick had now taken his place,
+and it made him feel after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[482]</a></span> the lapse of years like a small, scolded,
+sorry boy again; for it was so far away he could scarcely remember
+it&mdash;besides there having been but a moment or two of that sort in his
+happy childhood&mdash;the time when this parent had slapped him and called
+him a little fool. He was a big fool now&mdash;hugely immeasurable; she
+repeated the term over and over with high-pitched passion. The most
+painful thing in this painful hour was perhaps his glimpse of the
+strange feminine cynicism that lurked in her fine sense of injury. Where
+there was such a complexity of revolt it would have been difficult to
+pick out particular wrongs; but Nick could see that, to his mother's
+imagination, he was most a fool for not having kept his relations with
+the actress, whatever they were, better from Julia's knowledge. He
+remained indeed freshly surprised at the ardour with which she had
+rested her hopes on Julia. Julia was certainly a combination&mdash;she was
+accomplished, she was a sort of leading woman and she was rich; but
+after all&mdash;putting aside what she might be to a man in love with
+her&mdash;she was not the keystone of the universe. Yet the form in which the
+consequences of his apostasy appeared most to come home to Lady Agnes
+was the loss for the Dormer family of the advantages attached to the
+possession of Mrs. Dallow. The larger mortification would round itself
+later; for the hour the damning thing was that Nick had made that lady
+the gift of an unforgivable grievance. He had clinched their separation
+by his letter to his electors&mdash;and that above all was the wickedness of
+the letter. Julia would have got over the other woman, but she would
+never get over his becoming a nobody.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Agnes challenged him upon this low prospect exactly as if he had
+embraced it with the malignant purpose of making the return of his late
+intended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[483]</a></span> impossible. She contradicted her premises and lost her way in
+her wrath. What had made him suddenly turn round if he had been in good
+faith before? He had never been in good faith&mdash;never, never; he had had
+from his earliest childhood the nastiest hankerings after a vulgar
+little daubing, trash-talking life; they were not in him, the grander,
+nobler aspirations&mdash;they never had been&mdash;and he had been anything but
+honest to lead her on, to lead them all on, to think he would do
+something: the fall and the shame would have been less for them if they
+had come earlier. Moreover, what need under heaven had he to tell
+Charles Carteret of the cruel folly on his very death-bed?&mdash;as if he
+mightn't have let it all alone and accepted the benefit the old man was
+so delighted to confer. No wonder Mr. Carteret would keep his money for
+his heirs if that was the way Nick proposed to repay him; but where was
+the common sense, where was the common charity, where was the common
+decency of tormenting him with such vile news in his last hours? Was he
+trying what he could invent that would break her heart, that would send
+her in sorrow down to her grave? Weren't they all miserable enough and
+hadn't he a ray of pity for his wretched sisters?</p>
+
+<p>The relation of effect and cause, in regard to his sisters'
+wretchedness, was but dimly discernible to Nick, who, however, perceived
+his mother genuinely to consider that his action had disconnected them
+all, still more than she held they were already disconnected, from the
+good things of life. Julia was money, Mr. Carteret was money&mdash;everything
+else was the absence of it. If these precious people had been primarily
+money for Nick it after all flattered the distributive impulse in him to
+have taken for granted that for the rest of the family too the
+difference would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[484]</a></span> have been so great. For days, for weeks and months to
+come, the little room on the right of the hall was to vibrate for our
+young man, as if the very walls and window-panes still suffered, with
+the odious trial of his true temper.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[485]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXV" id="XXXV"></a><a href="#toc">XXXV</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>That evening&mdash;the evening of his return from Beauclere&mdash;he was conscious
+of a keen desire to get away, to go abroad, to leave behind him the
+little chatter his resignation would be sure to produce in an age of
+publicity which never discriminated as to the quality of events. Then he
+felt it decidedly better to stay, to see the business through on the
+spot. Besides, he would have to meet his constituents&mdash;would a parcel of
+cheese-eating burgesses ever have been "met" on so queer an
+occasion?&mdash;and when that was over the incident would practically be
+closed. Nick had an idea he knew in advance how it would affect him to
+be pointed at as a person who had given up a considerable chance of
+eventual "office" to take likenesses at so much a head. He wouldn't
+attempt down at Harsh to touch on the question of motive; for, given the
+nature of the public mind of Harsh, that would be a strain on his
+faculty of exposition. But as regards the chaff of the political world
+and of society he had a hope he should find chaff enough for retorts. It
+was true that when his mother twitted him in her own effective way he
+had felt rather flattened out; but then one's mother might have a
+heavier hand than any one else. He had not thrown up the House of
+Commons to amuse himself; he had thrown it up to work, to sit quietly
+down and bend over his task. If he should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">[486]</a></span> go abroad his parent might
+think he had some weak-minded view of joining Julia and trying, with
+however little hope, to win her back&mdash;an illusion it would be singularly
+pernicious to encourage. His desire for Julia's society had succumbed
+for the present at any rate to a dire interruption&mdash;he had become more
+and more aware of their speaking a different language. Nick felt like a
+young man who has gone to the Rhineland to "get up" his German for an
+examination&mdash;committed to talk, to read, to dream only in the new idiom.
+Now that he had taken his jump everything was simplified, at the same
+time that everything was pitched in a higher and intenser key; and he
+wondered how in the absence of a common dialect he had conversed on the
+whole so happily with Mrs. Dallow. Then he had aftertastes of
+understandings tolerably independent of words. He was excited because
+every fresh responsibility is exciting, and there was no manner of doubt
+he had accepted one. No one knew what it was but himself&mdash;Gabriel Nash
+scarcely counted, his whole attitude on the question of responsibility
+being so fantastic&mdash;and he would have to ask his dearest friends to take
+him on trust. Rather indeed he would ask nothing of any one, but would
+cultivate independence, mulishness, and gaiety, and fix his thoughts on
+a bright if distant morrow. It was disagreeable to have to remember that
+his task would not be sweetened by a sense of heroism; for if it might
+be heroic to give up the muses for the strife of great affairs, no
+romantic glamour worth speaking of would ever gather round an Englishman
+who in the prime of his strength had given up great or even small
+affairs for the muses. Such an original might himself privately and
+perversely regard certain phases of this inferior commerce as a great
+affair; but who would give him the benefit of that sort of
+confidence&mdash;except<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">[487]</a></span> indeed a faithful, clever, exalted little sister
+Biddy, if he should have the good luck to have one? Biddy was in fact
+all ready for heroic flights and eager to think she might fight the
+battle of the beautiful by her brother's side; so that he had really to
+moderate her and remind her how little his actual job was a crusade with
+bugles and banners and how much a grey, sedentary grind, the charm of
+which was all at the core. You might have an emotion about it, and an
+emotion that would be a help, but this was not the sort of thing you
+could show&mdash;the end in view would seem so disproportionately small. Nick
+put it to her that one really couldn't talk to people about the
+"responsibility" of what she would see him pottering at in his studio.</p>
+
+<p>He therefore didn't "run," as he would have said, to winged words any
+more than he was forced to, having, moreover, a sense that apologetic
+work (if apology it should be called to carry the war straight into the
+enemy's country) might be freely left to Gabriel Nash. He laid the
+weight of explanation on his commentators, meeting them all on the firm
+ground of his own amusement. He saw he should live for months in a thick
+cloud of irony, not the finest air of the season, and he adopted the
+weapon to which a person whose use of tobacco is only occasional resorts
+when every one else produces a cigar&mdash;he puffed the spasmodic, defensive
+cigarette. He accepted as to what he had done the postulate of the
+obscurely tortuous, abounding so in that sense that his critics were
+themselves bewildered. Some of them felt that they got, as the phrase
+is, little out of him&mdash;he rose in his good humour so much higher than
+the "rise" they had looked for&mdash;on his very first encounter with the
+world after his scrimmage with his mother. He went to a dinner-party&mdash;he
+had accepted the invitation many days before&mdash;having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">[488]</a></span> seen his
+resignation, in the form of a telegram from Harsh, announced in the
+evening papers. The people he found there had seen it as well, and the
+wittiest wanted to know what he was now going to do. Even the most
+embarrassed asked if it were true he had changed his politics. He gave
+different answers to different persons, but left most of them under the
+impression that he had strange scruples of conscience. This, however,
+was not a formidable occasion, for there had happened to be no one
+present he would have desired, on the old basis, especially to gratify.
+There were real good friends it would be less easy to meet&mdash;Nick was
+almost sorry for an hour that he had so many real good friends. If he
+had had more enemies the case would have been simpler, and he was fully
+aware that the hardest thing of all would be to be let off too easily.
+Then he would appear to himself to have been put, all round, on his
+generosity, and his deviation would thus wear its ugliest face.</p>
+
+<p>When he left the place at which he had been dining he betook himself to
+Rosedale Road: he saw no reason why he should go down to the House,
+though he knew he had not done with that yet. He had a dread of behaving
+as if he supposed he should be expected to make a farewell speech, and
+was thankful his eminence was not of a nature to create on such an
+occasion a demand for his oratory. He had in fact nothing whatever to
+say in public&mdash;not a vain word, not a sorry syllable. Though the hour
+was late he found Gabriel Nash established in his studio, drawn thither
+by the fine exhilaration of having seen an evening paper. Trying it
+late, on the chance, he had been told by Nick's servant that Nick would
+sleep there that night, and he had come in to wait, he was so eager to
+congratulate him. Nick submitted with a good grace to his society&mdash;he
+was tired enough to go to bed, but was restless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">[489]</a></span> too&mdash;in spite of noting
+now, oddly enough, that Nash's congratulations could add little to his
+fortitude. He had felt a good deal, before, as if he were in this
+philosopher's hands; but since making his final choice he had begun to
+strike himself as all in his own. Gabriel might have been the angel of
+that name, but no angel could assist him much henceforth.</p>
+
+<p>Nash indeed was as true as ever to his genius while he lolled on a divan
+and emitted a series of reflexions that were even more ingenious than
+opportune. Nick walked up and down the room, and it might have been
+supposed from his manner that he was impatient for his friend to
+withdraw. This idea would have been contradicted, however, by the fact
+that subsequently, after the latter had quitted him, he continued to
+perambulate. He had grown used to Gabriel and must now have been
+possessed of all he had to say. That was one's penalty with persons
+whose main gift was for talk, however inspiring; talk engendered a sense
+of sameness much sooner than action. The things a man did were
+necessarily more different from each other than the things he said, even
+if he went in for surprising you. Nick felt Nash could never surprise
+him any more save by mere plain perpetration.</p>
+
+<p>He talked of his host's future, talked of Miriam Rooth and of Peter
+Sherringham, whom he had seen at that young woman's and whom he
+described as in a predicament delightful to behold. Nick put a question
+about Peter's predicament and learned, rather to his disappointment,
+that it consisted only of the fact that he was in love with Miriam. He
+appealed to his visitor to do better than this, and Nash then added the
+touch that Sherringham wouldn't be able to have her. "Oh they've ideas!"
+he said when Nick asked him why.</p>
+
+<p>"What ideas? So has he, I suppose."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">[490]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but they're not the same."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they'll nevertheless arrange something," Nick opined.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have to help them a bit. She's in love with another man," Nash
+went on.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm never another man&mdash;I'm always more the wrong one than the man
+himself. It's you she's after." And on his friend's asking him what he
+meant by this Nash added: "While you were engaged in transferring her
+image to the tablet of your genius you stamped your own on that of her
+heart."</p>
+
+<p>Nick stopped in his walk, staring. "Ah, what a bore!"</p>
+
+<p>"A bore? Don't you think her formed to please?"</p>
+
+<p>Nick wondered, but didn't conclude. "I wanted to go on with her&mdash;now I
+can't."</p>
+
+<p>Nash himself, however, jumped straight to what really mattered. "My dear
+fellow, it only makes her handsomer. I wondered what happy turn she had
+taken."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's twaddle," said Nick, turning away. "Besides, has she told
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, but her mother has."</p>
+
+<p>"Has she told her mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Rooth says not. But I've known Mrs. Rooth to say that which
+isn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Apply that rule then to the information you speak of."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, since you press me, I know more," Gabriel said. "Miriam knows
+you're engaged to a wonderful, rich lady; she told me as much, told me
+she had seen her here. That was enough to set her off&mdash;she likes
+forbidden fruit."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not engaged to any lady whatever. I was,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">[491]</a></span> Nick handsomely
+conceded, "but we've altered our minds."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, what a pity!" his friend wailed.</p>
+
+<p>"Mephistopheles!"&mdash;and he stopped again with the point of this.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray then whom do you call Margaret? May I ask if your failure of
+interest in the political situation is the cause of this change in your
+personal one?" Nash went on. Nick signified that he mightn't; whereupon
+he added: "I'm not in the least devilish&mdash;I only mean it's a pity you've
+altered your minds, since Miriam may in consequence alter hers. She goes
+from one thing to another. However, I won't tell her."</p>
+
+<p>"I will then!" Nick declared between jest and earnest.</p>
+
+<p>"Would that really be prudent?" his companion asked more completely in
+the frolic key.</p>
+
+<p>"At any rate," he resumed, "nothing would induce me to interfere with
+Peter Sherringham. That sounds fatuous, but to you I don't mind
+appearing an ass."</p>
+
+<p>"The thing would be to get Sherringham, out of spite," Nash threw off,
+"to entangle himself with another woman."</p>
+
+<p>"What good would that do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Miriam would then begin to think of him."</p>
+
+<p>"Spite surely isn't a conceivable motive&mdash;for a healthy man."</p>
+
+<p>The plea, however, found Gabriel ready. "Sherringham's just precisely
+not a healthy man. He's too much in love."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he won't care for another woman."</p>
+
+<p>"He would try to, and that would produce its effect&mdash;its effect on
+Miriam."</p>
+
+<p>"You talk like an American novel. Let him try, and God keep us all
+straight." Nick adverted in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">[492]</a></span> extreme silence to his poor little Biddy
+and greatly hoped&mdash;he would have to see to it a little&mdash;that Peter
+wouldn't "try" on <i>her</i>. He changed the subject and before Nash withdrew
+took occasion to remark&mdash;the occasion was offered by some new allusion
+of the visitor's to the sport he hoped to extract from seeing Nick carry
+out everything to which he stood committed&mdash;that the comedy of the
+matter would fall flat and the incident pass unnoticed.</p>
+
+<p>But Nash lost no heart. "Oh, if you'll simply do your part I'll take
+care of the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"If you mean by doing my part minding my business and working like a
+beaver I shall easily satisfy you," Nick replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you reprobate, you'll become another Sir Joshua, a mere P.R.A.!"
+his companion railed, getting up to go.</p>
+
+<p>When he had gone Nick threw himself back on the cushions of the divan
+and, with his hands locked above his head, sat a long time lost in
+thought. He had sent his servant to bed; he was unmolested. He gazed
+before him into the gloom produced by the unheeded burning-out of the
+last candle. The vague outer light came in through the tall studio
+window and the painted images, ranged about, looked confused in the
+dusk. If his mother had seen him she might have thought he was staring
+at his father's ghost.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493">[493]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXVI" id="XXXVI"></a><a href="#toc">XXXVI</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>The night Peter Sherringham walked away from Balaklava Place with
+Gabriel Nash the talk of the two men directed itself, as was natural at
+the time, to the question of Miriam's future fame and the pace, as Nash
+called it, at which she would go. Critical spirits as they both were,
+and one of them as dissimulative in passion as the other was paradoxical
+in the absence of it, they yet took her career for granted as completely
+as the simple-minded, a pair of hot spectators in the pit, might have
+done, and exchanged observations on the assumption that the only
+uncertain element would be the pace. This was a proof of general
+subjugation. Peter wished not to show, yet wished to know, and in the
+restlessness of his anxiety was ready even to risk exposure, great as
+the sacrifice might be of the imperturbable, urbane scepticism most
+appropriate to a secretary of embassy. He couldn't rid himself of the
+sense that Nash had got up earlier than he, had had opportunities of
+contact in days already distant, the days of Mrs. Rooth's hungry foreign
+rambles. Something of authority and privilege stuck to him from this,
+and it made Sherringham still more uncomfortable when he was most
+conscious that, at the best, even the trained diplomatic mind would
+never get a grasp of Miriam as a whole. She was constructed to revolve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">[494]</a></span>
+like the terraqueous globe; some part or other of her was always out of
+sight or in shadow.</p>
+
+<p>Peter talked to conceal his feelings, and, like many a man practising
+that indirectness, rather lost himself in the wood. They agreed that,
+putting strange accidents aside, the girl would go further than any one
+had gone in England within the memory of man; and that it was a pity, as
+regards marking the comparison, that for so long no one had gone any
+distance worth speaking of. They further agreed that it would naturally
+seem absurd to any one who didn't know, their prophesying such big
+things on such small evidence; and they agreed lastly that the absurdity
+quite vanished as soon as the prophets knew as <i>they</i> knew. Their
+knowledge&mdash;they quite recognised this&mdash;was simply confidence raised to a
+high point, the communication of their young friend's own confidence.
+The conditions were enormously to make, but it was of the very essence
+of Miriam's confidence that she would make them. The parts, the plays,
+the theatres, the "support," the audiences, the critics, the money were
+all to be found, but she cast a spell that prevented this from seeming a
+serious hitch. One mightn't see from one day to the other what she would
+do or how she would do it, but this wouldn't stay her steps&mdash;she would
+none the less go on. She would have to construct her own road, as it
+were, but at the worst there would only be delays in making it. These
+delays would depend on the hardness of the stones she had to break.</p>
+
+<p>As Peter had noted, you never knew where to "have" Gabriel Nash; a truth
+exemplified in his unexpected delight at the prospect of Miriam's
+drawing forth the modernness of the age. You might have thought he would
+loathe that modernness; but he had a joyous, amused, amusing vision of
+it&mdash;saw<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">[495]</a></span> it as something huge and fantastically vulgar. Its vulgarity
+would rise to the grand style, like that of a London railway station,
+and the publicity achieved by their charming charge be as big as the
+globe itself. All the machinery was ready, the platform laid; the
+facilities, the wires and bells and trumpets, the roaring, deafening
+newspaperism of the period&mdash;its most distinctive sign&mdash;were waiting for
+her, their predestined mistress, to press her foot on the spring and set
+them all in motion. Gabriel brushed in a large, bright picture of her
+progress through the time and round the world, round it and round it
+again, from continent to continent and clime to clime; with populations
+and deputations, reporters and photographers, placards and interviews
+and banquets, steamers, railways, dollars, diamonds, speeches and
+artistic ruin all jumbled into her train. Regardless of expense the
+spectacle would be and thrilling, though somewhat monotonous, the
+drama&mdash;a drama more bustling than any she would put on the stage and a
+spectacle that would beat everything for scenery. In the end her divine
+voice would crack, screaming to foreign ears and antipodal barbarians,
+and her clever manner would lose all quality, simplified to a few
+unmistakable knock-down dodges. Then she would be at the fine climax of
+life and glory, still young and insatiate, but already coarse, hard, and
+raddled, with nothing left to do and nothing left to do it with, the
+remaining years all before her and the <i>raison d'&ecirc;tre</i> all behind. It
+would be splendid, dreadful, grotesque.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she'll have some good years&mdash;they'll be worth having," Peter
+insisted as they went. "Besides, you see her too much as a humbug and
+too little as a real producer. She has ideas&mdash;great ones; she loves the
+thing for itself. That may keep a woman serious."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">[496]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Her greatest idea must always be to show herself, and fortunately she
+has a great quantity of that treasure to show. I think of her absolutely
+as a real producer, but as a producer whose production is her own
+person. No 'person,' even as fine a one as hers, will stand that for
+more than an hour, so that humbuggery has very soon to lend a hand.
+However," Nash continued, "if she's a fine humbug it will do as well, it
+will perfectly suit the time. We can all be saved by vulgarity; that's
+the solvent of all difficulties and the blessing of this delightful age.
+One doesn't die of it&mdash;save in soul and sense: one dies only of minding
+it. Therefore let no man despair&mdash;a new hope has dawned."</p>
+
+<p>"She'll do her work like any other worker, with the advantage over many
+that her talent's rare," Peter obliquely answered. "Compared with the
+life of many women that's security and sanity of the highest order. Then
+she can't help her beauty. You can't vulgarise that."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, can't you?" Gabriel cried.</p>
+
+<p>"It will abide with her till the day of her death. It isn't a mere
+superficial freshness. She's very noble."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's the pity of it," said Nash. "She's a big more or less
+directed force, and I quite admit that she'll do for a while a lot of
+good. She'll have brightened up the world for a great many people&mdash;have
+brought the ideal nearer to them and held it fast for an hour with its
+feet on earth and its great wings trembling. That's always something,
+for blest is he who has dropped even the smallest coin into the little
+iron box that contains the precious savings of mankind. Miriam will
+doubtless have dropped a big gold-piece. It will be found in the general
+scramble on the day the race goes bankrupt. And then for herself she'll
+have had a great go at life."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497">[497]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, she'll have got out of her hole&mdash;she won't have vegetated,"
+Peter concurred. "That makes her touching to me&mdash;it adds to the many
+good reasons for which one may want to help her. She's tackling a big
+job, and tackling it by herself; throwing herself upon the world in good
+faith and dealing with it as she can; meeting alone, in her youth, her
+beauty, her generosity, all the embarrassments of notoriety and all the
+difficulties of a profession of which, if one half's what's called
+brilliant the other's frankly odious."</p>
+
+<p>"She has great courage, but you speak of her as solitary with such a lot
+of us all round her?" Nash candidly inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"She's a great thing for you and me, but we're a small thing for her."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, a good many small things, if they but stick together, may make up
+a mass," Gabriel said. "There must always be the man, you see. He's the
+indispensable element in such a life, and he'll be the last thing she'll
+ever lack."</p>
+
+<p>"What man are you talking about?" Peter asked with imperfect ease.</p>
+
+<p>"The man of the hour, whoever he is. She'll inspire innumerable
+devotions."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course she will, and they'll be precisely a part of the insufferable
+side of her life."</p>
+
+<p>"Insufferable to whom?" Nash demanded. "Don't forget that the
+insufferable side of her life will be just the side she'll thrive on.
+You can't eat your cake and have it, and you can't make omelettes
+without breaking eggs. You can't at once sit by the fire and parade
+about the world, and you can't take all chances without having some
+adventures. You can't be a great actress without the luxury of nerves.
+Without a plentiful supply&mdash;or without the right ones&mdash;you'll only be
+second fiddle. If you've all the tense<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">[498]</a></span> strings you may take life for
+your fiddlestick. Your nerves and your adventures, your eggs and your
+cake, are part of the cost of the most expensive of professions. You
+play with human passions, with exaltations and ecstasies and terrors,
+and if you trade on the fury of the elements you must know how to ride
+the storm."</p>
+
+<p>Well, Peter thought it over. "Those are the fine old commonplaces about
+the artistic temperament, but I usually find the artist a very meek,
+decent, little person."</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>never</i> find the artist&mdash;you only find his work, and that's all you
+need find. When the artist's a woman, and the woman's an actress,
+meekness and decency will doubtless be there in the right proportions,"
+Nash went on. "Miriam will represent them for you, if you give her her
+cue, with the utmost charm."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course she'll inspire devotions&mdash;<i>that's</i> all right," said Peter
+with a wild cheerfulness.</p>
+
+<p>"And of course they'll inspire responses, and with that
+consequence&mdash;don't you see?&mdash;they'll mitigate her solitude, they'll even
+enliven it," Nash set forth.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll probably box a good many ears: that'll be lively!" Peter
+returned with some grimness.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh magnificent!&mdash;it will be a merry life. Yet with its tragic passages,
+its distracted or its pathetic hours," Gabriel insisted. "In short, a
+little of everything."</p>
+
+<p>They walked on without further speech till at last Peter resumed: "The
+best thing for a woman in her situation is to marry some decent
+care-taking man."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I daresay she'll do that too!" Nash laughed; a remark as a result of
+which his companion lapsed afresh into silence. Gabriel left him a
+little to enjoy this; after which he added: "There's somebody she'd
+marry to-morrow."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">[499]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Peter wondered. "Do you mean her friend Dashwood?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, I mean Nick Dormer."</p>
+
+<p>"She'd marry <i>him</i>?" Peter gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean her head's full of him. But she'll hardly get the chance."</p>
+
+<p>Peter watched himself. "Does she like him as much as that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't quite know how much you mean, but enough for all practical
+ends."</p>
+
+<p>"Marrying a fashionable actress is hardly a practical end."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not, but I'm not speaking from his point of view." Nash was
+perfectly lucid. "Moreover, I thought you just now said it would be such
+a good thing for her."</p>
+
+<p>"To marry Nick Dormer?"</p>
+
+<p>"You said a good decent man, and he's one of the very decentest."</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't thinking of the individual, but of the protection. It would
+fence her about, settle certain questions, or appear to; it would make
+things safe and comfortable for her and keep a lot of cads and
+blackguards away."</p>
+
+<p>"She ought to marry the prompter or the box-keeper," said Nash. "Then it
+would be all right. I think indeed they generally do, don't they?"</p>
+
+<p>Peter felt for a moment a strong disposition to drop his friend on the
+spot, to cross to the other side of the street and walk away without
+him. But there was a different impulse which struggled with this one and
+after a minute overcame it, the impulse that led to his saying
+presently: "Has she told you she's&mdash;a&mdash;she's in love with Nick?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no&mdash;that's not the way I know it."</p>
+
+<p>"Has Nick told you then?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary, I've told <i>him</i>."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">[500]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You've rendered him a questionable service if you've no proof," Peter
+pronounced.</p>
+
+<p>"My proof's only that I've seen her with him. She's charming, poor dear
+thing."</p>
+
+<p>"But surely she isn't in love with every man she's charming to."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean she's charming to <i>me</i>," Nash returned. "I see her that way. I
+see her interested&mdash;and what it does to her, with her, <i>for</i> her. But
+judge for yourself&mdash;the first time you get a chance."</p>
+
+<p>"When shall I get a chance? Nick doesn't come near her."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh he'll come, he'll come; his picture isn't finished."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean <i>he'll</i> be the box-keeper, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, I shall never allow it," said Gabriel Nash. "It would
+be idiotic and quite unnecessary. He's beautifully arranged&mdash;in quite a
+different line. Fancy his taking that sort of job on his hands! Besides,
+she'd never expect it; she's not such a goose. They're very good
+friends&mdash;it will go on that way. She's an excellent person for him to
+know; she'll give him lots of ideas of the plastic kind. He would have
+been up there before this, but it has taken him time to play his
+delightful trick on his constituents. That of course is pure amusement;
+but when once his effect has been well produced he'll get back to
+business, and his business will be a very different matter from
+Miriam's. Imagine him writing her advertisements, living on her money,
+adding up her profits, having rows and recriminations with her agent,
+carrying her shawl, spending his days in her rouge-pot. The right man
+for that, if she must have one, will turn up. '<i>Pour le mariage, non</i>.'
+She isn't wholly an idiot; she really, for a woman, quite sees things as
+they are."</p>
+
+<p>As Peter had not crossed the street and left Gabriel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">[501]</a></span> planted he now
+suffered the extremity of irritation. But descrying in the dim vista of
+the Edgware Road a vague and vigilant hansom he waved his stick with
+eagerness and with the abrupt declaration that, feeling tired, he must
+drive the rest of his way. He offered Nash, as he entered the vehicle,
+no seat, but this coldness was not reflected in the lucidity with which
+that master of every subject went on to affirm that there was of course
+a danger&mdash;the danger that in given circumstances Miriam would leave the
+stage.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave it, you mean, for some man?"</p>
+
+<p>"For the man we're talking about."</p>
+
+<p>"For Nick Dormer?" Peter asked from his place in the cab, his paleness
+lighted by its lamps.</p>
+
+<p>"If he should make it a condition. But why should he? why should he make
+<i>any</i> conditions? He's not an ass either. You see it would be a
+bore"&mdash;Nash kept it up while the hansom waited&mdash;"because if she were to
+do anything of that sort she'd make him pay for the sacrifice."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, she'd make him pay for the sacrifice," Peter blindly concurred.</p>
+
+<p>"And then when he had paid she'd go back to her footlights," Gabriel
+developed from the curbstone as his companion closed the apron of the
+cab.</p>
+
+<p>"I see&mdash;she'd go back&mdash;good-night," Peter returned. "<i>Please</i> go on!" he
+cried to the driver through the hole in the roof. And while the vehicle
+rolled away he growled to himself: "Of course she would&mdash;and quite
+right!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">[502]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXVII" id="XXXVII"></a><a href="#toc">XXXVII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>"Judge for yourself when you get a chance," Nash had said to him; and as
+it turned out he was able to judge two days later, for he found his
+cousin in Balaklava Place on the Tuesday following his walk with their
+insufferable friend. He had not only stayed away from the theatre on the
+Monday evening&mdash;he regarded this as an achievement of some
+importance&mdash;but had not been near Miriam during the day. He had meant to
+absent himself from her company on Tuesday as well; a determination
+confirmed by the fact that the afternoon turned to rain. But when at ten
+minutes to five o'clock he jumped into a hansom and directed his course
+to Saint John's Wood it was precisely upon the weather that he shifted
+the responsibility of his behaviour.</p>
+
+<p>Miriam had dined when he reached the villa, but she was lying down,
+unduly fatigued, before going to the theatre. Mrs. Rooth was, however,
+in the drawing-room with three gentlemen, in two of whom the fourth
+visitor was not startled to recognise Basil Dashwood and Gabriel Nash.
+Dashwood appeared to have become Miriam's brother-in-arms and a second
+child&mdash;a fonder one&mdash;to Mrs. Rooth; it had reached Peter on some late
+visit that the young actor had finally moved his lodgings into the
+quarter, making himself a near neighbour for all sorts of convenience.
+"Hang his convenience!" Peter thought,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503">[503]</a></span> perceiving that Mrs. Lovick's
+"Arty" was now altogether one of the family. Oh the family!&mdash;it was a
+queer one to be connected with: that consciousness was acute in
+Sherringham's breast to-day as he entered Mrs. Rooth's little circle.
+The place was filled with cigarette-smoke and there was a messy
+coffee-service on the piano, whose keys Basil Dashwood lightly touched
+for his own diversion. Nash, addressing the room of course, was at one
+end of a little sofa with his nose in the air, and Nick Dormer was at
+the other end, seated much at his ease and with a certain privileged
+appearance of having been there often before, though Sherringham knew he
+had not. He looked uncritical and very young, as rosy as a school-boy on
+a half-holiday. It was past five o'clock in the day, but Mrs. Rooth was
+not dressed; there was, however, no want of finish in her elegant
+attitude&mdash;the same relaxed grandeur (she seemed to let you understand)
+for which she used to be distinguished at Castle Nugent when the house
+was full. She toyed incongruously, in her unbuttoned wrapper, with a
+large tinsel fan which resembled a theatrical property.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of the discomforts of Peter's position that many of those
+minor matters which are superficially at least most characteristic of
+the histrionic life had power to displease him, so that he was obliged
+constantly to overlook and condone and pretend. He disliked besmoked
+drawing-rooms and irregular meals and untidy arrangements; he could
+suffer from the vulgarity of Mrs. Rooth's apartments, the importunate
+photographs which gave on his nerves, the barbarous absence of signs of
+an orderly domestic life, the odd volumes from the circulating library
+(you could see what they were&mdash;the very covers told you&mdash;at a glance)
+tumbled about under smeary cups and glasses. He hadn't waited till now
+to feel it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504">[504]</a></span> "rum" that fate should have let him in for such contacts;
+but as he stood before his hostess and her companions he wondered
+perhaps more than ever why he should. Her companions somehow, who were
+not responsible, didn't keep down his wonder; which was particularly
+odd, since they were not superficially in the least of Bohemian type.
+Almost the first thing that struck him, as happened, in coming into the
+room, was the fresh fact of the high good looks of his cousin, a
+gentleman, to one's taste and for one's faith, in a different enough
+degree from the stiff-collared, conversible Dashwood. Peter didn't hate
+Nick for being of so fine an English grain; he knew rather the brush of
+a new wave of annoyance at Julia's stupid failure to get on with him
+under that good omen.</p>
+
+<p>It was his first encounter with the late member for Harsh since his
+arrival in London: they had been on one side and the other so much taken
+up with their affairs. Since their last meeting Nick had, as we know, to
+his kinsman's perception, really put on a new character: he had done the
+finest stroke of business in the quietest way. This had made him a
+presence to be counted with, and in just the sense in which poor Peter
+desired least to count. Poor Peter, after his somersault in the blue,
+had just lately been much troubled; he was ravaged by contending
+passions; he paid every hour in a torment of unrest for what was false
+in his position, the impossibility of keeping the presentable parts of
+his character together, the opposition of interest and desire. Nick, his
+junior and a lighter weight, had settled <i>his</i> problem and showed no
+wounds; there was something impertinent and mystifying in it. Yet he
+looked, into the bargain, too innocently young and happy, and too
+careless and modest and amateurish, to figure as a rival or even as the
+genius he was apparently going to try to be&mdash;the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505">[505]</a></span> genius that the other
+day, in the studio there with Biddy, Peter had got a startled glimpse of
+his power to become. Julia's brother would have liked to be aware of
+grounds of resentment, to be able to hold she had been badly treated or
+that Nick was basely fatuous, for in that case he might have had the
+resource of taking offence. But where was the outrage of his merely
+being liked by a woman in respect to whom one had definitely denied
+one's self the luxury of pretensions, especially if, as the wrong-doer,
+he had taken no action in the matter? It could scarcely be called
+wrong-doing to call, casually, on an afternoon when the lady didn't seem
+to be there. Peter could at any rate rejoice that Miriam didn't; and he
+proposed to himself suggesting to Nick after a little that they should
+adjourn together&mdash;they had such interesting things to talk about.
+Meanwhile Nick greeted him with a friendly freedom in which he could
+read neither confusion nor defiance. Peter was reassured against a
+danger he believed he didn't recognise and puzzled by a mystery he
+flattered himself he hadn't heeded. And he was still more ashamed of
+being reassured than of being puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>It must be recorded that Miriam's absence from the scene was not
+prolonged. Nick, as Sherringham gathered, had been about a quarter of an
+hour in the house, which would have given her, gratified by his
+presence, due time to array herself to come down to him. At all events
+she was in the room, prepared apparently to go to the theatre, very
+shortly after one of her guests had become sensible of how glad he was
+she was out of it. Familiarity had never yet cured him of a certain
+tremor of expectation, and even of suspense, in regard to her entrances;
+a flutter caused by the simple circumstance of her infinite variety. To
+say she was always acting would too much convey that she was often
+fatiguing; since her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506">[506]</a></span> changing face affected this particular admirer at
+least not as a series of masks, but as a response to perceived
+differences, an intensity of that perception, or still more as something
+richly constructional, like the shifting of the scene in a play or like
+a room with many windows. The image she was to project was always
+incalculable, but if her present denied her past and declined
+responsibility for her future it made a good thing of the hour and kept
+the actual peculiarly fresh. This time the actual was a bright, gentle,
+graceful, smiling, young woman in a new dress, eager to go out, drawing
+on fresh gloves, who looked as if she were about to step into a carriage
+and&mdash;it was Gabriel Nash who thus formulated her physiognomy&mdash;do a lot
+of London things.</p>
+
+<p>The young woman had time to spare, however, and she sat down and talked
+and laughed and presently gave, as seemed to Peter, a deeper glow to the
+tawdry little room, which could do for others if it had to do for her.
+She described herself as in a state of nervous muddle, exhausted,
+blinded, <i>abrutie</i>, with the rehearsals of the forthcoming piece&mdash;the
+first night was close at hand, and it was going to be of a vileness:
+they would all see!&mdash;but there was no correspondence between this
+account of the matter and her present bravery of mood. She sent her
+mother away&mdash;to "put on some clothes or something"&mdash;and, left alone with
+the visitors, went to a long glass between the windows, talking always
+to Nick Dormer, and revised and rearranged a little her own attire. She
+talked to Nick, over her shoulder, and to Nick only, as if he were the
+guest to recognise and the others didn't count. She broke out at once on
+his having thrown up his seat, wished to know if the strange story told
+her by Mr. Nash were true&mdash;that he had knocked all the hopes of his
+party into pie.</p>
+
+<p>Nick took it any way she liked and gave a pleasant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507">[507]</a></span> picture of his
+party's ruin, the critical condition of public affairs: he was as yet
+clearly closed to contrition or shame. The pilgrim from Paris, before
+Miriam's entrance, had not, in shaking hands with him, made even a
+roundabout allusion to his odd "game"; he felt he must somehow show good
+taste&mdash;so English people often feel&mdash;at the cost of good manners. But he
+winced on seeing how his scruples had been wasted, and was struck with
+the fine, jocose, direct turn of his kinsman's conversation with the
+young actress. It was a part of her unexpectedness that she took the
+heavy literal view of Nick's behaviour; declared frankly, though without
+ill nature, that she had no patience with his mistake. She was horribly
+disappointed&mdash;she had set her heart on his being a great statesman, one
+of the rulers of the people and the glories of England. What was so
+useful, what was so noble?&mdash;how it belittled everything else! She had
+expected him to wear a cordon and a star some day&mdash;acquiring them with
+the greatest promptitude&mdash;and then to come and see her in her <i>loge</i>: it
+would look so particularly well. She talked after the manner of a lovely
+Philistine, except perhaps when she expressed surprise at
+hearing&mdash;hearing from Gabriel Nash&mdash;that in England gentlemen accoutred
+with those emblems of their sovereign's esteem didn't so far forget
+themselves as to stray into the dressing-rooms of actresses. She
+admitted after a moment that they were quite right and the
+dressing-rooms of actresses nasty places; but she was sorry, for that
+was the sort of thing she had always figured in a corner&mdash;a
+distinguished man, slightly bald, in evening dress, with orders,
+admiring the smallness of a satin shoe and saying witty things. Nash was
+convulsed with hilarity at this&mdash;such a vision of the British political
+hero. Coming back from the glass and making that critic give her his
+place on the sofa, she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508">[508]</a></span> seated herself near Nick and continued to
+express her regret at his perversity.</p>
+
+<p>"They all say that&mdash;all the charming women, but I shouldn't have looked
+for it from you," Nick replied. "I've given you such an example of what
+I can do in another line."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean my portrait? Oh I've got it, with your name and 'M.P.' in
+the corner, and that's precisely why I'm content. 'M.P.' in the corner
+of a picture is delightful, but I want to break the mould: I don't in
+the least insist on your giving specimens to others. And the artistic
+life, when you can lead another&mdash;if you've any alternative, however
+modest&mdash;is a very poor business. It comes last in dignity&mdash;after
+everything else. Ain't I up to my eyes in it and don't I truly know?"</p>
+
+<p>"You talk like my broken-hearted mother," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"Does she hate it so intensely?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has the darkest ideas about it&mdash;the wildest theories. I can't
+imagine where she gets them; partly I think from a general conviction
+that the 'esthetic'&mdash;a horrible insidious foreign disease&mdash;is eating the
+healthy core out of English life (dear old English life!) and partly
+from the charming pictures in <i>Punch</i> and the clever satirical articles,
+pointing at mysterious depths of contamination, in the other weekly
+papers. She believes there's a dreadful coterie of uncannily artful and
+desperately refined people who wear a kind of loose faded uniform and
+worship only beauty&mdash;which is a fearful thing; that Gabriel has
+introduced me to it; that I now spend all my time in it, and that for
+its sweet sake I've broken the most sacred vows. Poor Gabriel, who, so
+far as I can make out, isn't in any sort of society, however bad!"</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm uncannily artful," Nash objected, "and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509">[509]</a></span> though I can't afford
+the uniform&mdash;I believe you get it best somewhere in South Audley
+Street&mdash;I do worship beauty. I really think it's me the weekly papers
+mean."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I've read the articles&mdash;I know the sort!" said Basil Dashwood.</p>
+
+<p>Miriam looked at him. "Go and see if the brougham's there&mdash;I ordered it
+early."</p>
+
+<p>Dashwood, without moving, consulted his watch. "It isn't time yet&mdash;I
+know more about the brougham than you. I've made a ripping good
+arrangement for her stable&mdash;it really costs her nothing," the young
+actor continued confidentially to Peter, near whom he had placed
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother's quite right to be broken-hearted," Miriam declared, "and
+I can imagine exactly what she has been through. I should like to talk
+with her&mdash;I should like to see her." Nick showed on this easy amusement,
+reminding her she had talked to him while she sat for her portrait in
+quite the opposite sense, most helpfully and inspiringly; and Nash
+explained that she was studying the part of a political duchess and
+wished to take observations for it, to work herself into the character.
+The girl might in fact have been a political duchess as she sat, her
+head erect and her gloved hands folded, smiling with aristocratic
+dimness at Nick. She shook her head with stately sadness; she might have
+been trying some effect for Mary Stuart in Schiller's play. "I've
+changed since that. I want you to be the grandest thing there is&mdash;the
+counsellor of kings."</p>
+
+<p>Peter wondered if it possibly weren't since she had met his sister in
+Nick's studio that she had changed, if perhaps she hadn't seen how it
+might give Julia the sense of being more effectually routed to know that
+the woman who had thrown the bomb was one who also tried to keep Nick in
+the straight path. This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510">[510]</a></span> indeed would involve an assumption that Julia
+might know, whereas it was perfectly possible she mightn't and more than
+possible that if she should she wouldn't care. Miriam's essential
+fondness for trying different ways was always there as an adequate
+reason for any particular way; a truth which, however, sometimes only
+half-prevented the particular way from being vexatious to a particular
+observer.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet after all who's more esthetic than you and who goes in more for the
+beautiful?" Nick asked. "You're never so beautiful as when you pitch
+into it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm an inferior creature, of an inferior sex, and I've to earn my
+bread as I can. I'd give it all up in a moment, my odious trade&mdash;for an
+inducement."</p>
+
+<p>"And pray what do you mean by an inducement?" Nick demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, she means you&mdash;if you'll give her a permanent
+engagement to sit for you!" Gabriel volunteered. "What singularly crude
+questions you ask!"</p>
+
+<p>"I like the way she talks," Mr. Dashwood derisively said, "when I gave
+up the most brilliant prospects, of very much the same kind as Mr.
+Dormer's, expressly to go on the stage."</p>
+
+<p>"You're an inferior creature too," Miriam promptly pronounced.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Rooth's very hard to satisfy," Peter observed at this. "A man of
+distinction, slightly bald, in evening dress, with orders, in the corner
+of her <i>loge</i>&mdash;she has such a personage ready made to her hand and she
+doesn't so much as look at him. Am <i>I</i> not an inducement? Haven't I
+offered you a permanent engagement?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your orders&mdash;where are your orders?" she returned with a sweet smile,
+getting up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511">[511]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I shall be a minister next year and an ambassador before you know it.
+Then I shall stick on everything that can be had."</p>
+
+<p>"And they call <i>us</i> mountebanks!" cried the girl. "I've been so glad to
+see you again&mdash;do you want another sitting?" she went on to Nick as if
+to take leave of him.</p>
+
+<p>"As many as you'll give me&mdash;I shall be grateful for all," he made
+answer. "I should like to do you as you are at present. You're totally
+different from the woman I painted&mdash;you're wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>"The Comic Muse!" she laughed. "Well, you must wait till our first
+nights are over&mdash;I'm <i>sur les dents</i> till then. There's everything to do
+and I've to do it all. That fellow's good for nothing, for nothing but
+domestic life"&mdash;and she glanced at Basil Dashwood. "He hasn't an
+idea&mdash;not one you'd willingly tell of him, though he's rather useful for
+the stables. We've got stables now&mdash;or we try to look as if we had:
+Dashwood's ideas are <i>de cette force</i>. In ten days I shall have more
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"The Comic Muse? Never, never," Peter protested. "You're not to go
+smirking through the age and down to posterity&mdash;I'd rather see you as
+Medusa crowned with serpents. That's what you look like when you look
+best."</p>
+
+<p>"That's consoling&mdash;when I've just bought a lovely new bonnet, all red
+roses and bows. I forgot to tell you just now that when you're an
+ambassador you may propose anything you like," Miriam went on. "But
+forgive me if I make that condition. Seriously speaking, come to me
+glittering with orders and I shall probably succumb. I can't resist
+stars and garters. Only you must, as you say, have them all. I <i>don't</i>
+like to hear Mr. Dormer talk the slang of the studio&mdash;like that phrase
+just now: it <i>is</i> a fall to a lower state. However, when one's low one
+must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512">[512]</a></span> crawl, and I'm crawling down to the Strand. Dashwood, see if
+mamma's ready. If she isn't I decline to wait; you must bring her in a
+hansom. I'll take Mr. Dormer in the brougham; I want to talk with Mr.
+Dormer; he must drive with me to the theatre. His situation's full of
+interest." Miriam led the way out of the room as she continued to
+chatter, and when she reached the house-door with the four men in her
+train the carriage had just drawn up at the garden-gate. It appeared
+that Mrs. Rooth was not ready, and the girl, in spite of a remonstrance
+from Nick, who had a sense of usurping the old lady's place, repeated
+her injunction that she should be brought on in a cab. Miriam's
+gentlemen hung about her at the gate, and she insisted on Nick's taking
+his seat in the brougham and taking it first. Before she entered she put
+her hand out to Peter and, looking up at him, held his own kindly. "Dear
+old master, aren't you coming to-night? I miss you when you're not
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go&mdash;don't go&mdash;it's too much," Nash freely declared.</p>
+
+<p>"She is wonderful," said Mr. Dashwood, all expert admiration; "she <i>has</i>
+gone into the rehearsals tooth and nail. But nothing takes it out of
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing puts it into you, my dear!" Miriam returned. Then she pursued
+to Peter: "You're the faithful one&mdash;you're the one I count on." He was
+not looking at her; his eyes travelled into the carriage, where they
+rested on Nick Dormer, established on the farther seat with his face
+turned toward the farther window. He was the one, faithful or no,
+counted on or no, whom a charming woman had preferred to carry off, and
+there was clear triumph for him in that fact. Yet it pleased, it
+somewhat relieved, his kinsman to see his passivity as not a little
+foolish. Miriam noted something of this in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513">[513]</a></span> Peter's eyes, for she
+exclaimed abruptly, "Don't kill him&mdash;he doesn't care for me!" With which
+she passed into the carriage and let it roll away.</p>
+
+<p>Peter stood watching it till he heard Dashwood again beside him. "You
+wouldn't believe what I make him do the whole thing for&mdash;a little rascal
+I know."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye; take good care of Mrs. Rooth," said Gabriel Nash, waving a
+bland farewell to the young actor. He gave a smiling survey of the
+heavens and remarked to Sherringham that the rain had stopped. Was he
+walking, was he driving, should they be going in the same direction?
+Peter cared little about his direction and had little account of it to
+give; he simply moved away in silence and with Gabriel at his side. This
+converser was partly an affliction to him; indeed the fact that he
+couldn't only make light of him added to the oppression. It was just to
+him nevertheless to note that he could hold his peace occasionally: he
+had for instance this afternoon taken little part in the talk at
+Balaklava Place. Peter greatly disliked to speak to him of Miriam, but
+he liked Nash himself to make free with her, and even liked him to say
+such things as might be a little viciously and unguardedly contradicted.
+He was not, however, moved to gainsay something dropped by his
+companion, disconnectedly, at the end of a few minutes; a word to the
+effect that she was after all the best-natured soul alive. All the same,
+Nash added, it wouldn't do for her to take possession of a nice life
+like Nick's; and he repeated that for his part he would never allow it.
+It would be on his conscience to interfere. To which Peter returned
+disingenuously that they might all do as they liked&mdash;it didn't matter a
+button to <i>him</i>. And with an effort to carry off that comedy he changed
+the subject.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514">[514]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXVIII" id="XXXVIII"></a><a href="#toc">XXXVIII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>He wouldn't for a moment have admitted that he was jealous of his old
+comrade, but would almost have liked to be accused of it: for this would
+have given him a chance he rather lacked and missed, the right occasion
+to declare with plausibility that motives he couldn't avow had no
+application to his case. How could a man be jealous when he was not a
+suitor? how could he pretend to guard a property which was neither his
+own nor destined to become his own? There could be no question of loss
+when one had nothing at stake, and no question of envy when the
+responsibility of possession was exactly what one prayed to be delivered
+from. The measure of one's susceptibility was one's pretensions, and
+Peter was not only ready to declare over and over again that, thank God,
+he had none: his spiritual detachment was still more complete&mdash;he
+literally suffered from the fact that nobody appeared to care to hear
+him say it. He connected an idea of virtue and honour with his attitude,
+since surely it was a high case of conduct to have quenched a personal
+passion for the good of the public service. He had gone over the whole
+question at odd, irrepressible hours; he had returned, spiritually
+speaking, the buffet administered to him all at once, that day in
+Rosedale Road, by the spectacle of the <i>cr&acirc;nerie</i> with which Nick could
+let worldly glories slide.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515">[515]</a></span> Resolution for resolution he preferred after
+all another sort, and his own <i>cr&acirc;nerie</i> would be shown in the way he
+should stick to his profession and stand up for British interests. If
+Nick had leaped over a wall he would leap over a river. The course of
+his river was already traced and his loins were already girded. Thus he
+was justified in holding that the measure of a man's susceptibility was
+a man's attitude: that was the only thing he was bound to give an
+account of.</p>
+
+<p>He was perpetually giving an account of it to his own soul in default of
+other listeners. He was quite angry at having tasted a sweetness in
+Miriam's assurance at the carriage&mdash;door, bestowed indeed with very
+little solemnity, that Nick didn't care for her. Wherein did it concern
+him that Nick cared for her or that Nick didn't? Wherein did it signify
+to him that Gabriel Nash should have taken upon himself to disapprove of
+a union between the young actress and the young painter and to frustrate
+an accident that might perhaps prove fortunate? For those had also been
+cooling words at the hour, though Peter blushed on the morrow to think
+that he felt in them anything but Nash's personal sublimity. He was
+ashamed of having been refreshed, and refreshed by so sickly a
+draught&mdash;it being all his theory that he was not in a fever. As for
+keeping an eye on Nick, it would soon become clear to that young man and
+that young man's charming friend that he had quite other uses for his
+eyes. The pair, with Nash to help, might straighten out their
+complications according to their light. He would never speak to Nick of
+Miriam; he felt indeed just now as if he should never speak to Nick of
+anything. He had traced the course of his river, as I say, and the real
+proof would be in the way he should, clearing the air, land on the
+opposite bank. It was a case for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_516" id="Page_516">[516]</a></span> action&mdash;for vigorous, unmistakable
+action. He had done very little since his arrival in London but moon
+round a <i>fille de th&eacute;&acirc;tre</i> who was taken up partly, though she bluffed
+it off, with another man, and partly with arranging new petticoats for a
+beastly old "poetic drama"; but this little waste of time should
+instantly be made up. He had given himself a definite rope, and he had
+danced to the end of his rope, and now he would dance back. That was all
+right&mdash;so right that Peter could only express to himself how right it
+was by whistling with extravagance.</p>
+
+<p>He whistled as he went to dine with a great personage the day after his
+meeting with Nick in Balaklava Place; a great personage to whom he had
+originally paid his respects&mdash;it was high time&mdash;the day before that
+meeting, the previous Monday. The sense of omissions to repair, of a
+superior line to take, perhaps made him study with more zeal to please
+the personage, who gave him ten minutes and asked him five questions. A
+great many doors were successively opened before any palpitating pilgrim
+who was about to enter the presence of this distinguished man; but they
+were discreetly closed again behind Sherringham, and I must ask the
+reader to pause with me at the nearer end of the momentary vista. This
+particular pilgrim fortunately felt he could count on recognition not
+only as a faithful if obscure official in the great hierarchy, but as a
+clever young man who happened to be connected by blood with people his
+lordship had intimately known. No doubt it was simply as the clever
+young man that Peter received the next morning, from the dispenser of
+his lordship's hospitality, a note asking him to dine on the morrow.
+Such cards had come to him before, and he had always obeyed their call;
+he did so at present, however, with a sense of unusual intention. In due
+course his intention was translated into words; before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517">[517]</a></span> the gentlemen
+left the dining-room he respectfully asked his noble host for some
+further brief and benevolent hearing.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it you want? Tell me now," the master of his fate replied,
+motioning to the rest of the company to pass out and detaining him where
+they stood.</p>
+
+<p>Peter's excellent training covered every contingency: he could always be
+as concise or as diffuse as the occasion required. Even he himself,
+however, was surprised at the quick felicity of the terms in which he
+was conscious of conveying that, were it compatible with higher
+conveniences, he should extremely like to be transferred to duties in a
+more distant quarter of the globe. Indeed, fond as he was of thinking
+himself a man of emotions controlled by civility, it is not impossible
+that a greater candour than he knew glimmered through Peter's expression
+and trembled through his tone as he presented this petition. He had
+aimed at a good manner in presenting it, but perhaps the best of the
+effect produced for his interlocutor was just where it failed, where it
+confessed a secret that the highest diplomacy would have guarded.
+Sherringham remarked to the minister that he didn't care in the least
+where the place might be, nor how little coveted a post; the further
+away the better, and the climate didn't matter. He would only prefer of
+course that there should be really something to do, though he would make
+the best of it even if there were not. He stopped in time, or at least
+thought he did, not to betray his covertly seeking relief from minding
+his having been jilted in a flight to latitudes unfavourable to human
+life. His august patron gave him a sharp look which for a moment seemed
+the precursor of a sharper question; but the moment elapsed and the
+question failed to come. This considerate omission, characteristic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518">[518]</a></span> of a
+true man of the world and representing quick guesses and still quicker
+indifferences, made our gentleman from that moment his lordship's ardent
+partisan. What did come was a good-natured laugh and the exclamation:
+"You know there are plenty of swamps and jungles, if you want that sort
+of thing," Peter replied that it was very much that sort of thing he did
+want; whereupon his chief continued: "I'll see&mdash;I'll see. If anything
+turns up you shall hear."</p>
+
+<p>Something turned up the very next day: our young man, taken at his word,
+found himself indebted to the postman for a note of concise intimation
+that the high position of minister to the smallest of Central American
+republics would be apportioned him. The republic, though small, was big
+enough to be "shaky," and the position, though high, not so exalted that
+there were not much greater altitudes above it to which it was a
+stepping-stone. Peter, quite ready to take one thing with another,
+rejoiced at his easy triumph, reflected that he must have been even more
+noticed at headquarters than he had hoped, and, on the spot, consulting
+nobody and waiting for nothing, signified his unqualified acceptance of
+the place. Nobody with a grain of sense would have advised him to do
+anything else. It made him happier than he had supposed he should ever
+be again; it made him feel professionally in the train, as they said in
+Paris; it was serious, it was interesting, it was exciting, and his
+imagination, letting itself loose into the future, began once more to
+scale the crowning eminence. It was very simple to hold one's course if
+one really tried, and he blessed the variety of peoples. Further
+communications passed, the last enjoining on him to return to Paris for
+a short interval a week later, after which he would be advised of the
+date for his proceeding to his remoter duties.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_519" id="Page_519">[519]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIX" id="XXXIX"></a><a href="#toc">XXXIX</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>The next thing he meanwhile did was to call with his news on Lady Agnes
+Dormer; it is not unworthy of note that he took on the other hand no
+step to make his promotion known to Miriam Rooth. To render it probable
+he should find his aunt he went at the luncheon-hour; and she was indeed
+on the point of sitting down to that repast with Grace. Biddy was not at
+home&mdash;Biddy was never at home now, her mother said: she was always at
+Nick's place, she spent her life there, she ate and drank there, she
+almost slept there. What she contrived to do there for so many hours and
+what was the irresistible spell Lady Agnes couldn't pretend she had
+succeeded in discovering. She spoke of this baleful resort only as
+"Nick's place," and spoke of it at first as little as possible. She
+judged highly probable, however, that Biddy would come in early that
+afternoon: there was something or other, some common social duty, she
+had condescended to promise she would perform with Grace. Poor Lady
+Agnes, whom Peter found somehow at once grim and very prostrate&mdash;she
+assured her nephew her nerves were all gone&mdash;almost abused her younger
+daughter for two minutes, having evidently a deep-seated need of abusing
+some one. I must yet add that she didn't wait to meet Grace's eye before
+recovering, by a rapid gyration, her view of the possibilities of
+things&mdash;those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_520" id="Page_520">[520]</a></span> possibilities from which she still might squeeze, as a
+parent almost in despair, the drop that would sweeten her cup. "Dear
+child," she had the presence of mind to subjoin, "her only fault is
+after all that she adores her brother. She has a capacity for adoration
+and must always take her gospel from some one."</p>
+
+<p>Grace declared to Peter that her sister would have stayed at home if she
+had dreamed he was coming, and Lady Agnes let him know that she had
+heard all about the hour he had spent with the poor child at Nick's
+place and about his extraordinary good nature in taking the two girls to
+the play. Peter lunched in Calcutta Gardens, spending an hour there
+which proved at first unexpectedly and, as seemed to him, unfairly
+dismal. He knew from his own general perceptions, from what Biddy had
+told him and from what he had heard Nick say in Balaklava Place, that
+his aunt would have been wounded by her son's apostasy; but it was not
+till he saw her that he appreciated the dark difference this young man's
+behaviour had made in the outlook of his family. Evidently that
+behaviour had sprung a dreadful leak in the great vessel of their hopes.
+These were things no outsider could measure, and they were none of an
+outsider's business; it was enough that Lady Agnes struck him really as
+a woman who had received her death-blow. She looked ten years older; she
+was white and haggard and tragic. Her eyes burned with a strange fitful
+fire that prompted one to conclude her children had better look out for
+her. When not filled with this unnatural flame they were suffused with
+comfortless tears; and altogether the afflicted lady was, as he viewed
+her, very bad, a case for anxiety. It was because he had known she would
+be very bad that he had, in his kindness, called on her exactly in this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_521" id="Page_521">[521]</a></span>
+manner; but he recognised that to undertake to be kind to her in
+proportion to her need might carry one very far. He was glad he had not
+himself a wronged mad mother, and he wondered how Nick could bear the
+burden of the home he had ruined. Apparently he didn't bear it very far,
+but had taken final, convenient refuge in Rosedale Road.</p>
+
+<p>Peter's judgement of his perverse cousin was considerably confused, and
+not the less so for the consciousness that he was perhaps just now not
+in the best state of mind for judging him at all. At the same time,
+though he held in general that a man of sense has always warrant enough
+in his sense for doing the particular thing he prefers, he could
+scarcely help asking himself whether, in the exercise of a virile
+freedom, it had been absolutely indispensable Nick should work such
+domestic woe. He admitted indeed that that was an anomalous figure for
+Nick, the worker of domestic woe. Then he saw that his aunt's
+grievance&mdash;there came a moment, later, when she asserted as much&mdash;was
+not quite what her recreant child, in Balaklava Place, had represented
+it&mdash;with questionable taste perhaps&mdash;to a mocking actress; was not a
+mere shocked quarrel with his adoption of a "low" career, or a horror,
+the old-fashioned horror, of the <i>louches</i> licences taken by artists
+under pretext of being conscientious: the day for this was past, and
+English society thought the brush and the fiddle as good as anything
+else&mdash;with two or three exceptions. It was not what he had taken up but
+what he had put down that made the sorry difference, and the tragedy
+would have been equally great if he had become a wine-merchant or a
+horse-dealer. Peter had gathered at first that Lady Agnes wouldn't trust
+herself to speak directly of her trouble, and he had obeyed what he
+supposed the best discretion in making no allusion to it. But a few
+minutes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_522" id="Page_522">[522]</a></span> before they rose from table she broke out, and when he
+attempted to utter a word of mitigation there was something that went to
+his heart in the way she returned: "Oh you don't know&mdash;you don't know!"
+He felt Grace's eyes fixed on him at this instant in a mystery of
+supplication, and was uncertain as to what she wanted&mdash;that he should
+say something more to console her mother or should hurry away from the
+subject. Grace looked old and plain and&mdash;he had thought on coming
+in&mdash;rather cross, but she evidently wanted something. "You don't know,"
+Lady Agnes repeated with a trembling voice, "you don't know." She had
+pushed her chair a little away from her place; she held her
+pocket-handkerchief pressed hard to her mouth, almost stuffed into it,
+and her eyes were fixed on the floor. She made him aware he did
+virtually know&mdash;know what towering piles of confidence and hope had been
+dashed to the earth. Then she finished her sentence unexpectedly&mdash;"You
+don't know what my life with my great husband was." Here on the other
+hand Peter was slightly at fault&mdash;he didn't exactly see what her life
+with her great husband had to do with it. What was clear to him,
+however, was that they literally had looked for things all in the very
+key of that greatness from Nick. It was not quite easy to see why this
+had been the case&mdash;it had not been precisely Peter's own prefigurement.
+Nick appeared to have had the faculty of planting that sort of
+flattering faith in women; he had originally given Julia a tremendous
+dose of it, though she had since shaken off the effects.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really think he would have done such great things, politically
+speaking?" Peter risked. "Do you consider that the root of the matter
+was so essentially in him?"</p>
+
+<p>His hostess had a pause, looking at him rather<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_523" id="Page_523">[523]</a></span> hard. "I only think what
+all his friends&mdash;all his father's friends&mdash;have thought. He was his
+father's son after all. No young man ever had a finer training, and he
+gave from the first repeated proof of the highest ability, the highest
+ambition. See how he got in everywhere. Look at his first seat&mdash;look at
+his second," Lady Agnes continued. "Look at what every one says at this
+moment."</p>
+
+<p>"Look at all the papers!" said Grace. "Did you ever hear him speak?" she
+asked. And when Peter reminded her how he had spent his life in foreign
+lands, shut out from such pleasures, she went on: "Well, you lost
+something."</p>
+
+<p>"It was very charming," said Lady Agnes quietly and poignantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he's charming, whatever he does," Peter returned. "He'll be a
+charming artist."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh God help us!" the poor lady groaned, rising quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"He won't&mdash;that's the worst," Grace amended. "It isn't as if he'd do
+things people would like, I've been to his place, and I never saw such a
+horrid lot of things&mdash;not at all clever or pretty."</p>
+
+<p>Yet her mother, at this, turned upon her with sudden asperity. "You know
+nothing whatever about the matter!" Then she added for Peter that, as it
+happened, her children did have a good deal of artistic taste: Grace was
+the only one who was totally deficient in it. Biddy was very
+clever&mdash;Biddy really might learn to do pretty things. And anything the
+poor child could learn was now no more than her duty&mdash;there was so
+little knowing what the future had in store for them all.</p>
+
+<p>"You think too much of the future&mdash;you take terribly gloomy views," said
+Peter, looking for his hat.</p>
+
+<p>"What other views can one take when one's son has deliberately thrown
+away a fortune?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_524" id="Page_524">[524]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Thrown one away? Do you mean through not marrying&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean through killing by his perversity the best friend he ever had."</p>
+
+<p>Peter stared a moment; then with laughter: "Ah but Julia isn't dead of
+it!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not talking of Julia," said his aunt with a good deal of majesty.
+"Nick isn't mercenary, and I'm not complaining of that."</p>
+
+<p>"She means Mr. Carteret," Grace explained with all her competence. "He'd
+have done anything if Nick had stayed in the House."</p>
+
+<p>"But he's not dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"Charles Carteret's dying," said Lady Agnes&mdash;"his end's dreadfully near.
+He has been a sort of providence to us&mdash;he was Sir Nicholas's second
+self. But he won't put up with such insanity, such wickedness, and that
+chapter's closed."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean he has dropped Nick out of his will?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cut him off utterly. He has given him notice."</p>
+
+<p>"The old scoundrel!"&mdash;Peter couldn't keep this back. "But Nick will work
+the better for that&mdash;he'll depend on himself."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and whom shall we depend on?" Grace spoke up.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be vulgar, for God's sake!" her mother ejaculated with a certain
+inconsequence.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh leave Nick alone&mdash;he'll make a lot of money," Peter declared
+cheerfully, following his two companions into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't in the least care if he does or not," said Lady Agnes. "You
+must come upstairs again&mdash;I've lots to say to you yet," she went on,
+seeing him make for his hat. "You must arrange to come and dine with us
+immediately; it's only because I've been so steeped in misery that I
+didn't write to you the other day&mdash;directly after you had called. We
+don't give<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_525" id="Page_525">[525]</a></span> parties, as you may imagine, but if you'll come just as we
+are, for old acquaintance' sake&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Just with Nick&mdash;if Nick will come&mdash;and dear Biddy," Grace interposed.</p>
+
+<p>"Nick must certainly come, as well as dear Biddy, whom I hoped so much
+to find," Peter pronounced. "Because I'm going away&mdash;I don't know when
+I, shall see them again."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait with mamma. Biddy will come in now at any moment," Grace urged.</p>
+
+<p>"You're going away?" said Lady Agnes, pausing at the foot of the stairs
+and turning her white face upon him. Something in her voice showed she
+had been struck by his own tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I've had promotion and you must congratulate me. They're sending me out
+as minister to a little hot hole in Central America&mdash;six thousand miles
+away. I shall have to go rather soon."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I'm so glad!" Lady Agnes breathed. Still she paused at the foot of
+the stair and still she gazed.</p>
+
+<p>"How very delightful&mdash;it will lead straight off to all sorts of other
+good things!" Grace a little coarsely commented.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I'm crawling up&mdash;I'm an excellency," Peter laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Then if you dine with us your excellency must have great people to meet
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Nick and Biddy&mdash;they're great enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Come upstairs&mdash;come upstairs," said Lady Agnes, turning quickly and
+beginning to ascend.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait for Biddy&mdash;I'm going out," Grace continued, extending her hand to
+her kinsman. "I shall see you again&mdash;not that you care; but good-bye
+now. Wait for Biddy," the girl repeated in a lower tone, fastening her
+eyes on his with the same urgent mystifying gleam he thought he had
+noted at luncheon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_526" id="Page_526">[526]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh I'll go and see her in Rosedale Road," he threw off.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to-day&mdash;now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about to-day, but before I leave England."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she'll be in immediately," said Grace. "Good-bye to your
+excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"Come up, Peter&mdash;<i>please</i> come up," called Lady Agnes from the top of
+the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>He mounted and when he found himself in the drawing-room with her and
+the door closed she expressed her great interest in his fine prospects
+and position, which she wished to hear all about. She rang for coffee
+and indicated the seat he would find most comfortable: it shone before
+him for a moment that she would tell him he might if he wished light a
+cigar. For Peter had suddenly become restless&mdash;too restless to occupy a
+comfortable chair; he seated himself in it only to jump up again, and he
+went to the window, while he imparted to his hostess the very little he
+knew about his post, on hearing a vehicle drive up to the door. A strong
+light had just been thrown into his mind, and it grew stronger when,
+looking out, he saw Grace Dormer issue from the house in a hat and a
+jacket which had all the air of having been assumed with extraordinary
+speed. Her jacket was unbuttoned and her gloves still dangling from the
+hands with which she was settling her hat. The vehicle into which she
+hastily sprang was a hansom-cab which had been summoned by the butler
+from the doorstep and which rolled away with her after she had given an
+address.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Grace going in such a hurry?" he asked of Lady Agnes; to which
+she replied that she hadn't the least idea&mdash;her children, at the pass
+they had all come to, knocked about as they liked.</p>
+
+<p>Well, he sat down again; he stayed a quarter of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_527" id="Page_527">[527]</a></span> an hour and then he
+stayed longer, and during this time his appreciation of what she had in
+her mind gathered force. She showed him that precious quantity clearly
+enough, though she showed it by no clumsy, no voluntary arts. It looked
+out of her sombre, conscious eyes and quavered in her preoccupied,
+perfunctory tones. She took an extravagant interest in his future
+proceedings, the probable succession of events in his career, the
+different honours he would be likely to come in for, the salary attached
+to his actual appointment, the salary attached to the appointments that
+would follow&mdash;they would be sure to, wouldn't they?&mdash;and what he might
+reasonably expect to save. Oh he must save&mdash;Lady Agnes was an advocate
+of saving; and he must take tremendous pains and get on and be clever
+and fiercely ambitious: he must make himself indispensable and rise to
+the top. She was urgent and suggestive and sympathetic; she threw
+herself into the vision of his achievements and emoluments as if to
+appease a little the sore hunger with which Nick's treachery had left
+her. This was touching to her nephew, who didn't remain unmoved even at
+those more importunate moments when, as she fell into silence, fidgeting
+feverishly with a morsel of fancy-work she had plucked from a table, her
+whole presence became an intense, repressed appeal to him. What that
+appeal would have been had it been uttered was: "Oh Peter, take little
+Biddy; oh my dear young friend, understand your interests at the same
+time that you understand mine; be kind and reasonable and clever; save
+me all further anxiety and tribulation and accept my lovely, faultless
+child from my hands."</p>
+
+<p>That was what Lady Agnes had always meant, more or less, that was what
+Grace had meant, and they meant it with singular lucidity on the present
+occasion, Lady Agnes meant it so much that from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_528" id="Page_528">[528]</a></span> one moment to another
+he scarce knew what she might do; and Grace meant it so much that she
+had rushed away in a hansom to fetch her sister from the studio. Grace,
+however, was a fool, for Biddy certainly wouldn't come. The news of his
+promotion had started them off, adding point to their idea of his being
+an excellent match; bringing home to them sharply the sense that if he
+were going away to strange countries he must take Biddy with him&mdash;that
+something at all events must be settled about Biddy before he went. They
+had suddenly begun to throb, poor things, with alarm at the ebbing
+hours.</p>
+
+<p>Strangely enough the perception of all this hadn't the effect of
+throwing him on the defensive and still less that of making him wish to
+bolt. When once he had made sure what was in the air he recognised a
+propriety, a real felicity in it; couldn't deny that he was in certain
+ways a good match, since it was quite probable he would go far; and was
+even generous enough&mdash;as he had no fear of being materially dragged to
+the altar&mdash;to enter into the conception that he might offer some balm to
+a mother who had had a horrid disappointment. The feasibility of
+marrying Biddy was not exactly augmented by the idea that his doing so
+would be a great offset to what Nick had made Lady Agnes suffer; but at
+least Peter didn't dislike his strenuous aunt so much as to wish to
+punish her for her nature. He was not afraid of her, whatever she might
+do; and though unable to grasp the practical relevancy of Biddy's being
+produced on the instant was willing to linger half an hour on the chance
+of successful production.</p>
+
+<p>There was meanwhile, moreover, a certain contagion in Lady Agnes's
+appeal&mdash;it made him appeal sensibly to himself, since indeed, as it is
+time to say, the glass of our young man's spirit had been polished for
+that reflexion. It was only at this moment really<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_529" id="Page_529">[529]</a></span> that he became
+inwardly candid. While making up his mind that his only safety was in
+flight and taking the strong measure of a request for help toward it, he
+was yet very conscious that another and probably still more effectual
+safeguard&mdash;especially if the two should be conjoined&mdash;lay in the hollow
+of his hand. His sister's words in Paris had come back to him and had
+seemed still wiser than when uttered: "She'll save you disappointments;
+you'd know the worst that can happen to you, and it wouldn't be bad."
+Julia had put it into a nutshell&mdash;Biddy would probably save him
+disappointments. And then she was&mdash;well, she was Biddy. Peter knew
+better what that was since the hour he had spent with her in Rosedale
+Road. But he had brushed away the sense of it, though aware that in
+doing so he took only half-measures and was even guilty of a sort of
+fraud upon himself. If he was sincere in wishing to put a gulf between
+his future and that sad expanse of his past and present over which
+Miriam had cast her shadow there was a very simple way to do so. He had
+dodged this way, dishonestly fixing on another which, taken alone, was
+far from being so good; but Lady Agnes brought him back to it. She held
+him in well-nigh confused contemplation of it, during which the safety,
+as Julia had called it, of the remedy wrought upon him as he wouldn't
+have believed beforehand, and not least to the effect of sweetening, of
+prettily colouring, the pill. It would be simple and it would deal with
+all his problems; it would put an end to all alternatives, which, as
+alternatives were otherwise putting an end to him, would be an excellent
+thing. It would settle the whole question of his future, and it was high
+time this should be settled.</p>
+
+<p>Peter took two cups of coffee while he made out his future with Lady
+Agnes, but though he drank them slowly he had finished them before Biddy
+turned up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_530" id="Page_530">[530]</a></span> He stayed three-quarters of an hour, saying to himself she
+wouldn't come&mdash;why should she come? Lady Agnes stooped to no avowal; she
+really stooped, so far as bald words went, to no part of the business;
+but she made him fix the next day save one for coming to dinner, and her
+repeated declaration that there would be no one else, not another
+creature but themselves, had almost the force of the supplied form for a
+promise to pay. In giving his word that he would come without fail, and
+not write the next day to throw them over for some function he should
+choose to dub obligatory, he felt quite as if he were putting his name
+to such a document. He went away at half-past three; Biddy of course
+hadn't come, and he had been sure she wouldn't. He couldn't imagine what
+Grace's idea had been, nor what pretext she had put forward to her
+sister. Whatever these things Biddy had seen through them and hated
+them. Peter could but like her the more for that.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_531" id="Page_531">[531]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XL" id="XL"></a><a href="#toc">XL</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Lady Agnes would doubtless have done better, in her own interest or in
+that of her child, to have secured his company for the very next
+evening. This she had indeed attempted, but her application of her
+thought had miscarried, Peter bethinking himself that he was importantly
+engaged. Her ladyship, moreover, couldn't presume to answer for Nick,
+since after all they must of course <i>have</i> Nick, though, to tell the
+truth, the hideous truth, she and her son were scarcely on terms. Peter
+insisted on Nick, wished particularly to see him, and gave his hostess
+notice that he would make each of them forgive everything to the other.
+She returned that all her son had to forgive was her loving him more
+than her life, and she would have challenged Peter, had he allowed it,
+on the general ground of the comparative dignity of the two arts of
+painting portraits and governing nations. Our friend declined the
+challenge: the most he did was to intimate that he perhaps saw Nick more
+vividly as a painter than as a governor. Later he remembered vaguely
+something his aunt had said about their being a governing family.</p>
+
+<p>He was going, by what he could ascertain, to a very queer climate and
+had many preparations to make. He gave his best attention to these, and
+for a couple of hours after leaving Lady Agnes rummaged London for books
+from which he might extract information<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_532" id="Page_532">[532]</a></span> about his new habitat. It made
+apparently no great figure in literature, and Peter could reflect that
+he was perhaps destined to find a salutary distraction in himself
+filling the void with a volume of impressions. After he had resigned
+himself to necessary ignorance he went into the Park. He treated himself
+to an afternoon or two there when he happened to drop upon London in
+summer&mdash;it refreshed his sense of the British interests he would have to
+stand up for. Moreover, he had been hiding more or less, and now all
+that was changed and this was the simplest way not to hide. He met a
+host of friends, made his situation as public as possible and accepted
+on the spot a great many invitations; all subject, however, to the
+mental reservation that he should allow none of them to interfere with
+his being present the first night of Miriam's new venture. He was going
+to the equator to get away from her, but to repudiate the past with some
+decency of form he must show an affected interest, if he could muster
+none other, in an occasion that meant so much for her. The least
+intimate of her associates would do that, and Peter remembered how, at
+the expense of good manners, he had stayed away from her first
+appearance on any stage at all. He would have been shocked had he found
+himself obliged to go back to Paris without giving her at the imminent
+crisis the personal countenance she had so good a right to expect.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly eight o'clock when he went to Great Stanhope Street to
+dress for dinner and learn that a note awaiting him on the hall-table
+and which bore the marks of hasty despatch had come three or four hours
+before. It exhibited the signature of Miriam Rooth and let him know that
+she positively expected him at the theatre by eleven o'clock the next
+morning, for which hour a dress-rehearsal of the revived play had been
+hurriedly projected, the first night being now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_533" id="Page_533">[533]</a></span> definitely fixed for the
+impending Saturday. She counted on his attendance at both ceremonies,
+but with particular reasons for wishing to see him in the morning. "I
+want you to see and judge and tell me," she said, "for my mind's like a
+flogged horse&mdash;it won't give another kick." It was for the Saturday he
+had made Lady Agnes his promise; he had thought of the possibility of
+the play in doing so, but had rested in the faith that, from valid
+symptoms, this complication would not occur till the following week. He
+decided nothing on the spot as to the conflict of occupations&mdash;it was
+enough to send Miriam three words to the effect that he would sooner
+perish than fail her on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>He went to the theatre in the morning, and the episode proved curious
+and instructive. Though there were twenty people in the stalls it bore
+little resemblance to those <i>r&eacute;p&eacute;titions g&eacute;n&eacute;rales</i> to which, in Paris,
+his love of the drama had often attracted him and which, taking place at
+night, in the theatre closed to the public, are virtually first
+performances with invited spectators. They were to his sense always
+settled and stately, rehearsals of the <i>premi&egrave;re</i> even more than
+rehearsals of the play. The present occasion was less august; it was not
+so much a concert as a confusion of sounds, and it took audible and at
+times disputatious counsel with itself. It was rough and frank and
+spasmodic, but was lively and vivid and, in spite of the serious
+character of the piece, often exceedingly droll: while it gave
+Sherringham, oddly enough, a more present sense than ever of bending
+over the hissing, smoking, sputtering caldron in which a palatable
+performance is stewed. He looked into the gross darkness that may result
+from excess of light; that is, he understood how knocked up, on the eve
+of production, every one concerned in the preparation of a piece might
+be,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_534" id="Page_534">[534]</a></span> with nerves overstretched and glasses blurred, awaiting the test
+and the response, the echo to be given back by the big, receptive,
+artless, stupid, delightful public. Peter's interest had been great in
+advance, and as Miriam since his arrival had taken him much into her
+confidence he knew what she intended to do and had discussed a hundred
+points with her. They had differed about some of them and she had always
+said: "Ah but wait till you see how I shall do it at the time!" That was
+usually her principal reason and her most convincing argument. She had
+made some changes at the last hour&mdash;she was going to do several things
+in another way. But she wanted a touchstone, wanted a fresh ear, and, as
+she told Sherringham when he went behind after the first act, that was
+why she had insisted on this private trial, to which a few fresh ears
+were to be admitted. They didn't want to allow it her, the theatre
+people, they were such a parcel of donkeys; but as to what she meant in
+general to insist on she had given them a hint she flattered herself
+they wouldn't soon forget.</p>
+
+<p>She spoke as if she had had a great battle with her fellow-workers and
+had routed them utterly. It was not the first time he had heard her talk
+as if such a life as hers could only be a fighting life and of her frank
+measure of the fine uses of a faculty for making a row. She rejoiced she
+possessed this faculty, for she knew what to do with it; and though
+there might be a certain swagger in taking such a stand in advance when
+one had done the infinitely little she had yet done, she nevertheless
+trusted to the future to show how right she should have been in
+believing a pack of idiots would never hold out against her and would
+know they couldn't afford to. Her assumption of course was that she
+fought for the light and the right, for the good way and the thorough,
+for doing a thing properly if one did it at all. What she had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_535" id="Page_535">[535]</a></span> really
+wanted was the theatre closed for a night and the dress-rehearsal, put
+on for a few people, given instead of <i>Yolande</i>. That she had not got,
+but she would have it the next time. She spoke as if her triumphs behind
+the scenes as well as before would go by leaps and bounds, and he could
+perfectly see, for the time, that she would drive her coadjutors in
+front of her like sheep. Her tone was the sort of thing that would have
+struck one as preposterous if one hadn't believed in her; but if one did
+so believe it only seemed thrown in with the other gifts. How was she
+going to act that night and what could be said for such a hateful way of
+doing things? She thrust on poor Peter questions he was all unable to
+answer; she abounded in superlatives and tremendously strong objections.
+He had a sharper vision than usual of the queer fate, for a peaceable
+man, of being involved in a life of so violent a rhythm: one might as
+well be hooked to a Catharine-wheel and whiz round in flame and smoke.</p>
+
+<p>It had only been for five minutes, in the wing, amid jostling and
+shuffling and shoving, that they held this conference. Miriam, splendid
+in a brocaded anachronism, a false dress of the beginning of the
+century, and excited and appealing, imperious, reckless and
+good-humoured, full of exaggerated propositions, supreme determinations
+and comic irrelevancies, showed as radiant a young head as the stage had
+ever seen. Other people quickly surrounded her, and Peter saw that
+though, she wanted, as she said, a fresh ear and a fresh eye she was
+liable to rap out to those who possessed these advantages that they
+didn't know what they were talking about. It was rather hard for her
+victims&mdash;Basil Dashwood let him into this, wonderfully painted and in a
+dress even more beautiful than Miriam's, that of a young dandy under
+Charles the Second: if you were not in the business<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_536" id="Page_536">[536]</a></span> you were one kind
+of donkey and if you <i>were</i> in the business you were another kind. Peter
+noted with a certain chagrin that Gabriel Nash had failed; he preferred
+to base his annoyance on that ground when the girl, after the remark
+just quoted from Dashwood, laughing and saying that at any rate the
+thing would do because it would just have to do, thrust vindictively but
+familiarly into the young actor's face a magnificent feather fan. "Isn't
+he too lovely," she asked, "and doesn't he know how to do it?" Dashwood
+had the sense of costume even more than Peter had inferred or supposed
+he minded, inasmuch as it now appeared he had gone profoundly into the
+question of what the leading lady was to wear. He had drawn patterns and
+hunted up stuffs, had helped her to try on her clothes, had bristled
+with ideas and pins. It would not have been quite clear, Peter's ground
+for resenting Nash's cynical absence; it may even be thought singular he
+should have missed him. At any rate he flushed a little when their young
+woman, of whom he inquired whether she hadn't invited her oldest and
+dearest friend, made answer: "Oh he says he doesn't like the
+kitchen-fire&mdash;he only wants the pudding!" It would have taken the
+kitchen-fire to account at that point for the red of Sherringham's
+cheek; and he was indeed uncomfortably heated by helping to handle, as
+he phrased it, the saucepans.</p>
+
+<p>This he felt so much after he had returned to his seat, which he forbore
+to quit again till the curtain had fallen on the last act, that in spite
+of the high beauty of that part of the performance of which Miriam
+carried the weight there were moments when his relief overflowed into
+gasps, as if he had been scrambling up the bank of a torrent after an
+immersion. The girl herself, out in the open of her field to win, was of
+the incorruptible faith: she had been saturated to good purpose with the
+great spirit of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_537" id="Page_537">[537]</a></span> Madame Carr&eacute;. That was conspicuous while the play went
+on and she guarded the whole march with fagged piety and passion.
+Sherringham had never liked the piece itself; he held that as barbarous
+in form and false in feeling it did little honour to the British
+theatre; he despised many of the speeches, pitied Miriam for having to
+utter them, and considered that, lighted by that sort of candle, the
+path of fame might very well lead nowhere.</p>
+
+<p>When the ordeal was over he went behind again, where in the
+rose-coloured satin of the silly issue the heroine of the occasion said
+to him: "Fancy my having to drag through that other stuff to-night&mdash;the
+brutes!" He was vague about the persons designated in this allusion, but
+he let it pass: he had at the moment a kind of detached foreboding of
+the way any gentleman familiarly connected with her in the future would
+probably form the habit of letting objurgations and some other things
+pass. This had become indeed now a frequent state of mind with him; the
+instant he was before her, near her, next her, he found himself a
+helpless subject of the spell which, so far at least as he was
+concerned, she put forth by contact and of which the potency was
+punctual and absolute: the fit came on, as he said, exactly as some
+esteemed express-train on a great line bangs at a given moment into the
+station. At a distance he partly recovered himself&mdash;that was the
+encouragement for going to the shaky republic; but as soon as he entered
+her presence his life struck him as a thing disconnected from his will.
+It was as if he himself had been one thing and his behaviour another; he
+had shining views of this difference, drawn as they might be from the
+coming years&mdash;little illustrative scenes in which he saw himself in
+strange attitudes of resignation, always rather sad and still and with a
+slightly bent head. Such images<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_538" id="Page_538">[538]</a></span> should not have been inspiring, but it
+is a fact that they were something to go upon. The gentleman with the
+bent head had evidently given up something that was dear to him, but it
+was exactly because he had got his price that he was there. "Come and
+see me three or four hours hence," Miriam said&mdash;"come, that is, about
+six. I shall rest till then, but I want particularly to talk with you.
+There will be no one else&mdash;not the tip of any tiresome nose. You'll do
+me good." So of course he drove up at six.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_539" id="Page_539">[539]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XLI" id="XLI"></a><a href="#toc">XLI</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>"I don't know; I haven't the least idea; I don't care; don't ask
+me!"&mdash;it was so he met some immediate appeal of her artistic egotism,
+some challenge of his impression of her at this and that moment. Hadn't
+she frankly better give up such and such a point and return to their
+first idea, the one they had talked over so much? Peter replied to this
+that he disowned all ideas; that at any rate he should never have
+another as long as he lived, and that, so help him heaven, they had
+worried that hard bone more than enough.</p>
+
+<p>"You're tired of me&mdash;yes, already," she said sadly and kindly. They were
+alone, her mother had not peeped out and she had prepared herself to
+return to the Strand. "However, it doesn't matter and of course your
+head's full of other things. You must think me ravenously
+selfish&mdash;perpetually chattering about my vulgar shop. What will you have
+when one's a vulgar shop-girl? You used to like it, but then you weren't
+an ambassador."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you know about my being a minister?" he asked, leaning back in
+his chair and showing sombre eyes. Sometimes he held her handsomer on
+the stage than off, and sometimes he reversed that judgement. The former
+of these convictions had held his mind in the morning, and it was now
+punctually followed by the other. As soon as she stepped on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_540" id="Page_540">[540]</a></span> boards
+a great and special alteration usually took place in her&mdash;she was in
+focus and in her frame; yet there were hours too in which she wore her
+world's face before the audience, just as there were hours when she wore
+her stage face in the world. She took up either mask as it suited her
+humour. To-day he was seeing each in its order and feeling each the
+best. "I should know very little if I waited for you to tell me&mdash;that's
+very certain," Miriam returned. "It's in the papers that you've got a
+high appointment, but I don't read the papers unless there's something
+in them about myself. Next week I shall devour them and think them, no
+doubt, inane. It was Basil told me this afternoon of your promotion&mdash;he
+had seen it announced somewhere, I'm delighted if it gives you more
+money and more advantages, but don't expect me to be glad that you're
+going away to some distant, disgusting country."</p>
+
+<p>"The matter has only just been settled and we've each been busy with our
+own affairs. But even if you hadn't given me these opportunities," Peter
+went on, "I should have tried to see you to-day, to tell you my news and
+take leave of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Take leave? Aren't you coming to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, I shall see you through that. But I shall rush away the very
+moment it's over."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be much better then&mdash;really I shall," the girl said.</p>
+
+<p>"The better you are the worse you are."</p>
+
+<p>She returned his frown with a beautiful charity. "If it would do you any
+good I'd be bad."</p>
+
+<p>"The worse you are the better you are!" Peter laughed. "You're a
+devouring demon."</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit! It's you."</p>
+
+<p>"It's I? I like that."</p>
+
+<p>"It's you who make trouble, who are sore and suspicious and supersubtle,
+not taking things as they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_541" id="Page_541">[541]</a></span> come and for what they are, but twisting them
+into misery and falsity. Oh I've watched you enough, my dear friend, and
+I've been sorry for you&mdash;and sorry as well for myself; for I'm not so
+taken up with myself, in the low greedy sense, as you think. I'm not
+such a base creature. I'm capable of gratitude, I'm capable of
+affection. One may live in paint and tinsel, but one isn't absolutely
+without a soul. Yes, I've got one," the girl went on, "though I do smear
+my face and grin at myself in the glass and practise my intonations. If
+what you're going to do is good for you I'm very glad. If it leads to
+good things, to honour and fortune and greatness, I'm enchanted. If it
+means your being away always, for ever and ever, of course that's
+serious. You know it&mdash;I needn't tell you&mdash;I regard you as I really don't
+regard any one else. I've a confidence in you&mdash;ah it's a luxury! You're
+a gentleman, <i>mon bon</i>&mdash;ah you're a gentleman! It's just that. And then
+you see, you understand, and that's a luxury too. You're a luxury
+altogether, dear clever Mr. Sherringham. Your being where I shall never
+see you isn't a thing I shall enjoy; I know that from the separation of
+these last months&mdash;after our beautiful life in Paris, the best thing
+that ever happened to me or that ever will. But if it's your career, if
+it's your happiness&mdash;well, I can miss you and hold my tongue. I <i>can</i> be
+disinterested&mdash;I can!"</p>
+
+<p>"What did you want me to come for?" he asked, all attentive and
+motionless. The same impression, the old impression, was with him again;
+the sense that if she was sincere it was sincerity of execution, if she
+was genuine it was the genuineness of doing it well. She did it so well
+now that this very fact was charming and touching. In claiming from him
+at the theatre this hour of the afternoon she had wanted honestly (the
+more as she had not seen him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_542" id="Page_542">[542]</a></span> at home for several days) to go over with
+him once again, on the eve of the great night&mdash;it would be for her
+second creation the critics would lie so in wait; the first success
+might have been a fluke&mdash;some of her recurrent doubts: knowing from
+experience of what good counsel he often was, how he could give a
+worrying question its "settler" at the last. Then she had heard from
+Dashwood of the change in his situation, and that had really from one
+moment to the other made her think sympathetically of his
+preoccupations&mdash;led her open-handedly to drop her own. She was sorry to
+lose him and eager to let him know how good a friend she was conscious
+he had been to her. But the expression of this was already, at the end
+of a minute, a strange bedevilment: she began to listen to herself, to
+speak dramatically, to represent. She uttered the things she felt as if
+they were snatches of old play-books, and really felt them the more
+because they sounded so well. This, however, didn't prevent their really
+being as good feelings as those of anybody else, and at the moment her
+friend, to still a rising emotion&mdash;which he knew he shouldn't
+still&mdash;articulated the challenge I have just recorded, she had for his
+sensibility, at any rate, the truth of gentleness and generosity.</p>
+
+<p>"There's something the matter with you, my dear&mdash;you're jealous," Miriam
+said. "You're jealous of poor Mr. Dormer. That's an example of the way
+you tangle everything up. Lord, he won't hurt you, nor me either!"</p>
+
+<p>"He can't hurt me, certainly," Peter returned, "and neither can you; for
+I've a nice little heart of stone and a smart new breastplate of iron.
+The interest I take in you is something quite extraordinary; but the
+most extraordinary thing in it is that it's perfectly prepared to
+tolerate the interest of others."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_543" id="Page_543">[543]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The interest of others needn't trouble it much!" Miriam declared. "If
+Mr. Dormer has broken off his marriage to such an awfully fine
+woman&mdash;for she's that, your swell of a sister&mdash;it isn't for a ranting
+wretch like me. He's kind to me because that's his nature and he notices
+me because that's his business; but he's away up in the clouds&mdash;a
+thousand miles over my head. He has got something 'on,' as they say;
+he's in love with an idea. I think it's a shocking bad one, but that's
+his own affair. He's quite <i>exalt&eacute;</i>; living on nectar and ambrosia&mdash;what
+he has to spare for us poor crawling things on earth is only a few dry
+crumbs. I didn't even ask him to come to rehearsal. Besides, he thinks
+you're in love with me and that it wouldn't be honourable to cut in.
+He's capable of that&mdash;isn't it charming?"</p>
+
+<p>"If he were to relent and give up his scruples would you marry him?"
+Peter asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy, how you chatter about 'marrying'!" the girl laughed. "<i>C'est la
+maladie anglaise</i>&mdash;you've all got it on the brain."</p>
+
+<p>"Why I put it that way to please you," he explained. "You complained to
+me last year precisely that this was not what seemed generally wanted."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh last year!"&mdash;she made nothing of that. Then differently, "Yes, it's
+very tiresome!" she conceded.</p>
+
+<p>"You told me, moreover, in Paris more than once that you wouldn't listen
+to anything but that."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," she declared, "I won't, but I shall wait till I find a husband
+who's charming enough and bad enough. One who'll beat me and swindle me
+and spend my money on other women&mdash;that's the sort of man for me. Mr.
+Dormer, delightful as he is, doesn't come up to that."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll marry Basil Dashwood." He spoke it with conviction.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_544" id="Page_544">[544]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh 'marry'?&mdash;call it marry if you like. That's what poor mother
+threatens me with&mdash;she lives in dread of it."</p>
+
+<p>"To this hour," he mentioned, "I haven't managed to make out what your
+mother wants. She has so many ideas, as Madame Carr&eacute; said."</p>
+
+<p>"She wants me to be some sort of tremendous creature&mdash;all her ideas are
+reducible to that. What makes the muddle is that she isn't clear about
+the creature she wants most. A great actress or a great lady&mdash;sometimes
+she inclines for one and sometimes for the other, but on the whole
+persuading herself that a great actress, if she'll cultivate the right
+people, may <i>be</i> a great lady. When I tell her that won't do and that a
+great actress can never be anything but a great vagabond, then the dear
+old thing has tantrums, and we have scenes&mdash;the most grotesque: they'd
+make the fortune, for a subject, of some play-writing rascal, if he had
+the wit to guess them; which, luckily for us perhaps, he never will. She
+usually winds up by protesting&mdash;<i>devinez un peu quoi</i>!" Miriam added.
+And as her companion professed his complete inability to divine: "By
+declaring that rather than take it that way I must marry <i>you</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"She's shrewder than I thought," Peter returned. "It's the last of
+vanities to talk about, but I may state in passing that if you'd marry
+me you should be the greatest of all possible ladies."</p>
+
+<p>She had a beautiful, comical gape. "Lord o' mercy, my dear fellow, what
+natural capacity have I for that?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're artist enough for anything. I shall be a great diplomatist: my
+resolution's firmly taken, I'm infinitely cleverer than you have the
+least idea of, and you shall be," he went on, "a great diplomatist's
+wife."</p>
+
+<p>"And the demon, the devil, the devourer and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_545" id="Page_545">[545]</a></span> destroyer, that you are so
+fond of talking about: what, in such a position, do you do with that
+element of my nature? <i>O&ugrave; le fourrez-vous</i>?" she cried as with a real
+anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll look after it, I'll keep it under. Rather perhaps I should say
+I'll bribe it and amuse it; I'll gorge it with earthly grandeurs."</p>
+
+<p>"That's better," said Miriam; "for a demon that's kept under is a shabby
+little demon. Don't let's be shabby." Then she added: "Do you really go
+away the beginning of next week?"</p>
+
+<p>"Monday night if possible."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah that's but to Paris. Before you go to your new post they must give
+you an interval here."</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't take it&mdash;I'm so tremendously keen for my duties. I shall
+insist on going sooner. Oh," he went on, "I shall be concentrated now."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll come and act there." She met it all&mdash;she was amused and amusing.
+"I've already forgotten what it was I wanted to discuss with you," she
+said&mdash;"it was some trumpery stuff. What I want to say now is only one
+thing: that it's not in the least true that because my life pitches me
+in every direction and mixes me up with all sorts of people&mdash;or rather
+with one sort mainly, poor dears!&mdash;I haven't a decent character, I
+haven't common honesty. Your sympathy, your generosity, your patience,
+your precious suggestions, our dear sweet days last summer in Paris, I
+shall never forget. You're the best&mdash;you're different from all the
+others. Think of me as you please and make profane jokes about my mating
+with a disguised 'Arty'&mdash;I shall think of <i>you</i> only in one way. I've a
+great respect for you. With all my heart I hope you'll be a great
+diplomatist. God bless you, dear clever man."</p>
+
+<p>She got up as she spoke and in so doing glanced at the clock&mdash;a movement
+that somehow only added<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_546" id="Page_546">[546]</a></span> to the noble gravity of her discourse: she was
+considering his time so much more than her own. Sherringham, at this,
+rising too, took out his watch and stood a moment with his eyes bent
+upon it, though without in the least seeing what the needles marked.
+"You'll have to go, to reach the theatre at your usual hour, won't you?
+Let me not keep you. That is, let me keep you only long enough just to
+say this, once for all, as I shall never speak of it again. I'm going
+away to save myself," he frankly said, planted before her and seeking
+her eyes with his own. "I ought to go, no doubt, in silence, in decorum,
+in virtuous submission to hard necessity&mdash;without asking for credit or
+sympathy, without provoking any sort of scene or calling attention to my
+fortitude. But I can't&mdash;upon my soul I can't. I can go, I can see it
+through, but I can't hold my tongue. I want you to know all about it, so
+that over there, when I'm bored to death, I shall at least have the
+exasperatingly vain consolation of feeling that you do know&mdash;and that it
+does neither you nor me any good!"</p>
+
+<p>He paused a moment; on which, as quite vague, she appealed. "That I 'do
+know' what?"</p>
+
+<p>"That I've a consuming passion for you and that it's impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh impossible, my friend!" she sighed, but with a quickness in her
+assent.</p>
+
+<p>"Very good; it interferes, the gratification of it would interfere
+fatally, with the ambition of each of us. Our ambitions are inferior and
+odious, but we're tied fast to them."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah why ain't we simple?" she quavered as if all touched by it. "Why
+ain't we of the people&mdash;<i>comme tout le monde</i>&mdash;just a man and a girl
+liking each other?"</p>
+
+<p>He waited a little&mdash;she was so tenderly mocking, so sweetly ambiguous.
+"Because we're precious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_547" id="Page_547">[547]</a></span> asses! However, I'm simple enough, after all,
+to care for you as I've never cared for any human creature. You have, as
+it happens, a personal charm for me that no one has ever approached, and
+from the top of your splendid head to the sole of your theatrical shoe
+(I could go down on my face&mdash;there, abjectly&mdash;and kiss it!) every inch
+of you is dear and delightful to me. Therefore good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>She took this in with wider eyes: he had put the matter in a way that
+struck her. For a moment, all the same, he was afraid she would reply as
+on the confessed experience of so many such tributes, handsome as this
+one was. But she was too much moved&mdash;the pure colour that had risen to
+her face showed it&mdash;to have recourse to this particular facility. She
+was moved even to the glimmer of tears, though she gave him her hand
+with a smile. "I'm so glad you've said all that, for from you I know
+what it means. Certainly it's better for you to go away. Of course it's
+all wrong, isn't it?&mdash;but that's the only thing it can be: therefore
+it's all right, isn't it? Some day when we're both great people we'll
+talk these things over; then we shall be quiet, we shall be rich, we
+shall be at peace&mdash;let us hope so at least&mdash;and better friends than
+others about us will know." She paused, smiling still, and then said
+while he held her hand: "Don't, <i>don't</i> come to-morrow night."</p>
+
+<p>With this she attempted to draw her hand away, as if everything were
+settled and over; but the effect of her movement was that, as he held
+her tight, he was simply drawn toward her and close to her. The effect
+of this, in turn, was that, releasing her only to possess her the more
+completely, he seized her in his arms and, breathing deeply "I love you,
+you know," clasped her in a long embrace. His demonstration and her
+conscious sufferance, almost equally liberal, so sustained themselves
+that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_548" id="Page_548">[548]</a></span> the door of the room had time to open slowly before either had
+taken notice. Mrs. Rooth, who had not peeped in before, peeped in now,
+becoming in this manner witness of an incident she could scarce have
+counted on. The unexpected indeed had for Mrs. Rooth never been an
+insuperable element in things; it was her position in general to be too
+acquainted with all the passions for any crude surprise. As the others
+turned round they saw her stand there and smile, and heard her ejaculate
+with wise indulgence: "Oh you extravagant children!"</p>
+
+<p>Miriam brushed off her tears, quickly but unconfusedly. "He's going
+away, the wretch; he's bidding us farewell."</p>
+
+<p>Peter&mdash;it was perhaps a result of his acute agitation&mdash;laughed out at
+the "us" (he had already laughed at the charge of puerility), and Mrs.
+Rooth went on: "Going away? Ah then I must have one too!" She held out
+both her hands, and Sherringham, stepping forward to take them, kissed
+her respectfully on each cheek, in the foreign manner, while she
+continued: "Our dear old friend&mdash;our kind, gallant gentleman!"</p>
+
+<p>"The gallant gentleman has been promoted to a great post&mdash;the proper
+reward of his gallantry," Miriam said. "He's going out as minister to
+some impossible place&mdash;where is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"As minister&mdash;how very charming! We <i>are</i> getting on." And their
+companion languished up at him with a world of approval.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh well enough. One must take what one can get," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll get everything now, I'm sure, shan't you?" Mrs. Rooth asked with
+an inflexion that called back to him comically&mdash;the source of the sound
+was so different&mdash;the very vibrations he had heard the day before from
+Lady Agnes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_549" id="Page_549">[549]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He's going to glory and he'll forget all about us&mdash;forget he has ever
+known such low people. So we shall never see him again, and it's better
+so. Good-bye, good-bye," Miriam repeated; "the brougham must be there,
+but I won't take you. I want to talk to mother about you, and we shall
+say things not fit for you to hear. Oh I'll let you know what we
+lose&mdash;don't be afraid," she added to Mrs. Rooth. "He's the rising star
+of diplomacy."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it from the first&mdash;I know how things turn out for such people as
+you!" cried the old woman, gazing fondly at Sherringham. "But you don't
+mean to say you're not coming to-morrow night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't&mdash;don't; it's great folly," Miriam interposed; "and it's quite
+needless, since you saw me to-day."</p>
+
+<p>Peter turned from the mother to the daughter, the former of whom broke
+out to the latter: "Oh you dear rogue, to say one has <i>seen</i> you yet!
+You know how you'll come up to it&mdash;you'll be beyond everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I shall be there&mdash;certainly," Peter said, at the door, to Mrs.
+Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh you dreadful goose!" Miriam called after him. But he went out
+without looking round at her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_550" id="Page_550">[550]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_551" id="Page_551">[551]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_SEVENTH" id="BOOK_SEVENTH"></a>BOOK SEVENTH</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XLII" id="XLII"></a><a href="#toc">XLII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Nick Dormer had for the hour quite taken up his abode at his studio,
+where Biddy usually arrived after breakfast to give him news of the
+state of affairs in Calcutta Gardens and where many letters and
+telegrams were now addressed him. Among such missives, on the morning of
+the Saturday on which Peter Sherringham had promised to dine at the
+other house, was a note from Miriam Rooth, informing Nick that if he
+shouldn't telegraph to put her off she would turn up about half-past
+eleven, probably with her mother, for just one more sitting. She added
+that it was a nervous day for her and that she couldn't keep still, so
+that it would really be very kind to let her come to him as a refuge.
+She wished to stay away from the theatre, where everything was now
+settled&mdash;or so much the worse for the others if it wasn't&mdash;till the
+evening; in spite of which she should if left to herself be sure to go
+there. It would keep her quiet and soothe her to sit&mdash;he could keep her
+quiet (he was such a blessing that way!) at any time. Therefore she
+would give him two or three hours&mdash;or rather she would herself ask for
+them&mdash;if he didn't positively turn her from the door.</p>
+
+<p>It had not been definite to Nick that he wanted another sitting at all
+for the slight work, as he held it to be, that Miriam had already helped
+him to achieve. He regarded this work as a mere light wind-fall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_552" id="Page_552">[552]</a></span> of the
+shaken tree: he had made what he could of it and would have been
+embarrassed to make more. If it was not finished this was because it was
+not finishable; at any rate he had said all he had to say in that
+particular phrase. The young man, in truth, was not just now in the
+highest spirits; his imagination had within two or three days become
+conscious of a check that he tried to explain by the idea of a natural
+reaction. Any decision or violent turn, any need of a new sharp choice
+in one's career, was upsetting, and, exaggerate that importance and
+one's own as little as one would, a deal of flurry couldn't help
+attending, especially in the face of so much scandal, the horrid act,
+odious to one's modesty at the best, of changing one's clothes in the
+marketplace. That made life not at all positively pleasant, yet
+decidedly thrilling, for the hour; and it was well enough till the
+thrill abated. When this occurred, as it inevitably would, the romance
+and the glow of the adventure were exchanged for the chill and the
+prose. It was to these latter elements he had waked up pretty wide on
+this particular morning; and the prospect was not appreciably fresher
+from the fact that he had warned himself in advance it would be dull. He
+had in fact known how dull it would be, but now he would have time to
+learn even better. A reaction was a reaction, but it was not after all a
+catastrophe. It would be a feature of his very freedom that he should
+ask himself if he hadn't made a great mistake; this privilege would
+doubtless even remain within the limits of its nature in exposing him to
+hours of intimate conviction of his madness. But he would live to
+retract his retractations&mdash;this was the first thing to bear in mind.</p>
+
+<p>He was absorbed, even while he dressed, in the effort to achieve
+intelligibly to himself some such revolution when, by the first post,
+Miriam's note<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_553" id="Page_553">[553]</a></span> arrived. At first it did little to help his agility&mdash;it
+made him, seeing her esthetic faith as so much stronger and simpler than
+his own, wonder how he should keep with her at her high level. Ambition,
+in her, was always on the rush, and she was not a person to conceive
+that others might in bad moments listen for the trumpet in vain. It
+would never have occurred to her that only the day before he had spent a
+part of the afternoon quite at the bottom of the hill. He had in fact
+turned into the National Gallery and had wandered about there for more
+than an hour, and it was just while he did so that the immitigable
+recoil had begun perversely to make itself felt. The perversity was all
+the greater from the fact that if the experience was depressing this was
+not because he had been discouraged beyond measure by the sight of the
+grand things that had been done&mdash;things so much grander than any that
+would ever bear his signature. That variation he was duly acquainted
+with and should know in abundance again. What had happened to him, as he
+passed on this occasion from Titian to Rubens and from Gainsborough to
+Rembrandt, was that he found himself calling the whole exhibited art
+into question. What was it after all at the best and why had people
+given it so high a place? Its weakness, its limits broke upon him;
+tacitly blaspheming he looked with a lustreless eye at the palpable,
+polished, "toned" objects designed for suspension on hooks. That is, he
+blasphemed if it were blasphemy to feel that as bearing on the energies
+of man they were a poor and secondary show. The human force producing
+them was so far from one of the greatest; their place was a small place
+and their connexion with the heroic life casual and slight. They
+represented so little great ideas, and it was great ideas that kept the
+world from chaos. He had incontestably been in much closer relation with
+them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_554" id="Page_554">[554]</a></span> a few months before than he was to-day: it made up a great deal
+for what was false and hollow, what was merely personal, in "politics"
+that, were the idea greater or smaller, they could at their best so
+directly deal with it. The love of it had really been much of the time
+at the bottom of his impulse to follow them up; though this was not what
+he had most talked of with his political friends or even with Julia. No,
+political as Julia was, he had not conferred with her much about the
+idea. However, this might have been his own fault quite as much as hers,
+and she in fact took such things, such enthusiasms, for granted&mdash;there
+was an immense deal in every way that she took for granted. On the other
+hand, he had often put forward this brighter side of the care for the
+public weal in his discussions with Gabriel Nash, to the end, it is
+true, of making that worthy scoff aloud at what he was pleased to term
+his hypocrisy. Gabriel maintained precisely that there were more ideas,
+more of those that man lived by, in a single room of the National
+Gallery than in all the statutes of Parliament. Nick had replied to this
+more than once that the determination of what man did live by was
+required; to which Nash had retorted (and it was very rarely that he
+quoted Scripture) that it was at any rate not by bread and beans alone.
+The statutes of Parliament gave him bread and beans <i>tout au plus</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Nick had at present no pretension of trying this question over again: he
+reminded himself that his ambiguity was subjective, as the philosophers
+said; the result of a mood which in due course would be at the mercy of
+another mood. It made him curse, and cursing, as a finality, lacked
+firmness&mdash;one had to drive in posts somewhere under. The greatest time
+to do one's work was when it didn't seem worth doing, for then one gave
+it a brilliant chance, that of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_555" id="Page_555">[555]</a></span> resisting the stiffest test of all&mdash;the
+test of striking one as too bad. To do the most when there would be the
+least to be got by it was to be most in the spirit of high production.
+One thing at any rate was certain, Nick reflected: nothing on earth
+would induce him to change back again&mdash;not even if this twilight of the
+soul should last for the rest of his days. He hardened himself in his
+posture with a good conscience which, had they had a glimpse of it,
+would have made him still more diverting to those who already thought
+him so; and now, by a happy chance, Miriam suddenly supplied the bridge
+correcting the gap in his continuity. If he had made his sketch it was a
+proof he had done her, and that he had done her flashed upon him as a
+sign that she would be still more feasible. Art was <i>doing</i>&mdash;it came
+back to that&mdash;which politics in most cases weren't. He thus, to pursue
+our image, planted his supports in the dimness beneath all cursing, and
+on the platform so improvised was able, in his relief, to dance. He sent
+out a telegram to Balaklava Place requesting his beautiful sitter by no
+manner of means to fail him. When his servant came back it was to usher
+into the studio Peter Sherringham, whom the man had apparently found at
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>The hour was so early for general commerce that Nick immediately guessed
+his visitor had come on some rare errand; but this inference yielded to
+the reflexion that Peter might after all only wish to make up by present
+zeal for not having been near him before. He forgot that, as he had
+subsequently learned from Biddy, their foreign, or all but foreign,
+cousin had spent an hour in Rosedale Road, missing him there but pulling
+out Miriam's portrait, the day of his own last visit to Beauclere. These
+young men were not on a ceremonious footing and it was not in Nick's
+nature to keep a record of civilities rendered or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_556" id="Page_556">[556]</a></span> omitted; nevertheless
+he had been vaguely conscious that during a stay in London elastic
+enough on Peter's part he and his kinsman had foregathered less than of
+yore. It was indeed an absorbing moment in the career of each, but even
+while recognising such a truth Nick judged it not impossible that
+Julia's brother might have taken upon himself to resent some
+suppositions failure of consideration for that lady; though this indeed
+would have been stupid and the newly appointed minister (to he had
+forgotten where) didn't often make mistakes. Nick held that as he had
+treated Julia with studious generosity she had nothing whatever to visit
+on him&mdash;wherefore Peter had still less. It was at any rate none of that
+gentleman's business. There were only two abatements to disposing in a
+few frank words of all this: one of them Nick's general hatred of
+talking of his private affairs (a reluctance in which he and Peter were
+well matched); and the other a truth involving more of a confession&mdash;the
+subtle truth that the most definite and even most soothing result of the
+collapse of his engagement was, as happened, an unprecedented
+consciousness of freedom. Nick's observation was of a different sort
+from his cousin's; he noted much less the signs of the hour and kept
+throughout a looser register of life; nevertheless, just as one of our
+young men had during these days in London found the air peopled with
+personal influences, the concussion of human atoms, so the other, though
+only asking to live without too many questions and work without too many
+rubs, to be glad and sorry in short on easy terms, had become aware of a
+certain social tightness, of the fact that life is crowded and passion
+restless, accident and community inevitable. Everybody with whom one had
+relations had other relations too, and even indifference was a mixture
+and detachment a compromise. The only wisdom was to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_557" id="Page_557">[557]</a></span> consent to the
+loss, if necessary, of everything but one's temper and to the ruin, if
+necessary, of everything but one's work. It must be added that Peter's
+relative took precautions against irritation perhaps in excess of the
+danger, as departing travellers about to whiz through foreign countries
+mouth in phrase-books combinations of words they will never use. He was
+at home in clear air and disliked to struggle either for breath or for
+light. He had a dim sense that Peter felt some discomfort from him and
+might have come now to tell him so; in which case he should be sorry for
+the sufferer in various ways. But as soon as that aspirant began to
+speak suspicion reverted to mere ancient kindness, and this in spite of
+the fact that his speech had a slightly exaggerated promptitude, like
+the promptitude of business, which might have denoted
+self-consciousness. To Nick it quickly appeared better to be glad than
+to be sorry: this simple argument was more than sufficient to make him
+glad Peter was there.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, it's an unpardonable hour, isn't it? I wasn't even sure
+you'd be up, yet had to risk it, because my hours are numbered. I'm
+going away to-morrow," Peter went on; "I've a thousand things to do.
+I've had no talk with you this time such as we used to have of old (it's
+an irreparable loss, but it's your fault, you know), and as I've got to
+rush about all day I thought I'd just catch you before any one else
+does."</p>
+
+<p>"Some one has already caught me, but there's plenty of time," Nick
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>Peter all but asked a question&mdash;it fell short. "I see, I see. I'm sorry
+to say I've only a few minutes at best."</p>
+
+<p>"Man of crushing responsibilities, you've come to humiliate me!" his
+companion cried. "I know all about it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_558" id="Page_558">[558]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's more than I do then. That's not what I've come for, but I shall be
+delighted if I humiliate you a little by the way. I've two things in
+mind, and I'll mention the most difficult first. I came here the other
+day&mdash;the day after my arrival in town."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah yes, so you did; it was very good of you"&mdash;Nick remembered. "I ought
+to have returned your visit or left a card or written my name&mdash;to have
+done something in Great Stanhope Street, oughtn't I? You hadn't got this
+new thing then, or I'd have 'called.'"</p>
+
+<p>Peter eyed him a moment. "I say, what's the matter with you? Am I really
+unforgivable for having taken that liberty?"</p>
+
+<p>"What liberty?" Nick looked now quite innocent of care, and indeed his
+visitor's allusion was not promptly clear. He was thinking for the
+instant all of Biddy, of whom and whose secret inclinations Grace had
+insisted on talking to him. They were none of his business, and if he
+wouldn't for the world have let the girl herself suspect he had violent
+lights on what was most screened and curtained in her, much less would
+he have made Peter a clumsy present of this knowledge. Grace had a queer
+theory that Peter treated Biddy badly&mdash;treated them all somehow badly;
+but Grace's zeal (she had plenty of it, though she affected all sorts of
+fine indifference) almost always took the form of her being unusually
+wrong. Nick wanted to do only what Biddy would thank him for, and he
+knew very well what she wouldn't. She wished him and Peter to be great
+friends, and the only obstacle to this was that Peter was too much of a
+diplomatist. Peter made him for an instant think of her and of the hour
+they had lately spent together in the studio in his absence&mdash;an hour of
+which Biddy had given him a history full of items and omissions; and
+this in turn brought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_559" id="Page_559">[559]</a></span> Nick's imagination back to his visitor's own side
+of the matter. That general human complexity of which the sense had
+lately increased with him, and to which it was owing that any thread one
+might take hold of would probably be the extremely wrong end of
+something, was illustrated by the fact that while poor Biddy was
+thinking of Peter it was ten to one poor Peter was thinking of Miriam
+Rooth. All of which danced before Nick's intellectual vision for a space
+briefer than my too numerous words.</p>
+
+<p>"I pitched into your treasures&mdash;I rummaged among your canvases," Peter
+said. "Biddy had nothing whatever to do with it&mdash;she maintained an
+attitude of irreproachable reserve. It has been on my conscience all
+these days and I ought to have done penance before. I've been putting it
+off partly because I'm so ashamed of my indiscretion. <i>Que voulez-vous</i>,
+my dear chap? My provocation was great. I heard you had been painting
+Miss Rooth, so that I couldn't restrain my curiosity. I simply went into
+that corner and struck out there&mdash;a trifle wildly no doubt. I dragged
+the young lady to the light&mdash;your sister turned pale as she saw me. It
+was a good deal like breaking open one of your letters, wasn't it?
+However, I assure you it's all right, for I congratulate you both on
+your style and on your correspondent."</p>
+
+<p>"You're as clever, as witty, as humorous as ever, old boy," Nick
+pronounced, going himself into the corner designated by his companion
+and laying his hands on the same canvas. "Your curiosity's the highest
+possible tribute to my little attempt and your sympathy sets me right
+with myself. There she is again," Nick went on, thrusting the picture
+into an empty frame; "you shall see her whether you wish to or not."</p>
+
+<p>"Right with yourself? You don't mean to say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_560" id="Page_560">[560]</a></span> you've been wrong!" Peter
+returned, standing opposite the portrait.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I don't know. I've been kicking up such a row. Anything's better
+than a row."</p>
+
+<p>"She's awfully good&mdash;she's awfully true," said Peter. "You've done more
+to her since the other day. You've put in several things."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I've worked distractedly. I've not altogether conformed to the
+good rule about being off with the old love."</p>
+
+<p>"With the old love?"&mdash;and the visitor looked hard at the picture.</p>
+
+<p>"Before you're on with the new!" Nick had no sooner uttered these words
+than he coloured: it occurred to him his friend would probably infer an
+allusion to Julia. He therefore added quickly: "It isn't so easy to
+cease to represent an affectionate constituency. Really most of my time
+for a fortnight has been given to letter-writing. They've all been
+unexpectedly charming. I should have thought they'd have loathed and
+despised me. But not a bit of it; they cling to me fondly&mdash;they struggle
+with me tenderly. I've been down to talk with them about it, and we've
+passed the most sociable, delightful hours. I've designated my
+successor; I've felt a good deal like the Emperor Charles the Fifth when
+about to retire to the monastery of Yuste. The more I've seen of them in
+this way the more I've liked them, and they declare it has been the same
+with themselves about me. We spend our time assuring each other we
+hadn't begun to know each other till now. In short it's all wonderfully
+jolly, but it isn't business. <i>C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la
+guerre</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"They're not so charming as they might be if they don't offer to keep
+you and let you paint."</p>
+
+<p>"They do, almost&mdash;it's fantastic," said Nick.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_561" id="Page_561">[561]</a></span> "Remember they haven't
+yet seen a daub of my brush."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm sorry for you; we live in too enlightened an age," Peter
+returned. "You can't suffer for art&mdash;that grand romance is over. Your
+experience is interesting; it seems to show that at the tremendous pitch
+of civilisation we've reached you can't suffer from anything but
+hunger."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall doubtless," Nick allowed, "do that enough to make up for the
+rest."</p>
+
+<p>"Never, never, when you paint so well as this."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh come, you're too good to be true," Nick said. "But where did you
+learn that one's larder's full in proportion as one's work's fine?"</p>
+
+<p>Peter waived this curious point&mdash;he only continued to look at the
+picture; after which he roundly brought out: "I'll give you your price
+for it on the spot."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you're so magnanimous that you shall have it for nothing!" And Nick,
+touched to gratitude, passed his arm into his visitor's.</p>
+
+<p>Peter had a pause. "Why do you call me magnanimous?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh bless my soul, it's hers&mdash;I forgot!" laughed Nick, failing in his
+turn to answer the other's inquiry. "But you shall have another."</p>
+
+<p>"Another? Are you going to do another?"</p>
+
+<p>"This very morning. That is, I shall begin it. I've heard from her;
+she's coming to sit&mdash;a short time hence."</p>
+
+<p>Peter turned away a little at this, releasing himself, and, as if the
+movement had been an effect of his host's words, looked at his watch
+earnestly to dissipate that appearance. He fell back to consider the
+work from further off. "The more you do her the better&mdash;she has all the
+qualities of a great model. From that point of view it's a pity she has
+another trade: she might make so good a thing of this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_562" id="Page_562">[562]</a></span> one. But how
+shall you do her again?" he asked ingenuously.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I can scarcely say; we'll arrange something; we'll talk it over.
+It's extraordinary how well she enters into what one wants: she knows
+more than one does one's self. She isn't, as you Frenchmen say, the
+first comer. However, you know all about that, since you invented her,
+didn't you? That's what she says; she's awfully sweet on you," Nick
+kindly pursued. "What I ought to do is to try something as different as
+possible from that thing; not the sibyl, the muse, the tremendous
+creature, but the charming woman, the person one knows, differently
+arranged as she appears <i>en ville</i>, she calls it. I'll do something
+really serious and send it to you out there with my respects. It will
+remind you of home and perhaps a little even of me. If she knows it's
+for you she'll throw herself into it in the right spirit. Leave it to
+us, my dear fellow; we'll turn out something splendid."</p>
+
+<p>"It's jolly to hear you, but I shall send you a cheque," said Peter very
+stoutly.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it's all right in your position, but you're too proud," his
+kinsman answered.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by my position?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your exaltation, your high connexion with the country, your treating
+with sovereign powers as the representative of a sovereign power. Isn't
+that what they call 'em?"</p>
+
+<p>Peter, who had turned round again, listened to this with his eyes fixed
+on Nick's face while he once more drew forth his watch. "Brute!" he
+exclaimed familiarly, at the same time dropping his eyes on the watch.
+"When did you say you expect your sitter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh we've plenty of time; don't be afraid of letting me see you agitated
+by her presence."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_563" id="Page_563">[563]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Brute!" Peter again ejaculated.</p>
+
+<p>This friendly personal note cleared the air, made their communication
+closer. "Stay with me and talk to me," said Nick; "I daresay it's good
+for me. It may be the last time I shall see you without having before
+anything else to koo-too."</p>
+
+<p>"Beast!" his kinsman once more, and a little helplessly, threw off;
+though next going on: "Haven't you something more to show me then&mdash;some
+other fruit of your genius?"</p>
+
+<p>"Must I bribe you by setting my sign-boards in a row? You know what I've
+done; by which I mean of course you know what I haven't. My genius, as
+you're so good as to call it, has hitherto been dreadfully sterile. I've
+had no time, no opportunity, no continuity. I must go and sit down in a
+corner and learn my alphabet. That thing isn't good; what I shall do for
+you won't be good. Don't protest, my dear fellow; nothing will be fit to
+look at for a long time." After which poor Nick wound up: "And think of
+my ridiculous age! As the good people say (or don't they say it?), it's
+a rum go. It won't be amusing."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you're so clever you'll get on fast," Peter returned, trying to
+think how he could most richly defy the injunction not to protest.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean it won't be amusing for others," said Nick, unperturbed by this
+levity. "They want results, and small blame to them."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, whatever you do, don't talk like Mr. Gabriel Nash," Peter went
+on. "Sometimes I think you're just going to."</p>
+
+<p>Nick stared a moment. "Ah he never would have said <i>that</i> 'They want
+results, the damned asses'&mdash;that would have been more in his key."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the difference of a <i>nuance</i>! And are you extraordinarily happy?"
+Peter added as his host<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_564" id="Page_564">[564]</a></span> now obliged him by arranging half-a-dozen
+canvases so that he could look at them.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so much so, doubtless, as the artistic life ought to make one:
+because all one's people are not so infatuated as one's electors. But
+little by little I'm learning the charm of pig-headedness."</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother's very bad," Peter allowed&mdash;"I lunched with her day before
+yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know, I know"&mdash;Nick had such reason to know; "but it's too late,
+too late. I must just peg away here and not mind. I've after all a great
+advantage in my life."</p>
+
+<p>His companion waited impartially to hear. "And that would be&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, knowing what I want to do. That's everything, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"It's an advantage, however, that you've only just come in for, isn't
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but the delay and the probation only make me prize it the more.
+I've got it now; and it makes up for the absence of some other things."</p>
+
+<p>Again Peter had a pause. "That sounds a little flat," he remarked at
+last.</p>
+
+<p>"It depends on what you compare it with. It has more point than I
+sometimes found in the House of Commons."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I never thought I should like that!"</p>
+
+<p>There was another drop during which Nick moved about the room turning up
+old sketches to see if he had anything more to show, while his visitor
+continued to look at the unfinished and in some cases, as seemed,
+unpromising productions already exposed. They were far less interesting
+than the portrait of Miriam Rooth and, it would have appeared, less
+significant of ability. For that particular effort Nick's talent had
+taken an inspired flight. So much Peter thought, as he had thought it
+intensely before;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_565" id="Page_565">[565]</a></span> but the words he presently uttered had no visible
+connexion with it. They only consisted of the abrupt inquiry; "Have you
+heard anything from Julia?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a syllable. Have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear no; she never writes to me."</p>
+
+<p>"But won't she on the occasion of your promotion?"</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay not," said Peter; and this was the only reference to Mrs.
+Dallow that passed between her brother and her late intended. It left a
+slight stir of the air which Peter proceeded to allay by an allusion
+comparatively speaking more relevant. He expressed disappointment that
+Biddy shouldn't have come in, having had an idea she was always in
+Rosedale Road of a morning. That was the other branch of his present
+errand&mdash;the wish to see her and give her a message for Lady Agnes, upon
+whom, at so early an hour, he had not presumed to intrude in Calcutta
+Gardens. Nick replied that Biddy did in point of fact almost always turn
+up, and for the most part early: she came to wish him good-morning and
+start him for the day. She was a devoted Electra, laying a cool, healing
+hand on a distracted, perspiring Orestes. He reminded Peter, however,
+that he would have a chance of seeing her that evening, and of seeing
+Lady Agnes; for wasn't he to do them the honour of dining in Calcutta
+Gardens? Biddy, the day before, had arrived full of that excitement.
+Peter explained that this was exactly the sad subject of his actual
+<i>d&eacute;marche</i>: the project of the dinner in Calcutta Gardens had, to his
+exceeding regret, fallen to pieces. The fact was (didn't Nick know it?)
+the night had been suddenly and perversely fixed for Miriam's premi&egrave;re,
+and he was under a definite engagement with her not to stay away from
+it. To add to the bore of the thing he was obliged to return to Paris
+the very next morning. He was quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_566" id="Page_566">[566]</a></span> awfully sorry, for he had promised
+Lady Agnes: he didn't understand then about Miriam's affair, in regard
+to which he had given a previous pledge. He was more grieved than he
+could say, but he could never fail Miss Rooth: he had professed from the
+first an interest in her which he must live up to a little more. This
+was his last chance&mdash;he hadn't been near her at the trying time of her
+first braving of the public. And the second night of the play wouldn't
+do&mdash;it must be the first or nothing. Besides, he couldn't wait over till
+Monday.</p>
+
+<p>While Peter recited all his hindrance Nick was occupied in rubbing with
+a cloth a palette he had just scraped. "I see what you mean&mdash;I'm very
+sorry too. I'm sorry you can't give my mother this joy&mdash;I give her so
+little."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, you might give her a little more!" it came to Peter to
+say. "It's rather too much to expect <i>me</i> to make up for your
+omissions!"</p>
+
+<p>Nick looked at him with a moment's fixedness while he polished the
+palette; and for that moment he felt the temptation to reply: "There's a
+way you could do that, to a considerable extent&mdash;I think you guess
+it&mdash;which wouldn't be intrinsically disagreeable." But the impulse
+passed without expressing itself in speech, and he simply brought out;
+"You can make this all clear to Biddy when she comes, and she'll make it
+clear to my mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little Biddy!" Peter mentally sighed, thinking of the girl with
+that job before her; but what he articulated was that this was exactly
+why he had come to the studio. He had inflicted his company on Lady
+Agnes the previous Thursday and had partaken of a meal with her, but had
+not seen Biddy though he had waited for her, had hoped immensely she'd
+come in. Now he'd wait again&mdash;dear Bid was thoroughly worth it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_567" id="Page_567">[567]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Patience, patience then&mdash;you've always me!" said Nick; to which he
+subjoined: "If it's a question of going to the play I scarcely see why
+you shouldn't dine at my mother's all the same. People go to the play
+after dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but it wouldn't be fair, it wouldn't be decent: it's a case when I
+must be in my seat from the rise of the curtain." Peter, about this, was
+thoroughly lucid. "I should force your mother to dine an hour earlier
+than usual and then in return for her courtesy should go off to my
+entertainment at eight o'clock, leaving her and Grace and Biddy
+languishing there. I wish I had proposed in time that they should go
+with me," he continued not very ingenuously.</p>
+
+<p>"You might do that still," Nick suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh at this time of day it would be impossible to get a box."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll speak to Miss Rooth about it if you like when she comes," smiled
+Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it wouldn't do," said Peter, turning away and looking once more at
+his watch. He made tacitly the addition that still less than asking Lady
+Agnes for his convenience to dine early would <i>this</i> be decent, would it
+be thinkable. His taking Biddy the night he dined with her and with Miss
+Tressilian had been something very like a violation of those
+proprieties. He couldn't say that, however, to the girl's brother, who
+remarked in a moment that it was all right, since Peter's action left
+him his own freedom.</p>
+
+<p>"Your own freedom?"&mdash;and Peter's question made him turn.</p>
+
+<p>"Why you see now I can go to the theatre myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly; I hadn't thought of that. You'd naturally have been going."</p>
+
+<p>"I gave it up for the prospect of your company at home."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_568" id="Page_568">[568]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word you're too good&mdash;I don't deserve such sacrifices," said
+Peter, who read in his kinsman's face that this was not a figure of
+speech but the absolute truth. "Didn't it, however, occur to you that,
+as it would turn out, I might&mdash;I even naturally <i>would</i>&mdash;myself be
+going?" he put forth.</p>
+
+<p>Nick broke into a laugh. "It would have occurred to me if I understood a
+little better&mdash;!" But he paused, as still too amused.</p>
+
+<p>"If you understood a little better what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your situation, simply."</p>
+
+<p>Peter looked at him a moment. "Dine with me to-night by ourselves and at
+a club. We'll go to the theatre together and then you'll understand it."</p>
+
+<p>"With pleasure, with pleasure: we'll have a jolly evening," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"Call it jolly if you like. When did you say she was coming?" Peter
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Biddy? Oh probably, as I tell you, at any moment."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean the great Miriam," Peter amended.</p>
+
+<p>"The great Miriam, if she's punctual, will be here in about forty
+minutes."</p>
+
+<p>"And will she be likely to find your sister?"</p>
+
+<p>"That will depend, my dear fellow, on whether my sister remains to see
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly; but the point's whether you'll allow her to remain, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Nick looked slightly mystified. "Why shouldn't she do as she likes?"</p>
+
+<p>"In that case she'll probably go."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, unless she stays."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let her," Peter dropped; "send her away." And to explain this he
+added: "It doesn't seem exactly the right sort of thing, fresh young
+creatures like Bid meeting <i>des femmes de th&eacute;&acirc;tre</i>." His explanation, in
+turn, struck him as requiring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_569" id="Page_569">[569]</a></span> another clause; so he went on: "At least
+it isn't thought the right sort of thing abroad, and even in England my
+foreign ideas stick to me."</p>
+
+<p>Even with this amplification, however, his plea evidently still had for
+his companion a flaw; which, after he had considered it a moment, Nick
+exposed in the simple words: "Why, you originally introduced them in
+Paris, Biddy and Miss Rooth. Didn't they meet at your rooms and
+fraternise, and wasn't that much more 'abroad' than this?"</p>
+
+<p>"So they did, but my hand had been forced and she didn't like it," Peter
+answered, suspecting that for a diplomatist he looked foolish.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Rooth didn't like it?" Nick persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"That I confess I've forgotten. Besides, she wasn't an actress then.
+What I mean is that Biddy wasn't particularly pleased with her."</p>
+
+<p>"Why she thought her wonderful&mdash;praised her to the sides. I remember
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"She didn't like her as a woman; she praised her as an actress."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you said she wasn't an actress then," Nick returned.</p>
+
+<p>Peter had a pause. "Oh Biddy thought so. She has seen her since,
+moreover. I took her the other night, and her curiosity's satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not of any consequence, and if there's a reason for it I'll bundle
+her off directly," Nick made haste to say. "But the great Miriam seems
+such a kind, good person."</p>
+
+<p>"So she is, charming, charming,"&mdash;and his visitor looked hard at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Here comes Biddy now," Nick went on. "I hear her at the door: you can
+warn her yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't a question of 'warning'&mdash;that's not in the least my idea. But
+I'll take Biddy away," said Peter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_570" id="Page_570">[570]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That will be still more energetic."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it will be simply more selfish&mdash;I like her company." Peter had
+turned as if to go to the door and meet the girl; but he quickly checked
+himself, lingering in the middle of the room, and the next instant Biddy
+had come in. When she saw him there she also stopped.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_571" id="Page_571">[571]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XLIII" id="XLIII"></a><a href="#toc">XLIII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>"Come on boldly, my dear," said Nick. "Peter's bored to death waiting
+for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah he's come to say he won't dine with us to-night!" Biddy stood with
+her hand on the latch.</p>
+
+<p>"I leave town to-morrow: I've everything to do; I'm broken-hearted; it's
+impossible"&mdash;Peter made of it again such a case as he could. "Please
+make my peace with your mother&mdash;I'm ashamed of not having written to her
+last night."</p>
+
+<p>She closed the door and came in while her brother said to her, "How in
+the world did you guess it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I saw it in the <i>Morning Post</i>." And she kept her eyes on their
+kinsman.</p>
+
+<p>"In the <i>Morning Post</i>?" he vaguely echoed.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw there's to be a first night at that theatre, the one you took us
+to. So I said, 'Oh he'll go there.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I've got to do that too," Peter admitted.</p>
+
+<p>"She's going to sit to me again this morning, his wonderful actress&mdash;she
+has made an appointment: so you see I'm getting on," Nick pursued to his
+sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I'm so glad&mdash;she's so splendid!" The girl looked away from her
+cousin now, but not, though it seemed to fill the place, at the
+triumphant portrait of Miriam Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm delighted you've come in. I <i>have</i> waited for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_572" id="Page_572">[572]</a></span> you," Peter hastened
+to declare to her, though conscious that this was in the conditions
+meagre.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you coming to see us again?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm in despair, but I shall really not have time. Therefore it's a
+blessing not to have missed you here."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm very glad," said Biddy. Then she added: "And you're going to
+America&mdash;to stay a long time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Till I'm sent to some better place."</p>
+
+<p>"And will that better place be as far away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Biddy, it wouldn't be better then," said Peter.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean they'll give you something to do at home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly that. But I've a tremendous lot to do at home to-day." For the
+twentieth time Peter referred to his watch.</p>
+
+<p>She turned to her brother, who had admonished her that she might bid him
+good-morning. She kissed him and he asked what the news would be in
+Calcutta Gardens; to which she made answer: "The only news is of course
+the great preparations they're making, poor dears, for Peter. Mamma
+thinks you must have had such a nasty dinner the other day," the girl
+continued to the guest of that romantic occasion.</p>
+
+<p>"Faithless Peter!" said Nick, beginning to whistle and to arrange a
+canvas in anticipation of Miriam's arrival.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Biddy, thank your stars you're not in my horrid profession,"
+protested the personage so designated. "One's bowled about like a
+cricket-ball, unable to answer for one's freedom or one's comfort from
+one moment to another."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh ours is the true profession&mdash;Biddy's and mine," Nick broke out,
+setting up his canvas; "the career of liberty and peace, of charming
+long mornings spent in a still north light and in the contemplation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_573" id="Page_573">[573]</a></span> I
+may even say in the company, of the amiable and the beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"That certainty's the case when Biddy comes to see you," Peter returned.</p>
+
+<p>Biddy smiled at him. "I come every day. Anch'io son pittore! I encourage
+Nick awfully."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pity I'm not a martyr&mdash;she'd bravely perish with me," Nick said.</p>
+
+<p>"You are&mdash;you're a martyr&mdash;when people say such odious things!" the girl
+cried. "They do say them. I've heard many more than I've repeated to
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"It's you yourself then, indignant and loyal, who are the martyr,"
+observed Peter, who wanted greatly to be kind to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I don't care!"&mdash;but she threw herself, flushed and charming, into a
+straight appeal to him. "Don't you think one can do as much good by
+painting great works of art as by&mdash;as by what papa used to do? Don't you
+think art's necessary to the happiness, to the greatness of a people?
+Don't you think it's manly and honourable? Do you think a passion for
+it's a thing to be ashamed of? Don't you think the artist&mdash;the
+conscientious, the serious one&mdash;is as distinguished a member of society
+as any one else?"</p>
+
+<p>Peter and Nick looked at each other and laughed at the way she had got
+up her subject, and Nick asked their kinsman if she didn't express it
+all in perfection. "I delight in general in artists, but I delight still
+more in their defenders," Peter made reply, perhaps a little meagrely,
+to Biddy.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah don't attack me if you're wise!" Nick said.</p>
+
+<p>"One's tempted to when it makes Biddy so fine."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's the way she encourages me: it's meat and drink to me,"
+Nick went on. "At the same time I'm bound to say there's a little
+whistling in the dark in it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_574" id="Page_574">[574]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"In the dark?" his sister demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"The obscurity, my dear child, of your own aspirations, your mysterious
+ambitions and esthetic views. Aren't there some heavyish shadows there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why I never cared for politics."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but you cared for life, you cared for society, and you've chosen
+the path of solitude and concentration."</p>
+
+<p>"You horrid boy!" said Biddy.</p>
+
+<p>"Give it up, that arduous steep&mdash;give it up and come out with me," Peter
+interposed.</p>
+
+<p>"Come out with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let us walk a little or even drive a little. Let us at any rate talk a
+little."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you had so much to do," Biddy candidly objected.</p>
+
+<p>"So I have, but why shouldn't you do a part of it with me? Would there
+be any harm? I'm going to some tiresome shops&mdash;you'll cheer the frugal
+hour."</p>
+
+<p>The girl hesitated, then turned to Nick. "Would there be any harm?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh it's none of <i>his</i> business!" Peter protested.</p>
+
+<p>"He had better take you home to your mother."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going home&mdash;I shan't stay here to-day," Biddy went on. Then to
+Peter: "I came in a hansom, but I shall walk back. Come that way with
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"With pleasure. But I shall not be able to go in," Peter added.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh that's no matter," said the girl. "Good-bye, Nick."</p>
+
+<p>"You understand then that we dine together&mdash;at seven sharp. Wouldn't a
+club, as I say, be best?" Peter, before going, inquired of Nick. He
+suggested further which club it should be; and his words led Biddy, who
+had directed her steps toward the door, to turn a moment as with a
+reproachful question&mdash;whether it was for this Peter had given up
+Calcutta<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_575" id="Page_575">[575]</a></span> Gardens. But her impulse, if impulse it was, had no sequel
+save so far as it was a sequel that Peter freely explained to her, after
+Nick had assented to his conditions, that her brother too had a desire
+to go to Miss Rooth's first night and had already promised to accompany
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh that's perfect; it will be so good for him&mdash;won't it?&mdash;if he's going
+to paint her again," Biddy responded.</p>
+
+<p>"I think there's nothing so good for him as that he happens to have such
+a sister as you," Peter declared as they went out. He heard at the same
+time the sound of a carriage stopping, and before Biddy, who was in
+front of him, opened the door of the house had been able to say to
+himself, "What a bore&mdash;there's Miriam!" The opened door showed him that
+truth&mdash;this young lady in the act of alighting from the brougham
+provided by Basil Dashwood's thrifty zeal. Her mother followed her, and
+both the new visitors exclaimed and rejoiced, in their demonstrative
+way, as their eyes fell on their valued friend. The door had closed
+behind Peter, but he instantly and violently rang, so that they should
+be admitted with as little delay as possible, while he stood
+disconcerted, and fearing he showed it, by the prompt occurrence of an
+encounter he had particularly sought to avert. It ministered, moreover,
+a little to this sensibility that Miriam appeared to have come somewhat
+before her time. The incident promised, however, to pass off in a fine
+florid way. Before he knew it both the ladies had taken possession of
+Biddy, who looked at them with comparative coldness, tempered indeed by
+a faint glow of apprehension, and Miriam had broken out:</p>
+
+<p>"We know you, we know you; we saw you in Paris, and you came to my
+theatre a short time ago with Mr. Sherringham!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_576" id="Page_576">[576]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We know your mother, Lady Agnes Dormer. I hope her ladyship's very
+well," said Mrs. Rooth, who had never struck Peter as a more
+objectionable old woman.</p>
+
+<p>"You offered to do a head of me or something or other: didn't you tell
+me you work in clay? I daresay you've forgotten all about it, but I
+should be delighted," Miriam pursued with the richest urbanity. Peter
+was not concerned with her mother's pervasiveness, though he didn't like
+Biddy to see even that; but he hoped his companion would take the
+overcharged benevolence of the young actress in the spirit in which,
+rather to his surprise, it evidently was offered. "I've sat to your
+clever brother many times," said Miriam; "I'm going to sit again. I
+daresay you've seen what we've done&mdash;he's too delightful. <i>Si vous
+saviez comme cela me repose</i>!" she added, turning for a moment to Peter.
+Then she continued, smiling at Biddy; "Only he oughtn't to have thrown
+up such prospects, you know. I've an idea I wasn't nice to you that day
+in Paris&mdash;I was nervous and scared and perverse. I remember perfectly; I
+<i>was</i> odious. But I'm better now&mdash;you'd see if you were to know me. I'm
+not a bad sort&mdash;really I'm not. But you must have your own friends.
+Happy they&mdash;you look so charming! Immensely like Mr. Dormer, especially
+about the eyes; isn't she, mamma?"</p>
+
+<p>"She comes of a beautiful Norman race&mdash;the finest, purest strain," the
+old woman simpered. "Mr. Dormer's sometimes so good as to come and see
+us&mdash;we're always at home on Sunday; and if some day you found courage to
+come with him you might perhaps find it pleasant, though very different
+of course from the circle in which you habitually move."</p>
+
+<p>Biddy murmured a vague recognition of these wonderful civilities, and
+Miriam commented:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_577" id="Page_577">[577]</a></span> "Different, yes; but we're all right, you know. Do
+come," she added. Then turning to Sherringham: "Remember what I told
+you&mdash;I don't expect you to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I understand; I shall come,"&mdash;and Peter knew he grew red.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be idiotic. Keep him, keep him away&mdash;don't let him," Miriam
+insisted to Biddy; with which, as Nick's portals now were gaping, she
+drew her mother away.</p>
+
+<p>Peter, at this, walked off briskly with Biddy, dropping as he did so:
+"She's too fantastic!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but so tremendously good-looking. I shall ask Nick to take me
+there," the girl said after a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she'll do you no harm. They're all right, as she says. It's the
+world of art&mdash;you were standing up so for art just now."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I wasn't thinking so much of that kind," she demurred.</p>
+
+<p>"There's only one kind&mdash;it's all the same thing. If one sort's good the
+other is."</p>
+
+<p>Biddy walked along a moment. "Is she serious? Is she conscientious?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has the makings of a great artist," Peter opined.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad to hear you think a woman can be one."</p>
+
+<p>"In that line there has never been any doubt about it."</p>
+
+<p>"And only in that line?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean on the stage in general, dramatic or lyric. It's as the actress
+that the woman produces the most complete and satisfactory artistic
+results."</p>
+
+<p>"And only as the actress?"</p>
+
+<p>He weighed it. "Yes, there's another art in which she's not bad."</p>
+
+<p>"Which one do you mean?" asked Biddy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_578" id="Page_578">[578]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That of being charming and good, that of being indispensable to man."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh that isn't an art."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you leave her only the stage. Take it if you like in the widest
+sense."</p>
+
+<p>Biddy appeared to reflect a moment, as to judge what sense this might
+be. But she found none that was wide enough, for she cried the next
+minute: "Do you mean to say there's nothing for a woman but to be an
+actress?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never in my life. I only say that that's the best thing for a woman to
+be who finds herself irresistibly carried into the practice of the arts;
+for there her capacity for them has most application and her incapacity
+for them least. But at the same time I strongly recommend her not to be
+an artist if she can possibly help it. It's a devil of a life."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I know; men want women not to be anything."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a poor little refuge they try to take from the overwhelming
+consciousness that you're in very fact everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Everything?" And the girl gave a toss. "That's the kind of thing you
+say to keep us quiet."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Biddy, you see how well we succeed!" laughed Peter.</p>
+
+<p>To which she replied by asking irrelevantly: "Why is it so necessary for
+you to go to the theatre to-night if Miss Rooth doesn't want you to?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child, she does want me to. But that has nothing to do with
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why then did she say that she doesn't?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh because she meant just the contrary."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she so false then&mdash;is she so vulgar?"</p>
+
+<p>"She speaks a special language; practically it isn't false, because it
+renders her thought and those who know her understand it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_579" id="Page_579">[579]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But she doesn't use it only to those who know her," Biddy returned,
+"since she asked me, who have so little the honour of her acquaintance,
+to keep you away to-night. How am I to know that she meant by that that
+I'm to urge you on to go?"</p>
+
+<p>He was on the point of replying, "Because you've my word for it"; but he
+shrank in fact from giving his word&mdash;he had some fine scruples&mdash;and
+sought to relieve his embarrassment by a general tribute. "Dear Biddy,
+you're delightfully acute: you're quite as clever as Miss Rooth." He
+felt, however, that this was scarcely adequate and he continued: "The
+truth is that its being important for me to go is a matter quite
+independent of that young lady's wishing it or not wishing it. There
+happens to be a definite intrinsic propriety in it which determines the
+thing and which it would take me long to explain."</p>
+
+<p>"I see. But fancy your 'explaining' to me: you make me feel so
+indiscreet!" the girl cried quickly&mdash;an exclamation which touched him
+because he was not aware that, quick as it had been, she had still had
+time to be struck first&mdash;though she wouldn't for the world have
+expressed it&mdash;with the oddity of such a duty at such a season. In fact
+that oddity, during a silence of some minutes, came back to Peter
+himself: the note had been forced&mdash;it sounded almost ignobly frivolous
+from a man on the eve of proceeding to a high diplomatic post. The
+effect of this, none the less, was not to make him break out with "Hang
+it, I <i>will</i> keep my engagement to your mother!" but to fill him with
+the wish to shorten his present strain by taking Biddy the rest of the
+way in a cab. He was uncomfortable, and there were hansoms about that he
+looked at wistfully. While he was so occupied his companion took up the
+talk by an abrupt appeal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_580" id="Page_580">[580]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why did she say that Nick oughtn't to have resigned his seat?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I don't know. It struck her so. It doesn't matter much."</p>
+
+<p>But Biddy kept it up. "If she's an artist herself why doesn't she like
+people to go in for art, especially when Nick has given his time to
+painting her so beautifully? Why does she come there so often if she
+disapproves of what he has done?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Miriam's disapproval&mdash;it doesn't count; it's a manner of speaking."</p>
+
+<p>"Of speaking untruths, do you mean? Does she think just the reverse&mdash;is
+that the way she talks about everything?"</p>
+
+<p>"We always admire most what we can do least," Peter brought forth; "and
+Miriam of course isn't political. She ranks painters more or less with
+her own profession, about which already, new as she is to it, she has no
+illusions. They're all artists; it's the same general sort of thing. She
+prefers men of the world&mdash;men of action."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that the reason she likes you?" Biddy mildly mocked.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah she doesn't like me&mdash;couldn't you see it?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl at first said nothing; then she asked: "Is that why she lets
+you call her 'Miriam'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I don't, to her face."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah only to mine!" laughed Biddy.</p>
+
+<p>"One says that as one says 'Rachel' of her great predecessor."</p>
+
+<p>"Except that she isn't so great, quite yet, is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Far from it; she's the freshest of novices&mdash;she has scarcely been four
+months on the stage. But no novice has ever been such an adept. She'll
+go very fast," Peter pursued, "and I daresay that before long she'll be
+magnificent."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_581" id="Page_581">[581]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What a pity you'll not see that!" Biddy sighed after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Not see it?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you're thousands of miles away."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a pity," Peter said; "and since you mention it I don't mind
+frankly telling you&mdash;throwing myself on your mercy, as it were&mdash;that
+that's why I make such a point of a rare occasion like to-night. I've a
+weakness for the drama that, as you perhaps know, I've never concealed,
+and this impression will probably have to last me in some barren spot
+for many, many years."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand&mdash;I understand. I hope therefore it will be charming." And
+the girl walked faster.</p>
+
+<p>"Just as some other charming impressions will have to last," Peter
+added, conscious of keeping up with her by some effort. She seemed
+almost to be running away from him, an impression that led him to
+suggest, after they had proceeded a little further without more words,
+that if she were in a hurry they had perhaps better take a cab. Her face
+was strange and touching to him as she turned it to make answer:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I'm not in the least in a hurry and I really think I had better
+walk."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll walk then by all means!" Peter said with slightly exaggerated
+gaiety; in pursuance of which they went on a hundred yards. Biddy kept
+the same pace; yet it was scarcely a surprise to him that she should
+suddenly stop with the exclamation:</p>
+
+<p>"After all, though I'm not in a hurry I'm tired! I had better have a
+cab; please call that one," she added, looking about her.</p>
+
+<p>They were in a straight, blank, ugly street, where the small, cheap,
+grey-faced houses had no expression save that of a rueful, unconsoled
+acknowledgment of the universal want of identity. They would have
+constituted a "terrace" if they could, but they had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_582" id="Page_582">[582]</a></span> dolefully given it
+up. Even a hansom that loitered across the end of the vista turned a
+sceptical back upon it, so that Sherringham had to lift his voice in a
+loud appeal. He stood with Biddy watching the cab approach them. "This
+is one of the charming things you'll remember," she said, turning her
+eyes to the general dreariness from the particular figure of the
+vehicle, which was antiquated and clumsy. Before he could reply she had
+lightly stepped into the cab; but as he answered, "Most assuredly it
+is," and prepared to follow her she quickly closed the apron.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go alone; you've lots of things to do&mdash;it's all right"; and
+through the aperture in the roof she gave the driver her address. She
+had spoken with decision, and Peter fully felt now that she wished to
+get away from him. Her eyes betrayed it, as well as her voice, in a
+look, a strange, wandering ray that as he stood there with his hand on
+the cab he had time to take from her. "Good-bye, Peter," she smiled; and
+as the thing began to rumble away he uttered the same tepid, ridiculous
+farewell.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_583" id="Page_583">[583]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XLIV" id="XLIV"></a><a href="#toc">XLIV</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>At the entrance of Miriam and her mother Nick, in the studio, had
+stopped whistling, but he was still gay enough to receive them with
+every appearance of warmth. He thought it a poor place, ungarnished,
+untapestried, a bare, almost grim workshop, with all its revelations and
+honours still to come. But his visitors smiled on it a good deal in the
+same way in which they had smiled on Bridget Dormer when they met her at
+the door: Mrs. Rooth because vague, prudent approbation was the habit of
+her foolish face&mdash;it was ever the least danger; and Miriam because, as
+seemed, she was genuinely glad to find herself within the walls of which
+she spoke now as her asylum. She broke out in this strain to her host
+almost as soon as she had crossed the threshold, commending his
+circumstances, his conditions of work, as infinitely happier than her
+own. He was quiet, independent, absolute, free to do what he liked as he
+liked it, shut up in his little temple with his altar and his divinity;
+not hustled about in a mob of people, having to posture and grin to pit
+and gallery, to square himself at every step with insufferable
+conventions and with the ignorance and vanity of others. He was
+blissfully alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy, how you do abuse your fine profession! I'm sure I never urged
+you to adopt it!" Mrs. Rooth cried, in real bewilderment, to her
+daughter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_584" id="Page_584">[584]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She was abusing mine still more the other day," joked Nick&mdash;"telling me
+I ought to be ashamed of it and of myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I never know from one moment to the other&mdash;I live with my heart in
+my mouth," sighed the old woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you quiet about the great thing&mdash;about my personal behaviour?"
+Miriam smiled. "My improprieties are all of the mind."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you <i>call</i> your personal behaviour," her mother
+objected.</p>
+
+<p>"You would very soon if it were not what it is."</p>
+
+<p>"And I don't know why you should wish to have it thought you've a wicked
+mind," Mrs. Rooth agreeably grumbled.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I don't see very well how I can make you understand that. At
+any rate," Miriam pursued with her grand eyes on Nick, "I retract what I
+said the other day about Mr. Dormer. I've no wish to quarrel with him on
+the way he has determined to dispose of his life, because after all it
+does suit me very well. It rests me, this little devoted corner; oh it
+rests me! It's out of the row and the dust, it's deliciously still and
+they can't get at me. Ah when art's like this, <i>&agrave; la bonne heure</i>!" And
+she looked round on such a presentment of "art" in a splendid way that
+produced amusement on the young man's part at its contrast with the
+humble fact. Miriam shone upon him as if she liked to be the cause of
+his mirth and went on appealing to him: "You'll always let me come here
+for an hour, won't you, to take breath&mdash;to let the whirlwind pass? You
+needn't trouble yourself about me; I don't mean to impose on you in the
+least the necessity of painting me, though if that's a manner of helping
+you to get on you may be sure it will always be open to you. Do what you
+like with me in that respect;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_585" id="Page_585">[585]</a></span> only let me sit here on a high stool,
+keeping well out of your way, and see what you happen to be doing. I'll
+tell you my own adventures when you want to hear them."</p>
+
+<p>"The fewer adventures you have to tell the better, my dear," said Mrs.
+Rooth; "and if Mr. Dormer keeps you quiet he'll add ten years to my
+life."</p>
+
+<p>"It all makes an interesting comment on Mr. Dormer's own quietness, on
+his independence and sweet solitude," Nick observed. "Miss Rooth has to
+work with others, which is after all only what Mr. Dormer has to do when
+he works with Miss Rooth. What do you make of the inevitable sitter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," answered Miriam, "you can say to the inevitable sitter, 'Hold your
+tongue, you brute!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it a good deal in that manner that I've heard you address your
+comrades at the theatre?" Mrs. Rooth inquired. "That's why my heart's in
+my mouth."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but they hit me back; they reply to me&mdash;<i>comme de raison</i>&mdash;as I
+should never think of replying to Mr. Dormer. It's a great advantage to
+him that when he's peremptory with his model it only makes her better,
+adds to her expression of gloomy grandeur."</p>
+
+<p>"We did the gloomy grandeur in the other picture: suppose therefore we
+try something different in this," Nick threw off.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> serious, it <i>is</i> grand," murmured Mrs. Rooth, who had taken up
+a rapt attitude before the portrait of her daughter. "It makes one
+wonder what she's thinking of. Beautiful, commendable things&mdash;that's
+what it seems to say."</p>
+
+<p>"What can I be thinking of but the tremendous wisdom of my mother?"
+Miriam returned. "I brought her this morning to see that thing&mdash;she had
+only seen it in its earliest stage&mdash;and not to presume to advise you
+about anything else you may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_586" id="Page_586">[586]</a></span> be so good as to embark on. She wanted, or
+professed she wanted, terribly to know what you had finally arrived at.
+She was too impatient to wait till you should send it home."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah send it home&mdash;send it home; let us have it always with us!" Mrs.
+Rooth engagingly said. "It will keep us up, up, and up on the heights,
+near the stars&mdash;be always for us a symbol and a reminder!"</p>
+
+<p>"You see I was right," Miriam went on; "for she appreciates thoroughly,
+in her own way, and almost understands. But if she worries or distracts
+you I'll send her directly home&mdash;I've kept the carriage there on
+purpose. I must add that I don't feel quite safe to-day in letting her
+out of my sight. She's liable to make dashes at the theatre and play
+unconscionable tricks there. I shall never again accuse mamma of a want
+of interest in my profession. Her interest to-day exceeds even my own.
+She's all over the place and she has ideas&mdash;ah but ideas! She's capable
+of turning up at the theatre at five o'clock this afternoon to demand
+the repainting of the set in the third act. For myself I've not a word
+more to say on the subject&mdash;I've accepted every danger, I've swallowed
+my fate. Everything's no doubt wrong, but nothing can possibly be right.
+Let us eat and drink, for to-night we die. If you say so mamma shall go
+and sit in the carriage, and as there's no means of fastening the doors
+(is there?) your servant shall keep guard over her."</p>
+
+<p>"Just as you are now&mdash;be so good as to remain so; sitting just that
+way&mdash;leaning back with a smile in your eyes and one hand on the sofa
+beside you and supporting you a little. I shall stick a flower into the
+other hand&mdash;let it lie in your lap just as it is. Keep that thing on
+your head&mdash;it's admirably uncovered: do you call such an unconsidered
+trifle a bonnet?&mdash;and let your head fall back a little.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_587" id="Page_587">[587]</a></span> There it
+is&mdash;it's found. This time I shall really do something, and it will be as
+different as you like from that other crazy job. Here we go!" It was in
+these irrelevant but earnest words that Nick responded to his sitter's
+uttered vagaries, of which her charming tone and countenance diminished
+the superficial acerbity. He held up his hands a moment, to fix her in
+her limits, and in a few minutes had a happy sense of having begun to
+work.</p>
+
+<p>"The smile in her eyes&mdash;don't forget the smile in her eyes!" Mrs. Rooth
+softly chanted, turning away and creeping about the room. "That will
+make it so different from the other picture and show the two sides of
+her genius, the wonderful range between them. They'll be splendid mates,
+and though I daresay I shall strike you as greedy you must let me hope
+you'll send this one home too."</p>
+
+<p>She explored the place discreetly and on tiptoe, talking twaddle as she
+went and bending her head and her eyeglass over various objects with an
+air of imperfect comprehension that didn't prevent Nick's private recall
+of the story of her underhand, commercial habits told by Gabriel Nash at
+the exhibition in Paris the first time her name had fallen on his ear. A
+queer old woman from whom, if you approached her in the right way, you
+could buy old pots&mdash;it was in this character that she had originally
+been introduced to him. He had lost sight of it afterwards, but it
+revived again as his observant eyes, at the same time that they followed
+his active hand, became aware of her instinctive, appraising gestures.
+There was a moment when he frankly laughed out&mdash;there was so little in
+his poor studio to appraise. Mrs. Rooth's wandering eyeglass and vague,
+polite, disappointed, bent back and head made a subject for a sketch on
+the instant: they gave such a sudden pictorial glimpse of the element of
+race. He found<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_588" id="Page_588">[588]</a></span> himself seeing the immemorial Jewess in her hold up a
+candle in a crammed back shop. There was no candle indeed and his studio
+was not crammed, and it had never occurred to him before that she was a
+grand-daughter of Israel save on the general theory, so stoutly held by
+several clever people, that few of us are not under suspicion. The late
+Rudolf Roth had at least been, and his daughter was visibly her father's
+child; so that, flanked by such a pair, good Semitic presumptions
+sufficiently crowned the mother. Receiving Miriam's sharp, satiric
+shower without shaking her shoulders she might at any rate have been the
+descendant of a tribe long persecuted. Her blandness was beyond all
+baiting; she professed she could be as still as a mouse. Miriam, on the
+other side of the room, in the tranquil beauty of her attitude&mdash;"found"
+indeed, as Nick had said&mdash;watched her a little and then declared she had
+best have been locked up at home. Putting aside her free account of the
+dangers to which her mother exposed her, it wasn't whimsical to imagine
+that within the limits of that repose from which the Neville-Nugents
+never wholly departed the elder lady might indeed be a trifle fidgety
+and have something on her mind. Nick presently mentioned that it
+wouldn't be possible for him to "send home" his second performance; and
+he added, in the exuberance of having already got a little into relation
+with his work, that perhaps this didn't matter, inasmuch as&mdash;if Miriam
+would give him his time, to say nothing of her own&mdash;a third and a fourth
+masterpiece might also some day very well struggle into the light. His
+model rose to this without conditions, assuring him he might count upon
+her till she grew too old and too ugly and that nothing would make her
+so happy as that he should paint her as often as Romney had painted the
+celebrated Lady Hamilton. "Ah Lady Hamilton!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_589" id="Page_589">[589]</a></span> deprecated Mrs. Rooth;
+while Miriam, who had on occasion the candour of a fine acquisitiveness,
+wished to know what particular reason there might be for his not letting
+them have the picture he was now beginning.</p>
+
+<p>"Why I've promised it to Peter Sherringham&mdash;he has offered me money for
+it," Nick replied. "However, he's welcome to it for nothing, poor chap,
+and I shall be delighted to do the best I can for him."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Rooth, still prowling, stopped in the middle of the room at this,
+while her daughter echoed: "He offered you money&mdash;just as we came in?"</p>
+
+<p>"You met him then at the door with my sister? I supposed you had&mdash;he's
+taking her home," Nick explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Your sister's a lovely girl&mdash;such an aristocratic type!" breathed Mrs.
+Rooth. Then she added: "I've a tremendous confession to make to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Mamma's confessions have to be tremendous to correspond with her
+crimes," said Miriam. "She asked Miss Dormer to come and see us,
+suggested even that you might bring her some Sunday. I don't like the
+way mamma does such things&mdash;too much humility, too many <i>simagr&eacute;es</i>,
+after all; but I also said what I could to be nice to her. Your sister
+<i>is</i> charming&mdash;awfully pretty and modest. If you were to press me I
+should tell you frankly that it seems to me rather a social muddle, this
+rubbing shoulders of 'nice girls' and <i>filles de th&eacute;&acirc;tre</i>: I shouldn't
+think it would do your poor young things much good. However, it's their
+own affair, and no doubt there's no more need of their thinking we're
+worse than we are than of their thinking we're better. The people they
+live with don't seem to know the difference&mdash;I sometimes make my
+reflexions about the public one works for."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah if you go in for the public's knowing differences<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_590" id="Page_590">[590]</a></span> you're far too
+particular," Nick laughed. "<i>D'o&ugrave; tombez-vous</i>? as you affected French
+people say. If you've anything at stake on that you had simply better
+not play."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Mr. Dormer, don't encourage her to be so dreadful; for it <i>is</i>
+dreadful, the way she talks," Mrs. Rooth broke in. "One would think we
+weren't respectable&mdash;one would think I had never known what I've known
+and been what I've been."</p>
+
+<p>"What one would think, beloved mother, is that you're a still greater
+humbug than you are. It's you, on the contrary, who go down on your
+knees, who pour forth apologies about our being vagabonds."</p>
+
+<p>"Vagabonds&mdash;listen to her!&mdash;after the education I've given her and our
+magnificent prospects!" wailed Mrs. Rooth, sinking with clasped hands
+upon the nearest ottoman.</p>
+
+<p>"Not after our prospects, if prospects they be: a good deal before them.
+Yes, you've taught me tongues and I'm greatly obliged to you&mdash;they no
+doubt give variety as well as incoherency to my conversation; and that
+of people in our line is for the most part notoriously monotonous and
+shoppy. The gift of tongues is in general the sign of your true
+adventurer. Dear mamma, I've no low standard&mdash;that's the last thing,"
+Miriam went on. "My weakness is my exalted conception of respectability.
+Ah <i>parlez-moi de &ccedil;a</i> and of the way I understand it! If I were to go in
+for being respectable you'd see something fine. I'm awfully conservative
+and I know what respectability is, even when I meet people of society on
+the accidental middle ground of either glowering or smirking. I know
+also what it isn't&mdash;it isn't the sweet union of well-bred little girls
+('carefully-nurtured,' don't they call them?) and painted she-mummers. I
+should carry it much further than any of these people: I should never
+look at the likes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_591" id="Page_591">[591]</a></span> of us! Every hour I live I see that the wisdom of the
+ages was in the experience of dear old Madame Carr&eacute;&mdash;was in a hundred
+things she told me. She's founded on a rock. After that," Miriam went on
+to her host, "I can assure you that if you were so good as to bring Miss
+Dormer to see us we should be angelically careful of her and surround
+her with every attention and precaution."</p>
+
+<p>"The likes of us&mdash;the likes of us!" Mrs. Rooth repeated plaintively and
+with a resentment as vain as a failure to sneeze. "I don't know what
+you're talking about and I decline to be turned upside down, I've my
+ideas as well as you, and I repudiate the charge of false humility. I've
+been through too many troubles to be proud, and a pleasant, polite
+manner was the rule of my life even in the days when, God knows, I had
+everything. I've never changed and if with God's help I had a civil
+tongue then, I've a civil tongue now. It's more than you always have, my
+poor, perverse, passionate child. Once a lady always a lady&mdash;all the
+footlights in the world, turn them up as high as you will, make no
+difference there. And I think people know it, people who know
+anything&mdash;if I may use such an expression&mdash;and it's because they know it
+that I'm not afraid to address them in a pleasant way. So I must
+say&mdash;and I call Mr. Dormer to witness, for if he could reason with you a
+bit about it he might render several people a service&mdash;your conduct to
+Mr. Sherringham simply breaks my heart," Mrs. Rooth concluded, taking a
+jump of several steps in the fine modern avenue of her argument.</p>
+
+<p>Nick was appealed to, but he hung back, drawing with a free hand, and
+while he forbore Miriam took it up. "Mother's good&mdash;mother's very good;
+but it's only little by little that you discover how good she is." This
+seemed to leave him at ease to ask<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_592" id="Page_592">[592]</a></span> their companion, with the
+preliminary intimation that what she had just said was very striking,
+what she meant by her daughter's conduct to old Peter. Before Mrs. Rooth
+could answer this question, however, Miriam broke across with one of her
+own. "Do you mind telling me if you made your sister go off with Mr.
+Sherringham because you knew it was about time for me to turn up? Poor
+Mr. Dormer, I get you into trouble, don't I?" she added quite with
+tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>"Into trouble?" echoed Nick, looking at her head but not at her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we won't talk about that!" she returned with a rich laugh.</p>
+
+<p>He now hastened to say that he had nothing to do with his sister's
+leaving the studio&mdash;she had only come, as it happened, for a moment. She
+had walked away with Peter Sherringham because they were cousins and old
+friends: he was to leave England immediately, for a long time, and he
+had offered her his company going home. Mrs. Rooth shook her head very
+knowingly over the "long time" Mr. Sherringham would be absent&mdash;she
+plainly had her ideas about that; and she conscientiously related that
+in the course of the short conversation they had all had at the door of
+the house her daughter had reminded Miss Dormer of something that had
+passed between them in Paris on the question of the charming young
+lady's modelling her head.</p>
+
+<p>"I did it to make the idea of our meeting less absurd&mdash;to put it on the
+footing of our both being artists. I don't ask you if she has talent,"
+said Miriam.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I needn't tell you," laughed Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure she has talent and a very refined inspiration. I see something
+in that corner, covered with a mysterious veil," Mrs. Rooth insinuated;
+which led Miriam to go on immediately:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_593" id="Page_593">[593]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Has she been trying her hand at Mr. Sherringham?"</p>
+
+<p>"When should she try her hand, poor dear young lady? He's always sitting
+with us," said Mrs. Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear mamma, you exaggerate. He has his moments&mdash;when he seems to say
+his prayers to me; but we've had some success in cutting them down. <i>Il
+s'est bien d&eacute;tach&eacute; ces jours-ci</i>, and I'm very happy for him. Of course
+it's an impertinent allusion for me to make; but I should be so
+delighted if I could think of him as a little in love with Miss Dormer,"
+the girl pursued, addressing Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"He is, I think, just a little&mdash;just a tiny bit," her artist allowed,
+working away; while Mrs. Rooth ejaculated to her daughter
+simultaneously:</p>
+
+<p>"How can you ask such fantastic questions when you know he's dying for
+<i>you</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dying!&mdash;he's dying very hard!" cried Miriam. "Mr. Sherringham's a
+man of whom I can't speak with too much esteem and affection and who may
+be destined to perish by some horrid fever (which God forbid!) in the
+unpleasant country he's going to. But he won't have caught his fever
+from your humble servant."</p>
+
+<p>"You may kill him even while you remain in perfect health yourself,"
+said Nick; "and since we're talking of the matter I don't see the harm
+of my confessing that he strikes me as far gone&mdash;oh as very bad indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet he's in love with your sister?&mdash;<i>je n'y suis plus</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"He tries to be, for he sees that as regards you there are difficulties.
+He'd like to put his hand on some nice girl who'd be an antidote to his
+poison."</p>
+
+<p>"Difficulties are a mild name for them; poison even is a mild name for
+the ill he suffers from. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_594" id="Page_594">[594]</a></span> principal difficulty is that he doesn't
+know what the devil he wants. The next is that I don't either&mdash;or what
+the devil I want myself. I only know what I don't want," Miriam kept on
+brightly and as if uttering some happy, beneficent truth. "I don't want
+a person who takes things even less simply than I do myself. Mr.
+Sherringham, poor man, must be very uncomfortable, for one side of him's
+in a perpetual row with the other side. He's trying to serve God and
+Mammon, and I don't know how God will come off. What I like in you is
+that you've definitely let Mammon go&mdash;it's the only decent way. That's
+my earnest conviction, and yet they call us people light. Dear Mr.
+Sherringham has tremendous ambitions&mdash;tremendous <i>riguardi</i>, as we used
+to say in Italy. He wants to enjoy every comfort and to save every
+appearance, and all without making a scrap of a sacrifice. He expects
+others&mdash;me, for instance&mdash;to make all the sacrifices. <i>Merci</i>, much as I
+esteem him and much as I owe him! I don't know how he ever came to stray
+at all into our bold, bad, downright Bohemia: it was a cruel trick for
+fortune to play him. He can't keep out of it, he's perpetually making
+dashes across the border, and yet as soon as he gets here he's on pins
+and needles. There's another in whose position&mdash;if I were in it&mdash;I
+wouldn't look at the likes of us!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know much about the matter," Nick brought out after some intent
+smudging, "but I've an idea Peter thinks he has made or at least is
+making sacrifices."</p>
+
+<p>"So much the better&mdash;you must encourage him, you must help him."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what my daughter's talking about," Mrs. Rooth
+contributed&mdash;"she's much too paradoxical for my plain mind. But there's
+one way to encourage Mr. Sherringham&mdash;there's one way to help<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_595" id="Page_595">[595]</a></span> him; and
+perhaps it won't be a worse way for a gentleman of your good nature that
+it will help me at the same time. Can't I look to you, dear Mr. Dormer,
+to see that he does come to the theatre to-night&mdash;that he doesn't feel
+himself obliged to stay away?"</p>
+
+<p>"What danger is there of his staying away?" Nick asked.</p>
+
+<p>"If he's bent on sacrifices that's a very good one to begin with,"
+Miriam observed.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the mad, bad way she talks to him&mdash;she has forbidden the dear
+unhappy gentleman the house!" her mother cried. "She brought it up to
+him just now at the door&mdash;before Miss Dormer: such very odd form! She
+pretends to impose her commands upon him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh he'll be there&mdash;we're going to dine together," said Nick. And when
+Miriam asked him what that had to do with it he went on: "Why we've
+arranged it; I'm going, and he won't let me go alone."</p>
+
+<p>"You're going? I sent you no places," his sitter objected.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I've got one. Why didn't you, after all I've done for you?"</p>
+
+<p>She beautifully thought of it. "Because I'm so good. No matter," she
+added, "if Mr. Sherringham comes I won't act."</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you act for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"She'll act like an angel," Mrs. Rooth protested. "She might do, she
+might be, anything in all the world; but she won't take common pains."</p>
+
+<p>"Of one thing there's no doubt," said Miriam: "that compared with the
+rest of us&mdash;poor passionless creatures&mdash;mamma does know what she wants."</p>
+
+<p>"And what's that?" Nick inquired, chalking on.</p>
+
+<p>"She wants everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Never, never&mdash;I'm much more humble," retorted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_596" id="Page_596">[596]</a></span> the old woman; upon
+which her daughter requested her to give then to Mr. Dormer, who was a
+reasonable man and an excellent judge, a general idea of the scope of
+her desires.</p>
+
+<p>As, however, Mrs. Rooth, sighing and deprecating, was not quick to
+acquit herself, the girl tried a short cut to the truth with the abrupt
+demand: "Do you believe for a single moment he'd marry me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why he has proposed to you&mdash;you've told me yourself&mdash;a dozen times."</p>
+
+<p>"Proposed what to me?" Miriam rang out. "I've told you <i>that</i> neither a
+dozen times nor once, because I've never understood. He has made
+wonderful speeches, but has never been serious."</p>
+
+<p>"You told me he had been in the seventh heaven of devotion, especially
+that night we went to the foyer of the Fran&ccedil;ais," Mrs. Rooth insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you call the seventh heaven of devotion serious? He's in love with
+me, <i>je le veux bien</i>; he's so poisoned&mdash;Mr. Dormer vividly puts it&mdash;as
+to require a strong antidote; but he has never spoken to me as if he
+really expected me to listen to him, and he's the more of a gentleman
+from that fact. He knows we haven't a square foot of common ground&mdash;that
+a grasshopper can't set up a house with a fish. So he has taken care to
+say to me only more than he can possibly mean. That makes it stand just
+for nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he say more than he can possibly mean when he took formal leave of
+you yesterday&mdash;for ever and ever?" the old woman cried.</p>
+
+<p>On which Nick re-enforced her. "And don't you call that&mdash;his taking
+formal leave&mdash;a sacrifice?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh he took it all back, his sacrifice, before he left the house."</p>
+
+<p>"Then has that no meaning?" demanded Mrs. Rooth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_597" id="Page_597">[597]</a></span>.</p>
+
+<p>"None that I can make out," said her daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah I've no patience with you: you can be stupid when you will&mdash;you can
+be even that too!" the poor lady groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"What mamma wishes me to understand and to practise is the particular
+way to be artful with Mr. Sherringham," said Miriam. "There are
+doubtless depths of wisdom and virtue in it. But I see only one
+art&mdash;that of being perfectly honest."</p>
+
+<p>"I like to hear you talk&mdash;it makes you live, brings you out," Nick
+contentedly dropped. "And you sit beautifully still. All I want to say
+is please continue to do so: remain exactly as you are&mdash;it's rather
+important&mdash;for the next ten minutes."</p>
+
+<p>"We're washing our dirty linen before you, but it's all right," the girl
+returned, "because it shows you what sort of people we are, and that's
+what you need to know. Don't make me vague and arranged and fine in this
+new view," she continued: "make me characteristic and real; make life,
+with all its horrid facts and truths, stick out of me. I wish you could
+put mother in too; make us live there side by side and tell our little
+story. 'The wonderful actress and her still more wonderful mamma'&mdash;don't
+you think that's an awfully good subject?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Rooth, at this, cried shame on her daughter's wanton humour,
+professing that she herself would never accept so much from Nick's good
+nature, and Miriam settled it that at any rate he was some day and in
+some way to do her mother, <i>really</i> do her, and so make her, as one of
+the funniest persons that ever was, live on through the ages.</p>
+
+<p>"She doesn't believe Mr. Sherringham wants to marry me any more than you
+do," the girl, taking up her dispute again after a moment, represented
+to Nick; "but she believes&mdash;how indeed can I tell you what she
+believes?&mdash;that I can work it so well,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_598" id="Page_598">[598]</a></span> if you understand, that in the
+fulness of time I shall hold him in a vice. I'm to keep him along for
+the present, but not to listen to him, for if I listen to him I shall
+lose him. It's ingenious, it's complicated; but I daresay you follow
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't move&mdash;don't move," said Nick. "Pardon a poor clumsy beginner."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I shall explain quietly. Somehow&mdash;here it's <i>very</i> complicated and
+you mustn't lose the thread&mdash;I shall be an actress and make a tremendous
+lot of money, and somehow too (I suppose a little later) I shall become
+an ambassadress and be the favourite of courts. So you see it will all
+be delightful. Only I shall have to go very straight. Mamma reminds me
+of a story I once heard about the mother of a young lady who was in
+receipt of much civility from the pretender to a crown, which indeed he,
+and the young lady too, afterwards more or less wore. The old countess
+watched the course of events and gave her daughter the cleverest advice:
+'<i>Tiens bon, ma fille</i>, and you shall sit upon a throne.' Mamma wishes
+me to <i>tenir bon</i>&mdash;she apparently thinks there's a danger I mayn't&mdash;so
+that if I don't sit upon a throne I shall at least parade at the foot of
+one. And if before that, for ten years, I pile up the money, they'll
+forgive me the way I've made it. I should hope so, if I've <i>tenu bon</i>!
+Only ten years is a good while to hold out, isn't it? If it isn't Mr.
+Sherringham it will be some one else. Mr. Sherringham has the great
+merit of being a bird in the hand. I'm to keep him along, I'm to be
+still more diplomatic than even he can be."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Rooth listened to her daughter with an air of assumed reprobation
+which melted, before the girl had done, into a diverted, complacent
+smile&mdash;the gratification of finding herself the proprietress of so much
+wit and irony and grace. Miriam's account of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_599" id="Page_599">[599]</a></span> her mother's views was a
+scene of comedy, and there was instinctive art in the way she added
+touch to touch and made point upon point. She was so quiet, to oblige
+her painter, that only her fine lips moved&mdash;all her expression was in
+their charming utterance. Mrs. Rooth, after the first flutter of a less
+cynical spirit, consented to be sacrificed to an effect of the really
+high order she had now been educated to recognise; so that she scarce
+hesitated, when Miriam had ceased speaking, before she tittered out with
+the fondest indulgence: '<i>Com&eacute;dienne</i>!' And she seemed to appeal to
+their companion. "Ain't she fascinating? That's the way she does for
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's rather cruel, isn't it," said Miriam, "to deprive people of the
+luxury of calling one an actress as they'd call one a liar? I represent,
+but I represent truly."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Sherringham would marry you to-morrow&mdash;there's no question of ten
+years!" cried Mrs. Rooth with a comicality of plainness.</p>
+
+<p>Miriam smiled at Nick, deprecating his horror of such talk. "Isn't it
+droll, the way she can't get it out of her head?" Then turning almost
+coaxingly to the old woman: "<i>Voyons</i>, look about you: they don't marry
+us like that."</p>
+
+<p>"But they do&mdash;<i>cela se voit tous les jours</i>. Ask Mr. Dormer."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh never! It would be as if I asked him to give us a practical proof."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never prove anything by marrying any one," Nick said. "For me
+that question's over."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam rested kind eyes on him. "Dear me, how you must hate me!" And
+before he had time to reply she went on to her mother: "People marry
+them to make them leave the stage; which proves exactly what I say."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_600" id="Page_600">[600]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ah they offer them the finest positions," reasoned Mrs. Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want me to leave it then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh you can manage if you will!"</p>
+
+<p>"The only managing I know anything about is to do my work. If I manage
+that decently I shall pull through."</p>
+
+<p>"But, dearest, may our work not be of many sorts?"</p>
+
+<p>"I only know one," said Miriam.</p>
+
+<p>At this her mother got up with a sigh. "I see you do wish to drive me
+into the street."</p>
+
+<p>"Mamma's bewildered&mdash;there are so many paths she wants to follow, there
+are so many bundles of hay. As I told you, she wishes to gobble them
+all," the girl pursued. Then she added: "Yes, go and take the carriage;
+take a turn round the Park&mdash;you always delight in that&mdash;and come back
+for me in an hour."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm too vexed with you; the air will do me good," said Mrs. Rooth. But
+before she went she addressed Nick: "I've your assurance that you'll
+bring him then to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bring Peter? I don't think I shall have to drag him," Nick returned.
+"But you must do me the justice to remember that if I should resort to
+force I should do something that's not particularly in my interest&mdash;I
+should be magnanimous."</p>
+
+<p>"We must always be that, mustn't we?" moralised Mrs. Rooth.</p>
+
+<p>"How could it affect your interest?" Miriam asked less abstractedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, as you say," her mother mused at their host, "the question of
+marriage has ceased to exist for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Mamma goes straight at it!" laughed the girl, getting up while Nick
+rubbed his canvas before answering. Miriam went to mamma and settled
+her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_601" id="Page_601">[601]</a></span> bonnet and mantle in preparation for her drive, then stood a moment
+with a filial arm about her and as if waiting for their friend's
+explanation. This, however, when it came halted visibly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why you said a while ago that if Peter was there you wouldn't act."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll act for <i>him</i>," smiled Miriam, inconsequently caressing her
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't matter whom it's for!" Mrs. Rooth declared sagaciously.</p>
+
+<p>"Take your drive and relax your mind," said the girl, kissing her. "Come
+for me in an hour; not later&mdash;but not sooner." She went with her to the
+door, bundled her out, closed it behind her and came back to the
+position she had quitted. "<i>This</i> is the peace I want!" she gratefully
+cried as she settled into it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_602" id="Page_602">[602]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XLV" id="XLV"></a><a href="#toc">XLV</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Peter Sherringham said so little during the performance that his
+companion was struck by his dumbness, especially as Miriam's acting
+seemed to Nick magnificent. He held his breath while she was on the
+stage&mdash;she gave the whole thing, including the spectator's emotion, such
+a lift. She had not carried out her fantastic menace of not exerting
+herself, and, as Mrs. Rooth had said, it little mattered for whom she
+acted. Nick was conscious in watching her that she went through it all
+for herself, for the idea that possessed her and that she rendered with
+extraordinary breadth. She couldn't open the door a part of the way to
+it and let it simply peep in; if it entered at all it must enter in full
+procession and occupy the premises in state.</p>
+
+<p>This was what had happened on an occasion which, as the less tormented
+of our young men felt in his stall, grew larger with each throb of the
+responsive house; till by the time the play was half over it appeared to
+stretch out wide arms to the future. Nick had often heard more applause,
+but had never heard more attention, since they were all charmed and
+hushed together and success seemed to be sitting down with them. There
+had been of course plenty of announcement&mdash;the newspapers had abounded
+and the arts of the manager had taken the freest license; but it was
+easy to feel a fine, universal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_603" id="Page_603">[603]</a></span> consensus and to recognise everywhere
+the light spring of hope. People snatched their eyes from the stage an
+instant to look at each other, all eager to hand on the torch passed to
+them by the actress over the footlights. It was a part of the impression
+that she was now only showing to the full, for this time she had verse
+to deal with and she made it unexpectedly exquisite. She was beauty,
+melody, truth; she was passion and persuasion and tenderness. She caught
+up the obstreperous play in soothing, entwining arms and, seeming to
+tread the air in the flutter of her robe, carried it into the high
+places of poetry, of art, of style. And she had such tones of nature,
+such concealments of art, such effusions of life, that the whole scene
+glowed with the colour she communicated, and the house, pervaded with
+rosy fire, glowed back at the scene. Nick looked round in the intervals;
+he felt excited and flushed&mdash;the night had turned to a feast of
+fraternity and he expected to see people embrace each other. The crowd,
+the agitation, the triumph, the surprise, the signals and rumours, the
+heated air, his associates, near him, pointing out other figures who
+presumably were celebrated but whom he had never heard of, all amused
+him and banished every impulse to question or to compare. Miriam was as
+happy as some right sensation&mdash;she would have fed the memory with deep
+draughts.</p>
+
+<p>One of the things that amused him or at least helped to fill his
+attention was Peter's attitude, which apparently didn't exclude
+criticism&mdash;rather indeed mainly implied it. This admirer never took his
+eyes off the actress, but he made no remark about her and never stirred
+out of his chair. Nick had had from the first a plan of going round to
+speak to her, but as his companion evidently meant not to move he
+scrupled at being more forward. During their brief dinner together&mdash;they
+were determined not to be late&mdash;Peter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_604" id="Page_604">[604]</a></span> had been silent, quite recklessly
+grave, but also, his kinsman judged, full of the wish to make it clear
+he was calm. In his seat he was calmer than ever and had an air even of
+trying to suggest that his attendance, preoccupied as he was with deeper
+solemnities, was more or less mechanical, the result of a conception of
+duty, a habit of courtesy. When during a scene in the second act&mdash;a
+scene from which Miriam was absent&mdash;Nick observed to him that one might
+judge from his reserve that he wasn't pleased he replied after a moment:
+"I've been looking for her mistakes." And when Nick made answer to this
+that he certainly wouldn't find them he said again in an odd tone: "No,
+I shan't find them&mdash;I shan't find them." It might have seemed that since
+the girl's performance was a dazzling success he regarded his evening as
+rather a failure.</p>
+
+<p>After the third act Nick said candidly: "My dear fellow, how can you sit
+here? Aren't you going to speak to her?"</p>
+
+<p>To which Peter replied inscrutably: "Lord, no, never again. I bade her
+good-bye yesterday. She knows what I think of her form. It's very good,
+but she carries it a little too far. Besides, she didn't want me to
+come, and it's therefore more discreet to keep away from her."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely it isn't an hour for discretion!" Nick cried. "Excuse me at any
+rate for five minutes."</p>
+
+<p>He went behind and reappeared only as the curtain was rising on the
+fourth act; and in the interval between the fourth and the fifth he went
+again for a shorter time. Peter was personally detached, but he
+consented to listen to his companion's vivid account of the state of
+things on the stage, where the elation of victory had lighted up the
+place. The strain was over, the ship in port&mdash;they were all wiping their
+faces and grinning. Miriam&mdash;yes, positively&mdash;was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_605" id="Page_605">[605]</a></span> grinning too, and she
+hadn't asked a question about Peter nor sent him a message. They were
+kissing all round and dancing for joy. They were on the eve, worse luck,
+of a tremendous run. Peter groaned irrepressibly for this; it was, save
+for a slight sign a moment later, the only vibration caused in him by
+his cousin's report. There was but one voice of regret that they hadn't
+put on the piece earlier, as the end of the season would interrupt the
+run. There was but one voice too about the fourth act&mdash;it was believed
+all London would rush to see the fourth act. The crowd about her was a
+dozen deep and Miriam in the midst of it all charming; she was receiving
+in the ugly place after the fashion of royalty, almost as hedged with
+the famous "divinity," yet with a smile and a word for each. She was
+really like a young queen on her accession. When she saw him, Nick, she
+had kissed her hand to him over the heads of the courtiers. Nick's
+artless comment on this was that she had such pretty manners. It made
+Peter laugh&mdash;apparently at his friend's conception of the manners of a
+young queen. Mrs. Rooth, with a dozen shawls on her arm, was as red as
+the kitchen-fire, but you couldn't tell if Miriam were red or pale: she
+was so cleverly, finely made up&mdash;perhaps a little too much. Dashwood of
+course was greatly to the fore, but you hadn't to mention his own
+performance to him: he took it all handsomely and wouldn't hear of
+anything but that <i>her</i> fortune was made. He didn't say much indeed, but
+evidently had ideas about her fortune; he nodded significant things and
+whistled inimitable sounds&mdash;"Heuh, heuh!" He was perfectly satisfied;
+moreover, he looked further ahead than any one.</p>
+
+<p>It was on coming back to his place after the fourth act that Nick put
+in, for his companion's benefit, most of these touches in his sketch of
+the situation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_606" id="Page_606">[606]</a></span> If Peter had continued to look for Miriam's mistakes he
+hadn't yet found them: the fourth act, bristling with dangers, putting a
+premium on every sort of cheap effect, had rounded itself without a
+flaw. Sitting there alone while Nick was away he had leisure to meditate
+on the wonder of this&mdash;on the art with which the girl had separated
+passion from violence, filling the whole place and never screaming; for
+it had often seemed to him in London of old that the yell of theatrical
+emotion rang through the shrinking night like the voice of the Sunday
+newsboy. Miriam had never been more present to him than at this hour;
+but she was inextricably transmuted&mdash;present essentially as the romantic
+heroine she represented. His state of mind was of the strangest and he
+was conscious of its strangeness, just as he was conscious in his very
+person of a lapse of resistance which likened itself absurdly to
+liberation. He felt weak at the same time that he felt inspired, and he
+felt inspired at the same time that he knew, or believed he knew, that
+his face was a blank. He saw things as a shining confusion, and yet
+somehow something monstrously definite kept surging out of them. Miriam
+was a beautiful, actual, fictive, impossible young woman of a past age,
+an undiscoverable country, who spoke in blank verse and overflowed with
+metaphor, who was exalted and heroic beyond all human convenience and
+who yet was irresistibly real and related to one's own affairs. But that
+reality was a part of her spectator's joy, and she was not changed back
+to the common by his perception of the magnificent trick of art with
+which it was connected. Before his kinsman rejoined him Peter, taking a
+visiting-card from his pocket, had written on it in pencil a few words
+in a foreign tongue; but as at that moment he saw Nick coming in he
+immediately put it out of view.</p>
+
+<p>The last thing before the curtain rose on the fifth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_607" id="Page_607">[607]</a></span> act that young man
+mentioned his having brought a message from Basil Dashwood, who hoped
+they both, on leaving the theatre, would come to supper with him in
+company with Miriam and her mother and several others: he had prepared a
+little informal banquet in honour of so famous a night. At this, while
+the curtain was about to rise, Peter immediately took out his card again
+and added something&mdash;he wrote the finest small hand you could see. Nick
+asked him what he was doing, and he waited but an instant. "It's a word
+to say I can't come."</p>
+
+<p>"To Dashwood? Oh I shall go," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I hope you'll enjoy it!" his companion replied in a tone which
+came back to him afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>When the curtain fell on the last act the people stayed, standing up in
+their places for acclamation. The applause shook the house&mdash;the recall
+became a clamour, the relief from a long tension. This was in any
+performance a moment Peter detested, but he stood for an instant beside
+Nick, who clapped, to his cousin's diplomatic sense, after the fashion
+of a school-boy at the pantomime. There was a veritable roar while the
+curtain drew back at the side most removed from our pair. Peter could
+see Basil Dashwood holding it, making a passage for the male "juvenile
+lead," who had Miriam in tow. Nick redoubled his efforts; heard the
+plaudits swell; saw the bows of the leading gentleman, who was hot and
+fat; saw Miriam, personally conducted and closer to the footlights, grow
+brighter and bigger and more swaying; and then became aware that his own
+comrade had with extreme agility slipped out of the stalls. Nick had
+already lost sight of him&mdash;he had apparently taken but a minute to
+escape from the house; and wondered at his quitting him without a
+farewell if he was to leave England on the morrow and they were not to
+meet at the hospitable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_608" id="Page_608">[608]</a></span> Dashwood's. He wondered even what Peter was "up
+to," since, as he had assured him, there was no question of his going
+round to Miriam. He waited to see this young lady reappear three times,
+dragging Dashwood behind her at the second with a friendly arm, to whom,
+in turn, was hooked Miss Fanny Rover, the actress entrusted in the piece
+with the inevitable comic relief. He went out slowly with the crowd and
+at the door looked again for Peter, who struck him as deficient for once
+in finish. He couldn't know that in another direction and while he was
+helping the house to "rise" at its heroine, his kinsman had been
+particularly explicit.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the lobby Peter had pounced on a small boy in buttons, who
+seemed superfluously connected with a desolate refreshment-room and,
+from the tips of his toes, was peeping at the stage through the glazed
+hole in the door of a box. Into one of the child's hands he thrust the
+card he had drawn again from his waistcoat and into the other the
+largest silver coin he could find in the same receptacle, while he bent
+over him with words of adjuration&mdash;words the little page tried to help
+himself to apprehend by instantly attempting to peruse the other words
+written on the card.</p>
+
+<p>"That's no use&mdash;it's Italian," said Peter; "only carry it round to Miss
+Rooth without a minute's delay. Place it in her hand and she'll give you
+some object&mdash;a bracelet, a glove, or a flower&mdash;to bring me back as a
+sign that she has received it. I shall be outside; bring me there what
+she gives you and you shall have another shilling&mdash;only fly!"</p>
+
+<p>His small messenger sounded him a moment with the sharp face of London
+wage-earning, and still more of London tip-earning, infancy, and
+vanished as swiftly as a slave of the Arabian Nights. While he waited in
+the lobby the audience began to pour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_609" id="Page_609">[609]</a></span> out, and before the urchin had
+come back to him he was clapped on the shoulder by Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad I haven't lost you, but why didn't you stay to give her a
+hand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Give her a hand? I hated it."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear man, I don't follow you," Nick said. "If you won't come to
+Dashwood's supper I fear our ways don't lie together."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank him very much; say I've to get up at an unnatural hour." To this
+Peter added: "I think I ought to tell you she may not be there."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Rooth? Why it's all <i>for</i> her."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm waiting for a word from her&mdash;she may change her mind."</p>
+
+<p>Nick showed his interest. "For you? What then have you proposed?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've proposed marriage," said Peter in a strange voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I say&mdash;!" Nick broke out; and at the same moment Peter's messenger
+squeezed through the press and stood before him.</p>
+
+<p>"She has given me nothing, sir," the boy announced; "but she says I'm to
+say 'All right!'"</p>
+
+<p>Nick's stare widened. "You've proposed through <i>him</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, and she accepts. Good-night!"&mdash;on which, turning away, Peter
+bounded into a hansom. He said something to the driver through the roof,
+and Nick's eyes followed the cab as it started off. This young man was
+mystified, was even amused; especially when the youth in buttons,
+planted there and wondering too, brought forth:</p>
+
+<p>"Please sir, he told me he'd give me a shilling and he've forgot it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I can't pay you for <i>that</i>!" Nick laughed. But he fished out a dole,
+though he was vexed at the injury to the supper.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_610" id="Page_610">[610]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XLVI" id="XLVI"></a><a href="#toc">XLVI</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Peter meanwhile rolled away through the summer night to Saint John's
+Wood. He had put the pressure of strong words on his young friend,
+entreating her to drive home immediately, return there without any one,
+without even her mother. He wished to see her alone and for a purpose he
+would fully and satisfactorily explain&mdash;couldn't she trust him? He
+besought her to remember his own situation and throw over her supper,
+throw over everything. He would wait for her with unspeakable impatience
+in Balaklava Place.</p>
+
+<p>He did so, when he got there, but it had taken half an hour.
+Interminable seemed his lonely vigil in Miss Lumley's drawing-room,
+where the character of the original proprietress came out to him more
+than ever before in a kind of afterglow of old sociabilities, a vulgar,
+ghostly reference. The numerous candles had been lighted for him, and
+Mrs. Rooth's familiar fictions lay about; but his nerves forbade him the
+solace of a chair and a book. He walked up and down, thinking and
+listening, and as the long window, the balmy air permitting, stood open
+to the garden, he passed several times in and out. A carriage appeared
+to stop at the gate&mdash;then there was nothing; he heard the rare rattle of
+wheels and the far-off hum of London. His impatience was overwrought,
+and though he knew this it persisted;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_611" id="Page_611">[611]</a></span> it would have been no easy matter
+for Miriam to break away from the flock of her felicitators. Still less
+simple was it doubtless for her to leave poor Dashwood with his supper
+on his hands. Perhaps she would bring Dashwood with her, bring him to
+time her; she was capable of playing him&mdash;that is, of playing Her
+Majesty's new representative to the small far-off State, or even of
+playing them both&mdash;that trick. Perhaps the little wretch in
+buttons&mdash;Peter remembered now the neglected shilling&mdash;only pretending to
+go round with his card, had come back with an invented answer. But how
+could he know, since presumably he couldn't read Italian, that his
+answer would fit the message? Peter was sorry now that he himself had
+not gone round, not snatched Miriam bodily away, made sure of her and of
+what he wanted of her.</p>
+
+<p>When forty minutes had elapsed he regarded it as proved that she
+wouldn't come, and, asking himself what he should do, determined to
+drive off again and seize her at her comrade's feast. Then he remembered
+how Nick had mentioned that this entertainment was not to be held at the
+young actor's lodgings but at some tavern or restaurant the name of
+which he had not heeded. Suddenly, however, Peter became aware with joy
+that this name didn't matter, for there was something at the garden door
+at last. He rushed out before she had had time to ring, and saw as she
+stepped from the carriage that she was alone. Now that she was there,
+that he had this evidence she had listened to him and trusted him, all
+his impatience and bitterness gave way and a flood of pleading
+tenderness took their place in the first words he spoke to her. It was
+far "dearer" of her than he had any right to dream, but she was the best
+and kindest creature&mdash;this showed it&mdash;as well as the most wonderful. He
+was really not off his head with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_612" id="Page_612">[612]</a></span> his contradictory ways; no, before
+heaven he wasn't, and he would explain, he would make everything clear.
+Everything was changed.</p>
+
+<p>She stopped short in the little dusky garden, looking at him in the
+light of the open window. Then she called back to the coachman&mdash;they had
+left the garden door open&mdash;"Wait for me, mind; I shall want you again."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter&mdash;won't you stay?" Peter asked. "Are you going out
+again at this absurd hour? I won't hurt you," he gently urged. And he
+went back and closed the garden door. He wanted to say to the coachman,
+"It's no matter&mdash;please drive away." At the same time he wouldn't for
+the world have done anything offensive to her.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come because I thought it better to-night, as things have turned
+out, to do the thing you ask me, whatever it may be," she had already
+begun. "That's probably what you calculated I would think, eh? What this
+evening has been you've seen, and I must allow that your hand's in it.
+That you know for yourself&mdash;that you doubtless felt as you sat there.
+But I confess I don't imagine what you want of me here now," she added.
+She had remained standing in the path.</p>
+
+<p>Peter felt the irony of her "now" and how it made a fool of him, but he
+had been prepared for this and for much worse. He had begged her not to
+think him a fool, but in truth at present he cared little if she did.
+Very likely he was&mdash;in spite of his plea that everything was changed: he
+cared little even himself. However, he spoke in the tone of intense
+reason and of the fullest disposition to satisfy her. This lucidity only
+took still more from the dignity of his change of front: his separation
+from her the day before had had such pretensions to being lucid. But the
+explanation and the justification were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_613" id="Page_613">[613]</a></span> in the very fact, the fact that
+had complete possession of him. He named it when he replied to her:
+"I've simply overrated my strength."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I knew&mdash;I knew! That's why I entreated you not to come!" Miriam
+groaned. She turned away lamenting, and for a moment he thought she
+would retreat to her carriage. But he passed his hand into her arm, to
+draw her forward, and after an instant felt her yield.</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is we must have this thing out," he said. Then he added as he
+made her go into the house, bending over her, "The failure of my
+strength&mdash;that was just the reason of my coming."</p>
+
+<p>She broke into her laugh at these words, as she entered the
+drawing-room, and it made them sound pompous in their false wisdom. She
+flung off, as a good-natured tribute to the image of their having the
+thing out, a white shawl that had been wrapped round her. She was still
+painted and bedizened, in the splendid dress of her climax, so that she
+seemed protected and alienated by the character she had been acting.
+"Whatever it is you want&mdash;when I understand&mdash;you'll be very brief, won't
+you? Do you know I've given up a charming supper for you? Mamma has gone
+there. I've promised to go back to them."</p>
+
+<p>"You're an angel not to have let her come with you. I'm sure she wanted
+to," Peter made reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh she's all right, but she's nervous." Then the girl added: "Couldn't
+she keep you away after all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whom are you talking about?" Biddy Dormer was as absent from his mind
+as if she had never existed.</p>
+
+<p>"The charming thing you were with this morning. Is she so afraid of
+obliging me? Oh she'd be so good for you!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_614" id="Page_614">[614]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Don't speak of that," Peter gravely said. "I was in perfect good faith
+yesterday when I took leave of you. I was&mdash;I was. But I can't&mdash;I can't:
+you're too unutterably dear to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh don't&mdash;<i>please</i> don't!" Miriam wailed at this. She stood before the
+fireless chimney-piece with one of her hands on it. "If it's only to say
+that, don't you know, what's the use?"</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't only to say that. I've a plan, a perfect plan: the whole thing
+lies clear before me."</p>
+
+<p>"And what's the whole thing?"</p>
+
+<p>He had to make an effort. "You say your mother's nervous. Ah if you knew
+how nervous I am!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm not. Go on."</p>
+
+<p>"Give it up&mdash;give it up!" Peter stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"Give it up?" She fixed him like a mild Medusa.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll marry you to-morrow if you'll renounce; and in return for the
+sacrifice you make for me I'll do more for you than ever was done for a
+woman before."</p>
+
+<p>"Renounce after to-night? Do you call that a plan?" she asked. "Those
+are old words and very foolish ones&mdash;you wanted something of that sort a
+year ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I fluttered round the idea at that time; we were talking in the air.
+I didn't really believe I could make you see it then, and certainly you
+didn't see it. My own future, moreover, wasn't definite to me. I didn't
+know what I could offer you. But these last months have made a
+difference&mdash;I do know now. Now what I say is deliberate&mdash;It's deeply
+meditated. I simply can't live without you, and I hold that together we
+may do great things."</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to wonder. "What sort of things?"</p>
+
+<p>"The things of my profession, of my life, the things one does for one's
+country, the responsibility<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_615" id="Page_615">[615]</a></span> and the honour of great affairs; deeply
+fascinating when one's immersed in them, and more exciting really&mdash;put
+them even at that&mdash;than the excitements of the theatre. Care for me only
+a little and you'll see what they are, they'll take hold of you. Believe
+me, believe me," Peter pleaded; "every fibre of my being trembles in
+what I say to you."</p>
+
+<p>"You admitted yesterday it wouldn't do," she made answer. "Where were
+the fibres of your being then?"</p>
+
+<p>"They throbbed in me even more than now, and I was trying, like an ass,
+not to feel them. Where was this evening yesterday&mdash;where were the
+maddening hours I've just spent? Ah you're the perfection of
+perfections, and as I sat there to-night you taught me what I really
+want."</p>
+
+<p>"The perfection of perfections?" the girl echoed with the strangest
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I needn't try to tell you: you must have felt to-night with such
+rapture what you are, what you can do. How can I give that up?" he
+piteously went on.</p>
+
+<p>"How can <i>I</i>, my poor friend? I like your plans and your
+responsibilities and your great affairs, as you call them. <i>Voyons</i>,
+they're infantile. I've just shown that I'm a perfection of perfections:
+therefore it's just the moment to 'renounce,' as you gracefully say? Oh
+I was sure, I was sure!" And Miriam paused, resting eyes at once lighted
+and troubled on him as in the effort to think of some arrangement that
+would help him out of his absurdity. "I was sure, I mean, that if you
+did come your poor, dear, doting brain would be quite confused," she
+presently pursued. "I can't be a muff in public just for you,
+<i>pourtant</i>. Dear me, why do you like us so much?"</p>
+
+<p>"Like you? I loathe you!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_616" id="Page_616">[616]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>Je le vois parbleu bien</i>!" she lightly returned. "I mean why do you
+feel us, judge us, understand us so well? I please you because you see,
+because you know; and then for that very reason of my pleasing you must
+adapt me to your convenience, you must take me over, as they say. You
+admire me as an artist and therefore want to put me into a box in which
+the artist will breathe her last. Ah be reasonable; you must let her
+live!"</p>
+
+<p>"Let her live? As if I could prevent her living!" Peter cried with
+unmistakable conviction. "Even if I did wish how could I prevent a
+spirit like yours from expressing itself? Don't talk about my putting
+you in a box, for, dearest child, I'm taking you out of one," he all
+persuasively explained. "The artist is irrepressible, eternal; she'll be
+in everything you are and in everything you do, and you'll go about with
+her triumphantly exerting your powers, charming the world, carrying
+everything before you."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam's colour rose, through all her artificial surfaces, at this all
+but convincing appeal, and she asked whimsically: "Shall you like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Like my wife to be the most brilliant woman in Europe? I think I can do
+with it."</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you afraid of me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit."</p>
+
+<p>"Bravely said. How little you know me after all!" sighed the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell the truth," Peter ardently went on; "and you must do me the
+justice to admit that I've taken the time to dig deep into my feelings.
+I'm not an infatuated boy; I've lived, I've had experience, I've
+observed; in short I know what I mean and what I want. It isn't a thing
+to reason about; it's simply a need that consumes me. I've put it on
+starvation diet, but that's no use&mdash;really, it's no use, Miriam," the
+young man declared with a ring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_617" id="Page_617">[617]</a></span> that spoke enough of his sincerity. "It
+is no question of my trusting you; it's simply a question of your
+trusting me. You're all right, as I've heard you say yourself; you're
+frank, spontaneous, generous; you're a magnificent creature. Just
+quietly marry me and I'll manage you."</p>
+
+<p>"'Manage' me?" The girl's inflexion was droll; it made him change
+colour.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean I'll give you a larger life than the largest you can get in any
+other way. The stage is great, no doubt, but the world's greater. It's a
+bigger theatre than any of those places in the Strand. We'll go in for
+realities instead of fables, and you'll do them far better than you do
+the fables."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam had listened attentively, but her face that could so show things
+showed her despair at his perverted ingenuity. "Pardon my saying it
+after your delightful tributes to my worth," she returned in a moment,
+"but I've never listened to anything quite so grandly unreal. You think
+so well of me that humility itself ought to keep me silent; nevertheless
+I <i>must</i> utter a few shabby words of sense. I'm a magnificent creature
+on the stage&mdash;well and good; it's what I want to be and it's charming to
+see such evidence that I succeed. But off the stage, woe betide us both,
+I should lose all my advantages. The fact's so patent that it seems to
+me I'm very good-natured even to discuss it with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you on the stage now, pray? Ah Miriam, if it weren't for the
+respect I owe you!" her companion wailed.</p>
+
+<p>"If it weren't for that I shouldn't have come here to meet you. My gift
+is the thing that takes you: could there be a better proof than that
+it's to-night's display of it that has brought you to this unreason?
+It's indeed a misfortune that you're so sensitive to our poor arts,
+since they play such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_618" id="Page_618">[618]</a></span> tricks with your power to see things as they are.
+Without my share of them I should be a dull, empty, third-rate woman,
+and yet that's the fate you ask me to face and insanely pretend you're
+ready to face yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Without it&mdash;without it?" Sherringham cried. "Your own sophistry's
+infinitely worse than mine. I should like to see you without it for the
+fiftieth part of a second. What I ask you to give up is the dusty boards
+of the play-house and the flaring footlights, but not the very essence
+of your being. Your 'gift,' your genius, is yourself, and it's because
+it's yourself that I yearn for you. If it had been a thing you could
+leave behind by the easy dodge of stepping off the stage I would never
+have looked at you a second time. Don't talk to me as if I were a
+simpleton&mdash;with your own false simplifications! You were made to charm
+and console, to represent beauty and harmony and variety to miserable
+human beings; and the daily life of man is the theatre for that&mdash;not a
+vulgar shop with a turnstile that's open only once in the twenty-four
+hours. 'Without it,' verily!" Peter proceeded with a still, deep heat
+that kept down in a manner his rising scorn and exasperated passion.
+"Please let me know the first time you're without your face, without
+your voice, your step, your exquisite spirit, the turn of your head and
+the wonder of your look!"</p>
+
+<p>Miriam at this moved away from him with a port that resembled what she
+sometimes showed on the stage when she turned her young back upon the
+footlights and then after a few steps grandly swept round again. This
+evolution she performed&mdash;it was over in an instant&mdash;on the present
+occasion; even to stopping short with her eyes upon him and her head
+admirably erect. "Surely it's strange," she said, "the way the other
+solution never occurs to you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_619" id="Page_619">[619]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The other solution?"</p>
+
+<p>"That <i>you</i> should stay on the stage."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand you," her friend gloomed.</p>
+
+<p>"Stay on <i>my</i> stage. Come off your own."</p>
+
+<p>For a little he said nothing; then: "You mean that if I'll do that
+you'll have me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that if it were to occur to you to offer me a little sacrifice
+on your own side it might place the matter in a slightly more attractive
+light."</p>
+
+<p>"Continue to let you act&mdash;as my wife?" he appealed. "Is it a real
+condition? Am I to understand that those are your terms?"</p>
+
+<p>"I may say so without fear, because you'll never accept them."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you accept them <i>from</i> me?" he demanded; "accept the manly, the
+professional sacrifice, see me throw up my work, my prospects&mdash;of course
+I should have to do that&mdash;and simply become your appendage?"</p>
+
+<p>She raised her arms for a prodigious fall. "My dear fellow, you invite
+me with the best conscience in the world to become yours."</p>
+
+<p>"The cases are not equal. You'd make of me the husband of an actress. I
+should make of you the wife of an ambassador."</p>
+
+<p>"The husband of an actress, <i>c'est bient&ocirc;t dit</i>, in that tone of scorn!
+If you're consistent," said Miriam, all lucid and hard, "it ought to be
+a proud position for you."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, if I'm consistent?"</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you always insisted on the beauty and interest of our art and
+the greatness of our mission? Haven't you almost come to blows with poor
+Gabriel Nash about it? What did all that mean if you won't face the
+first consequences of your theory? Either it was an enlightened
+conviction or it was an empty pretence. If you were only talking
+against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_620" id="Page_620">[620]</a></span> time I'm glad to know it," she rolled out with a darkening eye.
+"The better the cause, it seems to me, the better the deed; and if the
+theatre <i>is</i> important to the 'human spirit,' as you used to say so
+charmingly, and if into the bargain you've the pull of being so fond of
+me, I don't see why it should be monstrous of you to give us your
+services in an intelligent, indirect way. Of course if you're not
+serious we needn't talk at all; but if you are, with your conception of
+what the actor can do, why is it so base to come to the actor's aid,
+taking one devotion with another? If I'm so fine I'm worth looking after
+a bit, and the place where I'm finest is the place to look after me!"</p>
+
+<p>He had a long pause again, taking her in as it seemed to him he had
+never done. "You were never finer than at this minute, in the deepest
+domesticity of private life. I've no conception whatever of what the
+actor can do, and no theory whatever about the importance of the
+theatre. Any infatuation of that sort has completely dropped from me,
+and for all I care the theatre may go to the dogs&mdash;which I judge it
+altogether probably will!"</p>
+
+<p>"You're dishonest, you're ungrateful, you're false!" Miriam flashed. "It
+was the theatre brought you here&mdash;if it hadn't been for the theatre I
+never would have looked at you. It was in the name of the theatre you
+first made love to me; it's to the theatre you owe every advantage that,
+so far as I'm concerned, you possess."</p>
+
+<p>"I seem to possess a great many!" poor Peter derisively groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"You might avail yourself better of those you have! You make me angry,
+but I want to be fair," said the shining creature, "and I can't be
+unless you are. You're not fair, nor candid, nor honourable, when you
+swallow your words and abjure your faith,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_621" id="Page_621">[621]</a></span> when you throw over old
+friends and old memories for a selfish purpose."</p>
+
+<p>"'Selfish purpose' is, in your own convenient idiom, <i>bient&ocirc;t dit</i>,"
+Peter promptly answered. "I suppose you consider that if I truly
+esteemed you I should be ashamed to deprive the world of the light of
+your genius. Perhaps my esteem isn't of the right quality&mdash;there are
+different kinds, aren't there? At any rate I've explained to you that I
+propose to deprive the world of nothing at all. You shall be celebrated,
+<i>allez</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"Vain words, vain words, my dear!" and she turned off again in her
+impatience. "I know of course," she added quickly, "that to befool
+yourself with such twaddle you must be pretty bad."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm pretty bad," he admitted, looking at her dismally. "What do
+you do with the declaration you made me the other day&mdash;the day I found
+my cousin here&mdash;that you'd take me if I should come to you as one who
+had risen high?"</p>
+
+<p>Miriam thought of it. "I remember&mdash;the chaff about the honours, the
+orders, the stars and garters. My poor foolish friend, don't be so
+painfully literal. Don't you know a joke when you see it? It was to
+worry your cousin, wasn't it? But it didn't in the least succeed."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you wish to worry my cousin?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because he's so provoking!" she instantly answered; after which she
+laughed as if for her falling too simply into the trap he had laid.
+"Surely, at all events, I had my freedom no less than I have it now.
+Pray what explanations should I have owed you and in what fear of you
+should I have gone? However, that has nothing to do with it. Say I did
+tell you that we might arrange it on the day you should come to me
+covered with glory in the shape of little tinkling medals: why should
+you anticipate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_622" id="Page_622">[622]</a></span> that transaction by so many years and knock me down such
+a long time in advance? Where's the glory, please, and where are the
+medals?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest girl, am I not going to strange parts&mdash;a capital
+promotion&mdash;next month," he insistently demanded, "and can't you trust me
+enough to believe I speak with a real appreciation of the facts (that
+I'm not lying to you in short) when I tell you I've my foot in the
+stirrup? The glory's dawning. <i>I</i>'m all right too."</p>
+
+<p>"What you propose to me, then, is to accompany you <i>tout bonnement</i> to
+your new post. What you propose to me is to pack up and start?"</p>
+
+<p>"You put it in a nutshell." But Peter's smile was strained.</p>
+
+<p>"You're touching&mdash;it has its charm. But you can't get anything in any of
+the Americas, you know. I'm assured there are no medals to be picked up
+in those parts&mdash;which are therefore 'strange' indeed. That's why the
+diplomatic body hate them all."</p>
+
+<p>"They're on the way, they're on the way!"&mdash;he could only feverishly
+hammer. "The people here don't keep us long in disagreeable places
+unless we want to stay. There's one thing you can get anywhere if you've
+ability, and nowhere if you've not, and in the disagreeable places
+generally more than in the others; and that&mdash;since it's the element of
+the question we're discussing&mdash;is simply success. It's odious to be put
+on one's swagger, but I protest against being treated as if I had
+nothing to offer&mdash;to offer a person who has such glories of her own. I'm
+not a little presumptuous ass; I'm a man accomplished and determined,
+and the omens are on my side." Peter faltered a moment and then with a
+queer expression went on: "Remember, after all, that, strictly speaking,
+your glories are also still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_623" id="Page_623">[623]</a></span> in the future." An exclamation at these
+words burst from Miriam's lips, but her companion resumed quickly: "Ask
+my official superiors, ask any of my colleagues, if they consider I've
+nothing to offer."</p>
+
+<p>He had an idea as he ceased speaking that she was on the point of
+breaking out with some strong word of resentment at his allusion to the
+contingent nature of her prospects. But it only deepened his wound to
+hear her say with extraordinary mildness: "It's perfectly true that my
+glories are still to come, that I may fizzle out and that my little
+success of to-day is perhaps a mere flash in the pan. Stranger things
+have been&mdash;something of that sort happens every day. But don't we talk
+too much of that part of it?" she asked with a weary patience that was
+noble in its effect. "Surely it's vulgar to think only of the noise
+one's going to make&mdash;especially when one remembers how utterly <i>b&ecirc;tes</i>
+most of the people will be among whom one makes it. It isn't to my
+possible glories I cling; it's simply to my idea, even if it's destined
+to betray me and sink me. I like it better than anything else&mdash;a
+thousand times better (I'm sorry to have to put it in such a way) than
+tossing up my head as the fine lady of a little coterie."</p>
+
+<p>"A little coterie? I don't know what you're talking about!"&mdash;for this at
+least Peter could fight.</p>
+
+<p>"A big coterie, then! It's only that at the best. A nasty, prim,
+'official' woman who's perched on her little local pedestal and thinks
+she's a queen for ever because she's ridiculous for an hour! Oh you
+needn't tell me, I've seen them abroad&mdash;the dreariest females&mdash;and could
+imitate them here. I could do one for you on the spot if I weren't so
+tired. It's scarcely worth mentioning perhaps all this while&mdash;but I'm
+ready to drop." She picked up the white mantle she had tossed off,
+flinging it round her with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_624" id="Page_624">[624]</a></span> her usual amplitude of gesture. "They're
+waiting for me and I confess I'm hungry. If I don't hurry they'll eat up
+all the nice things. Don't say I haven't been obliging, and come back
+when you're better. Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>"I quite agree with you that we've talked too much about the vulgar side
+of our question," Peter returned, walking round to get between her and
+the French window by which she apparently had a view of leaving the
+room. "That's because I've wanted to bribe you. Bribery's almost always
+vulgar."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you should do better. <i>Merci</i>! There's a cab: some of them have
+come for me. I must go," she added, listening for a sound that reached
+her from the road.</p>
+
+<p>Peter listened too, making out no cab. "Believe me, it isn't wise to
+turn your back on such an affection as mine and on such a confidence,"
+he broke out again, speaking almost in a warning tone&mdash;there was a touch
+of superior sternness in it, as of a rebuke for real folly, but it was
+meant to be tender&mdash;and stopping her within a few feet of the window.
+"Such things are the most precious that life has to give us," he added
+all but didactically.</p>
+
+<p>She had listened once more for a little; then she appeared to give up
+the idea of the cab. The reader need hardly be told that at this stage
+of her youthful history the right way for her lover to take her wouldn't
+have been to picture himself as acting for her highest good. "I like
+your calling the feeling with which I inspire you confidence," she
+presently said; and the deep note of the few words had something of the
+distant mutter of thunder.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, then, when I offer you everything I have, everything I am,
+everything I shall ever be?"</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to measure him as for the possible success of an attempt to
+pass him. But she remained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_625" id="Page_625">[625]</a></span> where she was. "I'm sorry for you, yes, but
+I'm also rather ashamed."</p>
+
+<p>"Ashamed of <i>me</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"A brave offer to see me through&mdash;that's what I should call confidence.
+You say to-day that you hate the theatre&mdash;and do you know what has made
+you do it? The fact that it has too large a place in your mind to let
+you disown it and throw it over with a good conscience. It has a deep
+fascination for you, and yet you're not strong enough to do so
+enlightened and public a thing as take up with it in my person. You're
+ashamed of yourself for that, as all your constant high claims for it
+are on record; so you blaspheme against it to try and cover your retreat
+and your treachery and straighten out your personal situation. But it
+won't do, dear Mr. Sherringham&mdash;it won't do at all," Miriam proceeded
+with a triumphant, almost judicial lucidity which made her companion
+stare; "you haven't the smallest excuse of stupidity, and your
+perversity is no excuse whatever. Leave her alone altogether&mdash;a poor
+girl who's making her way&mdash;or else come frankly to help her, to give her
+the benefit of your wisdom. Don't lock her up for life under the
+pretence of doing her good. What does one most good is to see a little
+honesty. You're the best judge, the best critic, the best observer, the
+best <i>believer</i>, that I've ever come across: you're committed to it by
+everything you've said to me for a twelvemonth, by the whole turn of
+your mind, by the way you've followed us up, all of us, from far back.
+If an art's noble and beneficent one shouldn't be afraid to offer it
+one's arm. Your cousin isn't: he can make sacrifices."</p>
+
+<p>"My cousin?" Peter amazedly echoed. "Why, wasn't it only the other day
+you were throwing his sacrifices in his teeth?"</p>
+
+<p>Under this imputation on her straightness Miriam<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_626" id="Page_626">[626]</a></span> flinched but for an
+instant. "I did that to worry <i>you</i>," she smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you wish to worry me if you care so little about me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Care little about you? Haven't I told you often, didn't I tell you
+yesterday, how much I care? Ain't I showing it now by spending half the
+night here with you&mdash;giving myself away to all those cynics&mdash;taking all
+this trouble to persuade you to hold up your head and have the courage
+of your opinions?"</p>
+
+<p>"You invent my opinions for your convenience," said Peter all undaunted.
+"As long ago as the night I introduced you, in Paris, to Mademoiselle
+Voisin, you accused me of looking down on those who practise your art. I
+remember how you came down on me because I didn't take your friend
+Dashwood seriously enough. Perhaps I didn't; but if already at that time
+I was so wide of the mark you can scarcely accuse me of treachery now."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't remember, but I daresay you're right," Miriam coldly meditated.
+"What I accused you of then was probably simply what I reproach you with
+now&mdash;the germ at least of your deplorable weakness. You consider that we
+do awfully valuable work, and yet you wouldn't for the world let people
+suppose you really take our side. If your position was even at that time
+so false, so much the worse for you, that's all. Oh it's refreshing,"
+his formidable friend exclaimed after a pause during which Peter seemed
+to himself to taste the full bitterness of despair, so baffled and
+cheapened he intimately felt&mdash;"oh it's refreshing to see a man burn his
+ships in a cause that appeals to him, give up something precious for it
+and break with horrid timidities and snobberies! It's the most beautiful
+sight in the world."</p>
+
+<p>Poor Peter, sore as he was, and with the cold<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_627" id="Page_627">[627]</a></span> breath of failure in his
+face, nevertheless burst out laughing at this fine irony. "You're
+magnificent, you give me at this moment the finest possible illustration
+of what you mean by burning one's ships. Verily, verily there's no one
+like you: talk of timidity, talk of refreshment! If I had any talent for
+it I'd go on the stage to-morrow, so as to spend my life with you the
+better."</p>
+
+<p>"If you'll do that I'll be your wife the day after your first
+appearance. That would be really respectable," Miriam said.</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately I've no talent."</p>
+
+<p>"That would only make it the more respectable."</p>
+
+<p>"You're just like poor Nick," Peter returned&mdash;"you've taken to imitating
+Gabriel Nash. Don't you see that it's only if it were a question of my
+going on the stage myself that there would be a certain fitness in your
+contrasting me invidiously with Nick and in my giving up one career for
+another? But simply to stand in the wing and hold your shawl and your
+smelling-bottle&mdash;!" he concluded mournfully, as if he had ceased to
+debate.</p>
+
+<p>"Holding my shawl and my smelling-bottle is a mere detail, representing
+a very small part of the whole precious service, the protection and
+encouragement, for which a woman in my position might be indebted to a
+man interested in her work and as accomplished and determined as you
+very justly describe yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"And would it be your idea that such a man should live on the money
+earned by an exhibition of the person of his still more accomplished and
+still more determined wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not if they work together&mdash;if there's something of his spirit and
+his support in everything she does?" Miriam demanded. "<i>Je vous
+attendais</i> with the famous 'person'; of course that's the great stick<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_628" id="Page_628">[628]</a></span>
+they beat us with. Yes, we show it for money, those of us who have
+anything decent to show, and some no doubt who haven't, which is the
+real scandal. What will you have? It's only the envelope of the idea,
+it's only our machinery, which ought to be conceded to us; and in
+proportion as the idea takes hold of us do we become unconscious of the
+clumsy body. Poor old 'person'&mdash;if you knew what <i>we</i> think of it! If
+you don't forget it that's your own affair: it shows you're dense before
+the idea."</p>
+
+<p>"That <i>I</i>'m dense?"&mdash;and Peter appealed to their lamplit solitude, the
+favouring, intimate night that only witnessed his defeat, as if this
+outrage had been all that was wanting.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean the public is&mdash;the public who pays us. After all, they expect us
+to look at <i>them</i> too, who are not half so well worth it. If you should
+see some of the creatures who have the face to plant themselves there in
+the stalls before one for three mortal hours! I daresay it would be
+simpler to have no bodies, but we're all in the same box, and it would
+be a great injustice to the idea, and we're all showing ourselves all
+the while; only some of us are not worth paying."</p>
+
+<p>"You're extraordinarily droll, but somehow I can't laugh at you," he
+said, his handsome face drawn by his pain to a contraction sufficiently
+attesting the fact. "Do you remember the second time I ever saw you&mdash;the
+day you recited at my place?" he abruptly asked; a good deal as if he
+were taking from his quiver an arrow which, if it was the last, was also
+one of the sharpest.</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly, and what an idiot I was, though it was only yesterday!"</p>
+
+<p>"You expressed to me then a deep detestation of the sort of
+self-exposure to which the profession you were taking up would commit
+you. If you compared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_629" id="Page_629">[629]</a></span> yourself to a contortionist at a country fair I'm
+only taking my cue from you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what I may have said then," replied Miriam, whose steady
+flight was not arrested by this ineffectual bolt; "I was no doubt
+already wonderful for talking of things I know nothing about. I was only
+on the brink of the stream and I perhaps thought the water colder than
+it is. One warms it a bit one's self when once one's in. Of course I'm a
+contortionist and of course there's a hateful side, but don't you see
+how that very fact puts a price on every compensation, on the help of
+those who are ready to insist on the <i>other</i> side, the grand one, and
+especially on the sympathy of the person who's ready to insist most and
+to keep before us the great thing, the element that makes up for
+everything?"</p>
+
+<p>"The element&mdash;?" Peter questioned with a vagueness that was pardonably
+exaggerated. "Do you mean your success?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean what you've so often been eloquent about," she returned with an
+indulgent shrug&mdash;"the way we simply stir people's souls. Ah there's
+where life can help us," she broke out with a change of tone, "there's
+where human relations and affections can help us; love and faith and joy
+and suffering and experience&mdash;I don't know what to call 'em! They
+suggest things, they light them up and sanctify them, as you may say;
+they make them appear worth doing." She became radiant a while, as if
+with a splendid vision; then melting into still another accent, which
+seemed all nature and harmony and charity, she proceeded: "I must tell
+you that in the matter of what we can do for each other I have a
+tremendously high ideal. I go in for closeness of union, for identity of
+interest. A true marriage, as they call it, must do one a lot of good!"</p>
+
+<p>He stood there looking at her for a time during<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_630" id="Page_630">[630]</a></span> which her eyes
+sustained his penetration without a relenting gleam, some lapse of
+cruelty or of paradox. But with a passionate, inarticulate sound he
+turned away, to remain, on the edge of the window, his hands in his
+pockets, gazing defeatedly, doggedly, into the featureless night, into
+the little black garden which had nothing to give him but a familiar
+smell of damp. The warm darkness had no relief for him, and Miriam's
+histrionic hardness flung him back against a fifth-rate world, against a
+bedimmed, star-punctured nature which had no consolation&mdash;the bleared,
+irresponsive eyes of the London firmament. For the brief space of his
+glaring at these things he dumbly and helplessly raged. What he wanted
+was something that was not in <i>that</i> thick prospect. What was the
+meaning of this sudden, offensive importunity of "art," this senseless,
+mocking catch, like some irritating chorus of conspirators in a bad
+opera, in which her voice was so incongruously conjoined with Nick's and
+in which Biddy's sweet little pipe had not scrupled still more
+bewilderingly to mingle? Art might yield to damnation: what commission
+after all had he ever given it to better him or bother him? If the
+pointless groan in which Peter exhaled a part of his humiliation had
+been translated into words, these words would have been as heavily
+charged with a genuine British mistrust of the uncanny principle as if
+the poor fellow speaking them had never quitted his island. Several
+acquired perceptions had struck a deep root in him, but an immemorial,
+compact formation lay deeper still. He tried at the present hour to rest
+on it spiritually, but found it inelastic; and at the very moment when
+most conscious of this absence of the rebound or of any tolerable ease
+he felt his vision solicited by an object which, as he immediately
+guessed, could only add to the complication of things.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_631" id="Page_631">[631]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>An undefined shape hovered before him in the garden, halfway between the
+gate and the house; it remained outside of the broad shaft of lamplight
+projected from the window. It wavered for a moment after it had become
+aware of his observation and then whisked round the corner of the lodge.
+This characteristic movement so effectually dispelled the mystery&mdash;it
+could only be Mrs. Rooth who resorted to such conspicuous
+secrecies&mdash;that, to feel the game up and his interview over, he had no
+need to see the figure reappear on second thoughts and dodge about in
+the dusk with a sportive, vexatious vagueness. Evidently Miriam's
+warning of a few minutes before had been founded: a cab had deposited
+her anxious mother at the garden door. Mrs. Rooth had entered with
+precautions; she had approached the house and retreated; she had effaced
+herself&mdash;had peered and waited and listened. Maternal solicitude and
+muddled calculations had drawn her from a feast as yet too imperfectly
+commemorative. The heroine of the occasion of course had been
+intolerably missed, so that the old woman had both obliged the company
+and quieted her own nerves by jumping insistently into a hansom and
+rattling up to Saint John's Wood to reclaim the absentee. But if she had
+wished to be in time she had also desired not to be impertinent, and
+would have been still more embarrassed to say what she aspired to
+promote than to phrase what she had proposed to hinder. She wanted to
+abstain tastefully, to interfere felicitously, and, more generally and
+justifiably&mdash;the small hours having come&mdash;to see what her young charges
+were "up to." She would probably have gathered that they were
+quarrelling, and she appeared now to be motioning to Peter to know if it
+were over. He took no notice of her signals, if signals they were; he
+only felt that before he made way for the poor, odious lady there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_632" id="Page_632">[632]</a></span> was
+one small spark he might strike from Miriam's flint.</p>
+
+<p>Without letting her guess that her mother was on the premises he turned
+again to his companion, half-expecting she would have taken her chance
+to regard their discussion as more than terminated and by the other
+egress flit away from him in silence. But she was still there; she was
+in the act of approaching him with a manifest intention of kindness, and
+she looked indeed, to his surprise, like an angel of mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let us part so harshly," she said&mdash;"with your trying to make me
+feel as if I were merely disobliging. It's no use talking&mdash;we only hurt
+each other. Let us hold our tongues like decent people and go about our
+business. It isn't as if you hadn't any cure&mdash;when you've such a capital
+one. Try it, try it, my dear friend&mdash;you'll see! I wish you the highest
+promotion and the quickest&mdash;every success and every reward. When you've
+got them all, some day, and I've become a great swell too, we'll meet on
+that solid basis and you'll be glad I've been dreadful now."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely before I leave you I've a right to ask you this," he answered,
+holding fast in both his own the cool hand of farewell she had chosen
+finally to torment him with. "Are you ready to follow up by a definite
+promise your implied assurance that I've a remedy?"</p>
+
+<p>"A definite promise?" Miriam benignly gazed&mdash;it was the perfection of
+indirectness. "I don't 'imply' that you've a remedy. I declare it on the
+house-tops. That delightful girl&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not talking of any delightful girl but you!" he broke in with a
+voice that, as he afterwards learned, struck Mrs. Rooth's ears in the
+garden with affright. "I simply hold you, under pain of being convicted
+of the grossest prevarication, to the strict sense of what you said ten
+minutes ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah I've said so many things! One has to do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_633" id="Page_633">[633]</a></span> that to get rid of you. You
+rather hurt my hand," she added&mdash;and jerked it away in a manner showing
+that if she was an angel of mercy her mercy was partly for herself.</p>
+
+<p>"As I understand you, then, I may have some hope if I do renounce my
+profession?" Peter pursued. "If I break with everything, my prospects,
+my studies, my training, my emoluments, my past and my future, the
+service of my country and the ambition of my life, and engage to take up
+instead the business of watching your interests so far as I may learn
+how and ministering to your triumphs so far as may in me lie&mdash;if after
+further reflexion I decide to go through these preliminaries, have I
+your word that I may definitely look to you to reward me with your
+precious hand?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you've any right to put the question to me now," she
+returned with a promptitude partly produced perhaps by the clear-cut
+form his solemn speech had given&mdash;there was a charm in the sound of
+it&mdash;to each item of his enumeration. "The case is so very contingent, so
+dependent on what you ingeniously call your further reflexion. While you
+really reserve everything you ask me to commit myself. If it's a
+question of further reflexion why did you drag me up here? And then,"
+she added, "I'm so far from wishing you to take any such monstrous
+step."</p>
+
+<p>"Monstrous you call it? Just now you said it would be sublime."</p>
+
+<p>"Sublime if it's done with spontaneity, with passion; ridiculous if it's
+done 'after further reflexion.' As you said, perfectly, a while ago, it
+isn't a thing to reason about."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah what a help you'd be to me in diplomacy!" Peter yearningly cried.
+"Will you give me a year to consider?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_634" id="Page_634">[634]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Would you trust <i>me</i> for a year?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, if I'm ready to trust you for life?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I shouldn't be free then, worse luck. And how much you seem to take
+for granted one must like you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Remember," he could immediately say, "that you've made a great point of
+your liking me. Wouldn't you do so still more if I were heroic?"</p>
+
+<p>She showed him, for all her high impatience now, the interest of a long
+look. "I think I should pity you in such a cause. Give it all to <i>her</i>;
+don't throw away a real happiness!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you can't back out of your position with a few vague and even rather
+impertinent words!" Peter protested. "You accuse me of swallowing my
+opinions, but you swallow your pledges. You've painted in heavenly
+colours the sacrifice I'm talking of, and now you must take the
+consequences."</p>
+
+<p>"The consequences?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why my coming back in a year to square you."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you're a bore!"&mdash;she let him have it at last. "Come back when you
+like. I don't wonder you've grown desperate, but fancy <i>me</i> then!" she
+added as she looked past him at a new interlocutor.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but if he'll square you!" Peter heard Mrs. Rooth's voice respond
+all persuasively behind him. She had stolen up to the window now, had
+passed the threshold, was in the room, but her daughter had not been
+startled. "What is it he wants to do, dear?" she continued to Miriam.</p>
+
+<p>"To induce me to marry him if he'll go upon the stage. He'll practise
+over there&mdash;where he's going&mdash;and then come back and appear. Isn't it
+too dreadful? Talk him out of it, stay with him, soothe him!" the girl
+hurried on. "You'll find some drinks and some biscuits in the
+cupboard&mdash;keep him with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_635" id="Page_635">[635]</a></span> you, pacify him, give him <i>his</i> little supper.
+Meanwhile I'll go to mine; I'll take the brougham; don't follow!"</p>
+
+<p>With which words Miriam bounded into the garden, her white drapery
+shining for an instant in the darkness before she disappeared. Peter
+looked about him to pick up his hat, but while he did so heard the bang
+of the gate and the quick carriage get into motion. Mrs. Rooth appeared
+to sway violently and in opposed directions: that of the impulse to rush
+after Miriam and that of the extraordinary possibility to which the
+young lady had alluded. She was in doubt, yet at a venture, detaining
+him with a maternal touch, she twinkled up at their visitor like an
+insinuating glow-worm. "I'm so glad you came."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not. I've got nothing by it," Peter said as he found his hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh it was so beautiful!" she declared.</p>
+
+<p>"The play&mdash;yes, wonderful. I'm afraid it's too late for me to avail
+myself of the privilege your daughter offers me. Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah it's a pity; won't you take <i>anything</i>?" asked Mrs. Rooth. "When I
+heard your voice so high I was scared and hung back." But before he
+could reply she added: "Are you really thinking of the stage?"</p>
+
+<p>"It comes to the same thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean you've proposed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh unmistakably."</p>
+
+<p>"And what does she say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why you heard: she says I'm an ass."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah the little wretch!" laughed Mrs. Rooth. "Leave her to me. I'll help
+you. But you are mad. Give up nothing&mdash;least of all your advantages."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't give up your daughter," said Peter, reflecting that if this was
+cheap it was at any rate good enough for Mrs. Rooth. He mended it a
+little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_636" id="Page_636">[636]</a></span> indeed by adding darkly: "But you can't make her take me."</p>
+
+<p>"I can prevent her taking any one else."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh <i>can</i> you?" Peter cried with more scepticism than ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll see&mdash;you'll see." He passed into the garden, but, after she had
+blown out the candles and drawn the window to, Mrs. Rooth went with him.
+"All you've got to do is to be yourself&mdash;to be true to your fine
+position," she explained as they proceeded. "Trust me with the
+rest&mdash;trust me and be quiet."</p>
+
+<p>"How can one be quiet after this magnificent evening?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but it's just that!" panted the eager old woman. "It has launched
+her so on this sea of dangers that to make up for the loss of the old
+security (don't you know?) we must take a still firmer hold."</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, of what?" Peter asked as Mrs. Rooth's comfort became vague while
+she stopped with him at the garden door.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah you know: of the <i>real</i> life, of the true anchor!" Her hansom was
+waiting for her and she added: "I kept it, you see; but a little
+extravagance on the night one's fortune has come!&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Peter stared. Yes, there were people whose fortune had come; but he
+managed to stammer: "Are you following her again?"</p>
+
+<p>"For you&mdash;for you!" And she clambered into the vehicle. From the seat,
+enticingly, she offered him the place beside her. "Won't you come too? I
+know he invited you." Peter declined with a quick gesture and as he
+turned away he heard her call after him, to cheer him on his lonely
+walk: "I shall keep this up; I shall never lose sight of her!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_637" id="Page_637">[637]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_638" id="Page_638">[638]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_EIGHTH" id="BOOK_EIGHTH"></a>BOOK EIGHTH</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XLVII" id="XLVII"></a><a href="#toc">XLVII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>When Mrs. Dallow returned to London just before London broke up the fact
+was immediately known in Calcutta Gardens and was promptly communicated
+to Nick Dormer by his sister Bridget. He had learnt it in no other
+way&mdash;he had had no correspondence with Julia during her absence. He
+gathered that his mother and sisters were not ignorant of her
+whereabouts&mdash;he never mentioned her name to them&mdash;but as to this he was
+not sure if the source of their information had been the <i>Morning Post</i>
+or a casual letter received by the inscrutable Biddy. He knew Biddy had
+some epistolary commerce with Julia; he had an impression Grace
+occasionally exchanged letters with Mrs. Gresham. Biddy, however, who,
+as he was also well aware, was always studying what he would like,
+forbore to talk to him about the absent mistress of Harsh beyond once
+dropping the remark that she had gone from Florence to Venice and was
+enjoying gondolas and sunsets too much to leave them. Nick's comment on
+this was that she was a happy woman to have such a go at Titian and
+Tintoret: as he spoke, and for some time afterwards, the sense of how he
+himself should enjoy a like "go" made him ache with ineffectual longing.</p>
+
+<p>He had forbidden himself at the present to think of absence, not only
+because it would be inconvenient and expensive, but because it would be
+a kind of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_639" id="Page_639">[639]</a></span> retreat from the enemy, a concession to difficulty. The enemy
+was no particular person and no particular body of persons: not his
+mother; not Mr. Carteret, who, as he heard from the doctor at Beauclere,
+lingered on, sinking and sinking till his vitality appeared to have the
+vertical depth of a gold-mine; not his pacified constituents, who had
+found a healthy diversion in returning another Liberal wholly without
+Mrs. Dallow's aid (she had not participated even to the extent of a
+responsive telegram in the election); not his late colleagues in the
+House, nor the biting satirists of the newspapers, nor the brilliant
+women he took down at dinner-parties&mdash;there was only one sense in which
+he ever took them down; not in short his friends, his foes, his private
+thoughts, the periodical phantom of his shocked father: the enemy was
+simply the general awkwardness of his situation. This awkwardness was
+connected with the sense of responsibility so greatly deprecated by
+Gabriel Nash, Gabriel who had ceased to roam of late on purpose to miss
+as few scenes as possible of the drama, rapidly growing dull alas, of
+his friend's destiny; but that compromising relation scarcely drew the
+soreness from it. The public flurry produced by his collapse had only
+been large enough to mark the flatness of our young man's position when
+it was over. To have had a few jokes cracked audibly at your expense
+wasn't an ordeal worth talking of; the hardest thing about it was merely
+that there had not been enough of them to yield a proportion of good
+ones. Nick had felt in fine the benefit of living in an age and in a
+society where number and pressure have, for the individual figure,
+especially when it's a zero, compensations almost equal to their
+cruelties.</p>
+
+<p>No, the pinch for his conscience after a few weeks had passed was simply
+an acute mistrust of the superficiality of performance into which the
+desire to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_640" id="Page_640">[640]</a></span> justify himself might hurry him. That desire was passionate
+as regards Julia Dallow; it was ardent also as regards his mother; and,
+to make it absolutely uncomfortable, it was complicated with the
+conviction that neither of them would know his justification even when
+she should see it. They probably couldn't know it if they would, and
+very certainly wouldn't if they could. He assured himself, however, that
+this limitation wouldn't matter; it was their affair&mdash;his own was simply
+to have the right sort of thing to show. The work he was now attempting
+wasn't the right sort of thing, though doubtless Julia, for instance,
+would dislike it almost as much as if it were. The two portraits of
+Miriam, after the first exhilaration of his finding himself at large,
+filled him with no private glee; they were not in the direction in which
+he wished for the present really to move. There were moments when he
+felt almost angry, though of course he held his tongue, when by the few
+persons who saw them they were pronounced wonderfully clever. That they
+were wonderfully clever was just the detestable thing in them, so active
+had that cleverness been in making them seem better than they were.
+There were people to whom he would have been ashamed to show them, and
+these were the people whom it would give him most pleasure some day to
+please. Not only had he many an hour of disgust at his actual work, but
+he thought he saw as in an ugly revelation that nature had cursed him
+with an odious facility and that the lesson of his life, the sternest
+and wholesomest, would be to keep out of the trap it had laid for him.
+He had fallen into this trap on the threshold and had only scrambled out
+with his honour. He had a talent for appearance, and that was the fatal
+thing; he had a damnable suppleness and a gift of immediate response, a
+readiness to oblige, that made him seem to take up causes which he
+really<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_641" id="Page_641">[641]</a></span> left lying, enabled him to learn enough about them in an hour to
+have all the air of having converted them to his use. Many people used
+them&mdash;that was the only thing to be said&mdash;who had taken them in much
+less. He was at all events too clever by half, since this pernicious
+overflow had wrecked most of his attempts. He had assumed a virtue and
+enjoyed assuming it, and the assumption had cheated his father and his
+mother and his affianced wife and his rich benefactor and the candid
+burgesses of Harsh and the cynical reporters of the newspapers. His
+enthusiasms had been but young curiosity, his speeches had been young
+agility, his professions and adhesions had been like postage-stamps
+without glue: the head was all right, but they wouldn't stick. He stood
+ready now to wring the neck of the irrepressible vice that certainly
+would tend to nothing so much as to get him into further trouble. His
+only real justification would be to turn patience&mdash;his own of
+course&mdash;inside out; yet if there should be a way to misread that recipe
+his humbugging genius could be trusted infallibly to discover it. Cheap
+and easy results would dangle before him, little amateurish
+conspicuities at exhibitions helped by his history; putting it in his
+power to triumph with a quick "What do you say to that?" over those he
+had wounded. The fear of this danger was corrosive; it poisoned even
+lawful joys. If he should have a striking picture at the Academy next
+year it wouldn't be a crime; yet he couldn't help suspecting any
+conditions that would enable him to be striking so soon. In this way he
+felt quite enough how Gabriel Nash had "had" him whenever railing at his
+fever for proof, and how inferior as a productive force the desire to
+win over the ill-disposed might be to the principle of quiet growth.
+Nash had a foreign manner of lifting up his finger and waving it before
+him, as if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_642" id="Page_642">[642]</a></span> to put an end to everything, whenever it became, in
+conversation or discussion, to any extent a question whether any one
+would "like" anything.</p>
+
+<p>It was presumably in some degree at least a due respect for the
+principle of quiet growth that kept Nick on the spot at present, made
+him stick fast to Rosedale Road and Calcutta Gardens and deny himself
+the simplifications of absence. Do what he would he couldn't despoil
+himself of the impression that the disagreeable was somehow connected
+with the salutary, and the "quiet" with the disagreeable, when
+stubbornly borne; so he resisted a hundred impulses to run away to Paris
+or to Florence, coarse forms of the temptation to persuade himself by
+material motion that he was launched. He stayed in London because it
+seemed to him he was there more conscious of what he had undertaken, and
+he had a horror of shirking the consciousness. One element in it indeed
+was his noting how little convenience he could have found in a foreign
+journey even had his judgement approved such a subterfuge. The stoppage
+of his supplies from Beauclere had now become an historic fact, with
+something of the majesty of its class about it: he had had time to see
+what a difference this would make in his life. His means were small and
+he had several old debts, the number of which, as he believed, loomed
+large to his mother's imagination. He could never tell her she
+exaggerated, because he told her nothing of that sort in these days:
+they had no intimate talk, for an impenetrable partition, a tall,
+bristling hedge of untrimmed misconceptions, had sprung up between them.
+Poor Biddy had made a hole in it through which she squeezed from side to
+side, to keep up communications, at the cost of many rents and
+scratches; but Lady Agnes walked straight and stiff, never turning her
+head, never stopping to pluck the least little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_643" id="Page_643">[643]</a></span> daisy of consolation. It
+was in this manner she wished to signify that she had accepted her
+wrongs. She draped herself in them as in a Roman mantle and had never
+looked so proud and wasted and handsome as now that her eyes rested only
+on ruins.</p>
+
+<p>Nick was extremely sorry for her, though he marked as a dreadful want of
+grace her never setting a foot in Rosedale Road&mdash;she mentioned his
+studio no more than if it had been a private gambling-house or something
+worse; sorry because he was well aware that for the hour everything must
+appear to her to have crumbled. The luxury of Broadwood would have to
+crumble: his mind was very clear about that. Biddy's prospects had
+withered to the finest, dreariest dust, and Biddy indeed, taking a
+lesson from her brother's perversities, seemed little disposed to better
+a bad business. She professed the most peace-making sentiments, but when
+it came really to doing something to brighten up the scene she showed
+herself portentously corrupt. After Peter Sherringham's heartless flight
+she had wantonly slighted an excellent opportunity to repair her
+misfortune. Lady Agnes had reason to infer, about the end of June, that
+young Mr. Grindon, the only son&mdash;the other children being girls&mdash;of an
+immensely rich industrial and political baronet in the north, was
+literally waiting for the faintest sign. This reason she promptly
+imparted to her younger daughter, whose intelligence had to take it in
+but who had shown it no other consideration. Biddy had set her charming
+face as a stone; she would have nothing to do with signs, and she,
+practically speaking, wilfully, wickedly refused a magnificent offer, so
+that the young man carried his high expectations elsewhere. How much in
+earnest he had been was proved by the fact that before Goodwood had come
+and gone he was captured by Lady Muriel Macpherson.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_644" id="Page_644">[644]</a></span> It was superfluous
+to insist on the frantic determination to get married written on such an
+accident as that. Nick knew of this episode only through Grace, and he
+deplored its having occurred in the midst of other disasters.</p>
+
+<p>He knew or he suspected something more as well&mdash;something about his
+brother Percival which, should it come to light, no phase of their
+common history would be genial enough to gloss over. It had usually been
+supposed that Percy's store of comfort against the ills of life was
+confined to the infallibility of his rifle. He was not sensitive, and
+his use of that weapon represented a resource against which common
+visitations might have spent themselves. It had suddenly come to Nick's
+ears, however, that he cultivated a concurrent support in the person of
+a robust countrywoman, housed in an ivied corner of Warwickshire, in
+whom he had long been interested and whom, without any flourish of
+magnanimity, he had ended by making his wife. The situation of the
+latest born of the pledges of this affection, a blooming boy&mdash;there had
+been two or three previously&mdash;was therefore perfectly regular and of a
+nature to make a difference in the worldly position, as the phrase ran,
+of his moneyless uncle. If there be degrees in the absolute and Percy
+had an heir&mdash;others, moreover, supposedly following&mdash;Nick would have to
+regard himself as still more moneyless than before. His brother's last
+step was doubtless, given the case, to be commended; but such
+discoveries were enlivening only when made in other families, and Lady
+Agnes would scarcely enjoy learning to what tune she had become a
+grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>Nick forbore from delicacy to intimate to Biddy that he thought it a
+pity she couldn't care for Mr. Grindon; but he had a private sense that
+if she had been capable of such a feat it would have lightened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_645" id="Page_645">[645]</a></span> a little
+the weight he himself had to carry. He bore her a slight grudge, which
+lasted till Julia Dallow came back; when the circumstance of the girl's
+being summoned immediately down to Harsh created a diversion that was
+perhaps after all only fanciful. Biddy, as we know, entertained a
+theory, which Nick had found occasion to combat, that Mrs. Dallow had
+not treated him perfectly well; therefore in going to Harsh the very
+first time that relative held out a hand to her so jealous a little
+sister must have recognised a special inducement. The inducement might
+have been that the relative had comfort for her, that she was acting by
+her cousin's direct advice, that they were still in close communion on
+the question of the offers Biddy was not to accept, that in short
+Peter's sister had taken upon herself to see that their young friend
+should remain free for the day of the fugitive's inevitable return. Once
+or twice indeed Nick wondered if Julia had herself been visited, in a
+larger sense, by the thought of retracing her steps&mdash;if she wished to
+draw out her young friend's opinion as to how she might do that
+gracefully. During the few days she was in town Nick had seen her twice
+in Great Stanhope Street, but neither time alone. She had said to him on
+one of these occasions in her odd, explosive way: "I should have thought
+you'd have gone away somewhere&mdash;it must be such a bore." Of course she
+firmly believed he was staying for Miriam, which he really was not; and
+probably she had written this false impression off to Peter, who, still
+more probably, would prefer to regard it as just. Nick was staying for
+Miriam only in the sense that he should very glad of the money he might
+receive for the portrait he was engaged in painting. That money would be
+a great convenience to him in spite of the obstructive ground Miriam had
+taken in pretending&mdash;she had blown half a gale about it&mdash;that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_646" id="Page_646">[646]</a></span> he had
+had no right to dispose of such a production without her consent. His
+answer to this was simply that the purchaser was so little of a stranger
+that it didn't go, so to speak, out of the family, out of hers. It
+didn't matter, Miriam's retort that if Mr. Sherringham had formerly been
+no stranger he was utterly one now, so that nothing would ever less
+delight him than to see her hated image on his wall. He would back out
+of the bargain and Nick be left with the picture on his hands. Nick
+jeered at this shallow theory and when she came to sit the question
+served as well as another to sprinkle their familiar silences with
+chaff. He already knew something, as we have seen, of the conditions in
+which his distracted kinsman had left England; and this connected
+itself, in casual meditation, with some of the calculations imputable to
+Julia and to Biddy. There had naturally been a sequel to the queer
+behaviour perceptible in Peter, at the theatre, on the eve of his
+departure&mdash;a sequel lighted by a word of Miriam's in the course of her
+first sitting to Nick after her great night. "Fancy"&mdash;so this
+observation ran&mdash;"fancy the dear man finding time in the press of all
+his last duties to ask me to marry him!"</p>
+
+<p>"He told me you had found time in the press of all yours to say you
+would," Nick replied. And this was pretty much all that had passed on
+the subject between them&mdash;save of course her immediately making clear
+that Peter had grossly misinformed him. What had happened was that she
+had said she would do nothing of the sort. She professed a desire not to
+be confronted again with this obnoxious theme, and Nick easily fell in
+with it&mdash;quite from his own settled inclination not to handle that kind
+of subject with her. If Julia had false ideas about him, and if Peter
+had them too, his part of the business was to take the simplest course
+to establish the falsity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_647" id="Page_647">[647]</a></span> There were difficulties indeed attached even
+to the simplest course, but there would be a difficulty the less if one
+should forbear to meddle in promiscuous talk with the general,
+suggestive topic of intimate unions. It is certain that in these days
+Nick cultivated the practice of forbearances for which he didn't
+receive, for which perhaps he never would receive, due credit.</p>
+
+<p>He had been convinced for some time that one of the next things he
+should hear would be that Julia Dallow had arranged to marry either Mr.
+Macgeorge or some other master of multitudes. He could think of that
+now, he found&mdash;think of it with resignation even when Julia, before his
+eyes, looked so handsomely forgetful that her appearance had to be taken
+as referring still more to their original intimacy than to his
+comparatively superficial offence. What made this accomplishment of his
+own remarkable was that there was something else he thought of quite as
+much&mdash;the fact that he had only to see her again to feel by how great a
+charm she had in the old days taken possession of him. This charm
+operated apparently in a very direct, primitive way: her presence
+diffused it and fully established it, but her absence left comparatively
+little of it behind. It dwelt in the very facts of her person&mdash;it was
+something she happened physically to be; yet&mdash;considering that the
+question was of something very like loveliness&mdash;its envelope of
+associations, of memories and recurrences, had no great destiny. She
+packed it up and took it away with her quite as if she had been a woman
+who had come to sell a set of laces. The laces were as wonderful as ever
+when taken out of the box, but to admire again their rarity you had to
+send for the woman. What was above all remarkable for our young man was
+that Miriam Rooth fetched a fellow, vulgarly speaking, very much less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_648" id="Page_648">[648]</a></span>
+than Julia at the times when, being on the spot, Julia did fetch. He
+could paint Miriam day after day without any agitating blur of vision;
+in fact the more he saw of her the clearer grew the atmosphere through
+which she blazed, the more her richness became one with that of the
+flowering work. There are reciprocities and special sympathies in such a
+relation; mysterious affinities they used to be called, divinations of
+private congruity. Nick had an unexpressed conviction that if, according
+to his defeated desire, he had embarked with Mrs. Dallow in this
+particular quest of a great prize, disaster would have overtaken them on
+the deep waters. Even with the limited risk indeed disaster had come;
+but it was of a different kind and it had the advantage for him that now
+she couldn't reproach and denounce him as the cause of it&mdash;couldn't do
+so at least on any ground he was obliged to recognise. She would never
+know how much he had cared for her, how much he cared for her still;
+inasmuch as the conclusive proof for himself was his conscious
+reluctance to care for another woman&mdash;evidence she positively misread.
+Some day he would doubtless try to do that; but such a day seemed as yet
+far off, and he had meanwhile no spite, no vindictive impulse, to help
+him. The soreness that mingled with his liberation, the sense of
+indignity even, as of a full cup suddenly dashed by a blundering hand
+from his lips, demanded certainly a balm; but it found the balm, for the
+time, in another passion, not in a rancorous exercise of the same&mdash;a
+passion strong enough to make him forget what a pity it was he was not
+so formed as to care for two women at once.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Julia returned to England he broke ground to his mother on
+the subject of her making the mistress of Broadwood understand that she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_649" id="Page_649">[649]</a></span>
+and the girls now regarded their occupancy of that estate as absolutely
+over. He had already, several weeks before, picked a little at the arid
+tract of that indicated surrender, but in the interval the soil appeared
+to have formed again to a considerable thickness. It was disagreeable to
+him to call his parent's attention to the becoming course, and
+especially disagreeable to have to emphasise it and discuss it and
+perhaps clamour for it. He would have liked the whole business to be
+tacit&mdash;a little triumph of silent delicacy. But he found reasons to
+suspect that what in fact would be most tacit was Julia's certain
+endurance of any chance failure of that charm. Lady Agnes had a theory
+that they had virtually&mdash;"practically" as she said&mdash;given up the place,
+so that there was no need of making a splash about it; but Nick
+discovered in the course of an exploration of Biddy's view more rigorous
+perhaps than any to which he had ever subjected her, that none of their
+property had been removed from the delightful house&mdash;none of the things
+(there were ever so many things) heavily planted there when their mother
+took possession. Lady Agnes was the proprietor of innumerable articles
+of furniture, relics and survivals of her former greatness, and moved
+about the world with a train of heterogeneous baggage; so that her quiet
+overflow into the spaciousness of Broadwood had had all the luxury of a
+final subsidence. What Nick had to propose to her now was a dreadful
+combination, a relapse into the conditions she most hated&mdash;seaside
+lodgings, bald storehouses in the Marylebone Road, little London rooms
+crammed with objects that caught the dirt and made them stuffy. He was
+afraid he should really finish her, and he himself was surprised in a
+degree at his insistence. He wouldn't have supposed he should have cared
+so much, but he found he did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_650" id="Page_650">[650]</a></span> care intensely. He cared enough&mdash;it says
+everything&mdash;to explain to his mother that her retention of Broadwood
+would show "practically" (since that was her great word) for the
+violation of an agreement. Julia had given them the place on the
+understanding that he was to marry her, and once he was definitely not
+to marry her they had no right to keep the place. "Yes, you make the
+mess and <i>we</i> pay the penalty!" the poor lady flashed out; but this was
+the only overt protest she made&mdash;except indeed to contend that their
+withdrawal would be an act ungracious and offensive to Julia. She looked
+as she had looked during the months that succeeded his father's death,
+but she gave a general, a final grim assent to the proposition that, let
+their kinswoman take it as she would, their own duty was unmistakably
+clear.</p>
+
+<p>It was Grace who was principal representative of the idea that Julia
+would be outraged by such a step; she never ceased to repeat that she
+had never heard of anything so "nasty." Nick would have expected this of
+Grace, but he felt rather bereft and betrayed when Biddy murmured to him
+that <i>she</i> knew&mdash;that there was really no need of their sacrificing
+their mother's comfort to an extravagant scruple. She intimated that if
+Nick would only consent to their going on with Broadwood as if nothing
+had happened&mdash;or rather as if everything had happened&mdash;she would answer
+for the feelings of the owner. For almost the first time in his life
+Nick disliked what Biddy said to him, and he gave her a sharp rejoinder,
+a taste of the general opinion that they all had enough to do to answer
+for themselves. He remembered afterwards the way she looked at
+him&mdash;startled, even frightened and with rising tears&mdash;before turning
+away. He held that they should judge better how Julia would take it
+after they had thrown up the place; and he made it his duty to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_651" id="Page_651">[651]</a></span> arrange
+that his mother should formally advise her, by letter, of their
+intending to depart at once. Julia could then protest to her heart's
+content. Nick was aware that for the most part he didn't pass for
+practical; he could imagine why, from his early years, people should
+have joked him about it. But this time he was determined to rest on a
+rigid view of things as they were. He didn't sec his mother's letter,
+but he knew that it went. He felt she would have been more loyal if she
+had shown it to him, though of course there could be but little question
+of loyalty now. That it had really been written, however, very much on
+the lines he dictated was clear to him from the subsequent surprise
+which Lady Agnes's blankness didn't prevent his divining.</p>
+
+<p>Julia acknowledged the offered news, but in unexpected terms: she had
+apparently neither resisted nor protested; she had simply been very glad
+to get her house back again and had not accused any of them of
+nastiness. Nick saw no more of her letter than he had seen of his
+mother's, but he was able to say to Grace&mdash;to their parent he was
+studiously mute&mdash;"My poor child, you see after all that we haven't
+kicked up such a row." Grace shook her head and looked gloomy and deeply
+wise, replying that he had no cause to triumph&mdash;they were so far from
+having seen the end of it yet. Thus he guessed that his mother had
+complied with his wish on the calculation that it would be a mere form,
+that Julia would entreat them not to be so fantastic and that he himself
+would then, in the presence of her wounded surprise, consent to a quiet
+continuance, so much in the interest&mdash;the air of Broadwood had a
+purity!&mdash;of the health of all of them. But since Julia jumped at their
+sacrifice he had no chance to be mollified: he had all grossly to
+persist in having been right.</p>
+
+<p>At bottom probably he was a little surprised at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_652" id="Page_652">[652]</a></span> Julia's so prompt
+assent. Literally speaking, it was not perfectly graceful. He was sorry
+his mother had been so deceived, but was sorrier still for Biddy's
+mistake&mdash;it showed she might be mistaken about other things. Nothing was
+left now but for Lady Agnes to say, as she did substantially whenever
+she saw him: "We're to prepare to spend the autumn at Worthing then or
+some other horrible place? I don't know their names: it's the only thing
+we can afford." There was an implication in this that if he expected her
+to drag her girls about to country-houses in a continuance of the
+fidgety effort to work them off he must understand at once that she was
+now too weary and too sad and too sick. She had done her best for them
+and it had all been vain and cruel&mdash;now therefore the poor creatures
+must look out for themselves. To the grossness of Biddy's misconduct she
+needn't refer, nor to the golden opportunity that young woman had
+forfeited by her odious treatment of Mr. Grindon. It was clear that this
+time Lady Agnes was incurably discouraged; so much so as to fail to
+glean the dimmest light from the fact that the girl was really making a
+long stay at Harsh. Biddy went to and fro two or three times and then in
+August fairly settled there; and what her mother mainly saw in her
+absence was the desire to keep out of the way of household reminders of
+her depravity. In fact, as turned out, Lady Agnes and Grace gathered
+themselves together in the first days of that month for another visit to
+the very old lady who had been Sir Nicholas's godmother; after which
+they went somewhere else&mdash;so that the question of Worthing had not
+immediately to be faced.</p>
+
+<p>Nick stayed on in London with the obsession of work humming in his ears;
+he was joyfully conscious that for three or four months, in the empty
+Babylon, he would have ample stores of time. But toward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_653" id="Page_653">[653]</a></span> the end of
+August he got a letter from Grace in which she spoke of her situation
+and of her mother's in a manner that seemed to impose on him the doing
+of something tactful. They were paying a third visit&mdash;he knew that in
+Calcutta Gardens lady's-maids had been to and fro with boxes,
+replenishments of wardrobes&mdash;and yet somehow the outlook for the autumn
+was dark. Grace didn't say it in so many words, but what he read between
+the lines was that they had no more invitations. What, therefore, in
+pity's name was to become of them? People liked them well enough when
+Biddy was with them, but they didn't care for her mother and her, that
+prospect <i>tout pur</i>, and Biddy was cooped up indefinitely with Julia.
+This was not the manner in which Grace had anciently alluded to her
+sister's happy visits at Harsh, and the change of tone made Nick wince
+with a sense of all that had collapsed. Biddy was a little fish worth
+landing in short, scantly as she seemed disposed to bite, and Grace's
+rude probity could admit that she herself was not.</p>
+
+<p>Nick had an inspiration: by way of doing something tactful he went down
+to Brighton and took lodgings, for several weeks, in the general
+interest, the very quietest and sunniest he could find. This he intended
+as a kindly surprise, a reminder of how he had his mother's and sisters'
+comfort at heart, how he could exert himself and save them trouble. But
+he had no sooner concluded his bargain&mdash;it was a more costly one than he
+had at first calculated&mdash;than he was bewildered and befogged to learn
+that the persons on whose behalf he had so exerted himself were to pass
+the autumn at Broadwood with Julia. That daughter of privilege had taken
+the place into familiar use again and was now correcting their former
+surprise at her crude indifference&mdash;this was infinitely characteristic
+of Julia&mdash;by inviting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_654" id="Page_654">[654]</a></span> them to share it with her. Nick wondered vaguely
+what she was "up to"; but when his mother treated herself to the line
+irony of addressing him an elaborately humble request for his consent to
+their accepting the merciful refuge&mdash;she repeated this expression three
+times&mdash;he replied that she might do exactly as she liked: he would only
+mention that he shouldn't feel himself at liberty to come and see her
+there. This condition proved apparently to Lady Agnes's mind no
+hindrance, and she and her daughters were presently reinstated in the
+very apartments they had learned so to love. This time in fact it was
+even better than before&mdash;they had still fewer expenses. The expenses
+were Nick's: he had to pay a forfeit to the landlady at Brighton for
+backing out of his contract. He said nothing to his mother about that
+bungled business&mdash;he was literally afraid; but a sad event just then
+reminded him afresh how little it was the moment for squandering money.
+Mr. Carteret drew his last breath; quite painlessly it seemed, as the
+closing scene was described at Beauclere when the young man went down to
+the funeral. Two or three weeks later the contents of his will were made
+public in the <i>Illustrated London News</i>, where it definitely appeared
+that he left a very large fortune, not a penny of which was to go to
+Nick. The provision for Mr. Chayter's declining years was remarkably
+handsome.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_655" id="Page_655">[655]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XLVIII" id="XLVIII"></a><a href="#toc">XLVIII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Miriam had mounted at a bound, in her new part, several steps in the
+ladder of fame, and at the climax of the London season this fact was
+brought home to her from hour to hour. It produced a thousand
+solicitations and entanglements, and she rapidly learned that to be
+celebrated takes up almost as much of one's own time as of other
+people's. Even though, as she boasted, she had reduced to a science the
+practice of "working" her mother&mdash;she made use of the good lady socially
+to the utmost, pushing her perpetually into the breach&mdash;there was many a
+juncture at which it was clear that she couldn't too much disoblige
+without hurting her cause. She made almost an income out of the
+photographers&mdash;their appreciation of her as a subject knew no
+bounds&mdash;and she supplied the newspapers with columns of characteristic
+copy. To the gentlemen who sought speech of her on behalf of these
+organs she poured forth, vindictively, floods of unscrupulous romance;
+she told them all different tales, and, as her mother told them others
+more marvellous yet, publicity was cleverly caught by rival versions,
+which surpassed each other in authenticity. The whole case was
+remarkable, was unique; for if the girl was advertised by the
+bewilderment of her readers she seemed to every sceptic, on his going to
+see her, as fine as if he had discovered her for himself. She was still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_656" id="Page_656">[656]</a></span>
+accommodating enough, however, from time to time, to find an hour to
+come and sit to Nick Dormer, and he helped himself further by going to
+her theatre whenever he could. He was conscious Julia Dallow would
+probably hear of this and triumph with a fresh sense of how right she
+had been; but the reflexion only made him sigh resignedly, so true it
+struck him as being that there are some things explanation can never
+better, can never touch.</p>
+
+<p>Miriam brought Basil Dashwood once to see her portrait, and Basil, who
+commended it in general, directed his criticism mainly to two
+points&mdash;its not yet being finished and its not having gone into that
+year's Academy. The young actor audibly panted; he felt the short breath
+of Miriam's rapidity, the quick beat of her success, and, looking at
+everything now from the standpoint of that speculation, could scarcely
+contain his impatience at the painter's clumsy slowness. He thought the
+latter's second attempt much better than his first, but somehow it ought
+by that time to be shining in the eye of the public. He put it to their
+friend with an air of acuteness&mdash;he had those felicities&mdash;that in every
+great crisis there is nothing like striking while the iron is hot. He
+even betrayed the conviction that by putting on a spurt Nick might wind
+up the job and still get the Academy people to take him in. Basil knew
+some of them; he all but offered to speak to them&mdash;the case was so
+exceptional; he had no doubt he could get something done. Against the
+appropriation of the work by Peter Sherringham he explicitly and loudly
+protested, in spite of the homeliest recommendations of silence from
+Miriam; and it was indeed easy to guess how such an arrangement would
+interfere with his own conception of the eventual right place for the
+two portraits&mdash;the vestibule of the theatre, where every one going in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_657" id="Page_657">[657]</a></span>
+and out would see them suspended face to face and surrounded by
+photographs, artistically disposed, of the young actress in a variety of
+characters. Dashwood showed superiority in his jump to the contention
+that so exhibited the pictures would really help to draw. Considering
+the virtue he attributed to Miriam the idea was exempt from narrow
+prejudice.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, though a trifle feverish, he was really genial; he repeated
+more than once, "Yes, my dear sir, you've done it this time." This was a
+favourite formula with him; when some allusion was made to the girl's
+success he greeted it also with a comfortable "This time she <i>has</i> done
+it." There was ever a hint of fine judgement and far calculation in his
+tone. It appeared before he went that this time even he himself had done
+it&mdash;he had taken up something that would really answer. He told Nick
+more about Miriam, more certainly about her outlook at that moment, than
+she herself had communicated, contributing strongly to our young man's
+impression that one by one every gage of a great career was being
+dropped into her cup. Nick himself tasted of success vicariously for the
+hour. Miriam let her comrade talk only to contradict him, and
+contradicted him only to show how indifferently she could do it. She
+treated him as if she had nothing more to learn about his folly, but as
+if it had taken intimate friendship to reveal to her the full extent of
+it. Nick didn't mind her intimate friendships, but he ended by disliking
+Dashwood, who gave on his nerves&mdash;a circumstance poor Julia, had it come
+to her knowledge, would doubtless have found deplorably significant.
+Miriam was more pleased with herself than ever: she now made no scruple
+of admitting that she enjoyed all her advantages. She had a fuller
+vision of how successful success could be; she took everything as it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_658" id="Page_658">[658]</a></span>
+came&mdash;dined out every Sunday and even went into the country till the
+Monday morning; kept a hundred distinguished names on her lips and
+abounded in strange tales of the people who were making up to her. She
+struck Nick as less strenuous than she had been hitherto, as making even
+an aggressive show of inevitable laxities; but he was conscious of no
+obligation to rebuke her for it&mdash;the less as he had a dim vision that
+some effect of that sort, some irritation of his curiosity, was what she
+desired to produce. She would perhaps have liked, for reasons best known
+to herself, to look as if she were throwing herself away, not being able
+to do anything else. He couldn't talk to her as if he took a deep
+interest in her career, because in fact he didn't; she remained to him
+primarily and essentially a pictorial object, with the nature of whose
+vicissitudes he was concerned&mdash;putting common charity and his personal
+good nature of course aside&mdash;only so far as they had something to say in
+her face. How could he know in advance what turn of her experience,
+twist of her life, would say most?&mdash;so possible was it even that
+complete failure or some incalculable perversion (innumerable were the
+queer traps that might be set for her) would only make her for his
+particular purpose more precious.</p>
+
+<p>When she had left him at any rate, the day she came with Basil Dashwood,
+and still more on a later occasion, that of his turning back to his work
+after putting her into her carriage, and otherwise bare-headedly
+manifesting, the last time, for that year apparently, that he was to see
+her&mdash;when she had left him it occurred to him in the light of her quick
+distinction that there were deep differences in the famous artistic
+life. Miriam was already in a glow of glory&mdash;which, moreover, was
+probably but a faint spark in relation to the blaze to come; and as he
+closed the door on her and took up his palette to rub it with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_659" id="Page_659">[659]</a></span> a dirty
+cloth the little room in which his own battle was practically to be
+fought looked woefully cold and grey and mean. It was lonely and yet at
+the same time was peopled with unfriendly shadows&mdash;so thick he foresaw
+them gather in winter twilights to come&mdash;the duller conditions, the
+longer patiences, the less immediate and less personal joys. His late
+beginning was there and his wasted youth, the mistakes that would still
+bring forth children after their image, the sedentary solitude, the grey
+mediocrity, the poor explanations, the effect of foolishness he dreaded
+even from afar of in having to ask people to wait, and wait longer, and
+wait again, for a fruition which to their sense at least might well
+prove a grotesque anti-climax. He yearned enough over it, however it
+should figure, to feel that this possible pertinacity might enter into
+comparison even with such a productive force as Miriam's. That was after
+all in his bare studio the most collective dim presence, the one that
+kept him company best as he sat there and that made it the right place,
+however wrong&mdash;the sense that it was to the thing in itself he was
+attached. This was Miriam's case too, but the sharp contrast, which she
+showed him she also felt, was in the number of other things she got with
+the thing in itself.</p>
+
+<p>I hasten to add that our young man had hours when this last mystic value
+struck him as requiring for its full operation no adjunct whatever&mdash;as
+being in its own splendour a summary of all adjuncts and apologies. I
+have related that the great collections, the National Gallery and the
+Museum, were sometimes rather a series of dead surfaces to him; but the
+sketch I have attempted of him will have been inadequate if it fails to
+suggest that there were other days when, as he strolled through them, he
+plucked right and left perfect nosegays of reassurance. Bent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_660" id="Page_660">[660]</a></span> as he was
+on working in the modern, which spoke to him with a thousand voices, he
+judged it better for long periods not to haunt the earlier masters,
+whose conditions had been so different&mdash;later he came to see that it
+didn't matter much, especially if one kept away; but he was liable to
+accidental deflexions from this theory, liable in particular to feel the
+sanctity of the great portraits of the past. These were the things the
+most inspiring, in the sense that while generations, while worlds had
+come and gone, they seemed far most to prevail and survive and testify.
+As he stood before them the perfection of their survival often struck
+him as the supreme eloquence, the virtue that included all others,
+thanks to the language of art, the richest and most universal. Empires
+and systems and conquests had rolled over the globe and every kind of
+greatness had risen and passed away, but the beauty of the great
+pictures had known nothing of death or change, and the tragic centuries
+had only sweetened their freshness. The same faces, the same figures
+looked out at different worlds, knowing so many secrets the particular
+world didn't, and when they joined hands they made the indestructible
+thread on which the pearls of history were strung.</p>
+
+<p>Miriam notified her artist that her theatre was to close on the tenth of
+August, immediately after which she was to start, with the company, on a
+tremendous tour of the provinces. They were to make a lot of money, but
+they were to have no holiday, and she didn't want one; she only wanted
+to keep at it and make the most of her limited opportunities for
+practice; inasmuch as at that rate, playing but two parts a year&mdash;and
+such parts: she despised them!&mdash;she shouldn't have mastered the
+rudiments of her trade before decrepitude would compel her to lay it by.
+The first time she came to the studio after her visit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_661" id="Page_661">[661]</a></span> with Dashwood she
+sprang up abruptly at the end of half an hour, saying she could sit no
+more&mdash;she had had enough and to spare of it. She was visibly restless
+and preoccupied, and though Nick had not waited till now to note that
+she had more moods in her list than he had tints on his palette he had
+never yet seen her sensibility at this particular pitch. It struck him
+rather as a waste of passion, but he was ready to let her go. She looked
+round the place as if suddenly tired of it and then said mechanically,
+in a heartless London way, while she smoothed down her gloves, "So
+you're just going to stay on?" After he had confessed that this was his
+dark purpose she continued in the same casual, talk-making manner: "I
+daresay it's the best thing for you. You're just going to grind, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"I see before me an eternity of grinding."</p>
+
+<p>"All alone by yourself in this dull little hole? You <i>will</i> be
+conscientious, you <i>will</i> be virtuous."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh my solitude will be mitigated&mdash;I shall have models and people."</p>
+
+<p>"What people&mdash;what models?" Miriam asked as she arranged her hat before
+the glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no one so good as you."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a prospect!" the girl laughed&mdash;"for all the good you've got out
+of me!"</p>
+
+<p>"You're no judge of that quantity," said Nick, "and even I can't measure
+it just yet. Have I been rather a bore and a brute? I can easily believe
+it; I haven't talked to you&mdash;I haven't amused you as I might. The truth
+is that taking people's likenesses is a very absorbing, inhuman
+occupation. You can't do much to them besides."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's a cruel honour to pay them."</p>
+
+<p>"Cruel&mdash;that's too much," he objected.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean it's one you shouldn't confer on those you like, for when it's
+over it's over: it kills your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_662" id="Page_662">[662]</a></span> interest in them. After you've finished
+them you don't like them any more at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely I like <i>you</i>," Nick returned, sitting tilted back before his
+picture with his hands in his pockets.</p>
+
+<p>"We've done very well: it's something not to have quarrelled"&mdash;and she
+smiled at him now, seeming more "in" it. "I wouldn't have had you slight
+your work&mdash;I wouldn't have had you do it badly. But there's no fear of
+that for you," she went on. "You're the real thing and the rare bird. I
+haven't lived with you this way without seeing that: you're the sincere
+artist so much more than I. No, no, don't protest," she added with one
+of her sudden, fine transitions to a deeper tone. "You'll do things that
+will hand on your name when my screeching is happily over. Only you do
+seem to me, I confess, rather high and dry here&mdash;I speak from the point
+of view of your comfort and of my personal interest in you. You strike
+me as kind of lonely, as the Americans say&mdash;rather cut off and isolated
+in your grandeur. Haven't you any confr&egrave;res&mdash;fellow-artists and people
+of that sort? Don't they come near you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know them much," Nick humbly confessed. "I've always been
+afraid of them, and how can they take me seriously?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, <i>I</i>'ve got confr&egrave;res, and sometimes I wish I hadn't! But does
+your sister never come near you any more," she asked, "or is it only the
+fear of meeting me?"</p>
+
+<p>He was aware of his mother's theory that Biddy was constantly bundled
+home from Rosedale Road at the approach of improper persons: she was as
+angry at this as if she wouldn't have been more so had her child
+suffered exposure; but the explanation he gave his present visitor was
+nearer the truth. He reminded her that he had already told her&mdash;he had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_663" id="Page_663">[663]</a></span>
+been careful to do this, so as not to let it appear she was
+avoided&mdash;that his sister was now most of the time in the country,
+staying with an hospitable relation.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes," the girl rejoined to this, "with Mr. Sherringham's sister,
+Mrs.&mdash;what's her name? I always forget." And when he had pronounced the
+word with a reluctance he doubtless failed sufficiently to conceal&mdash;he
+hated to talk of Julia by any name and didn't know what business Miriam
+had with her&mdash;she went on: "That's the one&mdash;the beauty, the wonderful
+beauty. I shall never forget how handsome she looked the day she found
+me here. I don't in the least resemble her, but I should like to have a
+try at that type some day in a comedy of manners. But who the devil will
+write me a comedy of manners? There it is! The danger would be, no
+doubt, that I should push her <i>&agrave; la charge</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Nick listened to these remarks in silence, saying to himself that if she
+should have the bad taste&mdash;which she seemed trembling on the brink
+of&mdash;to make an allusion to what had passed between the lady in question
+and himself he should dislike her beyond remedy. It would show him she
+was a coarse creature after all. Her good genius interposed, however, as
+against this hard penalty, and she quickly, for the moment at least,
+whisked away from the topic, demanding, since they spoke of comrades and
+visitors, what had become of Gabriel Nash, whom she hadn't heard of for
+so many days.</p>
+
+<p>"I think he's tired of me," said Nick; "he hasn't been near me either.
+But after all it's natural&mdash;he has seen me through."</p>
+
+<p>"Seen you through? Do you mean," she laughed, "seen through you? Why
+you've only just begun."</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely, and at bottom he doesn't like to see me begin. He's afraid I
+shall do something."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_664" id="Page_664">[664]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She wondered&mdash;as with the interest of that. "Do you mean he's jealous?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not in the least, for from the moment one does anything one ceases to
+compete with him. It leaves him the field more clear. But that's just
+the discomfort for him&mdash;he feels, as you said just now, kind of lonely:
+he feels rather abandoned and even, I think, a little betrayed. So far
+from being jealous he yearns for me and regrets me. The only thing he
+really takes seriously is to speculate and understand, to talk about the
+reasons and the essence of things: the people who do that are the
+highest. The applications, the consequences, the vulgar little effects,
+belong to a lower plane, for which one must doubtless be tolerant and
+indulgent, but which is after all an affair of comparative accidents and
+trifles. Indeed he'll probably tell me frankly the next time I see him
+that he can't but feel that to come down to small questions of
+action&mdash;to the small prudences and compromises and simplifications of
+practice&mdash;is for the superior person really a fatal descent. One may be
+inoffensive and even commendable after it, but one can scarcely pretend
+to be interesting. '<i>Il en faut comme &ccedil;a</i>,' but one doesn't haunt them.
+He'll do his best for me; he'll come back again, but he'll come back
+sad, and finally he'll fade away altogether. Hell go off to Granada or
+somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"The simplifications of practice?" cried Miriam. "Why they're just
+precisely the most blessed things on earth. What should we do without
+them?"</p>
+
+<p>"What indeed?" Nick echoed. "But if we need them it's because we're not
+superior persons. We're awful Philistines."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be one with <i>you</i>," the girl smiled. "Poor Nash isn't worth
+talking about. What was it but a small question of action when he
+preached to you, as I know he did, to give up your seat?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_665" id="Page_665">[665]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he has a weakness for giving up&mdash;he'll go with you as far as that.
+But I'm not giving up any more, you see. I'm pegging away, and that's
+gross."</p>
+
+<p>"He's an idiot&mdash;<i>n'en parlons plus</i>!" she dropped, gathering up her
+parasol but lingering.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah I stick to him," Nick said. "He helped me at a difficult time."</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be ashamed to confess it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh you <i>are</i> a Philistine!" Nick returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I am," she declared, going toward the door&mdash;"if it makes me
+one to be sorry, awfully sorry and even rather angry, that I haven't
+before me a period of the same sort of unsociable pegging away that you
+have. For want of it I shall never really be good. However, if you don't
+tell people I've said so they'll never know. Your conditions are far
+better than mine and far more respectable: you can do as many things as
+you like in patient obscurity while I'm pitchforked into the <i>m&ecirc;l&eacute;e</i> and
+into the most improbable fame&mdash;all on the back of a solitary <i>cheval de
+bataille</i>, a poor broken-winded screw. I read it clear that I shall be
+condemned for the greater part of the rest of my days&mdash;do you see
+that?&mdash;to play the stuff I'm acting now. I'm studying Juliet and I want
+awfully to do her, but really I'm mortally afraid lest, making a success
+of her, I should find myself in such a box. Perhaps the brutes would
+want Juliet for ever instead of my present part. You see amid what
+delightful alternatives one moves. What I long for most I never shall
+have had&mdash;five quiet years of hard all-round work in a perfect company,
+with a manager more perfect still, playing five hundred things and never
+being heard of at all. I may be too particular, but that's what I should
+have liked. I think I'm disgusting with my successful crudities. It's
+discouraging; it makes one not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_666" id="Page_666">[666]</a></span> care much what happens. What's the use,
+in such an age, of being good?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good? Your haughty claim," Nick laughed, "is that you're bad."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean <i>good</i>, you know&mdash;there are other ways. Don't be stupid." And
+Miriam tapped him&mdash;he was near her at the door&mdash;with her parasol.</p>
+
+<p>"I scarcely know what to say to you," he logically pleaded, "for
+certainly it's your fault if you get on so fast."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm too clever&mdash;I'm a humbug."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the way I used to be," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>She rested her brave eyes on him, then turned them over the room slowly;
+after which she attached them again, kindly, musingly&mdash;rather as if he
+had been a fine view or an interesting object&mdash;to his face. "Ah, the
+pride of that&mdash;the sense of purification! He 'used' to be forsooth! Poor
+me! Of course you'll say, 'Look at the sort of thing I've undertaken to
+produce compared with the rot you have.' So it's all right. Become great
+in the proper way and don't expose me." She glanced back once more at
+the studio as if to leave it for ever, and gave another last look at the
+unfinished canvas on the easel. She shook her head sadly, "Poor Mr.
+Sherringham&mdash;with <i>that</i>!" she wailed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I'll finish it&mdash;it will be very decent," Nick said.</p>
+
+<p>"Finish it by yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not necessarily. You'll come back and sit when you return to London."</p>
+
+<p>"Never, never, never again."</p>
+
+<p>He wondered. "Why you've made me the most profuse offers and promises."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but they were made in ignorance and I've backed out of them. I'm
+capricious too&mdash;<i>faites la part de &ccedil;a</i>. I see it wouldn't do&mdash;I didn't
+know it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_667" id="Page_667">[667]</a></span> then. We're too far apart&mdash;I <i>am</i>, as you say, a Philistine."
+And as he protested with vehemence against this unscrupulous bad faith
+she added: "You'll find other models. Paint Gabriel Nash."</p>
+
+<p>"Gabriel Nash&mdash;as a substitute for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"It will be a good way to get rid of him. Paint Mrs. Dallow too," Miriam
+went on as she passed out of the door he had opened for her&mdash;"paint Mrs.
+Dallow if you wish to eradicate the last possibility of a throb."</p>
+
+<p>It was strange that, since only a moment before he had been in a state
+of mind to which the superfluity of this reference would have been the
+clearest thing about it, he should now have been moved to receive it
+quickly, naturally, irreflectively, receive it with the question: "The
+last possibility? Do you mean in her or in me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh in you. I don't know anything about 'her.'"</p>
+
+<p>"But that wouldn't be the effect," he argued with the same supervening
+candour. "I believe that if she were to sit to me the usual law would be
+reversed."</p>
+
+<p>"The usual law?"</p>
+
+<p>"Which you cited a while since and of which I recognised the general
+truth. In the case you speak of," he said, "I should probably make a
+shocking picture."</p>
+
+<p>"And fall in love with her again? Then for God's sake risk the daub!"
+Miriam laughed out as she floated away to her victoria.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_668" id="Page_668">[668]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XLIX" id="XLIX"></a><a href="#toc">XLIX</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>She had guessed happily in saying to him that to offer to paint Gabriel
+Nash would be the way to get rid of that visitant. It was with no such
+invidious purpose indeed that our young man proposed to his intermittent
+friend to sit; rather, as August was dusty in the London streets, he had
+too little hope that Nash would remain in town at such a time to oblige
+him. Nick had no wish to get rid of his private philosopher; he liked
+his philosophy, and though of course premeditated paradox was the light
+to read him by he yet had frequently and incidentally an inspired
+unexpectedness. He remained in Rosedale Road the man who most produced
+by his presence the effect of company. All the other men of Nick's
+acquaintance, all his political friends, represented, often very
+communicatively, their own affairs, their own affairs alone; which when
+they did it well was the most their host could ask of them. But Nash had
+the rare distinction that he seemed somehow to figure <i>his</i> affairs, the
+said host's, and to show an interest in them unaffected by the ordinary
+social limitations of capacity. This relegated him to the class of high
+luxuries, and Nick was well aware that we hold our luxuries by a fitful
+and precarious tenure. If a friend without personal eagerness was one of
+the greatest of these it would be evident to the simplest mind that by
+the law of distribution of earthly boons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_669" id="Page_669">[669]</a></span> such a convenience should be
+expected to forfeit in duration what it displayed in intensity. He had
+never been without a suspicion that Nash was too good to last, though
+for that matter nothing had yet confirmed a vague apprehension that his
+particular manner of breaking up or breaking down would be by his
+wishing to put so fresh a recruit in relation with other disciples.</p>
+
+<p>That would practically amount to a catastrophe, Nick felt; for it was
+odd that one could both have a great kindness for him and not in the
+least, when it came to the point, yearn for a view of his personal
+extensions. His originality had always been that he appeared to have
+none; and if in the first instance he had introduced his bright, young,
+political prodigy to Miriam and her mother, that was an exception for
+which Peter Sherringham's interference had been mainly responsible. All
+the same, however, it was some time before Nick ceased to view it as
+perhaps on the awkward books that, to complete his education as it were,
+Gabriel would wish him to converse a little with spirits formed by a
+like tonic discipline. Nick had an instinct, in which there was no
+consciousness of detriment to Nash, that the pupils, possibly even the
+imitators, of such a genius would be, as he mentally phrased it,
+something awful. He could be sure, even Gabriel himself could be sure,
+of his own reservations, but how could either of them be sure of those
+of others? Imitation is a fortunate homage only in proportion as it
+rests on measurements, and there was an indefinable something in Nash's
+doctrine that would have been discredited by exaggeration or by zeal.
+Providence happily appeared to have spared it this ordeal; so that Nick
+had after months still to remind himself how his friend had never
+pressed on his attention the least little group of fellow-mystics, never
+offered to produce<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_670" id="Page_670">[670]</a></span> them for his edification. It scarcely mattered now
+that he was just the man to whom the superficial would attribute that
+sort of tail: it would probably have been hard, for example, to persuade
+Lady Agnes or Julia Dallow or Peter Sherringham that he was not most at
+home in some dusky, untidy, dimly-imagined suburb of "culture," a region
+peopled by unpleasant phrasemongers who thought him a gentleman and who
+had no human use but to be held up in the comic press&mdash;which was,
+moreover, probably restrained by decorum from touching upon the worst of
+their aberrations.</p>
+
+<p>Nick at any rate never ran his academy to earth nor so much as skirted
+the suburb in question; never caught from the impenetrable background of
+his life the least reverberation of flitting or of flirting, the
+fainting esthetic ululation. There had been moments when he was even
+moved to anxiety by the silence that poor Gabriel's own faculty of sound
+made all about him&mdash;when at least it reduced to plainer elements (the
+mere bald terms of lonely singleness and thrift, of the lean philosophic
+life) the mystery he could never wholly dissociate from him, the air as
+of the transient and occasional, the likeness to curling vapour or
+murmuring wind or shifting light. It was, for instance, a symbol of this
+unclassified state, the lack of all position as a name in cited lists,
+that Nick in point of fact had no idea where he lived, would not have
+known how to go and see him or send him a doctor if he had heard he was
+ill. He had never walked with him to any door of Gabriel's own, even to
+pause at the threshold, though indeed Nash had a club, the Anonymous, in
+some improbable square, of which he might be suspected of being the only
+member&mdash;one had never heard of another&mdash;where it was vaguely understood
+letters would some day or other find him. Fortunately he pressed with
+no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_671" id="Page_671">[671]</a></span> sharpness the spring of pity&mdash;his whole "form" was so easy a grasp
+of the helm of consciousness, which he would never let go. He would
+never consent to any deformity, but would steer his course straight
+through the eventual narrow pass and simply go down over the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>He in any case turned up Rosedale Road one day after Miriam had left
+London; he had just come back from a fortnight in Brittany, where he had
+drawn refreshment from the tragic sweetness of&mdash;well, of everything. He
+was on his way somewhere else&mdash;was going abroad for the autumn but was
+not particular what he did, professing that he had come back just to get
+Nick utterly off his mind. "It's very nice, it's very nice; yes, yes, I
+see," he remarked, giving a little, general, assenting sigh as his eyes
+wandered over the simple scene&mdash;a sigh which for a suspicious ear would
+have testified to an insidious reaction.</p>
+
+<p>Nick's ear, as we know, was already suspicious; a fact accounting for
+the expectant smile&mdash;it indicated the pleasant apprehension of a theory
+confirmed&mdash;with which he returned: "Do you mean my pictures are nice?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, your pictures and the whole thing."</p>
+
+<p>"The whole thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your existence in this little, remote, independent corner of the great
+city. The disinterestedness of your attitude, the persistence of your
+effort, the piety, the beauty, in short the edification, of the whole
+spectacle."</p>
+
+<p>Nick laughed a little ruefully. "How near to having had enough of me you
+must be when you speak of me as edifying!" Nash changed colour slightly
+at this; it was the first time in his friend's remembrance that he had
+given a sign of embarrassment. "<i>Vous allez me l&acirc;cher</i>, I see it coming;
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_672" id="Page_672">[672]</a></span> who can blame you?&mdash;for I've ceased to be in the least spectacular.
+I had my little hour; it was a great deal, for some people don't even
+have that. I've given you your curious case and I've been generous; I
+made the drama last for you as long as I could. You'll 'slope,' my dear
+fellow&mdash;you'll quietly slope; and it will be all right and inevitable,
+though I shall miss you greatly at first. Who knows whether without you
+I shouldn't still have been 'representing' Harsh, heaven help me? You
+rescued me; you converted me from a representative into an
+example&mdash;that's a shade better. But don't I know where you must be when
+you're reduced to praising my piety?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't turn me away," said Nash plaintively; "give me a cigarette."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never dream of turning you away; I shall cherish you till the
+latest possible hour. I'm only trying to keep myself in tune with the
+logic of things. The proof of how I cling is that precisely I want you
+to sit to me."</p>
+
+<p>"To sit to you?" With which Nick could fancy his visitor a little blank.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, for after all it isn't much to ask. Here we are and the
+hour's peculiarly propitious&mdash;long light days with no one coming near
+me, so that I've plenty of time. I had a hope I should have some orders:
+my younger sister, whom you know and who's a great optimist, plied me
+with that vision. In fact we invented together a charming little sordid
+theory that there might be rather a 'run' on me from the chatter (such
+as it was) produced by my taking up this line. My sister struck out the
+idea that a good many of the pretty ladies would think me interesting
+and would want to be done. Perhaps they do, but they've controlled
+themselves, for I can't say the run has commenced. They haven't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_673" id="Page_673">[673]</a></span> even
+come to look, but I daresay they don't yet quite take it in. Of course
+it's a bad time&mdash;with every one out of town; though you know they might
+send for me to come and do them at home. Perhaps they will when they
+settle down. A portrait-tour of a dozen country-houses for the autumn
+and winter&mdash;what do you say to that for the ardent life? I know I
+excruciate you," Nick added, "but don't you see how it's in my interest
+to try how much you'll still stand?"</p>
+
+<p>Gabriel puffed his cigarette with a serenity so perfect that it might
+have been assumed to falsify these words. "Mrs. Dallow will send for
+you&mdash;<i>vous allez voir &ccedil;a</i>," he said in a moment, brushing aside all
+vagueness.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll send for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"To paint her portrait; she'll recapture you on that basis. She'll get
+you down to one of the country-houses, and it will all go off as
+charmingly&mdash;with sketching in the morning, on days you can't hunt, and
+anything you like in the afternoon, and fifteen courses in the evening;
+there'll be bishops and ambassadors staying&mdash;as if you were a
+'well-known,' awfully clever amateur. Take care, take care, for, fickle
+as you may think me, I can read the future: don't imagine you've come to
+the end of me yet. Mrs. Dallow and your sister, of both of whom I speak
+with the greatest respect, are capable of hatching together the most
+conscientious, delightful plan for you. Your differences with the
+beautiful lady will be patched up and you'll each come round a little
+and meet the other halfway. The beautiful lady will swallow your
+profession if you'll swallow hers. She'll put up with the palette if
+you'll put up with the country-house. It will be a very unusual one in
+which you won't find a good north room where you can paint. You'll go
+about with her and do all her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_674" id="Page_674">[674]</a></span> friends, all the bishops and ambassadors,
+and you'll eat your cake and have it, and every one, beginning with your
+wife, will forget there's anything queer about you, and everything will
+be for the best in the best of worlds; so that, together&mdash;you and
+she&mdash;you'll become a great social institution and every one will think
+she has a delightful husband; to say nothing of course of your having a
+delightful wife. Ah my dear fellow, you turn pale, and with reason!"
+Nash went lucidly on: "that's to pay you for having tried to make me let
+you have it. You have it then there! I may be a bore"&mdash;the emphasis of
+this, though a mere shade, testified to the first personal resentment
+Nick had ever heard his visitor express&mdash;"I may be a bore, but once in a
+while I strike a light, I make things out. Then I venture to repeat,
+'Take care, take care.' If, as I say, I respect <i>ces dames</i> infinitely
+it's because they will be acting according to the highest wisdom of
+their sex. That's the sort of thing women do for a man&mdash;the sort of
+thing they invent when they're exceptionally good and clever. When
+they're not they don't do so well; but it's not for want of trying.
+There's only one thing in the world better than their incomparable
+charm: it's their abysmal conscience. Deep calleth unto deep&mdash;the one's
+indeed a part of the other. And when they club together, when they
+earnestly consider, as in the case we're supposing," Nash continued,
+"then the whole thing takes a lift; for it's no longer the virtue of the
+individual, it's that of the wondrous sex."</p>
+
+<p>"You're so remarkable that, more than ever, I must paint you," Nick
+returned, "though I'm so agitated by your prophetic words that my hand
+trembles and I shall doubtless scarcely be able to hold my brush. Look
+how I rattle my easel trying to put it into position. I see it all there
+just as you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_675" id="Page_675">[675]</a></span> show it. Yes, it will be a droll day, and more modern than
+anything yet, when the conscience of women makes out good reasons for
+men's not being in love with them. You talk of their goodness and
+cleverness, and it's certainly much to the point. I don't know what else
+they themselves might do with those graces, but I don't see what man can
+do with them but be fond of them where he finds them."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh you'll do it&mdash;you'll do it!" cried Nash, brightly jubilant.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it I shall do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly what I just said; if not next year then the year after, or the
+year after that. You'll go halfway to meet her and she'll drag you about
+and pass you off. You'll paint the bishops and become a social
+institution. That is, you'll do it if you don't take great care."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall, no doubt, and that's why I cling to you. You must still look
+after me," Nick went on. "Don't melt away into a mere improbable
+reminiscence, a delightful, symbolic fable&mdash;don't if you can possibly
+help it. The trouble is, you see, that you can't really keep hold very
+tight, because at bottom it will amuse you much more to see me in
+another pickle than to find me simply jogging down the vista of the
+years on the straight course. Let me at any rate have some sort of
+sketch of you as a kind of feather from the angel's wing or a photograph
+of the ghost&mdash;to prove to me in the future that you were once a solid
+sociable fact, that I didn't invent you, didn't launch you as a deadly
+hoax. Of course I shall be able to say to myself that you can't have
+been a fable&mdash;otherwise you'd have a moral; but that won't be enough,
+because I'm not sure you won't have had one. Some day you'll peep in
+here languidly and find me in such an attitude of piety&mdash;presenting my
+bent back to you as I niggle over some interminable botch&mdash;that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_676" id="Page_676">[676]</a></span> I shall
+give cruelly on your nerves and you'll just draw away, closing the door
+softly. You'll be gentle and considerate about it and spare me, you
+won't even make me look round. You'll steal off on tiptoe, never, never
+to return."</p>
+
+<p>Gabriel consented to sit; he professed he should enjoy it and be glad to
+give up for it his immediate foreign commerce, so vague to Nick, so
+definite apparently to himself; and he came back three times for the
+purpose. Nick promised himself a deal of interest from this experiment,
+for with the first hour of it he began to feel that really as yet, given
+the conditions under which he now studied him, he had never at all
+thoroughly explored his friend. His impression had been that Nash had a
+head quite fine enough to be a challenge, and that as he sat there day
+by day all sorts of pleasant and paintable things would come out in his
+face. This impression was not gainsaid, but the whole tangle grew
+denser. It struck our young man that he had never <i>seen</i> his subject
+before, and yet somehow this revelation was not produced by the sense of
+actually seeing it. What was revealed was the difficulty&mdash;what he saw
+was not the measurable mask but the ambiguous meaning. He had taken
+things for granted which literally were not there, and he found things
+there&mdash;except that he couldn't catch them&mdash;which he had not hitherto
+counted in or presumed to handle. This baffling effect, eminently in the
+line of the mystifying, so familiar to Nash, might have been the result
+of his whimsical volition, had it not appeared to our artist, after a
+few hours of the job, that his sitter was not the one who enjoyed it
+most. He was uncomfortable, at first vaguely and then definitely
+so&mdash;silent, restless, gloomy, dim, as if on the test the homage of a
+directer attention than he had ever had gave him less pleasure than he
+would have supposed. He had been willing to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_677" id="Page_677">[677]</a></span> judge of this in good
+faith; but frankly he rather suffered. He wasn't cross, but was clearly
+unhappy, and Nick had never before felt him contract instead of
+expanding.</p>
+
+<p>It was all accordingly as if a trap had been laid for him, and our young
+man asked himself if it were really fair. At the same time there was
+something richly rare in such a relation between the subject and the
+artist, and Nick was disposed to go on till he should have to stop for
+pity or for shame. He caught eventually a glimmer of the truth
+underlying the strangeness, guessed that what upset his friend was
+simply the reversal, in such a combination, of his usual terms of
+intercourse. He was so accustomed to living upon irony and the
+interpretation of things that it was new to him to be himself
+interpreted and&mdash;as a gentleman who sits for his portrait is always
+liable to be&mdash;interpreted all ironically. From being outside of the
+universe he was suddenly brought into it, and from the position of a
+free commentator and critic, an easy amateurish editor of the whole
+affair, reduced to that of humble ingredient and contributor. It
+occurred afterwards to Nick that he had perhaps brought on a catastrophe
+by having happened to throw off as they gossiped or languished, and not
+alone without a cruel intention, but with an impulse of genuine
+solicitude: "But, my dear fellow, what will you do when you're old?"</p>
+
+<p>"Old? What do you call old?" Nash had replied bravely enough, but with
+another perceptible tinge of irritation. "Must I really remind you at
+this time of day that that term has no application to such a condition
+as mine? It only belongs to you wretched people who have the incurable
+superstition of 'doing'; it's the ignoble collapse you prepare for
+yourselves when you cease to be able to do. For me there'll be no
+collapse, no transition, no clumsy readjustment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_678" id="Page_678">[678]</a></span> of attitude; for I
+shall only <i>be</i>, more and more, with all the accumulations of
+experience, the longer I live."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I'm not particular about the term," said Nick. "If you don't call it
+old, the ultimate state, call it weary&mdash;call it final. The accumulations
+of experience are practically accumulations of fatigue."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know anything about weariness. I live freshly&mdash;it doesn't
+fatigue me."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you need never die," Nick declared.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly; I daresay I'm indestructible, immortal."</p>
+
+<p>Nick laughed out at this&mdash;it would be such fine news to some people. But
+it was uttered with perfect gravity, and it might very well have been in
+the spirit of that gravity that Nash failed to observe his agreement to
+sit again the next day. The next and the next and the next passed, but
+he never came back.</p>
+
+<p>True enough, punctuality was not important for a man who felt that he
+had the command of all time. Nevertheless his disappearance "without a
+trace," that of a personage in a fairy-tale or a melodrama, made a
+considerable impression on his friend as the months went on; so that,
+though he had never before had the least difficulty about entering into
+the play of Gabriel's humour, Nick now recalled with a certain fanciful
+awe the special accent with which he had ranked himself among
+imperishable things. He wondered a little if he hadn't at last,
+balancing always on the stretched tight-rope of his wit, fallen over on
+the wrong side. He had never before, of a truth, been so nearly witless,
+and would have to have gone mad in short to become so singularly simple.
+Perhaps indeed he was acting only more than usual in his customary
+spirit&mdash;thoughtfully contributing, for Nick's enlivenment, a purple rim
+of mystery to an horizon now so dreadfully let down. The mystery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_679" id="Page_679">[679]</a></span> at any
+rate remained; another shade of purple in fact was virtually added to
+it. Nick had the prospect, for the future, of waiting to see, all
+curiously, when Nash would turn up, if ever, and the further
+diversion&mdash;it almost consoled him for the annoyance of being left with a
+second unfinished thing on his hands&mdash;of imagining in the portrait he
+had begun an odd tendency to fade gradually from the canvas. He couldn't
+catch it in the act, but he could have ever a suspicion on glancing at
+it that the hand of time was rubbing it away little by little&mdash;for all
+the world as in some delicate Hawthorne tale&mdash;and making the surface
+indistinct and bare of all resemblance to the model. Of course the moral
+of the Hawthorne tale would be that his personage would come back in
+quaint confidence on the day his last projected shadow should have
+vanished.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_680" id="Page_680">[680]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="L" id="L"></a><a href="#toc">L</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>One day toward the end of March of the following year, in other words
+more than six months after Mr. Nash's disappearance, Bridget Dormer came
+into her brother's studio and greeted him with the effusion that
+accompanies a return from an absence. She had been staying at
+Broadwood&mdash;she had been staying at Harsh. She had various things to tell
+him about these episodes, about his mother, about Grace, about her small
+subterraneous self, and about Percy's having come, just before, over to
+Broadwood for two days; the longest visit with which, almost since they
+could remember, the head of the family had honoured their common parent.
+Nick noted indeed that this demonstration had apparently been taken as a
+great favour, and Biddy loyally testified to the fact that her elder
+brother was awfully jolly and that his presence had been a pretext for
+tremendous fun. Nick accordingly asked her what had passed about his
+marriage&mdash;what their mother had said to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh nothing," she replied; and Percy had said nothing to Lady Agnes and
+not a word to herself. This partly explained, for his junior, the
+consequent beatitude&mdash;none but cheerful topics had been produced; but he
+questioned the girl further&mdash;to a point which led her to say: "Oh I
+daresay that before long she'll write to her."</p>
+
+<p>"Who'll write to whom?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_681" id="Page_681">[681]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mamma'll write to Percy's wife. I'm sure he'd like it. Of course we
+shall end by going to see her. He was awfully disappointed at what he
+found in Spain&mdash;he didn't find anything."</p>
+
+<p>Biddy spoke of his disappointment almost with commiseration, for she was
+evidently inclined this morning to a fresh and kindly view of things.
+Nick could share her feeling but so far as was permitted by a
+recognition merely general of what his brother must have looked for. It
+might have been snipe and it might have been bristling boars. Biddy was
+indeed brief at first about everything, in spite of all the weeks that
+had gone since their last meeting; for he quickly enough saw she had
+something behind&mdash;something that made her gay and that she wanted to
+come to quickly. He was vaguely vexed at her being, fresh from
+Broadwood, so gay as that; for&mdash;it was impossible to shut one's eyes to
+the fact&mdash;what had practically come to pass in regard to that rural
+retreat was exactly what he had desired to avert. All winter, while it
+had been taken for granted his mother and sisters were doing what he
+wished, they had been doing precisely what he hated. He held Biddy
+perhaps least responsible, and there was no one he could exclusively
+blame. He washed his hands of the matter and succeeded fairly well, for
+the most part, in forgetting he was not pleased. Julia herself in truth
+appeared to have been the most active member of the little group united
+to make light of his decencies. There had been a formal restitution of
+Broadwood, but the three ladies were there more than ever, with the
+slight difference that they were mainly there with its mistress. Mahomet
+had declined to go any more to the mountain, so the mountain had
+virtually come to Mahomet.</p>
+
+<p>After their long visit in the autumn Lady Agnes and her girls had come
+back to town; but they had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_682" id="Page_682">[682]</a></span> gone down again for Christmas and Julia had
+taken this occasion to write to Nick that she hoped very much he
+wouldn't refuse them all his own company for just a little scrap of the
+supremely sociable time. Nick, after reflexion, judged it best not to
+refuse, so that he passed, in the event, four days under his cousin's
+roof. The "all" proved a great many people, for she had taken care to
+fill the house. She took the largest view of hospitality and Nick had
+never seen her so splendid, so free-handed, so gracefully active. She
+was a perfect mistress of the revels; she had arranged some ancient
+bravery for every day and for every night. The Dormers were so much in
+it, as the phrase was, that after all their discomfiture their fortune
+seemed in an hour to have come back. There had been a moment when, in
+extemporised charades, Lady Agnes, an elderly figure being required,
+appeared on the point of undertaking the part of the housekeeper at a
+castle, who, dropping her <i>h</i>'s, showed sheeplike tourists about; but
+she waived the opportunity in favour of her daughter Grace. Even Grace
+had a great success; Grace dropped her <i>h</i>'s as with the crash of
+empires. Nick of course was in the charades and in everything, but Julia
+was not; she only invented, directed, led the applause. When nothing
+else was forward Nick "sketched" the whole company: they followed him
+about, they waylaid him on staircases, clamouring to be allowed to sit.
+He obliged them so far as he could, all save Julia, who didn't clamour;
+and, growing rather red, he thought of Gabriel Nash while he bent over
+the paper. Early in the new year he went abroad for six weeks, but only
+as far as Paris. It was a new Paris for him then; a Paris of the Rue
+Bonaparte and three or four professional friends&mdash;he had more of these
+there than in London; a Paris of studios and studies and models, of
+researches and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_683" id="Page_683">[683]</a></span> revelations, comparisons and contrasts, of strong
+impressions and long discussions and rather uncomfortable economies,
+small caf&eacute;s, bad fires and the general sense of being twenty again.</p>
+
+<p>While he was away his mother and sisters&mdash;Lady Agnes now sometimes wrote
+to him&mdash;returned to London for a month, and before he was again
+established in Rosedale Road they went back for a third course of
+Broadwood. After they had been there five days&mdash;and this was the salt of
+the whole feast&mdash;Julia took herself off to Harsh, leaving them in
+undisturbed possession. They had remained so&mdash;they wouldn't come up to
+town till after Easter. The trick was played, and Biddy, as I have
+mentioned, was now very content. Her brother presently learned, however,
+that the reason of this was not wholly the success of the trick; unless
+indeed her further ground were only a continuation of it. She was not in
+London as a forerunner of her mother; she was not even as yet in
+Calcutta Gardens. She had come to spend a week with Florry Tressilian,
+who had lately taken the dearest little flat in a charming new place,
+just put up, on the other side of the Park, with all kinds of lifts and
+tubes and electricities. Florry had been awfully nice to her&mdash;had been
+with them ever so long at Broadwood while the flat was being painted and
+prepared&mdash;and mamma had then let her, let Biddy, promise to come to her,
+when everything was ready, so that they might have a happy old maids'
+(for they <i>were</i>, old maids now!) house-warming together. If Florry
+could by this time do without a chaperon&mdash;she had two latchkeys and went
+alone on the top of omnibuses, and her name was in the Red Book&mdash;she was
+enough of a duenna for another girl. Biddy referred with sweet cynical
+eyes to the fine happy stride she had thus taken in the direction of
+enlightened spinsterhood; and Nick hung his head, immensely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_684" id="Page_684">[684]</a></span> abashed and
+humiliated, for, modern as he had fatuously supposed himself, there were
+evidently currents more modern yet.</p>
+
+<p>It so happened that on this particular morning he had drawn out of a
+corner his interrupted study of Gabriel Nash; on no further
+curiosity&mdash;he had only been looking round the room in a rummaging
+spirit&mdash;than to see how much or how little of it remained. It had become
+to his view so dim an adumbration&mdash;he was sure of this, and it pressed
+some spring of melancholy mirth&mdash;that it didn't seem worth putting away,
+and he left it leaning against a table as if it had been a blank canvas
+or a "preparation" to be painted over. In this posture it attracted
+Biddy's attention, for on a second glance it showed distinguishable
+features. She had not seen it before and now asked whom it might
+represent, remarking also that she could almost guess, yet not quite:
+she had known the original but couldn't name him.</p>
+
+<p>"Six months ago, for a few days, it represented Gabriel Nash," Nick
+replied. "But it isn't anybody or anything now."</p>
+
+<p>"Six months ago? What's the matter with it and why don't you go on?"</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with it is more than I can tell you. But I can't go
+on because I've lost my model."</p>
+
+<p>She had an almost hopeful stare. "Is he beautifully dead?"</p>
+
+<p>Her brother laughed out at the candid cheerfulness, hopefulness almost,
+with which this inquiry broke from her. "He's only dead to me. He has
+gone away."</p>
+
+<p>"Where has he gone?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't the least idea."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, have you quarrelled?"&mdash;Biddy shone again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_685" id="Page_685">[685]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Quarrelled? For what do you take us? Docs the nightingale quarrel with
+the moon?"</p>
+
+<p>"I needn't ask which of you is the moon," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I'm the nightingale. But, more literally," Nick continued,
+"Nash has melted back into the elements&mdash;he's part of the great air of
+the world." And then as even with this lucidity he saw the girl still
+mystified: "I've a notion he has gone to India and at the present moment
+is reclining on a bank of flowers in the vale of Cashmere."</p>
+
+<p>Biddy had a pause, after which she dropped: "Julia will be glad&mdash;she
+dislikes him so."</p>
+
+<p>"If she dislikes him why should she be glad he's so enviably placed?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean about his going away. She'll be glad of that."</p>
+
+<p>"My poor incorrigible child," Nick cried, "what has Julia to do with
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has more to do with things than you think," Biddy returned with all
+her bravery. Yet she had no sooner uttered the words than she
+perceptibly blushed. Hereupon, to attenuate the foolishness of her
+blush&mdash;only it had the opposite effect&mdash;she added: "She thinks he has
+been a bad element in your life."</p>
+
+<p>Nick emitted a long strange sound. "She thinks perhaps, but she doesn't
+think enough; otherwise she'd arrive at this better thought&mdash;that she
+knows nothing whatever about my life."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah brother," the girl pleaded with solemn eyes, "you don't imagine what
+an interest she takes in it. She has told me many times&mdash;she has talked
+lots to me about it." Biddy paused and then went on, an anxious little
+smile shining through her gravity as if from a cautious wonder as to how
+much he would take: "She has a conviction it was Mr. Nash who made
+trouble between you."</p>
+
+<p>"Best of little sisters," Nick pronounced, "those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_686" id="Page_686">[686]</a></span> are thoroughly
+second-rate ideas, the result of a perfectly superficial view. Excuse my
+possibly priggish tone, but they really attribute to my dear detached
+friend a part he's quite incapable of playing. He can neither make
+trouble nor take trouble; no trouble could ever either have come out of
+him or have got into him. Moreover," our young man continued, "if Julia
+has talked to you so much about the matter there's no harm in my talking
+to you a little. When she threw me over in an hour it was on a perfectly
+definite occasion. That occasion was the presence in my studio of a
+dishevelled, an abandoned actress."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Nick, she has not thrown you over!" Biddy protested. "She has
+not&mdash;I've proof."</p>
+
+<p>He felt at this direct denial a certain stir of indignation and looked
+at the girl with momentary sternness. "Has she sent you here to tell me
+this? What do you mean by proof?"</p>
+
+<p>Biddy's eyes, at these questions, met her brother's with a strange
+expression, and for a few seconds, while she looked entreatingly into
+them, she wavered there with parted lips and vaguely stretched out her
+hands. The next minute she had burst into tears&mdash;she was sobbing on his
+breast. He said "Hallo!" and soothed her; but it was very quickly over.
+Then she told him what she meant by her proof and what she had had on
+her mind ever since her present arrival. It was a message from Julia,
+but not to say&mdash;not to say what he had questioned her about just before;
+though indeed, more familiar now that he had his arm round her, she
+boldly expressed the hope it might in the end come to the same thing.
+Julia simply wanted to know&mdash;- she had instructed her to sound him
+discreetly&mdash;if Nick would undertake her portrait; and she wound up this
+experiment in "sounding" by the statement that their beautiful kinswoman
+was dying to sit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_687" id="Page_687">[687]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Dying to sit?" echoed Nick, whose turn it was this time to feel his
+colour rise.</p>
+
+<p>"At any moment you like after Easter, when she comes up. She wants a
+full-length and your very best, your most splendid work."</p>
+
+<p>Nick stared, not caring that he had blushed. "Is she serious?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah Nick&mdash;serious!" Biddy reasoned tenderly. She came nearer again and
+he thought her again about to weep. He took her by the shoulders,
+looking into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right if she knows <i>I</i> am. But why doesn't she come like any
+one else? I don't refuse people!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nick, dearest Nick!" she went on, her eyes conscious and pleading. He
+looked into them intently&mdash;as well as she could he play at sounding&mdash;and
+for a moment, between these young persons, the air was lighted by the
+glimmer of mutual searchings and suppressed confessions. Nick read deep
+and then, suddenly releasing his sister, turned away. She didn't see his
+face in that movement, but an observer to whom it had been presented
+might have fancied it denoted a foreboding that was not exactly a dread,
+yet was not exclusively a joy.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing he made out in the room, when he could distinguish, was
+Gabriel Nash's portrait, which suddenly filled him with an unreasoning
+rancour. He seized it and turned it about, jammed it back into its
+corner with its face against the wall. This small diversion might have
+served to carry off the embarrassment with which he had finally averted
+himself from Biddy. The embarrassment, however, was all his own; none of
+it was reflected in the way she resumed, after a silence in which she
+had followed his disposal of the picture:</p>
+
+<p>"If she's so eager to come here&mdash;for it's here she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_688" id="Page_688">[688]</a></span> wants to sit, not in
+Great Stanhope Street, never!&mdash;how can she prove better that she doesn't
+care a bit if she meets Miss Rooth?"</p>
+
+<p>"She won't meet Miss Rooth," Nick replied rather dryly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I'm sorry!" said Biddy. She was as frank as if she had achieved a
+virtual victory, and seemed to regret the loss of a chance for Julia to
+show an equal mildness. Her tone made her brother laugh, but she went on
+with confidence: "She thought it was Mr. Nash who made Miss Rooth come."</p>
+
+<p>"So he did, by the way," said Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"Well then, wasn't that making trouble?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you admitted there was no harm in her being here."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but <i>he</i> hoped there'd be."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Nash's hopes!" Nick laughed. "My dear child, it would take a
+cleverer head than you or me, or even Julia, who must have invented that
+wise theory, to say what they were. However, let us agree that even if
+they were perfectly fiendish my good sense has been a match for them."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Nick, that's delightful!" chanted Biddy. Then she added: "Do you
+mean she doesn't come any more?"</p>
+
+<p>"The dishevelled actress? She hasn't been near me for months."</p>
+
+<p>"But she's in London&mdash;she's always acting? I've been away so much I've
+scarcely observed," Biddy explained with a slight change of note.</p>
+
+<p>"The same silly part, poor creature, for nearly a year. It appears that
+that's 'success'&mdash;in her profession. I saw her in the character several
+times last summer, but haven't set foot in her theatre since."</p>
+
+<p>Biddy took this in; then she suggested; "Peter wouldn't have liked
+that."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_689" id="Page_689">[689]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh Peter's likes&mdash;!" Nick at his easel, beginning to work, conveniently
+sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean her acting the same part for a year."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I don't know; he has never written me a word."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor me either," Biddy returned.</p>
+
+<p>There was another short silence, during which Nick brushed at a panel.
+It ended in his presently saying: "There's one thing certainly Peter
+<i>would</i> like&mdash;that is simply to be here to-night. It's a great
+night&mdash;another great night&mdash;for the abandoned one. She's to act Juliet
+for the first time."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah how I should like to see her!" the girl cried.</p>
+
+<p>Nick glanced at her; she sat watching him. "She has sent me a stall; I
+wish she had sent me two. I should have been delighted to take you."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think you could get another?" Biddy quavered.</p>
+
+<p>"They must be in tremendous demand. But who knows after all?" Nick
+added, at the same moment looking round. "Here's a chance&mdash;here's quite
+an extraordinary chance!"</p>
+
+<p>His servant had opened the door and was ushering in a lady whose
+identity was indeed justly reflected in those words. "Miss Rooth!" the
+man announced; but he was caught up by a gentleman who came next and who
+exclaimed, laughing and with a gesture gracefully corrective: "No,
+no&mdash;no longer Miss Rooth!"</p>
+
+<p>Miriam entered the place with her charming familiar grandeur&mdash;entered
+very much as she might have appeared, as she appeared every night, early
+in her first act, at the back of the stage, by the immemorial middle
+door. She might exactly now have been presenting herself to the house,
+taking easy possession, repeating old movements, looking from one to the
+other of the actors before the footlights.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_690" id="Page_690">[690]</a></span> The rich "Good-morning" she
+threw into the air, holding out her right hand to Biddy and then giving
+her left to Nick&mdash;as she might have given it to her own brother&mdash;had
+nothing to tell of intervals or alienations. She struck Biddy as still
+more terrible in her splendid practice than when she had seen her
+before&mdash;the practice and the splendour had now something almost royal.
+The girl had had occasion to make her curtsey to majesties and
+highnesses, but the flutter those effigies produced was nothing to the
+way in which at the approach of this young lady the agitated air seemed
+to recognise something supreme. So the deep mild eyes she bent on Biddy
+were not soothing, though for that matter evidently intended to soothe.
+Biddy wondered Nick could have got so used to her&mdash;he joked at her as
+she loomed&mdash;and later in the day, still under the great impression of
+this incident, she even wondered that Peter could have full an impunity.
+It was true that Peter apparently didn't quite feel one.</p>
+
+<p>"You never came&mdash;you never came," Miriam said to her kindly and sadly;
+and Biddy, recognising the allusion, the invitation to visit the actress
+at home, had to explain how much she had been absent from London and
+then even that her brother hadn't proposed to take her.</p>
+
+<p>"Very true&mdash;he hasn't come himself. What's he doing now?" asked Miss
+Rooth, standing near her young friend but looking at Nick, who had
+immediately engaged in conversation with his other visitor, a gentleman
+whose face came back to the girl. She had seen this gentleman on the
+stage with the great performer&mdash;that was it, the night Peter took her to
+the theatre with Florry Tressilian. Oh that Nick would only do something
+of that sort now! This desire, quickened by the presence of the strange,
+expressive woman, by the way she scattered sweet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_691" id="Page_691">[691]</a></span> syllables as if she
+were touching the piano-keys, combined with other things to make our
+young lady's head swim&mdash;other things too mingled to name, admiration and
+fear and dim divination and purposeless pride and curiosity and
+resistance, the impulse to go away and the determination to (as she
+would have liked fondly to fancy it) "hold her ground." The actress
+courted her with a wondrous voice&mdash;what was the matter with the actress
+and what did she want?&mdash;and Biddy tried in return to give an idea of
+what Nick was doing. Not succeeding very well she was about to appeal to
+her brother, but Miriam stopped her with the remark that it didn't
+signify; besides, Dashwood was telling Nick something&mdash;something they
+wanted him to know. "We're in a great excitement&mdash;he has taken a
+theatre," Miriam added.</p>
+
+<p>"Taken a theatre?" Biddy was vague.</p>
+
+<p>"We're going to set up for ourselves. He's going to do for me
+altogether. It has all been arranged only within a day or two. It
+remains to be seen how it will answer," Miriam smiled. Biddy murmured
+some friendly hope, and the shining presence went on: "Do you know why
+I've broken in here to-day after a long absence&mdash;interrupting your poor
+brother so basely, taking up his precious time? It's because I'm so
+nervous."</p>
+
+<p>"About your first night?" Biddy risked.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know about that&mdash;are you coming?" Miriam had caught at it.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not coming&mdash;I haven't a place."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come if I send you one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh but really it's too beautiful of you!" breathed the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall have a box; your brother shall bring you. They can't squeeze
+in a pin, I'm told; but I've kept a box, I'll manage it. Only if I do,
+you know,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_692" id="Page_692">[692]</a></span> mind you positively come!" She sounded it as the highest of
+favours, resting her hand on Biddy's.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid. And may I bring a friend&mdash;the friend with whom I'm
+staying?"</p>
+
+<p>Miriam now just gloomed. "Do you mean Mrs. Dallow?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no&mdash;Miss Tressilian. She puts me up, she has got a flat. Did you
+ever see a flat?" asked Biddy expansively. "My cousin's not in London."
+Miriam replied that she might bring whom she liked and Biddy broke out
+to her brother: "Fancy what kindness, Nick: we're to have a box to-night
+and you're to take me!"</p>
+
+<p>Nick turned to her a face of levity which struck her even at the time as
+too cynically free, but which she understood when the finer sense of it
+subsequently recurred to her. Mr. Dashwood interposed with the remark
+that it was all very well to talk about boxes, but that he didn't see
+how at that time of day the miracle was to be worked.</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't kept one as I told you?" Miriam demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"As you told me, my dear? Tell the lamb to keep its tenderest mutton
+from the wolves!"</p>
+
+<p>"You shall have one: we'll arrange it," Miriam went on to Biddy.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me qualify that statement a little, Miss Dormer," said Basil
+Dashwood. "We'll arrange it if it's humanly possible."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll arrange it even if it's inhumanly <i>im</i>possible&mdash;that's just the
+point," Miriam declared to the girl. "Don't talk about trouble&mdash;what's
+he meant for but to take it? <i>Cela s'annonce bien</i>, you see," she
+continued to Nick: "doesn't it look as if we should pull beautifully
+together?" And as he answered that he heartily congratulated her&mdash;he was
+immensely interested in what he had been told&mdash;she exclaimed after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_693" id="Page_693">[693]</a></span>
+resting her eyes on him a moment: "What will you have? It seemed
+simpler! It was clear there had to be some one." She explained further
+to Nick what had led her to come in at that moment, while Dashwood
+approached Biddy with a civil assurance that they would see, they would
+leave no stone unturned, though he would not have taken upon himself to
+promise.</p>
+
+<p>Miriam reminded Nick of the blessing he had been to her nearly a year
+before, on her other first night, when she was all impatient and on
+edge; how he had let her come and sit there for hours&mdash;helped her to
+possess her soul till the evening and to keep out of harm's way. The
+case was the same at present, with the aggravation indeed that he would
+understand&mdash;Dashwood's nerves as well as her own: Dashwood's were a
+great deal worse than hers. Everything was ready for Juliet; they had
+been rehearsing for five months&mdash;it had kept her from going mad from the
+treadmill of the other piece&mdash;and he, Nick, had occurred to her again,
+in the last intolerable hours, as the friend in need, the salutary
+stop-gap, no matter how much she worried him. She shouldn't be turned
+out? Biddy broke away from Basil Dashwood: she must go, she must hurry
+off to Miss Tressilian with her news. Florry might make some other
+stupid engagement for the evening: she must be warned in time. The girl
+took a flushed, excited leave after having received a renewal of
+Miriam's pledge and even heard her say to Nick that he must now give
+back the seat already sent him&mdash;they should be sure to have another use
+for it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_694" id="Page_694">[694]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LI" id="LI"></a><a href="#toc">LI</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>That night at the theatre and in the box&mdash;the miracle had been wrought,
+the treasure found&mdash;Nick Dormer pointed out to his two companions the
+stall he had relinquished, which was close in front; noting how oddly it
+remained during the whole of the first act vacant. The house was beyond
+everything, the actress beyond any one; though to describe again so
+famous an occasion&mdash;it has been described repeatedly by other
+reporters&mdash;is not in the compass of the closing words of a history
+already too sustained. It is enough to say that these great hours marked
+an era in contemporary art and that for those who had a spectator's
+share in them the words "revelation," "incarnation," "acclamation,"
+"demonstration," "ovation"&mdash;to name only a few, and all accompanied by
+the word "extraordinary"&mdash;acquired a new force. Miriam's Juliet was an
+exquisite image of young passion and young despair, expressed in the
+truest, divinest music that had ever poured from tragic lips. The great
+childish audience, gaping at her points, expanded there before her like
+a lap to catch flowers.</p>
+
+<p>During the first interval our three friends in the box had plenty to
+talk about, and they were so occupied with it that for some time they
+failed to observe a gentleman who had at last come into the empty stall
+near the front. This discovery was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_695" id="Page_695">[695]</a></span> presently formulated by Miss
+Tressilian in the cheerful exclamation: "Only fancy&mdash;there's Mr.
+Sherringham!" This of course immediately became a high wonder&mdash;a wonder
+for Nick and Biddy, who had not heard of his return; and the prodigy was
+quickened by the fact that he gave no sign of looking for them or even
+at them. Having taken possession of his place he sat very still in it,
+staring straight before him at the curtain. His abrupt reappearance held
+the seeds of anxiety both for Biddy and for Nick, so that it was mainly
+Miss Tressilian who had freedom of mind to throw off the theory that he
+had come back that very hour&mdash;had arrived from a long journey. Couldn't
+they see how strange he was and how brown, how burnt and how red, how
+tired and how worn? They all inspected him, though Biddy declined Miss
+Tressilian's glass; but he was evidently indifferent to notice and
+finally Biddy, leaning back in her chair, dropped the fantastic words:</p>
+
+<p>"He has come home to marry Juliet!"</p>
+
+<p>Nick glanced at her and then replied: "What a disaster&mdash;to make such a
+journey as that and to be late for the fair!"</p>
+
+<p>"Late for the fair?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why she's married&mdash;these three days. They did it very quietly; Miriam
+says because her mother hated it and hopes it won't be much known! All
+the same she's Basil Dashwood's wedded wife&mdash;he has come in just in time
+to take the receipts for Juliet. It's a good thing, no doubt, for there
+are at least two fortunes to be made out of her, and he'll give up the
+stage." Nick explained to Miss Tressilian, who had inquired, that the
+gentleman in question was the actor who was playing Mercutio, and he
+asked Biddy if she hadn't known that this was what they were telling him
+in Rosedale Road that morning. She replied that she had understood
+nothing but that she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_696" id="Page_696">[696]</a></span> was to be where she was, and she sank considerably
+behind the drapery of the box. From this cover she was able to launch,
+creditably enough, the exclamation:</p>
+
+<p>"Poor, poor Peter!"</p>
+
+<p>Nick got up and stood looking at poor, poor Peter. "He ought to come
+round and speak to us, but if he doesn't see us I suppose he doesn't."
+He quitted the box as to go to the restored exile, and I may add that as
+soon as he had done so Florence Tressilian bounded over to the dusk in
+which Biddy had nestled. What passed immediately between these young
+ladies needn't concern us: it is sufficient to mention that two minutes
+later Miss Tressilian broke out:</p>
+
+<p>"Look at him, dearest; he's turning his head this way!"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, I don't care to watch his turns," said Biddy; and she
+doubtless demeaned herself in the high spirit of these words. It
+nevertheless happened that directly afterwards she had certain knowledge
+of his having glanced at his watch as if to judge how soon the curtain
+would rise again, as well as of his having then jumped up and passed
+quickly out of his place. The curtain had risen again without his
+reappearing and without Nick's returning. Indeed by the time Nick
+slipped in a good deal of the third act was over; and even then, even
+when the curtain descended, Peter had not come back. Nick sat down in
+silence to watch the stage, to which the breathless attention of his
+companions seemed attached, though Biddy after a moment threw round at
+him a single quick look. At the end of the act they were all occupied
+with the recalls, the applause and the responsive loveliness of Juliet
+as she was led out&mdash;Mercutio had to give her up to Romeo&mdash;and even for a
+few minutes after the deafening roar had subsided nothing was said among
+the three. At last Nick began:</p>
+
+<p>"It's quite true he has just arrived; he's in Great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_697" id="Page_697">[697]</a></span> Stanhope Street.
+They've given him several weeks, to make up for the uncomfortable way
+they bundled him off&mdash;to get there in time for some special business
+that had suddenly to be gone into&mdash;when he first went out: he tells me
+they even then promised that. He got into Southampton only a few hours
+ago, rushed up by the first train he could catch and came off here
+without any dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy!" said Miss Tressilian; while Biddy more generally asked if Peter
+might be in good health and appeared to have been happy. Nick replied
+that he described his post as beastly but didn't seem to have suffered
+from it. He was to be in England probably a month, he was awfully brown,
+he sent his love to Biddy. Miss Tressilian looked at his empty stall and
+was of the opinion that it would be more to the point if he were to come
+in to see her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh he'll turn up; we had a goodish talk in the lobby where he met me. I
+think he went out somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"How odd to come so many thousand miles for this and then not to stay!"
+Biddy fluted.</p>
+
+<p>"Did he come on purpose for this?" Miss Tressilian asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he's gone out to get his dinner!" joked Biddy.</p>
+
+<p>Her friend suggested that he might be behind the scenes, but Nick cast
+doubts; whereupon Biddy asked if he himself were not going round. At
+this moment the curtain rose; Nick said he would go in the next
+interval. As soon as it came he quitted the box, remaining absent while
+it lasted.</p>
+
+<p>All this time, in the house, there was no sign of Peter. Nick reappeared
+only as the fourth act was beginning and uttered no word to his
+companions till it was over. Then, after a further delay produced by
+renewed vociferous proofs of the personal victory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_698" id="Page_698">[698]</a></span> won, he depicted his
+visit to the stage and the wonderful sight of Miriam on the field of
+battle. Miss Tressilian inquired if he had found Mr. Sherringham with
+her; to which he replied that, save across the footlights, she had not
+been in touch with him. At this a soft exclamation broke from Biddy.
+"Poor Peter! Where is he, then?"</p>
+
+<p>Nick seemed to falter. "He's walking the streets."</p>
+
+<p>"Walking the streets?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;I give it up!" our young man replied; and his tone, for
+some minutes, reduced his companions to silence. But a little later
+Biddy said:</p>
+
+<p>"Was it for him this morning she wanted that place&mdash;when she asked you
+to give yours back?"</p>
+
+<p>"For him exactly. It's very odd she had just managed to keep it&mdash;for all
+the good use he makes of it! She told me just now that she heard from
+him, at his post, a short time ago, to the effect that he had seen in a
+newspaper a statement she was going to do Juliet and that he firmly
+intended, though the ways and means were not clear to him&mdash;his leave of
+absence hadn't yet come out and he couldn't be sure when it would
+come&mdash;to be present on her first night; whereby she must do him the
+service to provide him a place. She thought this a speech rather in the
+air, so that in the midst of all her cares she took no particular pains
+about the matter. She had an idea she had really done with him for a
+long time. But this afternoon what does he do but telegraph to her from
+Southampton that he keeps his appointment and counts on her for a stall?
+Unless she had got back mine she wouldn't have been able to help him.
+When she was in Rosedale Road this morning she hadn't received his
+telegram; but his promise, his threat, whatever it was, came back to
+her: she had a vague foreboding and thought that on the chance she had
+better hold something ready.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_699" id="Page_699">[699]</a></span> When she got home she found his telegram,
+and she told me he was the first person she saw in the house, through
+her fright when she came on in the second act. It appears she was
+terrified this time, and it lasted half through the play."</p>
+
+<p>"She must be rather annoyed at his having gone away," Miss Tressilian
+observed.</p>
+
+<p>"Annoyed? I'm not so sure!" laughed Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah here he comes back!" cried Biddy, behind her fan, while the absentee
+edged into his seat in time for the fifth act. He stood there a moment,
+first looking round the theatre; then he turned his eyes to the box
+occupied by his relatives, smiling and waving his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"After that he'll surely come and see you," said Miss Tressilian.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall see him as we go out," Biddy returned: "he must lose no more
+time."</p>
+
+<p>Nick looked at him with a glass, then exclaiming: "Well, I'm glad he has
+pulled himself together!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why what's the matter with him&mdash;if he wasn't disappointed of his seat?"
+Miss Tressilian demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"The matter with him is that a couple of hours ago he had a great
+shock."</p>
+
+<p>"A great shock?"</p>
+
+<p>"I may as well mention it at last," Nick went on. "I had to say
+something to him in the lobby there when we met&mdash;something I was pretty
+sure he couldn't like. I let him have it full in the face&mdash;it seemed to
+me better and wiser. I let him know that Juliet's married."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't he know it?" asked Biddy, who, with her face raised, had
+listened in deep stillness to every word that fell from her brother.</p>
+
+<p>"How should he have known it? It has only just taken place, and they've
+been so clever, for reasons of their own&mdash;those people move among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_700" id="Page_700">[700]</a></span> a lot
+of considerations that are absolutely foreign to us&mdash;about keeping it
+out of the papers. They put in a lot of lies and they leave out the real
+things."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean to say Mr. Sherringham wanted to <i>marry</i> her!" Miss
+Tressilian gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ask me what he wanted&mdash;I daresay we shall never know. One thing's
+very certain&mdash;that he didn't like my news, dear old Peter, and that I
+shan't soon forget the look in his face as he turned away from me and
+slipped out into the street. He was too much upset&mdash;he couldn't trust
+himself to come back; he had to walk about&mdash;he tried to walk it off."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us hope, then, he <i>has</i> walked it off!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah poor fellow&mdash;he couldn't hold out to the end; he has had to come
+back and look at her once more. He knows she'll be sublime in these last
+scenes."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he so much in love with her as that? What difference does it make
+for an actress if she <i>is</i> mar&mdash;?" But in this rash inquiry Miss
+Tressilian suddenly checked herself.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall probably never know how much he has been in love with her, nor
+what difference it makes. We shall never know exactly what he came back
+for, nor why he couldn't stand it out there any longer without relief,
+nor why he scrambled down here all but straight from the station, nor
+why after all, for the last two hours, he has been roaming the streets.
+And it doesn't matter, for it's none of our business. But I'm sorry for
+him&mdash;she is going to be sublime," Nick added. The curtain was rising on
+the tragic climax of the play.</p>
+
+<p>Miriam Rooth was sublime; yet it may be confided to the reader that
+during these supreme scenes Bridget Dormer directed her eyes less to the
+inspired actress than to a figure in the stalls who sat with his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_701" id="Page_701">[701]</a></span> own
+gaze fastened to the stage. It may further be intimated that Peter
+Sherringham, though he saw but a fragment of the performance, read
+clear, at the last, in the intense light of genius with which this
+fragment was charged, that even so after all he had been rewarded for
+his formidable journey. The great trouble of his infatuation subsided,
+leaving behind it something appreciably deep and pure. This pacification
+was far from taking place at once, but it was helped on, unexpectedly to
+him&mdash;it began to work at least&mdash;the very next night he saw the play,
+through the whole of which he then sat. He felt somehow recalled to the
+real by the very felicity of this experience, the supreme exhibition
+itself. He began to come back as from a far-off province of his history
+where miserable madness had reigned. He had been baffled, he had got his
+answer; it must last him&mdash;that was plain. He didn't fully accept it the
+first week or the second; but he accepted it sooner than he could have
+supposed had he known what it was to be when he paced at night, under
+the southern stars, the deck of the ship bearing him to England.</p>
+
+<p>It had been, as we know, Miss Tressilian's view, and even Biddy's, that
+evening, that Peter Sherringham would join them as they left the
+theatre. This view, however, was not confirmed by the event, for our
+troubled gentleman vanished utterly&mdash;disappointingly crude behaviour on
+the part of a young diplomatist who had distinguished himself&mdash;before
+any one could put a hand on him. And he failed to make up for his
+crudity by coming to see any one the next day, or even the next. Indeed
+many days elapsed and very little would have been known about him had it
+not been that, in the country, Mrs. Dallow knew. What Mrs. Dallow knew
+was eventually known to Biddy Dormer; and in this way it could be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_702" id="Page_702">[702]</a></span>
+established in his favour that he had remained some extraordinarily
+small number of days in London, had almost directly gone over to Paris
+to see his old chief. He came back from Paris&mdash;Biddy learnt this not
+from Julia, but in a much more immediate way: she knew it by his
+pressing the little electric button at the door of Florence Tressilian's
+flat one day when the good Florence was out and she herself was at home.
+He made on this occasion a very long visit. The good Florence knew it
+not much later, you may be sure&mdash;and how he had got their address from
+Nick&mdash;and she took an extravagant pleasure in it. Mr. Sherringham had
+never been to see <i>her</i>&mdash;the like of her&mdash;in his life: therefore it was
+clear what had made him begin. When he had once begun he kept it up, and
+Miss Tressilian's pleasure grew.</p>
+
+<p>Good as she was, she could remember without the slightest relenting what
+Nick Dormer had repeated to them at the theatre about the dreary side of
+Peter's present post. However, she was not bound to make a stand at this
+if persons more nearly concerned, Lady Agnes and the girl herself,
+didn't mind it. How little <i>they</i> minded it, and Grace and Julia Dallow
+and even Nick, was proved in the course of a meeting that took place at
+Harsh during the Easter holidays. The mistress of that seat had a small
+and intimate party to celebrate her brother's betrothal. The two ladies
+came over from Broadwood; even Nick, for two days, went back to his old
+hunting-ground, and Miss Tressilian relinquished for as long a time the
+delights of her newly arranged flat. Peter Sherringham obtained an
+extension of leave, so that he might go back to his legation with a
+wife. Fortunately, as it turned out, Biddy's ordeal, in the more or less
+torrid zone, was not cruelly prolonged, for the pair have already
+received a superior appointment. It is Lady Agnes's proud opinion that
+her daughter is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_703" id="Page_703">[703]</a></span> even now shaping their destiny. I say "even now," for
+these facts bring me very close to contemporary history. During those
+two days at Harsh Nick arranged with the former mistress of his fate the
+conditions, as they might be called, under which she should sit to him;
+and every one will remember in how recent an exhibition general
+attention was attracted, as the newspapers said in describing the
+private view, to the noble portrait of a lady which was the final
+outcome of that arrangement. Gabriel Nash had been at many a private
+view, but he was not at that one.</p>
+
+<p>These matters are highly recent, however, as I say; so that in glancing
+about the little circle of the interests I have tried to evoke I am
+suddenly warned by a sharp sense of modernness. This renders it
+difficult to me, for instance, in taking leave of our wonderful Miriam,
+to do much more than allude to the general impression that her
+remarkable career is even yet only in its early prime. Basil Dashwood
+has got his theatre, and his wife&mdash;people know now she <i>is</i> his
+wife&mdash;has added three or four new parts to her repertory; but every one
+is agreed that both in public and in private she has a great deal more
+to show. This is equally true of Nick Dormer, in regard to whom I may
+finally say that his friend Nash's predictions about his reunion with
+Mrs. Dallow have not up to this time been justified. On the other hand,
+I must not omit to add, this lady has not, at the latest accounts,
+married Mr. Macgeorge. It is very true there has been a rumour that Mr.
+Macgeorge is worried about her&mdash;has even ceased at all fondly to believe
+in her.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Tragic Muse, by Henry James
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Tragic Muse
+
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 10, 2006  [eBook #20085]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRAGIC MUSE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Chuck Greif, R. Cedron, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team Europe (http://dp.rastko.net/)
+
+
+
+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 Comedie Francaise 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'la 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 a 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
+aesthete?"
+
+"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 _etat 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
+_metier_; 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 Elysees. 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 Hotel 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 braise_, 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 plait_. 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 braise_.
+
+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 Theatre Francais 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 Francais 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 Carre, Rue de Constantinople, _a
+l'entresol_."
+
+"Madame Carre? 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 Carre 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 Carre'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 Carre, 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 Carre 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 ete comme ca._"
+
+"And you went then very often to the Theatre Francais, 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 Carre--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 Carre 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 _raffines_ 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 Valerie Marneffe in _La Cousine Bette_."
+
+"And you contrast it with the poverty of Emile Augier's Seraphine 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 Carre in things of the modern repertory, which she has
+made as vivid to me, caused to abide as ineffaceably in my memory, as
+Valerie 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 Elysees 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 Hotel 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
+Hotel 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 _flanerie_. However, he had been very nice: he had
+invited them all to dine with him that evening at a convenient cafe,
+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
+Francais, your inveterate attendance at _premieres_, 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
+disponibilite_ 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 Theatre Francais 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 ca_."
+
+"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 Theatre Francais. 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 Seigliere_. 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 cafe; 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 _caissiere_ 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 Cafe Durand the Madeleine rose theatrical, a high artful
+_decor_ 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 _madere_--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 Carre'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 _comedie 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 Carre 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
+_comedienne_, the light of the French stage in the early years of the
+century, of whose example and instruction Madame Carre 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 Carre
+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 Carre 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
+Celimene!"_ Celimene, 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-la, c'est une plaisanterie,"_ she went on to Mrs. Rooth; "whereas
+you and your daughter, _chere 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 Carre 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 ca. La tete 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 Carre 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 Carre
+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 Carre, 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 _repertoire_?"
+
+Miriam Rooth stared as if she didn't understand. "I know some poetry."
+
+"English, French, Italian, German," said her mother.
+
+Madame Carre 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, _chere 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 Celimene; I've heard her do Celimene," Gabriel Nash said to
+Madame Carre".
+
+"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 Carre 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 Carre
+had been questioning the girl "_Chere 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 scene,--la notre_," Madame Carre 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 Carre 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 ca_?" Madame Carre 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, _chere 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 tres-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 Carre cried before he had time to reply that he wrote nothing
+but diplomatic memoranda. "Bad women? _Je n'ai joue que ca, madame_.
+'Really' bad? I tried to make them real!"
+
+"I can say 'L'Aventuriere,'" 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 Carre will give you
+the _replique_," said Peter Sherringham.
+
+"Certainly, my child; I can say it without the book," Madame Carre
+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 Carre 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, _chere 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! _Voila, chere 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 Carre 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 Carre 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 ca_," 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 Celie, 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
+Carre sent back the ball without raising her hand, repeating the
+speeches of Celie, 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 Carre 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 Carre 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 legerete a faire
+fremir._ 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 Carre
+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
+Carre 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 Carre, 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 Carre 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 Carre 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 Carre 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
+bete_: 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 bete_--appealed to Madame Carre 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 Carre 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 Carre 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 _scene 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 degager_, but they'll come. You must work."
+
+"I think she has ideas," said Mrs. Rooth.
+
+"She gets them from you," Madame Carre 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 Carre 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 ca_. 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 Carre.
+
+"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
+Carre, 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 Carre 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 Carre 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 Carre.
+
+"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 Carre 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 Carre'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 Hotel de la Garonne.
+
+On quitting Madame Carre 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 Carre 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 Hotel 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'Opera and the Place de la Bourse. Sherringham had occasionally
+traversed the high dimness, but had never noticed the tall, stale
+_maison meublee_, 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 cafe."
+
+Nick Dormer declared that he liked cafes, 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 Carre 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 _hurle_ 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 cafe on the corner of the Place de l'Opera--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 Carre thought so;
+she thought it was horrid. Wasn't it perfectly divine, the way the old
+woman had said those verses, those speeches of Celie? 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 Carre
+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 Carre'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 Carre. 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
+cafe forming one of the angles of the Place de l'Opera. 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 serieux_. 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 la 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 cafe 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 aesthetic 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 aesthetic 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 Venus
+toute entiere a sa proie attachee_--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 Hotel 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 Hotel de la Garonne.
+
+As a consequence of this speculation he went back to Madame Carre 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 Carre 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 Carre 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 Carre 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 _bete_ even when Sherringham, on their first meeting at
+Madame Carre'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 Carre's. It was doubtless that the girl's was
+fresh and strong and had a future in it, while poor Madame Carre'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
+Carre, 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
+Carre 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 Carre 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 Carre'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 Carre 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 Carre 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 Carre 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 Carre 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 Carre'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 Carre, 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 Carre. "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 cafe.
+
+"Objection? I've spent my life in cafes! 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 cafes--the little, cheap, shabby cafes 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 cafes: 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 Carre 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 cafe
+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 Carre 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 Carre'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 Carre'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 Carre'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'etait 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 Theatre Francais; 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 Francais 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 Comedie 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 Hotel 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 Elysees 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 Carre 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 _bouquetieres_ 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 Carre'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 Carre 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
+Carre 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 _raffine_.
+
+"You're worse than Madame Carre; 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 _a la guerre comme a 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 _betise_ 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 Comedie Francaise 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 Carre'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 Carre 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 Carre 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 a 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. Eugene 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
+Hotel 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 Carre 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 Carre, 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 Carre.
+
+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 fete_: 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 _repandue_ 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 theatre_. 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 Carre declared at the last that she could "do anything"?
+It was true that if Madame Carre 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 Hotel 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 Carre."
+
+"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.
+_Voila_!" 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 theatre_--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 theatre_. 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 Carre?"
+
+"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 Carre. 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 Hotel 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 Carre. 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 Carre'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 Carre, 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 Carre 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 perception
+that ended by becoming frequent with him--that of the perfect presence
+of mind, unconfused, unhurried by emotion, that any artistic performance
+requires and that all, whatever the instrument, require in exactly the
+same degree: the application, in other words, clear and calculated,
+crystal-firm as it were, of the idea conceived in the glow of
+experience, of suffering, of joy. He was afterwards often to talk of
+this with Miriam, who, however, was never to be able to present him with
+a neat theory of the subject. She had no knowledge that it was publicly
+discussed; she only ranged herself in practice on the side of those who
+hold that at the moment of production the artist can't too much have his
+wits about him. When Peter named to her the opinion of those maintaining
+that at such a crisis the office of attention ceases to be filled she
+stared with surprise and then broke out: "Ah the poor idiots!" She
+eventually became, in her judgements, in impatience and the expression
+of contempt, very free and absolutely irreverent.
+
+"What a splendid scolding!" the new visitor exclaimed when, on the
+entrance of the Pope's legate, her companion closed the book on the
+scene. Peter pressed his lips to Madame Carre's finger-tips; the old
+actress got up and held out her arms to Miriam. The girl never took her
+eyes off Sherringham while she passed into that lady's embrace and
+remained there. They were full of their usual sombre fire, and it was
+always the case that they expressed too much anything they could express
+at all; but they were not defiant nor even triumphant now--they were
+only deeply explicative. They seemed to say, "That's the sort of thing
+I meant; that's what I had in mind when I asked you to try to do
+something for me." Madame Carre folded her pupil to her bosom, holding
+her there as the old marquise in a _comedie de moeurs_ might in the last
+scene have held her god-daughter the _ingenue_.
+
+"Have you got me an engagement?"--the young woman then appealed eagerly
+to her friend. "Yes, he has done something splendid for me," she went on
+to Madame Carre, resting her hand caressingly on one of the actress's
+while the old woman discoursed with Mr. Dashwood, who was telling her in
+very pretty French that he was tremendously excited about Miss Rooth.
+Madame Carre looked at him as if she wondered how he appeared when he
+was calm and how, as a dramatic artist, he expressed that condition.
+
+"Yes, yes, something splendid, for a beginning," Peter answered
+radiantly, recklessly; feeling now only that he would say anything and
+do anything to please her. He spent on the spot, in imagination, his
+last penny.
+
+"It's such a pity you couldn't follow it; you'd have liked it so much
+better," Mr. Dashwood observed to their hostess.
+
+"Couldn't follow it? Do you take me for _une sotte_?" the celebrated
+artist cried. "I suspect I followed it _de plus pres que vous,
+monsieur_!"
+
+"Ah you see the language is so awfully fine," Basil Dashwood replied,
+looking at his shoes.
+
+"The language? Why she rails like a fish-wife. Is that what you call
+language? Ours is another business."
+
+"If you understood, if you understood, you'd see all the greatness of
+it," Miriam declared. And then in another tone: "Such delicious
+expressions!"
+
+"_On dit que c'est tres-fort_. But who can tell if you really say it?"
+Madame Carre demanded.
+
+"Ah, _par exemple_, I can!" Sherringham answered.
+
+"Oh you--you're a Frenchman."
+
+"Couldn't he make it out if he weren't?" asked Basil Dashwood.
+
+The old woman shrugged her shoulders. "He wouldn't know."
+
+"That's flattering to me."
+
+"Oh you--don't you pretend to complain," Madame Carre said. "I prefer
+_our_ imprecations--those of Camille," she went on. "They have the
+beauty _des plus belles choses_."
+
+"I can say them too," Miriam broke in.
+
+"_Insolente_!" smiled Madame Carre. "Camille doesn't squat down on the
+floor in the middle of them.
+
+    "For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.
+    To me and to the state of my great grief
+    Let kings assemble,"
+
+Miriam quickly declaimed. "Ah if you don't feel the way she makes a
+throne of it!"
+
+"It's really tremendously fine, _chere madame_," Sherringham said.
+"There's nothing like it."
+
+"_Vous etes insupportables_," the old woman answered. "Stay with us.
+I'll teach you Phedre."
+
+"Ah Phaedra, Phaedra!" Basil Dashwood vaguely ejaculated, looking more
+gentlemanly than ever.
+
+"You've learned all I've taught you, but where the devil have you
+learned what I haven't?" Madame Carre went on.
+
+"I've worked--I have; you'd call it work--all through the bright, late
+summer, all through the hot, dull, empty days. I've battered down the
+door--I did hear it crash one day. But I'm not so very good yet. I'm
+only in the right direction."
+
+"_Malicieuse_!" growled Madame Carre.
+
+"Oh I can beat that," the girl went on.
+
+"Did you wake up one morning and find you had grown a pair of wings?"
+Peter asked. "Because that's what the difference amounts to--you really
+soar. Moreover, you're an angel," he added, charmed with her
+unexpectedness, the good nature of her forbearance to reproach him for
+not having written to her. And it seemed to him privately that she _was_
+angelic when in answer to this she said ever so blandly:
+
+"You know you read _King John_ with me before you went away. I thought
+over immensely what you said. I didn't understand it much at the time--I
+was so stupid. But it all came to me later."
+
+"I wish you could see yourself," Peter returned.
+
+"My dear fellow, I do. What sort of a dunce do you take me for? I didn't
+miss a vibration of my voice, a fold of my robe."
+
+"Well, I didn't see you troubling about it," Peter handsomely insisted.
+
+"No one ever will. Do you think I'd ever show it?"
+
+"_Ars celare artem_," Basil Dashwood jocosely dropped.
+
+"You must first have the art to hide," said Sherringham, wondering a
+little why Miriam didn't introduce her young friend to him. She was,
+however, both then and later perfectly neglectful of such cares, never
+thinking, never minding how other people got on together. When she found
+they didn't get on she jeered at them: that was the nearest she came to
+arranging for them. Our young man noted in her from the moment she felt
+her strength an immense increase of this good-humoured inattention to
+detail--all detail save that of her work, to which she was ready to
+sacrifice holocausts of feelings when the feelings were other people's.
+This conferred on her a large profanity, an absence of ceremony as to
+her social relations, which was both amusing because it suggested that
+she would take what she gave, and formidable because it was inconvenient
+and you mightn't care to give what she would take.
+
+"If you haven't any art it's not quite the same as if you didn't hide
+it, is it?" Basil Dashwood ingeniously threw out.
+
+"That's right--say one of your clever things!" Miriam sweetly responded.
+
+"You're always acting," he declared in English and with a simple-minded
+laugh, while Sherringham remained struck with his expressing just what
+he himself had felt weeks before.
+
+"And when you've shown them your fish-wife, to your public _de la-bas_,
+what will you do next?" asked Madame Carre.
+
+"I'll do Juliet--I'll do Cleopatra."
+
+"Rather a big bill, isn't it?" Mr. Dashwood volunteered to Sherringham
+in a friendly but discriminating manner.
+
+"Constance and Juliet--take care you don't mix them," said Sherringham.
+
+"I want to be various. You once told me I had a hundred characters,"
+Miriam returned.
+
+"Ah, _vous en etes la_?" cried the old actress. "You may have a hundred
+characters, but you've only three plays. I'm told that's all there are
+in English."
+
+Miriam, admirably indifferent to this charge, appealed to Peter. "What
+arrangements have you made? What do the people want?"
+
+"The people at the theatre?"
+
+"I'm afraid they don't want _King John_, and I don't believe they hunger
+for _Antony and Cleopatra_," Basil Dashwood suggested. "Ships and sieges
+and armies and pyramids, you know: we mustn't be too heavy."
+
+"Oh I hate scenery!" the girl sighed.
+
+"_Elle est superbe_," said Madame Carre. "You must put those pieces on
+the stage: how will you do it?"
+
+"Oh we know how to get up a play in London, Madame Carre"--Mr. Dashwood
+was all geniality. "They put money on it, you know."
+
+"On it? But what do they put _in_ it? Who'll interpret them? Who'll
+manage a style like that--the style of which the rhapsodies she has just
+repeated are a specimen? Whom have you got that one has ever heard of?"
+
+"Oh you'll hear of a good deal when once she gets started," Dashwood
+cheerfully contended.
+
+Madame Carre looked at him a moment; then, "I feel that you'll become
+very bad," she said to Miriam. "I'm glad I shan't see it."
+
+"People will do things for me--I'll make them," the girl declared. "I'll
+stir them up so that they'll have ideas."
+
+"What people, pray?"
+
+"Ah terrible woman!" Peter theatrically groaned.
+
+"We translate your pieces--there will be plenty of parts," Basil
+Dashwood said.
+
+"Why then go out of the door to come in at the window?--especially if
+you smash it! An English arrangement of a French piece is a pretty woman
+with her back turned."
+
+"Do you really want to keep her?" Sherringham asked of Madame
+Carre--quite as if thinking for a moment that this after all might be
+possible.
+
+She bent her strange eyes on him. "No, you're all too queer together. We
+couldn't be bothered with you and you're not worth it."
+
+"I'm glad it's 'together' that we're queer then--we can console each
+other."
+
+"If you only would; but you don't seem to! In short I don't understand
+you--I give you up. But it doesn't matter," said the old woman wearily,
+"for the theatre's dead and even you, _ma toute-belle_, won't bring it
+to life. Everything's going from bad to worse, and I don't care what
+becomes of you. You wouldn't understand us here and they won't
+understand you there, and everything's impossible, and no one's a whit
+the wiser, and it's not of the least consequence. Only when you raise
+your arms lift them just a little higher," Madame Carre added.
+
+"My mother will be happier _chez nous_" said Miriam, throwing her arms
+straight up and giving them a noble tragic movement.
+
+"You won't be in the least in the right path till your mother's in
+despair."
+
+"Well, perhaps we can bring that about even in London," Sherringham
+patiently laughed.
+
+"Dear Mrs. Rooth--she's great fun," Mr. Dashwood as imperturbably
+dropped.
+
+Miriam transferred the dark weight of her gaze to him as if she were
+practising. "_You_ won't upset her, at any rate." Then she stood with
+her beautiful and fatal mask before her hostess. "I want to do the
+modern too. I want to do _le drame_, with intense realistic effects."
+
+"And do you want to look like the portico of the Madeleine when it's
+draped for a funeral?" her instructress mocked. "Never, never. I don't
+believe you're various: that's not the way I see you. You're pure
+tragedy, with _de grands eclats de voix_ in the great style, or you're
+nothing."
+
+"Be beautiful--be only that," Peter urged with high interest. "Be only
+what you can be so well--something that one may turn to for a glimpse of
+perfection, to lift one out of all the vulgarities of the day."
+
+Thus apostrophised the girl broke out with one of the speeches of
+Racine's Phaedra, hushing her companions on the instant. "You'll be the
+English Rachel," said Basil Dashwood when she stopped.
+
+"Acting in French!" Madame Carre amended. "I don't believe in an English
+Rachel."
+
+"I shall have to work it out, what I shall be," Miriam concluded with a
+rich pensive effect.
+
+"You're in wonderfully good form to-day," Sherringham said to her; his
+appreciation revealing a personal subjection he was unable to conceal
+from his companions, much as he wished it.
+
+"I really mean to do everything."
+
+"Very well; after all Garrick did."
+
+"Then I shall be the Garrick of my sex."
+
+"There's a very clever author doing something for me; I should like you
+to see it," said Basil Dashwood, addressing himself equally to Miriam
+and to her diplomatic friend.
+
+"Ah if you've very clever authors----!" And Madame Carre spun the sound
+to the finest satiric thread.
+
+"I shall be very happy to see it," Peter returned.
+
+This response was so benevolent that Basil Dashwood presently began:
+"May I ask you at what theatre you've made arrangements?"
+
+Sherringham looked at him a moment. "Come and see me at the embassy and
+I'll tell you." Then he added: "I know your sister, Mrs. Lovick."
+
+"So I supposed: that's why I took the liberty of asking such a
+question."
+
+"It's no liberty, but Mr. Sherringham doesn't appear to be able to tell
+you," said Miriam.
+
+"Well, you know, it's a very curious world, all those theatrical people
+over there," Peter conceded.
+
+"Ah don't say anything against them when I'm one of them," Basil
+Dashwood laughed.
+
+"I might plead the absence of information," Peter returned, "as Miss
+Rooth has neglected to make us acquainted."
+
+Miriam vaguely smiled. "I know you both so little." But she presented
+them with a great stately air to each other, and the two men shook hands
+while Madame Carre observed them.
+
+"_Tiens_! you gentlemen meet here for the first time? You do right to
+become friends--that's the best thing. Live together in peace and mutual
+confidence. _C'est de beaucoup le plus sage_."
+
+"Certainly, for yoke-fellows," said Sherringham.
+
+He began the next moment to repeat to his new acquaintance some of the
+things he had been told in London; but their hostess stopped him off,
+waving the talk away with charming overdone stage horror and the young
+hands of the heroines of Marivaux. "Ah wait till you go--for that! Do
+you suppose I care for news of your mountebanks' booths?"
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+As many people know, there are not, in the famous Theatre Francais, more
+than a dozen good seats accessible to ladies.[*] The stalls are
+forbidden them, the boxes are a quarter of a mile from the stage and the
+balcony is a delusion save for a few chairs at either end of its vast
+horseshoe. But there are two excellent _baignoires d'avant-scene_, which
+indeed are by no means always to be had. It was, however, into one of
+them that, immediately after his return to Paris, Sherringham ushered
+Mrs. Rooth and her daughter, with the further escort of Basil Dashwood.
+He had chosen the evening of the reappearance of the celebrated
+Mademoiselle Voisin--she had been enjoying a _conge_ of three months--an
+actress whom Miriam had seen several times before and for whose method
+she professed a high though somewhat critical esteem. It was only for
+the return of this charming performer that Peter had been waiting to
+respond to Miriam's most ardent wish--that of spending an hour in the
+_foyer des artistes_ of the great theatre. She was the person whom he
+knew best in the house of Moliere; he could count on her to do them the
+honours some night when she was in the "bill," and to make the occasion
+sociable. Miriam had been impatient for it--she was so convinced that
+her eyes would be opened in the holy of holies; but wishing as
+particularly as he did to participate in her impression he had made her
+promise she wouldn't taste of this experience without him--not let
+Madame Carre, for instance, take her in his absence. There were
+questions the girl wished to put to Mademoiselle Voisin--questions
+which, having admired her from the balcony, she felt she was exactly the
+person to answer. She was more "in it" now, after all, than Madame
+Carre, in spite of her slenderer talent: she was younger, fresher, more
+modern and--Miriam found the word--less academic. She was in fine less
+"_vieux jeu_." Peter perfectly foresaw the day when his young friend
+would make indulgent allowances for poor Madame Carre, patronising her
+as an old woman of good intentions.
+
+[*: 1890]
+
+The play to-night was six months old, a large, serious, successful
+comedy by the most distinguished of authors, with a thesis, a chorus
+embodied in one character, a _scene a faire_ and a part full of
+opportunities for Mademoiselle Voisin. There were things to be said
+about this artist, strictures to be dropped as to the general quality of
+her art, and Miriam leaned back now, making her comments as if they cost
+her less, but the actress had knowledge and distinction and pathos, and
+our young lady repeated several times: "How quiet she is, how
+wonderfully quiet! Scarcely anything moves but her face and her voice.
+_Le geste rare_, but really expressive when it comes. I like that
+economy; it's the only way to make the gesture significant."
+
+"I don't admire the way she holds her arms," Basil Dash wood said: "like
+a _demoiselle de magasin_ trying on a jacket."
+
+"Well, she holds them at any rate. I daresay it's more than you do with
+yours."
+
+"Oh yes, she holds them; there's no mistake about that. 'I hold them, I
+hope, _hein_?' she seems to say to all the house." The young English
+professional laughed good-humouredly, and Sherringham was struck with
+the pleasant familiarity he had established with their brave companion.
+He was knowing and ready and he said in the first _entr'acte_--they were
+waiting for the second to go behind--amusing perceptive things. "They
+teach them to be ladylike and Voisin's always trying to show that. 'See
+how I walk, see how I sit, see how quiet I am and how I have _le geste
+rare_. Now can you say I ain't a lady?' She does it all as if she had a
+class."
+
+"Well, to-night I'm her class," said Miriam.
+
+"Oh I don't mean of actresses, but of _femmes du monde_. She shows them
+how to act in society."
+
+"You had better take a few lessons," Miriam retorted.
+
+"Ah you should see Voisin in society," Peter interposed.
+
+"Does she go into it?" Mrs. Rooth demanded with interest.
+
+Her friend hesitated. "She receives a great many people."
+
+"Why shouldn't they when they're nice?" Mrs. Rooth frankly wanted to
+know.
+
+"When the people are nice?" Miriam asked.
+
+"Now don't tell me she's not what one would wish," said Mrs. Rooth to
+Sherringham.
+
+"It depends on what that is," he darkly smiled.
+
+"What I should wish if she were my daughter," the old woman rejoined
+blandly.
+
+"Ah wish your daughter to act as well as that and you'll do the handsome
+thing for her!"
+
+"Well, she _seems_ to feel what she says," Mrs. Rooth piously risked.
+
+"She has some stiff things to say. I mean about her past," Basil
+Dashwood remarked. "The past--the dreadful past--on the stage!"
+
+"Wait till the end, to see how she comes out. We must all be merciful!"
+sighed Mrs. Rooth.
+
+"We've seen it before; you know what happens," Miriam observed to her
+mother.
+
+"I've seen so many I get them mixed."
+
+"Yes, they're all in queer predicaments. Poor old mother--what we show
+you!" laughed the girl.
+
+"Ah it will be what _you_ show me--something noble and wise!"
+
+"I want to do this; it's a magnificent part," said Miriam.
+
+"You couldn't put it on in London--they wouldn't swallow it," Basil
+Dashwood declared.
+
+"Aren't there things they do there to get over the difficulties?" the
+girl inquired.
+
+"You can't get over what _she did_!"--her companion had a rueful
+grimace.
+
+"Yes, we must pay, we must expiate!" Mrs. Rooth moaned as the curtain
+rose again.
+
+When the second act was over our friends passed out of their _baignoire_
+into those corridors of tribulation where the bristling _ouvreuse_, like
+a pawnbroker driving a roaring trade, mounts guard upon piles of
+heterogeneous clothing, and, gaining the top of the fine staircase which
+forms the state entrance and connects the statued vestibule of the
+basement with the grand tier of boxes, opened an ambiguous door composed
+of little mirrors and found themselves in the society of the initiated.
+The janitors were courteous folk who greeted Sherringham as an
+acquaintance, and he had no difficulty in marshalling his little troop
+toward the foyer. They traversed a low, curving lobby, hung with
+pictures and furnished with velvet-covered benches where several
+unrecognised persons of both sexes looked at them without hostility, and
+arrived at an opening, on the right, from which, by a short flight of
+steps, there was a descent to one of the wings of the stage. Here
+Miriam paused, in silent excitement, like a young warrior arrested by a
+glimpse of the battle-field. Her vision was carried off through a lane
+of light to the point of vantage from which the actor held the house;
+but there was a hushed guard over the place and curiosity could only
+glance and pass.
+
+Then she came with her companions to a sort of parlour with a polished
+floor, not large and rather vacant, where her attention flew delightedly
+to a coat-tree, in a corner, from which three or four dresses were
+suspended--dresses she immediately perceived to be costumes in that
+night's play--accompanied by a saucer of something and a much-worn
+powder-puff casually left on a sofa. This was a familiar note in the
+general impression of high decorum which had begun at the threshold--a
+sense of majesty in the place. Miriam rushed at the powder-puff--there
+was no one in the room--snatched it up and gazed at it with droll
+veneration, then stood rapt a moment before the charming petticoats
+("That's Dunoyer's first underskirt," she said to her mother) while
+Sherringham explained that in this apartment an actress traditionally
+changed her gown when the transaction was simple enough to save the long
+ascent to her _loge_. He felt himself a cicerone showing a church to a
+party of provincials; and indeed there was a grave hospitality in the
+air, mingled with something academic and important, the tone of an
+institution, a temple, which made them all, out of respect and delicacy,
+hold their breath a little and tread the shining floors with discretion.
+
+These precautions increased--Mrs. Rooth crept about like a friendly but
+undomesticated cat--after they entered the foyer itself, a square,
+spacious saloon covered with pictures and relics and draped in official
+green velvet, where the _genius loci_ holds a reception every night in
+the year. The effect was freshly charming to Peter; he was fond of the
+place, always saw it again with pleasure, enjoyed its honourable look
+and the way, among the portraits and scrolls, the records of a splendid
+history, the green velvet and the waxed floors, the _genius loci_ seemed
+to be "at home" in the quiet lamplight. At the end of the room, in an
+ample chimney, blazed a fire of logs. Miriam said nothing; they looked
+about, noting that most of the portraits and pictures were
+"old-fashioned," and Basil Dashwood expressed disappointment at the
+absence of all the people they wanted most to see. Three or four
+gentlemen in evening dress circulated slowly, looking, like themselves,
+at the pictures, and another gentleman stood before a lady, with whom he
+was in conversation, seated against the wall. The foyer resembled in
+these conditions a ball-room, cleared for the dance, before the guests
+or the music had arrived.
+
+"Oh it's enough to see _this_; it makes my heart beat," said Miriam.
+"It's full of the vanished past, it makes me cry. I feel them here, all,
+the great artists I shall never see. Think of Rachel--look at her grand
+portrait there!--and how she stood on these very boards and trailed over
+them the robes of Hermione and Phedre." The girl broke out theatrically,
+as on the spot was right, not a bit afraid of her voice as soon as it
+rolled through the room; appealing to her companions as they stood under
+the chandelier and making the other persons present, who had already
+given her some attention, turn round to stare at so unusual a specimen
+of the English miss. She laughed, musically, when she noticed this, and
+her mother, scandalised, begged her to lower her tone. "It's all right.
+I produce an effect," said Miriam: "it shan't be said that I too haven't
+had my little success in the maison de Moliere." And Sherringham
+repeated that it was all right--the place was familiar with mirth and
+passion, there was often wonderful talk there, and it was only the
+setting that was still and solemn. It happened that this evening--there
+was no knowing in advance--the scene was not characteristically
+brilliant; but to confirm his assertion, at the moment he spoke,
+Mademoiselle Dunoyer, who was also in the play, came into the room
+attended by a pair of gentlemen.
+
+She was the celebrated, the perpetual, the necessary _ingenue_, who with
+all her talent couldn't have represented a woman of her actual age. She
+had the gliding, hopping movement of a small bird, the same air of
+having nothing to do with time, and the clear, sure, piercing note, a
+miracle of exact vocalisation. She chaffed her companions, she chaffed
+the room; she might have been a very clever little girl trying to
+personate a more innocent big one. She scattered her amiability
+about--showing Miriam how the children of Moliere took their ease--and
+it quickly placed her in the friendliest communication with Peter
+Sherringham, who already enjoyed her acquaintance and who now extended
+it to his companions, and in particular to the young lady _sur le point
+d'entrer au theatre._
+
+"You deserve a happier lot," said the actress, looking up at Miriam
+brightly, as if to a great height, and taking her in; upon which
+Sherringham left them together a little and led Mrs. Rooth and young
+Dashwood to consider further some of the pictures.
+
+"Most delightful, most curious," the old woman murmured about
+everything; while Basil Dashwood exclaimed in the presence of most of
+the portraits: "But their ugliness--their ugliness: did you ever see
+such a collection of hideous people? And those who were supposed to be
+good-looking--the beauties of the past--they're worse than the others.
+Ah you may say what you will, _nous sommes mieux que ca_!" Sherringham
+suspected him of irritation, of not liking the theatre of the great
+rival nation to be thrust down his throat. They returned to Miriam and
+Mademoiselle Dunoyer, and Peter asked the actress a question about one
+of the portraits to which there was no name attached. She replied, like
+a child who had only played about the room, that she was _toute
+honteuse_ not to be able to tell him the original: she had forgotten,
+she had never asked--"_Vous allez me trouver bien legere_!" She appealed
+to the other persons present, who formed a gallery for her, and laughed
+in delightful ripples at their suggestions, which she covered with
+ridicule. She bestirred herself; she declared she would ascertain, she
+shouldn't be happy till she did, and swam out of the room, with the
+prettiest paddles, to obtain the information, leaving behind her a
+perfume of delicate kindness and gaiety. She seemed above all things
+obliging, and Peter pronounced her almost as natural off the stage as
+on. She didn't come back.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Whether he had prearranged it is more than I can say, but Mademoiselle
+Voisin delayed so long to show herself that Mrs. Rooth, who wished to
+see the rest of the play, though she had sat it out on another occasion,
+expressed a returning relish for her corner of the _baignoire_ and gave
+her conductor the best pretext he could have desired for asking Basil
+Dashwood to be so good as to escort her back. When the young actor, of
+whose personal preference Peter was quite aware, had led Mrs. Rooth away
+with an absence of moroseness which showed that his striking resemblance
+to a gentleman was not kept for the footlights, the two others sat on a
+divan in the part of the room furthest from the entrance, so that it
+gave them a degree of privacy, and Miriam watched the coming and going
+of their fellow-visitors and the indefinite people, attached to the
+theatre, hanging about, while her companion gave a name to some of the
+figures, Parisian celebrities.
+
+"Fancy poor Dashwood cooped up there with mamma!" the girl exclaimed
+whimsically.
+
+"You're awfully cruel to him; but that's of course," said Sherringham.
+
+"It seems to me I'm as kind as you; you sent him off."
+
+"That was for your mother; she was tired."
+
+"Oh gammon! And why, if I _were_ cruel, should it be of course?"
+
+"Because you must destroy and torment and wear out--that's your nature.
+But you can't help your type, can you?"
+
+"My type?" she echoed.
+
+"It's bad, perverse, dangerous. It's essentially insolent."
+
+"And pray what's yours when you talk like that? Would you say such
+things if you didn't know the depths of my good nature?"
+
+"Your good nature all comes back to that," said Sherringham. "It's an
+abyss of ruin--for others. You've no respect. I'm speaking of the
+artistic character--in the direction and in the plentitude in which you
+have it. It's unscrupulous, nervous, capricious, wanton."
+
+"I don't know about respect. One can be good," Miriam mused and
+reasoned.
+
+"It doesn't matter so long as one's powerful," he returned. "We can't
+have everything, and surely we ought to understand that we must pay for
+things. A splendid organisation for a special end, like yours, is so
+rare and rich and fine that we oughtn't to grudge it its conditions."
+
+"What do you call its conditions?" Miriam asked as she turned and looked
+at him.
+
+"Oh the need to take its ease, to take up space, to make itself at home
+in the world, to square its elbows and knock, others about. That's large
+and free; it's the good nature you speak of. You must forage and ravage
+and leave a track behind you; you must live upon the country you
+traverse. And you give such delight that, after all, you're
+welcome--you're infinitely welcome!"
+
+"I don't know what you mean. I only care for the idea," the girl said.
+
+"That's exactly what I pretend--and we must all help you to it. You use
+us, you push us about, you break us up. We're your tables and chair, the
+simple furniture of your life."
+
+"Whom do you mean by 'we'?"
+
+Peter gave an ironic laugh. "Oh don't be afraid--there will be plenty of
+others!"
+
+She made no return to this, but after a moment broke out again. "Poor
+Dashwood immured with mamma--he's like a lame chair that one has put
+into the corner."
+
+"Don't break him up before he has served. I really believe something
+will come out of him," her companion went on. "However, you'll break me
+up first," he added, "and him probably never at all."
+
+"And why shall I honour you so much more?"
+
+"Because I'm a better article and you'll feel that."
+
+"You've the superiority of modesty--I see."
+
+"I'm better than a young mountebank--I've vanity enough to say that."
+
+She turned on him with a flush in her cheek and a splendid dramatic
+face. "How you hate us! Yes, at bottom, below your little cold taste,
+you _hate_ us!" she repeated.
+
+He coloured too, met her eyes, looked into them a minute, seemed to
+accept the imputation and then said quickly: "Give it up: come away with
+me."
+
+"Come away with you?"
+
+"Leave this place. Give it up."
+
+"You brought me here, you insisted it should be only you, and now you
+must stay," she declared with a head-shake and a high manner. "You
+should know what you want, dear Mr. Sherringham."
+
+"I do--I know now. Come away before you see her."
+
+"Before----?" she seemed to wonder.
+
+"She's success, this wonderful Voisin, she's triumph, she's full
+accomplishment: the hard, brilliant realisation of what I want to avert
+for you." Miriam looked at him in silence, the cold light still in her
+face, and he repeated: "Give it up--give it up."
+
+Her eyes softened after a little; she smiled and then said: "Yes, you're
+better than poor Dashwood."
+
+"Give it up and we'll live for ourselves, in ourselves, in something
+that can have a sanctity."
+
+"All the same you do hate us," the girl went on.
+
+"I don't want to be conceited, but I mean that I'm sufficiently fine and
+complicated to tempt you. I'm an expensive modern watch with a wonderful
+escapement--therefore you'll smash me if you can."
+
+"Never--never!" she said as she got up. "You tell me the hour too well."
+She quitted her companion and stood looking at Gerome's fine portrait of
+the pale Rachel invested with the antique attributes of tragedy. The
+rise of the curtain had drawn away most of the company. Peter, from his
+bench, watched his friend a little, turning his eyes from her to the
+vivid image of the dead actress and thinking how little she suffered by
+the juxtaposition. Presently he came over and joined her again and she
+resumed: "I wonder if that's what your cousin had in his mind."
+
+"My cousin----?"
+
+"What was his name? Mr. Dormer; that first day at Madame Carre's. He
+offered to paint my portrait."
+
+"I remember. I put him up to it."
+
+"Was he thinking of this?"
+
+"I doubt if he has ever seen it. I daresay I was."
+
+"Well, when we go to London he must do it," said Miriam.
+
+"Oh there's no hurry," Peter was moved to reply.
+
+"Don't you want my picture?" asked the girl with one of her successful
+touches.
+
+"I'm not sure I want it from _him_. I don't know quite what he'd make of
+you."
+
+"He looked so clever--I liked him. I saw him again at your party."
+
+"He's a jolly good fellow; but what's one to say," Peter put to her, "of
+a painter who goes for his inspiration to the House of Commons?"
+
+"To the House of Commons?" she echoed.
+
+"He has lately got himself elected."
+
+"Dear me, what a pity! I wanted to sit for him. But perhaps he won't
+have me--as I'm not a member of Parliament."
+
+"It's my sister, rather, who has got him in."
+
+"Your sister who was at your house that day? What has she to do with
+it?" Miriam asked.
+
+"Why she's his cousin just as I am. And in addition," Sherringham went
+on, "she's to be married to him."
+
+"Married--really?" She had a pause, but she continued. "So he paints
+_her_, I suppose?"
+
+"Not much, probably. His talent in that line isn't what she esteems in
+him most."
+
+"It isn't great, then?"
+
+"I haven't the least idea."
+
+"And in the political line?" the girl persisted.
+
+"I scarcely can tell. He's very clever."
+
+"He does paint decently, then?"
+
+"I daresay."
+
+Miriam looked once more at Gerome's picture. "Fancy his going into the
+House of Commons! And your sister put him there?"
+
+"She worked, she canvassed."
+
+"Ah you're a queer family!" she sighed, turning round at the sound of a
+step.
+
+"We're lost--here's Mademoiselle Voisin," said Sherringham.
+
+This celebrity presented herself smiling and addressing Miriam. "I acted
+for _you_ to-night--I did my best."
+
+"What a pleasure to speak to you, to thank you!" the girl murmured
+admiringly. She was startled and dazzled.
+
+"I couldn't come to you before, but now I've got a rest--for half an
+hour," the actress went on. Gracious and passive, as if a little spent,
+she let Sherringham, without looking at him, take her hand and raise it
+to his lips. "I'm sorry I make you lose the others--they're so good in
+this act," she added.
+
+"We've seen them before and there's nothing so good as you," Miriam
+promptly returned.
+
+"I like my part," said Mademoiselle Voisin gently, smiling still at our
+young lady with clear, charming eyes. "One's always better in that
+case."
+
+"She's so bad sometimes, you know!" Peter jested to Miriam; leading the
+actress thus to glance at him, kindly and vaguely, in a short silence
+which you couldn't call on her part embarrassment, but which was still
+less affectation.
+
+"And it's so interesting to be here--so interesting!" Miriam protested.
+
+"Ah you like our old house? Yes, we're very proud of it." And
+Mademoiselle Voisin smiled again at Sherringham all good-humouredly, but
+as if to say: "Well, here I am, and what do you want of me? Don't ask me
+to invent it myself, but if you'll tell me I'll do it." Miriam admired
+the note of discreet interrogation in her voice--the slight suggestion
+of surprise at their "old house" being liked. This performer was an
+astonishment from her seeming still more perfect on a nearer view--which
+was not, the girl had an idea, what performers usually did. This was
+very encouraging to her--it widened the programme of a young lady about
+to embrace the scenic career. To have so much to show before the
+footlights and yet to have so much left when you came off--that was
+really wonderful. Mademoiselle Voisin's eyes, as one looked into them,
+were still more agreeable than the distant spectator would have
+supposed; and there was in her appearance an extreme finish which
+instantly suggested to Miriam that she herself, in comparison, was big
+and rough and coarse.
+
+"You're lovely to-night--you're particularly lovely," Sherringham said
+very frankly, translating Miriam's own impression and at the same time
+giving her an illustration of the way that, in Paris at least, gentlemen
+expressed themselves to the stars of the drama. She thought she knew her
+companion very well and had been witness of the degree to which, in such
+general conditions, his familiarity could increase; but his address to
+the slim, distinguished, harmonious woman before them had a different
+quality, the note of a special usage. If Miriam had had an apprehension
+that such directness might be taken as excessive it was removed by the
+manner in which Mademoiselle Voisin returned:
+
+"Oh one's always well enough when one's made up; one's always exactly
+the same." That served as an example of the good taste with which a star
+of the drama could receive homage that was wanting in originality.
+Miriam determined on the spot that this should be the way _she_ would
+ever receive it. The grace of her new acquaintance was the greater as
+the becoming bloom to which she alluded as artificial was the result of
+a science so consummate that it had none of the grossness of a mask. The
+perception of all this was exciting to our young aspirant, and her
+excitement relieved itself in the inquiry, which struck her as rude as
+soon as she had uttered it:
+
+"You acted for 'me'? How did you know? What am I to you?"
+
+"Monsieur Sherringham has told me about you. He says we're nothing
+beside you--that you're to be the great star of the future. I'm proud
+that you've seen me."
+
+"That of course is what I tell every one," Peter acknowledged a trifle
+awkwardly to Miriam.
+
+"I can believe it when I see you. _Je vous ai bien observee_," the
+actress continued in her sweet conciliatory tone.
+
+Miriam looked from one of her interlocutors to the other as if there
+were joy for her in this report of Sherringham's remarks--joy
+accompanied and partly mitigated, however, by a quicker vision of what
+might have passed between a secretary of embassy and a creature so
+exquisite as Mademoiselle Voisin. "Ah you're wonderful people--a most
+interesting impression!" she yearningly sighed.
+
+"I was looking for you; he had prepared me. We're such old friends!"
+said the actress in a tone courteously exempt from intention: upon which
+Sherringham, again taking her hand, raised it to his lips with a
+tenderness which her whole appearance seemed to bespeak for her, a sort
+of practical consideration and carefulness of touch, as if she were an
+object precious and frail, an instrument for producing rare sounds, to
+be handled, like a legendary violin, with a recognition of its value.
+
+"Your dressing-room is so pretty--show her your dressing-room," he went
+on.
+
+"Willingly, if she'll come up. _Vous savez que c'est une montee."_
+
+"It's a shame to inflict it on _you_," Miriam objected.
+
+"_Comment donc?_ If it will interest you in the least!" They exchanged
+civilities, almost caresses, trying which could have the nicest manner
+to the other. It was the actress's manner that struck Miriam most; it
+denoted such a training, so much taste, expressed such a ripe conception
+of urbanity.
+
+"No wonder she acts well when she has that tact--feels, perceives, is so
+remarkable, _mon Dieu, mon Dieu!"_ the girl said to herself as they
+followed their conductress into another corridor and up a wide, plain
+staircase. The staircase was spacious and long and this part of the
+establishment sombre and still, with the gravity of a college or a
+convent. They reached another passage lined with little doors, on each
+of which the name of a comedian was painted, and here the aspect became
+still more monastic, like that of a row of solitary cells. Mademoiselle
+Voisin led the way to her own door all obligingly and as if wishing to
+be hospitable; she dropped little subdued, friendly attempts at
+explanation on the way. At her threshold the monasticism stopped--Miriam
+found herself in a wonderfully upholstered nook, a nest of lamplight and
+delicate cretonne. Save for its pair of long glasses it might have been
+a tiny boudoir, with a water-colour drawing of value in each of its
+panels of stretched stuff, with its crackling fire and its charming
+order. It was intensely bright and extremely hot, singularly pretty and
+exempt from litter. Nothing lay about, but a small draped doorway led
+into an inner sanctuary. To Miriam it seemed royal; it immediately made
+the art of the comedian the most distinguished thing in the world. It
+was just such a place as they _should_ have for their intervals if they
+were expected to be great artists. It was a result of the same evolution
+as Mademoiselle Voisin herself--not that our young lady found this
+particular term at hand to express her idea. But her mind was flooded
+with an impression of style, of refinement, of the long continuity of a
+tradition. The actress said, _"Voila, c'est tout!"_ as if it were little
+enough and there were even something clumsy in her having brought them
+so far for nothing, and in their all sitting there waiting and looking
+at each other till it was time for her to change her dress. But to
+Miriam it was occupation enough to note what she did and said: these
+things and her whole person and carriage struck our young woman as
+exquisite in their adaptation to the particular occasion. She had had an
+idea that foreign actresses were rather of the _cabotin_ order, but her
+hostess suggested to her much more a princess than a _cabotine_. She
+would do things as she liked and do them straight off: Miriam couldn't
+fancy her in the gropings and humiliations of rehearsal. Everything in
+her had been sifted and formed, her tone was perfect, her amiability
+complete, and she might have been the charming young wife of a secretary
+of state receiving a pair of strangers of distinction. The girl observed
+all her movements. And then, as Sherringham had said, she was
+particularly lovely. But she suddenly told this gentleman that she must
+put him _a la porte_--she wanted to change her dress. He retired and
+returned to the foyer, where Miriam was to rejoin him after remaining
+the few minutes more with Mademoiselle Voisin and coming down with her.
+He waited for his companion, walking up and down and making up his mind;
+and when she presently came in he said to her:
+
+"Please don't go back for the rest of the play. Stay here." They now had
+the foyer virtually to themselves.
+
+"I want to stay here. I like it better," She moved back to the
+chimney-piece, from above which the cold portrait of Rachel looked down,
+and as he accompanied her he went on:
+
+"I meant what I said just now."
+
+"What you said to Voisin?"
+
+"No, no; to you. Give it up and live with _me."_
+
+"Give it up?" She turned her stage face on him.
+
+"Give it up and I'll marry you to-morrow."
+
+"This is a happy time to ask it!" she said with superior amusement. "And
+this is a good place!"
+
+"Very good indeed, and that's why I speak: it's a place to make one
+choose--it puts it all before one."
+
+"To make _you_ choose, you mean. I'm much obliged, but that's not my
+choice," laughed Miriam.
+
+"You shall be anything you like except this."
+
+"Except what I most want to be? I _am_ much obliged."
+
+"Don't you care for me? Haven't you any gratitude?" Sherringham
+insisted.
+
+"Gratitude for kindly removing the blest cup from my lips? I want to be
+what _she_ is--I want it more than ever."
+
+"Ah what she is--!" He took it impatiently.
+
+"Do you mean I can't? Well see if I can't. Tell me more about her--tell
+me everything."
+
+"Haven't you seen for yourself and, knowing things as you do, can't you
+judge?"
+
+"She's strange, she's mysterious," Miriam allowed, looking at the fire.
+"She showed us nothing--nothing of her real self."
+
+"So much the better, all things considered."
+
+"Are there all sorts of other things in her life? That's what I
+believe," the girl went on, raising her eyes to him.
+
+"I can't tell you what there is in the life of such a woman."
+
+"Imagine--when she's so perfect!" she exclaimed thoughtfully. "Ah she
+kept me off--she kept me off! Her charming manner is in itself a kind
+of contempt. It's an abyss--it's the wall of China. She has a hard
+polish, an inimitable surface, like some wonderful porcelain that costs
+more than you'd think."
+
+"Do you want to become like that?" Sherringham asked.
+
+"If I could I should be enchanted. One can always try."
+
+"You must act better than she," he went on.
+
+"Better? I thought you wanted me to give it up."
+
+"Ah I don't know what I want," he cried, "and you torment me and turn me
+inside out! What I want is you yourself."
+
+"Oh don't worry," said Miriam--now all kindly. Then she added that
+Mademoiselle Voisin had invited her to "call"; to which Sherringham
+replied with a certain dryness that she would probably not find that
+necessary. This made the girl stare and she asked: "Do you mean it won't
+do on account of mamma's prejudices?"
+
+"Say this time on account of mine."
+
+"Do you mean because she has lovers?"
+
+"Her lovers are none of our business."
+
+"None of mine, I see. So you've been one of them?"
+
+"No such luck!"
+
+"What a pity!" she richly wailed. "I should have liked to see that. One
+must see everything--to be able to do everything." And as he pressed for
+what in particular she had wished to see she replied: "The way a woman
+like that receives one of the old ones."
+
+Peter gave a groan at this, which was at the same time partly a laugh,
+and, turning away to drop on a bench, ejaculated: "You'll do--you'll
+do!"
+
+He sat there some minutes with his elbows on his knees and his face in
+his hands. His friend remained looking at the portrait of Rachel, after
+which she put to him: "Doesn't such a woman as that receive--receive
+every one?"
+
+"Every one who goes to see her, no doubt."
+
+"And who goes?"
+
+"Lots of men--clever men, eminent men."
+
+"Ah what a charming life! Then doesn't she go out?"
+
+"Not what we Philistines mean by that--not into society, never. She
+never enters a lady's drawing-room."
+
+"How strange, when one's as distinguished as that; except that she must
+escape a lot of stupidities and _corvees_. Then where does she learn
+such manners?"
+
+"She teaches manners, _a ses heures_: she doesn't need to learn them."
+
+"Oh she has given me ideas! But in London actresses go into society,"
+Miriam continued.
+
+"Oh into ours, such as it is. In London _nous melons les genres_."
+
+"And shan't I go--I mean if I want?"
+
+"You'll have every facility to bore yourself. Don't doubt it."
+
+"And doesn't she feel excluded?" Miriam asked.
+
+"Excluded from what? She has the fullest life."
+
+"The fullest?"
+
+"An intense artistic life. The cleverest men in Paris talk over her work
+with her; the principal authors of plays discuss with her subjects and
+characters and questions of treatment. She lives in the world of art."
+
+"Ah the world of art--how I envy her! And you offer me Dashwood!"
+
+Sherringham rose in his emotion. "I 'offer' you--?"
+
+Miriam burst out laughing. "You look so droll! You offer me yourself,
+then, instead of all these things."
+
+"My dear child, I also am a very clever man," he said, trying to sink
+his consciousness of having for a moment stood gaping.
+
+"You are--you are; I delight in you. No ladies at all--no _femmes comme
+il faut?"_ she began again.
+
+"Ah what do _they_ matter? Your business is the artistic life!" he broke
+out with inconsequence, irritated, moreover, at hearing her sound that
+trivial note again.
+
+"You're a dear--your charming good sense comes back to you! What do you
+want of me, then?"
+
+"I want you for myself--not for others; and now, in time, before
+anything's done."
+
+"Why, then, did you bring me here? Everything's done--I feel it
+to-night."
+
+"I know the way you should look at it--if you do look at it at all,"
+Sherringham conceded.
+
+"That's so easy! I thought you liked the stage so," Miriam artfully
+added.
+
+"Don't you want me to be a great swell?"
+
+"And don't you want _me_ to be?"
+
+"You _will_ be--you'll share my glory."
+
+"So will you share mine."
+
+"The husband of an actress? Yes, I see myself that!" Peter cried with a
+frank ring of disgust.
+
+"It's a silly position, no doubt. But if you're too good for it why talk
+about it? Don't you think I'm important?" she demanded. Her companion
+met her eyes and she suddenly said in a different tone: "Ah why should
+we quarrel when you've been so kind, so generous? Can't we always be
+friends--the truest friends?"
+
+Her voice sank to the sweetest cadence and her eyes were grateful and
+good as they rested on him. She sometimes said things with such
+perfection that they seemed dishonest, but in this case he was stirred
+to an expressive response. Just as he was making it, however, he was
+moved to utter other words: "Take care, here's Dashwood!" Mrs. Rooth's
+tried attendant was in the doorway. He had come back to say that they
+really must relieve him.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK FIFTH
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+Mrs. Dallow came up to London soon after the meeting of Parliament; she
+made no secret of the fact that she was fond of "town" and that in
+present conditions it would of course not have become less attractive to
+her. But she prepared to retreat again for the Easter vacation, not to
+go back to Harsh, but to pay a couple of country visits. She did not,
+however, depart with the crowd--she never did anything with the
+crowd--but waited till the Monday after Parliament rose; facing with
+composure, in Great Stanhope Street, the horrors, as she had been taught
+to consider them, of a Sunday out of the session. She had done what she
+could to mitigate them by asking a handful of "stray men" to dine with
+her that evening. Several members of this disconsolate class sought
+comfort in Great Stanhope Street in the afternoon, and them for the most
+part she also invited to return at eight o'clock. There were accordingly
+almost too many people at dinner; there were even a couple of wives.
+Nick Dormer was then present, though he had not been in the afternoon.
+Each of the other persons had said on coming in, "So you've not
+gone--I'm awfully glad." Mrs. Dallow had replied, "No, I've not gone,"
+but she had in no case added that she was glad, nor had she offered an
+explanation. She never offered explanations; she always assumed that no
+one could invent them so well as those who had the florid taste to
+desire them.
+
+And in this case she was right, since it is probable that few of her
+visitors failed to say to themselves that her not having gone would have
+had something to do with Dormer. That could pass for an explanation with
+many of Mrs. Dallow's friends, who as a general thing were not morbidly
+analytic; especially with those who met Nick as a matter of course at
+dinner. His figuring at this lady's entertainments, being in her house
+whenever a candle was lighted, was taken as a sign that there was
+something rather particular between them. Nick had said to her more than
+once that people would wonder why they didn't marry; but he was wrong in
+this, inasmuch as there were many of their friends to whom it wouldn't
+have occurred that his position could be improved. That they were
+cousins was a fact not so evident to others as to themselves, in
+consequence of which they appeared remarkably intimate. The person
+seeing clearest in the matter was Mrs. Gresham, who lived so much in the
+world that being left now and then to one's own company had become her
+idea of true sociability. She knew very well that if she had been
+privately engaged to a young man as amiable as Nick Dormer she would
+have managed that publicity shouldn't play such a part in their
+intercourse; and she had her secret scorn for the stupidity of people
+whose conception of Nick's relation to Julia rested on the fact that he
+was always included in her parties. "If he never was there they might
+talk," she said to herself. But Mrs. Gresham was supersubtle. To her it
+would have appeared natural that her friend should celebrate the
+parliamentary recess by going down to Harsh and securing the young man's
+presence there for a fortnight; she recognised Mrs. Dallow's actual plan
+as a comparatively poor substitute--the project of spending the
+holidays in other people's houses, to which Nick had also promised to
+come. Mrs. Gresham was romantic; she wondered what was the good of mere
+snippets and snatches, the chances that any one might have, when large,
+still days _a deux_ were open to you--chances of which half the sanctity
+was in what they excluded. However, there were more unsettled matters
+between Mrs. Dallow and her queer kinsman than even Mrs. Gresham's fine
+insight could embrace. She was not on the Sunday evening before Easter
+among the guests in Great Stanhope Street; but if she had been Julia's
+singular indifference to observation would have stopped short of
+encouraging her to remain in the drawing-room, along with Nick, after
+the others had gone. I may add that Mrs. Gresham's extreme curiosity
+would have emboldened her as little to do so. She would have taken for
+granted that the pair wished to be alone together, though she would have
+regarded this only as a snippet. The company had at all events stayed
+late, and it was nearly twelve o'clock when the last of them, standing
+before the fire in the room they had quitted, broke out to his
+companion:
+
+"See here, Julia, how long do you really expect me to endure this kind
+of thing?" Julia made him no answer; she only leaned back in her chair
+with her eyes upon his. He met her gaze a moment; then he turned round
+to the fire and for another moment looked into it. After this he faced
+his hostess again with the exclamation: "It's so foolish--it's so
+damnably foolish!"
+
+She still said nothing, but at the end of a minute she spoke without
+answering him. "I shall expect you on Tuesday, and I hope you'll come by
+a decent train."
+
+"What do you mean by a decent train?"
+
+"I mean I hope you'll not leave it till the last thing before dinner, so
+that we can have a little walk or something."
+
+"What's a little walk or something? Why, if you make such a point of my
+coming to Griffin, do you want me to come at all?"
+
+She hesitated an instant; then she returned; "I knew you hated it!"
+
+"You provoke me so," said Nick. "You try to, I think."
+
+"And Severals is still worse. You'll get out of that if you can," Mrs.
+Dallow went on.
+
+"If I can? What's to prevent me?"
+
+"You promised Lady Whiteroy. But of course that's nothing."
+
+"I don't care a straw for Lady Whiteroy."
+
+"And you promised me. But that's less still."
+
+"It _is_ foolish--it's quite idiotic," said Nick with his hands in his
+pockets and his eyes on the ceiling.
+
+There was another silence, at the end of which Julia remarked: "You
+might have answered Mr. Macgeorge when he spoke to you."
+
+"Mr. Macgeorge--what has he to do with it?"
+
+"He has to do with your getting on a little. If you think that's the
+way--!"
+
+Nick broke into a laugh. "I like lessons in getting on--in other words I
+suppose you mean in urbanity--from you, Julia!"
+
+"Why not from me?"
+
+"Because you can do nothing base. You're incapable of putting on a
+flattering manner to get something by it: therefore why should you
+expect me to? You're unflattering--that is, you're austere--in
+proportion as there may be something to be got."
+
+She sprang from her chair, coming toward him. "There's only one thing I
+want in the world--you know very well."
+
+"Yes, you want it so much that you won't even take it when it's pressed
+on you. How long do you seriously expect me to bear it?" Nick repeated.
+
+"I never asked you to do anything base," she said as she stood in front
+of him. "If I'm not clever about throwing myself into things it's all
+the more reason you should be."
+
+"If you're not clever, my dear Julia--?" Nick, close to her, placed his
+hands on her shoulders and shook her with a mixture of tenderness and
+passion. "You're clever enough to make me furious, sometimes!"
+
+She opened and closed her fan looking down at it while she submitted to
+his mild violence. "All I want is that when a man like Mr. Macgeorge
+talks to you you shouldn't appear bored to death. You used to be so
+charming under those inflictions. Now you appear to take no interest in
+anything. At dinner to-night you scarcely opened your lips; you treated
+them all as if you only wished they'd go."
+
+"I did wish they'd go. Haven't I told you a hundred times what I think
+of your salon?"
+
+"How then do you want me to live?" she asked. "Am I not to have a
+creature in the house?"
+
+"As many creatures as you like. Your freedom's complete and, as far as
+I'm concerned, always will be. Only when you challenge me and overhaul
+me--not justly, I think--I must confess the simple truth, that there are
+many of your friends I don't delight in."
+
+"Oh _your_ idea of pleasant people!" Julia lamented. "I should like once
+for all to know what it really is."
+
+"I can tell you what it really isn't: it isn't Mr. Macgeorge. He's a
+being almost grotesquely limited."
+
+"He'll be where you'll never be--unless you change."
+
+"To be where Mr. Macgeorge is not would be very much my desire.
+Therefore why should I change?" Nick demanded. "However, I hadn't the
+least intention of being rude to him, and I don't think I was," he went
+on. "To the best of my ability I assume a virtue if I haven't it; but
+apparently I'm not enough of a comedian."
+
+"If you haven't it?" she echoed. "It's when you say things like that
+that you're so dreadfully tiresome. As if there were anything that you
+haven't or mightn't have!"
+
+Nick turned away from her; he took a few impatient steps in the room,
+looking at the carpet, his hands always in his pockets. Then he came
+back to the fire with the observation: "It's rather hard to be found so
+wanting when one has tried to play one's part so beautifully." He paused
+with his eyes on her own and then went on with a vibration in his voice:
+"I've imperilled my immortal soul, or at least bemuddled my
+intelligence, by all the things I don't care for that I've tried to do,
+and all the things I detest that I've tried to be, and all the things I
+never can be that I've tried to look as if I were--all the appearances
+and imitations, the pretences and hypocrisies in which I've steeped
+myself to the eyes; and at the end of it (it serves me right!) my reward
+is simply to learn that I'm still not half humbug enough!"
+
+Julia looked away from him as soon as he had spoken these words; she
+attached her eyes to the clock behind him and observed irrelevantly:
+"I'm very sorry, but I think you had better go. I don't like you to stay
+after midnight."
+
+"Ah what you like and what you don't like, and where one begins and the
+other ends--all that's an impenetrable mystery!" the young man
+declared. But he took no further notice of her allusion to his
+departure, adding in a different tone: "'A man like Mr. Macgeorge'! When
+you say a thing of that sort in a certain, particular way I should
+rather like to suffer you to perish."
+
+Mrs. Dallow stared; it might have seemed for an instant that she was
+trying to look stupid. "How can I help it if a few years hence he's
+certain to be at the head of any Liberal Government?"
+
+"We can't help it of course, but we can help talking about it," Nick
+smiled. "If we don't mention it it mayn't be noticed."
+
+"You're trying to make me angry. You're in one of your vicious moods,"
+she returned, blowing out on the chimney-piece a guttering candle.
+
+"That I'm exasperated I've already had the honour very positively to
+inform you. All the same I maintain that I was irreproachable at dinner.
+I don't want you to think I shall always be as good as that."
+
+"You looked so out of it; you were as gloomy as if every earthly hope
+had left you, and you didn't make a single contribution to any
+discussion that took place. Don't you think I observe you?" she asked
+with an irony tempered by a tenderness unsuccessfully concealed.
+
+"Ah my darling, what you observe--!" Nick cried with a certain
+bitterness of amusement. But he added the next moment more seriously, as
+if his tone had been disrespectful: "You probe me to the bottom, no
+doubt."
+
+"You needn't come either to Griffin or to Severals if you don't want
+to."
+
+"Give them up yourself; stay here with me!"
+
+She coloured quickly as he said this, and broke out: "Lord, how you hate
+political houses!"
+
+"How can you say that when from February to August I spend every blessed
+night in one?"
+
+"Yes, and hate that worst of all."
+
+"So do half the people who are in it. You, my dear, must have so many
+things, so many people, so much _mise-en-scene_ and such a perpetual
+spectacle to live," Nick went on. "Perpetual motion, perpetual visits,
+perpetual crowds! If you go into the country you'll see forty people
+every day and be mixed up with them all day. The idea of a quiet
+fortnight in town, when by a happy if idiotic superstition everybody
+goes out of it, disconcerts and frightens you. It's the very time, it's
+the very place, to do a little work and possess one's soul."
+
+This vehement allocution found her evidently somewhat unprepared; but
+she was sagacious enough, instead of attempting for the moment a general
+rejoinder, to seize on a single phrase and say: "Work? What work can you
+do in London at such a moment as this?"
+
+Nick considered. "I might tell you I want to get up a lot of subjects,
+to sit at home and read blue-books; but that wouldn't be quite what I
+mean."
+
+"Do you mean you want to paint?"
+
+"Yes, that's it, since you gouge it out of me."
+
+"Why do you make such a mystery about it? You're at perfect liberty,"
+Julia said.
+
+She put out her hand to rest it on the mantel-shelf, but her companion
+took it on the way and held it in both his own. "You're delightful,
+Julia, when you speak in that tone--then I know why it is I love you.
+But I can't do anything if I go to Griffin, if I go to Severals."
+
+"I see--I see," she answered thoughtfully and kindly.
+
+"I've scarcely been inside of my studio for months, and I feel quite
+homesick for it. The idea of putting in a few quiet days there has taken
+hold of me: I rather cling to it."
+
+"It seems so odd your having a studio!" Julia dropped, speaking so
+quickly that the words were almost incomprehensible.
+
+"Doesn't it sound absurd, for all the good it does me, or I do _in_ it?
+Of course one can produce nothing but rubbish on such terms--without
+continuity or persistence, with just a few days here and there. I ought
+to be ashamed of myself, no doubt; but even my rubbish interests me.
+'_Guenille si l'on veut, ma guenille m'est chere_.' But I'll go down to
+Harsh with you in a moment, Julia," Nick pursued: "that would do as well
+if we could be quiet there, without people, without a creature; and I
+should really be perfectly content. You'd beautifully sit for me; it
+would be the occasion we've so often wanted and never found."
+
+She shook her head slowly and with a smile that had a meaning for him.
+"Thank you, my dear; nothing would induce me to go to Harsh with you."
+
+He looked at her hard. "What's the matter whenever it's a question of
+anything of that sort? Are you afraid of me?" She pulled her hand from
+him quickly, turning away; but he went on: "Stay with me here then, when
+everything's so right for it. We shall do beautifully--have the whole
+place, have the whole day, to ourselves. Hang your engagements!
+Telegraph you won't come. We'll live at the studio--you'll sit to me
+every day. Now or never's our chance--when shall we have so good a one?
+Think how charming it will be! I'll make you wish awfully that I may do
+something."
+
+"I can't get out of Griffin--it's impossible," Julia said, moving
+further away and with her back presented to him.
+
+"Then you _are_ afraid of me--simply!"
+
+She turned straight round, very pale. "Of course I am. You're welcome to
+know it."
+
+He went toward her, and for a moment she seemed to make another slight
+movement of retreat. This, however, was scarcely perceptible, and there
+was nothing to alarm in the tone of reasonable entreaty in which he
+spoke as he stood there. "Put an end, Julia, to our absurd situation--it
+really can't go on. You've no right to expect a man to be happy or
+comfortable in so false a position. We're spoken of odiously--of that we
+may be sure; and yet what good have we of it?"
+
+"Spoken of? Do I care for that?"
+
+"Do you mean you're indifferent because there are no grounds? That's
+just why I hate it."
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about!" she returned with sharp
+disdain.
+
+"Be my wife to-morrow--be my wife next week. Let us have done with this
+fantastic probation and be happy."
+
+"Leave me now--come back to-morrow. I'll write to you." She had the air
+of pleading with him at present, pleading as he pleaded.
+
+"You can't resign yourself to the idea of one's looking 'out of it'!"
+Nick laughed.
+
+"Come to-morrow, before lunch," she went on.
+
+"To be told I must wait six months more and then be sent about my
+business? Ah, Julia, Julia!" the young man groaned.
+
+Something in this simple lament--it sounded natural and perfectly
+unstudied--seemed straightway to make a great impression on her. "You
+shall wait no longer," she said after a short silence.
+
+"What do you mean by no longer?"
+
+"Give me about five weeks--say till the Whitsuntide recess."
+
+"Five weeks are a great deal," smiled Nick.
+
+"There are things to be done--you ought to understand."
+
+"I only understand how I love you."
+
+She let herself go--"Dearest Nick!"--and he caught her and kept her in
+his arms.
+
+"I've your promise then for five weeks hence to a day?" he demanded as
+she at last released herself.
+
+"We'll settle that--the exact day; there are things to consider and to
+arrange. Come to luncheon to-morrow."
+
+"I'll come early--I'll come at one," he said; and for a moment they
+stood all deeply and intimately taking each other in.
+
+"Do you think I _want_ to wait, any more than you?" she asked in
+congruity with this.
+
+"I don't feel so much out of it now!" he declared by way of answer.
+"You'll stay of course now--you'll give up your visits?"
+
+She had hold of the lappet of his coat; she had kept it in her hand even
+while she detached herself from his embrace. There was a white flower in
+his buttonhole that she looked at and played with a moment before she
+said; "I've a better idea--you needn't come to Griffin. Stay in your
+studio--do as you like--paint dozens of pictures."
+
+"Dozens? Barbarian!" Nick wailed.
+
+The epithet apparently had an endearing suggestion for her; it at any
+rate led her to let him possess himself of her head and, so holding it,
+kiss her--led her to say: "What on earth do I want but that you should
+do absolutely as you please and be as happy as you can?"
+
+He kissed her in another place at this; but he put it to her; "What
+dreadful proposition is coming now?"
+
+"I'll go off and do up my visits and come back."
+
+"And leave me alone?"
+
+"Don't be affected! You know you'll work much better without me. You'll
+live in your studio--I shall be well out of the way."
+
+"That's not what one wants of a sitter. How can I paint you?"
+
+"You can paint me all the rest of your life. I shall be a perpetual
+sitter."
+
+"I believe I could paint you without looking at you"--and his lighted
+face shone down on her. "You do excuse me then from those dreary
+places?"
+
+"How can I insist after what you said about the pleasure of keeping
+these days?" she admirably--it was so all sincerely--asked.
+
+"You're the best woman on earth--though it does seem odd you should rush
+away as soon as our little business is settled."
+
+"We shall make it up. I know what I'm about. And now go!" She ended by
+almost pushing him out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+It was certainly singular, in the light of other matters, that on
+sitting down in his studio after she had left town Nick should not, as
+regards the effort to project plastically some beautiful form, have felt
+more chilled by the absence of a friend who was such an embodiment of
+beauty. She was away and he missed her and longed for her, and yet
+without her the place was more filled with what he wanted to find in it.
+He turned into it with confused feelings, the strongest of which was a
+sense of release and recreation. It looked blighted and lonely and
+dusty, and his old studies, as he rummaged them out, struck him even as
+less inspired than the last time he had ventured to face them. But amid
+this neglected litter, in the colourless and obstructed light of a high
+north window which needed washing, he came nearer tasting the
+possibility of positive happiness: it appeared to him that, as he had
+said to Julia, he was more in possession of his soul. It was frivolity
+and folly, it was puerility, to spend valuable hours pottering over the
+vain implements of an art he had relinquished; and a certain shame that
+he had felt in presenting his plea to Julia that Sunday night arose from
+the sense not of what he clung to, but of what he had given up. He had
+turned his back on serious work, so that pottering was now all he could
+aspire to. It couldn't be fruitful, it couldn't be anything but
+ridiculous, almost ignoble; but it soothed his nerves, it was in the
+nature of a secret dissipation. He had never suspected he should some
+day have nerves on his own part to count with; but this possibility had
+been revealed to him on the day it became clear that he was letting
+something precious go. He was glad he had not to justify himself to the
+critical, for this might have been a delicate business. The critical
+were mostly absent; and besides, shut up all day in his studio, how
+should he ever meet them? It was the place in the world where he felt
+furthest away from his constituents. That was a part of the
+pleasure--the consciousness that for the hour the coast was clear and
+his mind independent. His mother and his sister had gone to Broadwood:
+Lady Agnes--the phrase sounds brutal but represents his state of
+mind--was well out of the way. He had written to her as soon as Julia
+left town--he had apprised her of the fact that his wedding-day was
+fixed: a relief for poor Lady Agnes to a period of intolerable
+mystification, of dark, dumb wondering and watching. She had said her
+say the day of the poll at Harsh; she was too proud to ask and too
+discreet to "nag"; so she could only wait for something that didn't
+come. The unconditioned loan of Broadwood had of course been something
+of a bribe to patience: she had at first felt that on the day she should
+take possession of that capital house Julia would indeed seem to have
+entered the family. But the gift had confirmed expectations just enough
+to make disappointment more bitter; and the discomfort was greater in
+proportion as she failed to discover what was the matter. Her daughter
+Grace was much occupied with this question, and brought it up for
+discussion in a manner irritating to her ladyship, who had a high theory
+of being silent about it, but who, however, in the long run, was more
+unhappy when, in consequence of a reprimand, the girl suggested no
+reasons at all than when she suggested stupid ones. It eased Lady Agnes
+a little to advert to the mystery when she could have the air of not
+having begun.
+
+The letter Nick received from her the first day of Passion Week in reply
+to his important communication was the only one he read at that moment;
+not counting of course the several notes Mrs. Dallow addressed to him
+from Griffin. There were letters piled up, as he knew, in Calcutta
+Gardens, which his servant had strict orders not to bring to the studio.
+Nick slept now in the bedroom attached to this retreat; got things, as
+he wanted them, from Calcutta Gardens; and dined at his club, where a
+stray surviving friend or two, seeing him prowl about the library in the
+evening, was free to impute to such eccentricity some subtly political
+basis. When he thought of his neglected letters he remembered Mr.
+Carteret's convictions on the subject of not "getting behind"; they made
+him laugh, in the slightly sonorous painting-room, as he bent over one
+of the old canvases that he had ventured to turn to the light. He was
+fully determined, however, to master his correspondence before going
+down, the last thing before Parliament should reassemble, to spend
+another day at Beauclere. Mastering his correspondence meant, in Nick's
+mind, breaking open envelopes; writing answers was scarcely involved in
+the idea. But Mr. Carteret would never guess that. Nick was not moved
+even to write to him that the affair with Julia was on the point of
+taking the form he had been so good as to desire: he reserved the
+pleasure of this announcement for a personal interview.
+
+The day before Good Friday, in the morning, his stillness was broken by
+a rat-tat-tat on the outer door of his studio, administered apparently
+by the knob of a walking-stick. His servant was out and he went to the
+door, wondering who his visitor could be at such a time, especially of
+the rather presuming class. The class was indicated by the visitor's
+failure to look for the bell--since there _was_ a bell, though it
+required a little research. In a moment the mystery was solved: the
+gentleman who stood smiling at him from the threshold could only be
+Gabriel Nash. Nick had not seen this whimsical personage for several
+months, and had had no news of him beyond a general intimation that he
+was following his fancy in foreign parts. His old friend had
+sufficiently prepared him, at the time of their reunion in Paris, for
+the idea of the fitful in intercourse; and he had not been ignorant, on
+his return from Paris, that he should have had an opportunity to miss
+him if he had not been too busy to take advantage of it. In London,
+after the episode at Harsh, Gabriel had not reappeared: he had redeemed
+none of the pledges given the night they walked together to Notre Dame
+and conversed on important matters. He was to have interposed in Nick's
+destiny, but he had not interposed; he was to have pulled him hard and
+in the opposite sense from Julia, but there had been no pulling; he was
+to have saved him, as he called it, and yet Nick was lost. This
+circumstance indeed formed his excuse: the member for Harsh had rushed
+so wantonly to perdition. Nick had for the hour seriously wished to keep
+hold of him: he valued him as a salutary influence. Yet on coming to his
+senses after his election our young man had recognised that Nash might
+very well have reflected on the thanklessness of such a slippery
+subject--might have held himself released from his vows. Of course it
+had been particularly in the event of a Liberal triumph that he had
+threatened to make himself felt; the effect of a brand plucked from the
+burning would be so much greater if the flames were already high. Yet
+Nick had not kept him to the letter of this pledge, and had so fully
+admitted the right of a thorough connoisseur, let alone a faithful
+friend, to lose patience with him that he was now far from greeting his
+visitor with a reproach. He felt much more thrown on his defence.
+
+Gabriel, however, forbore at first to attack him. He brought in only
+blandness and benevolence and a great content at having obeyed the
+mystic voice--it was really a remarkable case of second sight--which had
+whispered him that the recreant comrade of his prime was in town. He had
+just come back from Sicily after a southern winter, according to a
+custom frequent with him, and had been moved by a miraculous prescience,
+unfavourable as the moment might seem, to go and ask for Nick in
+Calcutta Gardens, where he had extracted from his friend's servant an
+address not known to all the world. He showed Nick what a mistake it had
+been to fear a dull arraignment, and how he habitually ignored all
+lapses and kept up the standard only by taking a hundred fine things for
+granted. He also abounded more than ever in his own sense, reminding his
+relieved listener how no recollection of him, no evocation of him in
+absence, could ever do him justice. You couldn't recall him without
+seeming to exaggerate him, and then acknowledged, when you saw him, that
+your exaggeration had fallen short. He emerged out of vagueness--his
+Sicily might have been the Sicily of _A Winter's Tale_--and would
+evidently be reabsorbed in it; but his presence was positive and
+pervasive enough. He was duly "intense" while he lasted. His connexions
+were with beauty, urbanity and conversation, as usual, but they made up
+a circle you couldn't find in the Court Guide. Nick had a sense that he
+knew "a lot of esthetic people," but he dealt in ideas much more than
+in names and addresses. He was genial and jocose, sunburnt and
+romantically allusive. It was to be gathered that he had been living for
+many days in a Saracenic tower where his principal occupation was to
+watch for the flushing of the west. He had retained all the serenity of
+his opinions and made light, with a candour of which the only defect was
+apparently that it was not quite enough a conscious virtue, of many of
+the objects of common esteem. When Nick asked him what he had been doing
+he replied, "Oh living, you know"; and the tone of the words offered
+them as the story of a great deed. He made a long visit, staying to
+luncheon and after luncheon, so that the little studio heard all at once
+a greater quantity of brave talk than in the several previous years of
+its history. With much of our tale left to tell it is a pity that so
+little of this colloquy may be reported here; since, as affairs took
+their course, it marked really--if the question be of noting the exact
+point--a turn of the tide in Nick Dormer's personal situation. He was
+destined to remember the accent with which Nash exclaimed, on his
+drawing forth sundry specimens of amateurish earnestness:
+
+"I say--I say--I say!"
+
+He glanced round with a heightened colour. "They're pretty bad, eh?"
+
+"Oh you're a deep one," Nash went on.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Do you call your conduct that of a man of honour?"
+
+"Scarcely perhaps. But when no one has seen them--!"
+
+"That's your villainy. _C'est de l'exquis, du pur exquis_. Come, my dear
+fellow, this is very serious--it's a bad business," said Gabriel Nash.
+Then he added almost with austerity: "You'll be so good as to place
+before me every patch of paint, every sketch and scrap, that this room
+contains."
+
+Nick complied in great good humour. He turned out his boxes and drawers,
+shovelled forth the contents of bulging portfolios, mounted on chairs to
+unhook old canvases that had been severely "skied." He was modest and
+docile and patient and amused, above all he was quite thrilled--thrilled
+with the idea of eliciting a note of appreciation so late in the day. It
+was the oddest thing how he at present in fact found himself imputing
+value to his visitor--attributing to him, among attributions more
+confused, the dignity of judgement, the authority of knowledge. Nash was
+an ambiguous character but an excellent touchstone. The two said very
+little for a while, and they had almost half an hour's silence, during
+which, after our young man had hastily improvised an exhibition, there
+was only a puffing of cigarettes. Gabriel walked about, looking at this
+and that, taking up rough studies and laying them down, asking a
+question of fact, fishing with his umbrella, on the floor, amid a pile
+of unarranged sketches. Nick accepted jocosely the attitude of suspense,
+but there was even more of it in his heart than in his face. So few
+people had seen his young work--almost no one who really counted. He had
+been ashamed of it, never showing it to bring on a conclusion, since a
+conclusion was precisely what he feared. He whistled now while he let
+his companion take time. He rubbed old panels with his sleeve and dabbed
+wet sponges on surfaces that had sunk. It was a long time since he had
+felt so gay, strange as such an assertion sounds in regard to a young
+man whose bridal-day had at his urgent solicitation lately been fixed.
+He had stayed in town to be alone with his imagination, and suddenly,
+paradoxically, the sense of that result had arrived with poor Nash.
+
+"Nicholas Dormer," this personage remarked at last, "for grossness of
+immorality I think I've never seen your equal."
+
+"That sounds so well," Nick returned, "that I hesitate to risk spoiling
+it by wishing it explained."
+
+"Don't you recognise in _any_ degree the grand idea of duty?"
+
+"If I don't grasp it with a certain firmness I'm a deadly failure, for I
+was quite brought up on it," Nick said.
+
+"Then you're indeed the wretchedest failure I know. Life is ugly, after
+all."
+
+"Do I gather that you yourself recognise obligations of the order you
+allude to?"
+
+"Do you 'gather'?" Nash stared. "Why, aren't they the very flame of my
+faith, the burden of my song?"
+
+"My dear fellow, duty is doing, and I've inferred that you think rather
+poorly of doing--that it spoils one's style."
+
+"Doing wrong, assuredly."
+
+"But what do you call right? What's your canon of certainty there?" Nick
+asked.
+
+"The conscience that's in us--that charming, conversible, infinite
+thing, the intensest thing we know. But you must treat the oracle
+civilly if you wish to make it speak. You mustn't stride into the temple
+in muddy jack-boots and with your hat on your head, as the Puritan
+troopers tramped into the dear old abbeys. One must do one's best to
+find out the right, and your criminality appears to be that you've not
+taken the commonest trouble."
+
+"I hadn't you to ask," smiled Nick. "But duty strikes me as doing
+something in particular. If you're too afraid it may be the wrong thing
+you may let everything go."
+
+"Being is doing, and if doing is duty being is duty. Do you follow?"
+
+"At a very great distance."
+
+"To be what one _may_ be, really and efficaciously," Nash went on, "to
+feel it and understand it, to accept it, adopt it, embrace it--that's
+conduct, that's life."
+
+"And suppose one's a brute or an ass, where's the efficacy?"
+
+"In one's very want of intelligence. In such cases one's out of it--the
+question doesn't exist; one simply becomes a part of the duty of others.
+The brute, the ass," Nick's visitor developed, "neither feels nor
+understands, nor accepts nor adopts. Those fine processes in themselves
+classify us. They educate, they exalt, they preserve; so that to profit
+by them we must be as perceptive as we can. We must recognise our
+particular form, the instrument that each of us--each of us who carries
+anything--carries in his being. Mastering this instrument, learning to
+play it in perfection--that's what I call duty, what I call conduct,
+what I call success."
+
+Nick listened with friendly attention and the air of general assent was
+in his face as he said: "Every one has it then, this individual pipe?"
+
+"'Every one,' my dear fellow, is too much to say, for the world's full
+of the crudest _remplissage_. The book of life's padded, ah but
+padded--a deplorable want of editing! I speak of every one who's any
+one. Of course there are pipes and pipes--little quavering flutes for
+the concerted movements and big _cornets-a-piston_ for the great solos."
+
+"I see, I see. And what might your instrument be?"
+
+Nash hesitated not a moment; his answer was radiantly there. "To speak
+to people just as I'm speaking to you. To prevent for instance a great
+wrong being done."
+
+"A great wrong--?"
+
+"Yes--to the human race. I talk--I talk; I say the things other people
+don't, the things they can't the things they won't," Gabriel went on
+with his inimitable candour.
+
+"If it's a question of mastery and perfection you certainly have them,"
+his companion replied.
+
+"And you haven't, alas; that's the pity of it, that's the scandal.
+That's the wrong I want to set right before it becomes too public a
+shame. If I called you just now grossly immoral it's on account of the
+spectacle you present--a spectacle to be hidden from the eye of
+ingenuous youth: that of a man neglecting his own fiddle to blunder away
+on that of one of his fellows. We can't afford such mistakes, we can't
+tolerate such licence."
+
+"You think then I _have_ a fiddle?"--and our young man, in spite of
+himself, attached to the question a quaver of suspense finer, doubtless,
+than any that had ever passed his lips.
+
+"A regular Stradivarius! All these things you've shown me are remarkably
+interesting. You've a talent of a wonderfully pure strain."
+
+"I say--I say--I say!" Nick exclaimed, hovering there with his hands in
+his pockets and a blush on his lighted face, while he repeated with a
+change of accent Nash's exclamation of half an hour before.
+
+"I like it, your talent; I measure it, I appreciate it, I insist upon
+it," that critic went on between the whiffs of his cigarette. "I have to
+be awfully wise and good to do so, but fortunately I am. In such a case
+that's my duty. I shall make you my business for a while. Therefore," he
+added piously; "don't say I'm unconscious of the moral law."
+
+"A Stradivarius?" said Nick interrogatively and with his eyes wide open.
+The thought in his mind was of how different this seemed from his having
+gone to Griffin.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+His counsellor had plenty of further opportunity to develop this and
+other figurative remarks, for he not only spent several of the middle
+hours of the day at the studio, but came back in the evening--the pair
+had dined together at a little foreign pothouse in Soho, revealed to
+Nick on this occasion--and discussed the great question far into the
+night. The great question was whether, on the showing of those examples
+of his ability with which the scene of their discourse was now densely
+bestrewn, Nick Dormer would be justified in "really going in" for the
+practice of pictorial art. This may strike many readers of his history
+as a limited and even trivial inquiry, with little of the heroic or the
+romantic in it; but it was none the less carried to the finest point by
+our impassioned young men. Nick suspected Nash of exaggerating his
+encouragement in order to play a malign trick on the political world at
+whose expense it was his fond fancy to divert himself--without indeed
+making that organisation perceptibly totter--and reminded him that his
+present accusation of immorality was strangely inconsistent with the
+wanton hope expressed by him in Paris, the hope that the Liberal
+candidate at Harsh would be returned. Nash replied, first, "Oh I hadn't
+been in this place then!" but he defended himself later and more
+effectually by saying that it was not of Nick's having got elected he
+complained: it was of his visible hesitancy to throw up his seat. Nick
+begged that he wouldn't mention this, and his gallantry failed to render
+him incapable of saying: "The fact is I haven't the nerve for it." They
+talked then for a while of what he _could_ do, not of what he couldn't;
+of the mysteries and miracles of reproduction and representation; of the
+strong, sane joys of the artistic life. Nick made afresh, with more
+fulness, his great confession, that his private ideal of happiness was
+the life of a great painter of portraits. He uttered his thought on that
+head so copiously and lucidly that Nash's own abundance was stilled and
+he listened almost as if he had been listening to something
+new--difficult as it was to conceive a point of view for such a matter
+with which he was unacquainted.
+
+"There it is," said Nick at last--"there's the naked, preposterous
+truth: that if I were to do exactly as I liked I should spend my years
+reproducing the more or less vacuous countenances of my fellow-mortals.
+I should find peace and pleasure and wisdom and worth, I should find
+fascination and a measure of success in it--out of the din and the dust
+and the scramble, the world of party labels, party cries, party bargains
+and party treacheries: of humbuggery, hypocrisy and cant. The cleanness
+and quietness of it, the independent effort to do something, to leave
+something which shall give joy to man long after the howling has died
+away to the last ghost of an echo--such a vision solicits me in the
+watches of night with an almost irresistible force."
+
+As he dropped these remarks he lolled on a big divan with one of his
+long legs folded up, while his visitor stopped in front of him after
+moving about the room vaguely and softly, almost on tiptoe, so as not to
+interrupt him. "You speak," Nash said, "with the special and dreadful
+eloquence that rises to a man's lips when he has practically, whatever
+his theory may be, renounced the right and dropped hideously into the
+wrong. Then his regret for the right, a certain exquisite appreciation
+of it, puts on an accent I know well how to recognise."
+
+Nick looked up at him a moment. "You've hit it if you mean by that that
+I haven't resigned my seat and that I don't intend to."
+
+"I thought you took it only to give it up. Don't you remember our talk
+in Paris?"
+
+"I like to be a part of the spectacle that amuses you," Nick returned,
+"but I could scarcely have taken so much trouble as that for it."
+
+"Isn't it then an absurd comedy, the life you lead?"
+
+"Comedy or tragedy--I don't know which; whatever it is I appear to be
+capable of it to please two or three people."
+
+"Then you _can_ take trouble?" said Nash.
+
+"Yes, for the woman I'm to marry."
+
+"Oh you're to marry?"
+
+"That's what has come on since we met in Paris," Nick explained, "and it
+makes just the difference."
+
+"Ah my poor friend," smiled Gabriel, much arrested, "no wonder you've an
+eloquence, an accent!"
+
+"It's a pity I have them in the wrong place. I'm expected to have them
+in the House of Commons."
+
+"You will when you make your farewell speech there--to announce that you
+chuck it up. And may I venture to ask who's to be your wife?" the
+visitor pursued.
+
+"Mrs. Dallow has kindly consented to accept that yoke. I think you saw
+her in Paris."
+
+"Ah yes: you spoke of her to me, and I remember asking you even then if
+you were in love with her."
+
+"I wasn't then," said Nick.
+
+Nash had a grave pause. "And are you now?"
+
+"Oh dear, yes."
+
+"That would be better--if it wasn't worse."
+
+"Nothing could be better," Nick declared. "It's the best thing that can
+happen to me."
+
+"Well," his friend continued, "you must let me very respectfully
+approach this lady. You must let me bring her round."
+
+"Bring her round to what?"
+
+"To everything. Talk her over."
+
+"Talk her under!" Nick laughed--but making his joke a little as to gain
+time. He remembered the effect this adviser had produced on Julia--an
+effect that scantly ministered to the idea of another meeting. Julia had
+had no occasion to allude again to Nick's imperturbable friend; he had
+passed out of her life at once and for ever; but there flickered up a
+quick memory of the contempt he had led her to express, together with a
+sense of how odd she would think it her intended should have thrown over
+two pleasant visits to cultivate such company.
+
+"Over to a proper pride in what you may do," Nash returned--"what you
+may do above all if she'll help you."
+
+"I scarcely see how she can help me," said Nick with an air of thinking.
+
+"She's extremely handsome as I remember her. You could do great things
+with _her_."
+
+"Ah, there's the rub," Nick went on. "I wanted her to sit for me this
+week, but she wouldn't hear of it."
+
+"_Elle a bien tort_. You should attack some fine strong type. Is Mrs.
+Dallow in London?" Nash inquired.
+
+"For what do you take her? She's paying visits."
+
+"Then I've a model for you."
+
+"Then _you_ have--?" Nick stared. "What has that to do with Mrs.
+Dallow's being away?"
+
+"Doesn't it give you more time?"
+
+"Oh the time flies!" sighed Nick with a spontaneity that made his
+companion again laugh out--a demonstration in which for a moment he
+himself rather ruefully joined.
+
+"Does she like you to paint?" that personage asked with one of his
+candid intonations.
+
+"So she says."
+
+"Well, do something fine to show her."
+
+"I'd rather show it to you," Nick confessed.
+
+"My dear fellow, I see it from here--if you do your duty. Do you
+remember the Tragic Muse?" Nash added for explanation.
+
+"The Tragic Muse?"
+
+"That girl in Paris, whom we heard at the old actress's and afterwards
+met at the charming entertainment given by your cousin--isn't he?--the
+secretary of embassy."
+
+"Oh Peter's girl! Of course I remember her."
+
+"Don't call her Peter's; call her rather mine," Nash said with easy
+rectification. "I invented her. I introduced her. I revealed her."
+
+"I thought you on the contrary ridiculed and repudiated her."
+
+"As a fine, handsome young woman surely not--I seem to myself to have
+been all the while rendering her services. I said I disliked tea-party
+ranters, and so I do; but if my estimate of her powers was below the
+mark she has more than punished me."
+
+"What has she done?" Nick asked.
+
+"She has become interesting, as I suppose you know."
+
+"How should I know?"
+
+"Well, you must see her, you must paint her," Nash returned. "She tells
+me something was said about it that day at Madame Carre's."
+
+"Oh I remember--said by Peter."
+
+"Then it will please Mr. Sherringham--you'll be glad to do that. I
+suppose you know all he has done for Miriam?" Gabriel pursued.
+
+"Not a bit, I know nothing about Peter's affairs," Nick said, "unless it
+be in general that he goes in for mountebanks and mimes and that it
+occurs to me I've heard one of my sisters mention--the rumour had come
+to her--that he has been backing Miss Rooth."
+
+"Miss Rooth delights to talk of his kindness; she's charming when she
+speaks of it. It's to his good offices that she owes her appearance
+here."
+
+"Here?" Nick's interest rose. "Is she in London?"
+
+"_D'ou tombez-vous_? I thought you people read the papers."
+
+"What should I read, when I sit--sometimes--through the stuff they put
+into them?"
+
+"Of course I see that--that your engagement at your own variety-show,
+with its interminable 'turns,' keeps you from going to the others. Learn
+then," said Gabriel Nash, "that you've a great competitor and that
+you're distinctly not, much as you may suppose it, _the_ rising
+comedian. The Tragic Muse is the great modern personage. Haven't you
+heard people speak of her, haven't you been taken to see her?"
+
+Nick bethought himself. "I daresay I've heard of her, but with a good
+many other things on my mind I had forgotten it."
+
+"Certainly I can imagine what has been on your mind. She remembers you
+at any rate; she repays neglect with sympathy. She wants," said Nash,
+"to come and see you."
+
+"'See' me?" It was all for Nick now a wonder.
+
+"To be seen by you--it comes to the same thing. She's really worth
+seeing; you must let me bring her; you'll find her very suggestive. That
+idea that you should paint her--she appears to consider it a sort of
+bargain."
+
+"A bargain?" Our young man entered, as he believed, into the humour of
+the thing. "What will she give me?"
+
+"A splendid model. She _is_ splendid."
+
+"Oh then bring her," said Nick.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Nash brought her, the great modern personage, as he had described her,
+the very next day, and it took his friend no long time to test his
+assurance that Miriam Rooth was now splendid. She had made an impression
+on him ten months before, but it had haunted him only a day, soon
+overlaid as it had been with other images. Yet after Nash had talked of
+her a while he recalled her better; some of her attitudes, some of her
+looks and tones began to hover before him. He was charmed in advance
+with the notion of painting her. When she stood there in fact, however,
+it seemed to him he had remembered her wrong; the brave, free, rather
+grand creature who instantly filled his studio with such an unexampled
+presence had so shaken off her clumsiness, the rudeness and crudeness
+that had made him pity her, a whole provincial and "second-rate" side.
+Miss Rooth was light and bright and direct to-day--direct without being
+stiff and bright without being garish. To Nick's perhaps inadequately
+sophisticated mind the model, the actress were figures of a vulgar
+setting; but it would have been impossible to show that taint less than
+this extremely natural yet extremely distinguished aspirant to
+distinction. She was more natural even than Gabriel Nash--"nature" was
+still Nick's formula for his amusing old friend--and beside her he
+appeared almost commonplace.
+
+Nash recognised her superiority with a frankness honourable to both of
+them--testifying in this manner to his sense that they were all three
+serious beings, worthy to deal with fine realities. She attracted crowds
+to her theatre, but to his appreciation of such a fact as that,
+important doubtless in its way, there were the limits he had already
+expressed. What he now felt bound in all integrity to register was his
+perception that she had, in general and quite apart from the question of
+the box-office, a remarkable, a very remarkable, artistic nature. He
+allowed that she had surprised him here; knowing of her in other days
+mainly that she was hungry to adopt an overrated profession he had not
+imputed to her the normal measure of intelligence. Now he saw--he had
+had some talks with her--that she was capable almost of a violent play
+of mind; so much so that he was sorry for the embarrassment it would be
+to her. Nick could imagine the discomfort of having anything in the
+nature of a mind to arrange for in such conditions. "She's a woman of
+the best intentions, really of the best," Nash explained kindly and
+lucidly, almost paternally, "and the quite rare head you can see for
+yourself."
+
+Miriam, smiling as she sat on an old Venetian chair, held aloft, with
+the noblest effect, that quarter of her person to which this patronage
+was extended, remarking to her host that, strange as it might appear,
+she had got quite to like poor Mr. Nash: she could make him go about
+with her--it was a relief to her mother.
+
+"When I take him she has perfect peace," the girl said; "then she can
+stay at home and see the interviewers. She delights in that and I hate
+it, so our friend here is a great comfort. Of course a _femme de
+theatre_ is supposed to be able to go out alone, but there's a kind of
+'smartness,' an added _chic_, in having some one. People think he's my
+'companion '; I'm sure they fancy I pay him. I'd pay him, if he'd take
+it--and perhaps he will yet!--rather than give him up, for it doesn't
+matter that he's not a lady. He _is_ one in tact and sympathy, as you
+see. And base as he thinks the sort of thing I do he can't keep away
+from the theatre. When you're celebrated people will look at you who
+could never before find out for themselves why they should."
+
+"When you're celebrated you grow handsomer; at least that's what has
+happened to you, though you were pretty too of old," Gabriel placidly
+argued. "I go to the theatre to look at your head; it gives me the
+greatest pleasure. I take up anything of that sort as soon as I find it.
+One never knows how long it may last."
+
+"Are you attributing that uncertainty to my appearance?" Miriam
+beautifully asked.
+
+"Dear no, to my own pleasure, the first precious bloom of it," Nash went
+on. "Dormer at least, let me tell you in justice to him, hasn't waited
+till you were celebrated to want to see you again--he stands there
+open-eyed--for the simple reason that he hadn't the least idea of your
+renown. I had to announce it to him."
+
+"Haven't you seen me act?" Miriam put, without reproach, to her host.
+
+"I'll go to-night," he handsomely declared.
+
+"You have your terrible House, haven't you? What do they call it--the
+demands of public life?" Miriam continued: in answer to which Gabriel
+explained that he had the demands of private life as well, inasmuch as
+he was in love--he was on the point of being married. She listened to
+this with participation; then she said: "Ah then do bring your--what do
+they call her in English? I'm always afraid of saying something
+improper--your _future_. I'll send you a box, under the circumstances;
+you'll like that better." She added that if he were to paint her he
+would have to see her often on the stage, wouldn't he? to profit by the
+_optique de la scene_--what did they call _that_ in English?--studying
+her and fixing his impression. But before he had time to meet this
+proposition she asked him if it disgusted him to hear her speak like
+that, as if she were always posing and thinking about herself, living
+only to be looked at, thrusting forward her person. She already often
+got sick of doing so, but _a la guerre comme a la guerre_.
+
+"That's the fine artistic nature, you see--a sort of divine disgust
+breaking out in her," Nash expounded.
+
+"If you want to paint me 'at all at all' of course. I'm struck with the
+way I'm taking that for granted," the girl decently continued. "When Mr.
+Nash spoke of it to me I jumped at the idea. I remembered our meeting in
+Paris and the kind things you said to me. But no doubt one oughtn't to
+jump at ideas when they represent serious sacrifices on the part of
+others."
+
+"Doesn't she speak well?" Nash demanded of Nick. "Oh she'll go far!"
+
+"It's a great privilege to me to paint you: what title in the world have
+I to pretend to such a model?" Nick replied to Miriam. "The sacrifice is
+yours--a sacrifice of time and good nature and credulity. You come, in
+your bright beauty and your genius, to this shabby place where I've
+nothing worth speaking of to show, not a guarantee to offer you; and I
+wonder what I've done to deserve such a gift of the gods."
+
+"Doesn't _he_ speak well?"--and Nash appealed with radiance to their
+companion.
+
+She took no notice of him, only repeating to Nick that she hadn't
+forgotten his friendly attitude in Paris; and when he answered that he
+surely had done very little she broke out, first resting her eyes on
+him with a deep, reasonable smile and then springing up quickly; "Ah
+well, if I must justify myself I liked you!"
+
+"Fancy my appearing to challenge you!" laughed Nick in deprecation. "To
+see you again is to want tremendously to try something. But you must
+have an infinite patience, because I'm an awful duffer."
+
+She looked round the walls. "I see what you've done--_bien des choses_."
+
+"She understands--she understands," Gabriel dropped. And he added to
+their visitor: "Imagine, when he might do something, his choosing a life
+of shams! At bottom he's like you--a wonderful artistic nature."
+
+"I'll have patience," said the girl, smiling at Nick.
+
+"Then, my children, I leave you--the peace of the Lord be with you."
+With which words Nash took his departure.
+
+The others chose a position for the young woman's sitting after she had
+placed herself in many different attitudes and different lights; but an
+hour had elapsed before Nick got to work--began, on a large canvas, to
+"knock her in," as he called it. He was hindered even by the fine
+element of agitation, the emotion of finding himself, out of a clear
+sky, confronted with such a subject and launched in such a task. What
+could the situation be but incongruous just after he had formally
+renounced all manner of "art"?--the renunciation taking effect not a bit
+the less from the whim he had all consciously treated himself to _as_ a
+whim (the last he should ever descend to!) the freak of a fortnight's
+relapse into a fingering of old sketches for the purpose, as he might
+have said, of burning them up, of clearing out his studio and
+terminating his lease. There were both embarrassment and inspiration in
+the strange chance of snatching back for an hour a relinquished joy: the
+jump with which he found he could still rise to such an occasion took
+away his breath a little, at the same time that the idea--the idea of
+what one might make of such material--touched him with an irresistible
+wand. On the spot, to his inner vision, Miriam became a rich result,
+drawing a hundred formative forces out of their troubled sleep, defying
+him where he privately felt strongest and imposing herself triumphantly
+in her own strength. He had the good fortune, without striking matches,
+to see her, as a subject, in a vivid light, and his quick attempt was as
+exciting as a sudden gallop--he might have been astride, in a boundless
+field, of a runaway horse.
+
+She was in her way so fine that he could only think how to "do" her:
+that hard calculation soon flattened out the consciousness, lively in
+him at first, that she was a beautiful woman who had sought him out of
+his retirement. At the end of their first sitting her having done so
+appeared the most natural thing in the world: he had a perfect right to
+entertain her there--explanations and complications were engulfed in the
+productive mood. The business of "knocking her in" held up a lamp to her
+beauty, showed him how much there was of it and that she was infinitely
+interesting. He didn't want to fall in love with her--that _would_ be a
+sell, he said to himself--and she promptly became much too interesting
+for it. Nick might have reflected, for simplification's sake, as his
+cousin Peter had done, but with more validity, that he was engaged with
+Miss Rooth in an undertaking which didn't in the least refer to
+themselves, that they were working together seriously and that decent
+work quite gainsaid sensibility--the humbugging sorts alone had to help
+themselves out with it. But after her first sitting--she came, poor
+girl, but twice--the need of such exorcisms passed from his spirit: he
+had so thoroughly, so practically taken her up. As to whether his
+visitor had the same bright and still sense of co-operation to a
+definite end, the sense of the distinctively technical nature of the
+answer to every question to which the occasion might give birth, that
+mystery would be lighted only were it open to us to regard this young
+lady through some other medium than the mind of her friends. We have
+chosen, as it happens, for some of the great advantages it carries with
+it, the indirect vision; and it fails as yet to tell us--what Nick of
+course wondered about before he ceased to care, as indeed he intimated
+to her--why a budding celebrity should have dreamed of there being
+something for her in so blighted a spot. She should have gone to one of
+the regular people, the great people: they would have welcomed her with
+open arms. When Nick asked her if some of the R.A.'s hadn't expressed a
+wish for a crack at her she replied: "Oh dear no, only the tiresome
+photographers; and fancy _them_ in the future. If mamma could only do
+_that_ for me!" And she added with the charming fellowship for which she
+was conspicuous at these hours: "You know I don't think any one yet has
+been quite so much struck with me as you."
+
+"Not even Peter Sherringham?" her host jested while he stepped back to
+judge of the effect of a line.
+
+"Oh Mr. Sherringham's different. You're an artist."
+
+"For pity's sake don't say that!" he cried. "And as regards _your_ art I
+thought Peter knew more than any one."
+
+"Ah you're severe," said Miriam.
+
+"Severe--?"
+
+"Because that's what the poor dear thinks. But he does know a lot--he
+has been a providence to me."
+
+"Then why hasn't he come over to see you act?"
+
+She had a pause. "How do you know he hasn't come?"
+
+"Because I take for granted he'd have called on me if he had."
+
+"Does he like you very much?" the girl asked.
+
+"I don't know. I like _him_."
+
+"He's a gentleman--_pour cela_," she said.
+
+"Oh yes, for that!" Nick went on absently, labouring hard.
+
+"But he's afraid of me--afraid to see me."
+
+"Doesn't he think you good enough?"
+
+"On the contrary--he believes I shall carry him away and he's in a
+terror of my doing it."
+
+"He ought to like that," said Nick with conscious folly.
+
+"That's what I mean when I say he's not an artist. However, he declares
+he does like it, only it appears to be not the right thing for him. Oh
+the right thing--he's ravenous for that. But it's not for me to blame
+him, since I am too. He's coming some night, however. Then," she added
+almost grimly, "he shall have a dose."
+
+"Poor Peter!" Nick returned with a compassion none the less real because
+it was mirthful: the girl's tone was so expressive of easy unscrupulous
+power.
+
+"He's such a curious mixture," she luxuriously went on; "sometimes I
+quite lose patience with him. It isn't exactly trying to serve both God
+and Mammon, but it's muddling up the stage and the world. The world be
+hanged! The stage, or anything of that sort--I mean one's artistic
+conscience, one's true faith--comes first."
+
+"Brava, brava! you do me good," Nick murmured, still amused, beguiled,
+and at work. "But it's very kind of you, when I was in this absurd state
+of ignorance, to impute to me the honour of having been more struck with
+you than any one else," he continued after a moment.
+
+"Yes, I confess I don't quite see--when the shops were full of my
+photographs."
+
+"Oh I'm so poor--I don't go into shops," he explained.
+
+"Are you very poor?"
+
+"I live on alms."
+
+"And don't they pay you--the government, the ministry?"
+
+"Dear young lady, for what?--for shutting myself up with beautiful
+women?"
+
+"Ah you've others then?" she extravagantly groaned.
+
+"They're not so kind as you, I confess."
+
+"I'll buy it from you--what you're doing: I'll pay you well when it's
+done," said the girl. "I've got money now. I make it, you know--a good
+lot of it. It's too delightful after scraping and starving. Try it and
+you'll see. Give up the base, bad world."
+
+"But isn't it supposed to be the base, bad world that pays?"
+
+"Precisely; make it pay without mercy--knock it silly, squeeze it dry.
+That's what it's meant for--to pay for art. Ah if it wasn't for that!
+I'll bring you a quantity of photographs to-morrow--you must let me come
+back to-morrow: it's so amusing to have them, by the hundred, all for
+nothing, to give away. That's what takes mamma most: she can't get over
+it. That's luxury and glory; even at Castle Nugent they didn't do that.
+People used to sketch me, but not so much as mamma _veut bien le dire_;
+and in all my life I never had but one poor little carte-de-visite, when
+I was sixteen, in a plaid frock, with the banks of a river, at three
+francs the dozen."
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+It was success, the member for Harsh felt, that had made her finer--the
+full possession of her talent and the sense of the recognition of it.
+There was an intimation in her presence (if he had given his mind to it)
+that for him too the same cause would produce the same effect--that is
+would show him how being launched in the practice of an art makes
+strange and prompt revelations. Nick felt clumsy beside a person who
+manifestly, now, had such an extraordinary familiarity with the esthetic
+point of view. He remembered too the clumsiness that had been in his
+visitor--something silly and shabby, pert rather than proper, and of
+quite another value than her actual smartness, as London people would
+call it, her well-appointedness and her evident command of more than one
+manner. Handsome as she had been the year before, she had suggested
+sordid lodgings, bread and butter, heavy tragedy and tears; and if then
+she was an ill-dressed girl with thick hair who wanted to be an actress,
+she was already in these few weeks a performer who could even produce an
+impression of not performing. She showed what a light hand she could
+have, forbore to startle and looked as well, for unprofessional life, as
+Julia: which was only the perfection of her professional character.
+
+This function came out much in her talk, for there were many little
+bursts of confidence as well as many familiar pauses as she sat there;
+and she was ready to tell Nick the whole history of her _debut_--the
+chance that had suddenly turned up and that she had caught, with a
+fierce leap, as it passed. He missed some of the details in his
+attention to his own task, and some of them he failed to understand,
+attached as they were to the name of Mr. Basil Dashwood, which he heard
+for the first time. It was through Mr. Dashwood's extraordinary
+exertions that a hearing--a morning performance at a London theatre--had
+been obtained for her. That had been the great step, for it had led to
+the putting on at night of the play, at the same theatre, in place of a
+wretched thing they were trying (it was no use) to keep on its feet, and
+to her engagement for the principal part. She had made a hit in it--she
+couldn't pretend not to know that; but she was already tired of it,
+there were so many other things she wanted to do; and when she thought
+it would probably run a month or two more she fell to cursing the odious
+conditions of artistic production in such an age. The play was a more or
+less idiotised version of a new French piece, a thing that had taken in
+Paris at a third-rate theatre and was now proving itself in London good
+enough for houses mainly made up of ten-shilling stalls. It was Dashwood
+who had said it would go if they could get the rights and a fellow to
+make some changes: he had discovered it at a nasty little place she had
+never been to, over the Seine. They had got the rights, and the fellow
+who had made the changes was practically Dashwood himself; there was
+another man in London, Mr. Gushmore--Miriam didn't know if Nick had
+heard of him (Nick hadn't) who had done some of it. It had been awfully
+chopped down, to a mere bone, with the meat all gone; but that was what
+people in London seemed to like. They were very innocent--thousands of
+little dogs amusing themselves with a bone. At any rate she had made
+something, she had made a figure, of the woman--a dreadful stick, with
+what Dashwood had muddled her into; and Miriam added in the complacency
+of her young expansion: "Oh give me fifty words any time and the ghost
+of a situation, and I'll set you up somebody. Besides, I mustn't abuse
+poor Yolande--she has saved us," she said.
+
+"'Yolande'--?"
+
+"Our ridiculous play. That's the name of the impossible woman. She has
+put bread into our mouths and she's a loaf on the shelf for the future.
+The rights are mine."
+
+"You're lucky to have them," said Nick a little vaguely, troubled about
+his sitter's nose, which was somehow Jewish without the convex arch.
+
+"Indeed I am. He gave them to me. Wasn't it charming?"
+
+"'He' gave them--Mr. Dashwood?"
+
+"Dear me, no--where should poor Dashwood have got them? He hasn't a
+penny in the world. Besides, if he had got them he'd have kept them. I
+mean your blessed cousin."
+
+"I see--they're a present from Peter."
+
+"Like many other things. Isn't he a dear? If it hadn't been for him the
+shelf would have remained bare. He bought the play for this country and
+America for four hundred pounds, and on the chance: fancy! There was no
+rush for it, and how could he tell? And then he gracefully pressed it on
+me. So I've my little capital. Isn't he a duck? You've nice cousins."
+
+Nick assented to the proposition, only inserting an amendment to the
+effect that surely Peter had nice cousins too, and making, as he went on
+with his work, a tacit, preoccupied reflexion or two; such as that it
+must be pleasant to render little services like that to youth, beauty
+and genius--he rather wondered how Peter could afford them--and that,
+"duck" as he was, Miss Rooth's benefactor was rather taken for granted.
+_Sic vos non vobis_ softly sounded in his brain. This community of
+interests, or at least of relations, quickened the flight of time, so
+that he was still fresh when the sitting came to an end. It was settled
+Miriam should come back on the morrow, to enable her artist to make the
+most of the few days of the parliamentary recess; and just before she
+left him she asked:
+
+"Then you _will_ come to-night?"
+
+"Without fail. I hate to lose an hour of you."
+
+"Then I'll place you. It will be my affair."
+
+"You're very kind"--he quite rose to it. "Isn't it a simple matter for
+me to take a stall? This week I suppose they're to be had."
+
+"I'll send you a box," said Miriam. "You shall do it well. There are
+plenty now."
+
+"Why should I be lost, all alone, in the grandeur of a box?"
+
+"Can't you bring your friend?"
+
+"My friend?"
+
+"The lady you're engaged to."
+
+"Unfortunately she's out of town."
+
+Miriam looked at him in the grand manner. "Does she leave you alone like
+that?"
+
+"She thought I should like it--I should be more free to paint. You see I
+am."
+
+"Yes, perhaps it's good for _me_. Have you got her portrait?" Miriam
+asked.
+
+"She doesn't like me to paint her."
+
+"Really? Perhaps then she won't like you to paint me."
+
+"That's why I want to be quick!" laughed Nick.
+
+"Before she knows it?"
+
+"Shell know it to-morrow. I shall write to her."
+
+The girl faced him again portentously. "I see you're afraid of her." But
+she added: "Mention my name; they'll give you the box at the office."
+
+Whether or no Nick were afraid of Mrs. Dallow he still waved away this
+bounty, protesting that he would rather take a stall according to his
+wont and pay for it. Which led his guest to declare with a sudden
+flicker of passion that if he didn't do as she wished she would never
+sit to him again.
+
+"Ah then you have me," he had to reply. "Only I _don't_ see why you
+should give me so many things."
+
+"What in the world have I given you?"
+
+"Why an idea." And Nick looked at his picture rather ruefully. "I don't
+mean to say though that I haven't let it fall and smashed it."
+
+"Ah an idea--that _is_ a great thing for people in our line. But you'll
+see me much better from the box and I'll send you Gabriel Nash." She got
+into the hansom her host's servant had fetched for her, and as Nick
+turned back into his studio after watching her drive away he laughed at
+the conception that they were in the same "line."
+
+He did share, in the event, his box at the theatre with Nash, who talked
+during the _entr'actes_ not in the least about the performance or the
+performer, but about the possible greatness of the art of the
+portraitist--its reach, its range, its fascination, the magnificent
+examples it had left us in the past: windows open into history, into
+psychology, things that were among the most precious possessions of the
+human race. He insisted above all on the interest, the importance of
+this great peculiarity of it, that unlike most other forms it was a
+revelation of two realities, the man whom it was the artist's conscious
+effort to reveal and the man--the interpreter--expressed in the very
+quality and temper of that effort. It offered a double vision, the
+strongest dose of life that art could give, the strongest dose of art
+that life could give. Nick Dormer had already become aware of having two
+states of mind when listening to this philosopher; one in which he
+laughed, doubted, sometimes even reprobated, failed to follow or accept,
+and another in which his old friend seemed to take the words out of his
+mouth, to utter for him, better and more completely, the very things he
+was on the point of saying. Gabriel's saying them at such moments
+appeared to make them true, to set them up in the world, and to-night he
+said a good many, especially as to the happiness of cultivating one's
+own garden, growing there, in stillness and freedom, certain strong,
+pure flowers that would bloom for ever, bloom long after the rank weeds
+of the hour were withered and blown away.
+
+It was to keep Miriam Rooth in his eye for his current work that Nick
+had come to the play; and she dwelt there all the evening, being
+constantly on the stage. He was so occupied in watching her face--for he
+now saw pretty clearly what he should attempt to make of it--that he was
+conscious only in a secondary degree of the story she illustrated, and
+had in regard to her acting a surprised sense that she was
+extraordinarily quiet. He remembered her loudness, her violence in
+Paris, at Peter Sherringham's, her wild wails, the first time, at Madame
+Carre's; compared with which her present manner was eminently temperate
+and modern. Nick Dormer was not critical at the theatre; he believed
+what he saw and had a pleasant sense of the inevitable; therefore he
+wouldn't have guessed what Gabriel Nash had to tell him--that for this
+young woman, with her tragic cast and her peculiar attributes, her
+present performance, full of actuality, of light fine indications and at
+moments of pointed touches of comedy, was a rare _tour de force_. It
+went on altogether in a register he hadn't supposed her to possess and
+in which, as he said, she didn't touch her capital, doing it all with
+her wonderful little savings. It conveyed to him that she was capable of
+almost anything.
+
+In one of the intervals they went round to see her; but for Nick this
+purpose was partly defeated by the extravagant transports, as they
+struck him, of Mrs. Rooth, whom they found sitting with her daughter and
+who attacked him with a hundred questions about his dear mother and his
+charming sisters. She had volumes to say about the day in Paris when
+they had shown her the kindness she should never forget. She abounded
+also in admiration of the portrait he had so cleverly begun, declaring
+she was so eager to see it, however little he might as yet have
+accomplished, that she should do herself the honour to wait upon him in
+the morning when Miriam came to sit.
+
+"I'm acting for you to-night," the girl more effectively said before he
+returned to his place.
+
+"No, that's exactly what you're not doing," Nash interposed with one of
+his happy sagacities. "You've stopped acting, you've reduced it to the
+least that will do, you simply are--you're just the visible image, the
+picture on the wall. It keeps you wonderfully in focus. I've never seen
+you so beautiful."
+
+Miriam stared at this; then it could be seen that she coloured. "What a
+luxury in life to have everything explained! He's the great explainer,"
+she herself explained to Nick.
+
+He shook hands with her for good-night. "Well then, we must give him
+lots to do."
+
+She came to his studio in the morning, but unaccompanied by her mother,
+in allusion to whom she simply said, "Mamma wished to come but I
+wouldn't let her." They proceeded promptly to business. The girl
+divested herself of her hat and coat, taking the position already
+determined. After they had worked more than an hour with much less talk
+than the day before, Nick being extremely absorbed and Miriam wearing in
+silence an air of noble compunction for the burden imposed on him, at
+the end of this period of patience, pervaded by a holy calm, our young
+lady suddenly got up and exclaimed, "I say, I must see it!"--with which,
+quickly, she stepped down from her place and came round to the canvas.
+She had at Nick's request not looked at his work the day before. He fell
+back, glad to rest, and put down his palette and brushes.
+
+"_Ah bien, c'est tape_!" she cried as she stood before the easel. Nick
+was pleased with her ejaculation, he was even pleased with what he had
+done; he had had a long, happy spurt and felt excited and sanctioned.
+Miriam, retreating also a little, sank into a high-backed, old-fashioned
+chair that stood two or three yards from the picture and reclined in it,
+her head on one side, looking at the rough resemblance. She made a
+remark or two about it, to which Nick replied, standing behind her and
+after a moment leaning on the top of the chair. He was away from his
+work and his eyes searched it with a shy fondness of hope. They rose,
+however, as he presently became conscious that the door of the large
+room opposite him had opened without making a sound and that some one
+stood upon the threshold. The person on the threshold was Julia Dallow.
+
+As soon as he was aware Nick wished he had posted a letter to her the
+night before. He had written only that morning. There was nevertheless
+genuine joy in the words with which he bounded toward her--"Ah my dear
+Julia, what a jolly surprise!"--for her unannounced descent spoke to
+him above all of an irresistible desire to see him again sooner than
+they had arranged. She had taken a step forward, but she had done no
+more, stopping short at the sight of the strange woman, so divested of
+visiting-gear that she looked half-undressed, who lounged familiarly in
+the middle of the room and over whom Nick had been still more familiarly
+hanging. Julia's eyes rested on this embodied unexpectedness, and as
+they did so she grew pale--so pale that Nick, observing it,
+instinctively looked back to see what Miriam had done to produce such an
+effect. She had done nothing at all, which was precisely what was
+embarrassing; she only stared at the intruder, motionless and superb.
+She seemed somehow in easy possession of the place, and even at that
+instant Nick noted how handsome she looked; so that he said to himself
+inaudibly, in some deeper depth of consciousness, "How I should like to
+paint her that way!" Mrs. Dallow's eyes moved for a single moment to her
+friend's; then they turned away--away from Miriam, ranging over the
+room.
+
+"I've got a sitter, but you mustn't mind that; we're taking a rest. I'm
+delighted to see you"--he was all cordiality. He closed the door of the
+studio behind her; his servant was still at the outer door, which was
+open and through which he saw Julia's carriage drawn up. This made her
+advance a little further, but still she said nothing; she dropped no
+answer even when Nick went on with a sense of awkwardness: "When did you
+come back? I hope nothing has gone wrong. You come at a very interesting
+moment," he continued, aware as soon as he had spoken of something in
+his words that might have made her laugh. She was far from laughing,
+however; she only managed to look neither at him nor at Miriam and to
+say, after a little, when he had repeated his question about her
+return:
+
+"I came back this morning--I came straight here."
+
+"And nothing's wrong, I hope?"
+
+"Oh no--everything's all right," she returned very quickly and without
+expression. She vouchsafed no explanation of her premature descent and
+took no notice of the seat Nick offered her; neither did she appear to
+hear him when he begged her not to look yet at the work on the easel--it
+was in such a dreadful state. He was conscious, as he phrased it, that
+this request gave to Miriam's position, directly in front of his canvas,
+an air of privilege which her neglect to recognise in any way Mrs.
+Dallow's entrance or her importance did nothing to correct. But that
+mattered less if the appeal failed to reach Julia's intelligence, as he
+judged, seeing presently how deeply she was agitated. Nothing mattered
+in face of the sense of danger taking possession of him after she had
+been in the room a few moments. He wanted to say, "What's the
+difficulty? Has anything happened?" but he felt how little she would
+like him to utter words so intimate in presence of the person she had
+been rudely startled to find between them. He pronounced Miriam's name
+to her and her own to Miriam, but Julia's recognition of the ceremony
+was so slight as to be scarcely perceptible. Miriam had the air of
+waiting for something more before she herself made a sign; and as
+nothing more came she continued to say nothing and not to budge. Nick
+added a remark to the effect that Julia would remember to have had the
+pleasure of meeting her the year before--in Paris, that day at old
+Peter's; to which Mrs. Dallow made answer, "Ah yes," without any
+qualification, while she looked down at some rather rusty studies on
+panels ranged along the floor and resting against the base of the wall.
+Her discomposure was a clear pain to herself; she had had a shock of
+extreme violence, and Nick saw that as Miriam showed no symptom of
+offering to give up her sitting her stay would be of the briefest. He
+wished that young woman would do something--say she would go, get up,
+move about; as it was she had the appearance of watching from her point
+of vantage the other's upset. He made a series of inquiries about
+Julia's doings in the country, to two or three of which she gave answers
+monosyllabic and scarcely comprehensible, only turning her eyes round
+and round the room as in search of something she couldn't find--of an
+escape, of something that was not Miriam. At last she said--it was at
+the end of a very few minutes:
+
+"I didn't come to stay--when you're so busy. I only looked in to see if
+you were here. Good-bye."
+
+"It's charming of you to have come. I'm so glad you've seen for yourself
+how well I'm occupied," Nick replied, not unconscious of how red he was.
+This made Mrs. Dallow look at him while Miriam considered them both.
+Julia's eyes had a strange light he had never seen before--a flash of
+fear by which he was himself frightened. "Of course I'll see you later,"
+he added in awkward, in really misplaced gaiety while she reached the
+door, which she opened herself, getting out with no further attention to
+Miriam. "I wrote to you this morning--you've missed my letter," he
+repeated behind her, having already given her this information. The door
+of the studio was very near that of the house, but before she had
+reached the street the visitors' bell was set ringing. The passage was
+narrow and she kept in advance of Nick, anticipating his motion to open
+the street-door. The bell was tinkling still when, by the action of her
+own hand, a gentleman on the step stood revealed.
+
+"Ah my dear, don't go!" Nick heard pronounced in quick, soft dissuasion
+and in the now familiar accents of Gabriel Nash. The rectification
+followed more quickly still, if that were a rectification which so
+little improved the matter: "I beg a thousand pardons--I thought you
+were Miriam."
+
+Gabriel gave way and Julia the more sharply pursued her retreat. Her
+carriage, a victoria with a pair of precious heated horses, had taken a
+turn up the street, but the coachman had already seen his mistress and
+was rapidly coming back. He drew near; not so fast, however, but that
+Gabriel Nash had time to accompany Mrs. Dallow to the edge of the
+pavement with an apology for the freedom into which he had blundered.
+Nick was at her other hand, waiting to put her into the carriage and
+freshly disconcerted by the encounter with Nash, who somehow, as he
+stood making Julia an explanation that she didn't listen to, looked less
+eminent than usual, though not more conscious of difficulties. Our young
+man coloured deeper and watched the footman spring down as the victoria
+drove up; he heard Nash say something about the honour of having met
+Mrs. Dallow in Paris. Nick wanted him to go into the house; he damned
+inwardly his lack of delicacy. He desired a word with Julia alone--as
+much alone as the two annoying servants would allow. But Nash was not
+too much discouraged to say: "You came for a glimpse of the great model?
+Doesn't she sit? That's what I wanted too, this morning--just a look,
+for a blessing on the day. Ah but you, madam--"
+
+Julia had sprung into her corner while he was still speaking and had
+flashed out to the coachman a "Home!" which of itself set the horses in
+motion. The carriage went a few yards, but while Gabriel, with an
+undiscouraged bow, turned away, Nick Dormer, his hand on the edge of
+the hood, moved with it.
+
+"You don't like it, but I'll explain," he tried to say for its occupant
+alone.
+
+"Explain what?" she asked, still very pale and grave, but in a voice
+that showed nothing. She was thinking of the servants--she could think
+of them even then.
+
+"Oh it's all right. I'll come in at five," Nick returned, gallantly
+jocular, while she was whirled away.
+
+Gabriel had gone into the studio and Nick found him standing in
+admiration before Miriam, who had resumed the position in which she was
+sitting. "Lord, she's good to-day! Isn't she good to-day?" he broke out,
+seizing their host by the arm to give him a particular view. Miriam
+looked indeed still handsomer than before, and she had taken up her
+attitude again with a splendid, sphinx-like air of being capable of
+keeping it for ever. Nick said nothing, but went back to work with a
+tingle of confusion, which began to act after he had resumed his palette
+as a sharp, a delightful stimulus. Miriam spoke never a word, but she
+was doubly grand, and for more than an hour, till Nick, exhausted,
+declared he must stop, the industrious silence was broken only by the
+desultory discourse of their friend.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+Nick went to Great Stanhope Street at five o'clock and learned, rather
+to his surprise, that Julia was not at home--to his surprise because he
+had told her he would come at that hour, and he attributed to her, with
+a certain simplicity, an eager state of mind in regard to his
+explanation. Apparently she was not eager; the eagerness was his own--he
+was eager to explain. He recognised, not without a certain consciousness
+of magnanimity in doing so, that there had been some reason for her
+quick withdrawal from his studio or at any rate for her extreme
+discomposure there. He had a few days before put in a plea for a snatch
+of worship in that sanctuary and she had accepted and approved it; but
+the worship, when the curtain happened to blow back, showed for that of
+a magnificent young woman, an actress with disordered hair, who wore in
+a singular degree the appearance of a person settled for many hours. The
+explanation was easy: it dwelt in the simple truth that when one was
+painting, even very badly and only for a moment, one had to have models.
+Nick was impatient to give it with frank, affectionate lips and a full,
+pleasant admission that it was natural Julia should have been startled;
+and he was the more impatient that, though he would not in the least
+have expected her to like finding a strange woman intimately installed
+with him, she had disliked it even more than would have seemed probable
+or natural. That was because, not having heard from him about the
+matter, the impression was for the moment irresistible with her that a
+trick had been played her. But three minutes with him alone would make
+the difference.
+
+They would indeed have a considerable difference to make, Nick
+reflected, as minutes much more numerous elapsed without bringing Mrs.
+Dallow home. For he had said to the butler that he would come in and
+wait--though it was odd she should not have left a message for him: she
+would doubtless return from one moment to the other. He had of course
+full licence to wait anywhere he preferred; and he was ushered into
+Julia's particular sitting-room and supplied with tea and the evening
+papers. After a quarter of an hour, however, he gave little attention to
+these beguilements, thanks to his feeling still more acutely that since
+she definitely knew he was coming she might have taken the trouble to be
+at home. He walked up and down and looked out of the window, took up her
+books and dropped them again, and then, as half an hour had elapsed,
+became aware he was really sore. What could she be about when, with
+London a thankless void, she was of course not paying visits? A footman
+came in to attend to the fire, whereupon Nick questioned him as to the
+manner in which she was possibly engaged. The man disclosed the fact
+that his mistress had gone out but a quarter of an hour before Nick's
+arrival, and, as if appreciating the opportunity for a little decorous
+conversation, gave him still more information than he invited. From this
+it appeared that, as Nick knew, or could surmise, she had the evening
+before, from the country, wired for the victoria to meet her in the
+morning at Paddington and then gone straight from the station to the
+studio, while her maid, with her luggage, proceeded in a cab to Great
+Stanhope Street. On leaving the studio, however, she had not come
+directly home; she had chosen this unusual season for an hour's drive in
+the Park. She had finally re-entered her house, but had remained
+upstairs all day, seeing no one and not coming down to luncheon. At four
+o'clock she had ordered the brougham for four forty-five, and had got
+into it punctually, saying, "To the Park!" as she did so.
+
+Nick, after the footman had left him, made what he could of Julia's
+sudden passion for the banks of the Serpentine, forsaken and foggy now,
+inasmuch as the afternoon had come on grey and the light was waning. She
+usually hated the Park and hated a closed carriage. He had a gruesome
+vision of her, shrunken into a corner of her brougham and veiled as if
+in consequence of tears, revolving round the solitude of the Drive. She
+had of course been deeply displeased and was not herself; the motion of
+the carriage soothed her, had an effect on her nerves. Nick remembered
+that in the morning, at his door, she had appeared to be going home; so
+she had plunged into the drearier resort on second thoughts and as she
+noted herself near it. He lingered another half-hour, walked up and down
+the room many times and thought of many things. Had she misunderstood
+him when he said he would come at five? Couldn't she be sure, even if
+she had, that he would come early rather than late, and mightn't she
+have left a message for him on the chance? Going out that way a few
+minutes before he was to come had even a little the air of a thing done
+on purpose to offend him; as if she had been so displeased that she had
+taken the nearest occasion of giving him a sign she meant to break with
+him. But were these the things Julia did and was that the way she did
+them--his fine, proud, delicate, generous Julia?
+
+When six o'clock came poor Nick felt distinctly resentful; but he stayed
+ten minutes longer on the possibility that she would in the morning have
+understood him to mention that hour. The April dusk began to gather and
+the unsociability of her behaviour, especially if she were still
+rumbling round the Park, became absurd. Anecdotes came back to him,
+vaguely remembered, heard he couldn't have said when or where, of poor
+artists for whom life had been rendered difficult by wives who wouldn't
+allow them the use of the living female model and who made scenes if
+they encountered on the staircase such sources of inspiration. These
+ladies struck him as vulgar and odious persons, with whom it seemed
+grotesque that Julia should have anything in common. Of course she was
+not his wife yet, and of course if she were he should have washed his
+hands of every form of activity requiring the services of the sitter;
+but even these qualifications left him with a power to wince at the way
+in which the woman he was so sure he loved just escaped ranking herself
+with the Philistines.
+
+At a quarter past six he rang a bell and told the servant who answered
+it that he was going and that Mrs. Dallow was to be informed as soon as
+she came in that he had expected to find her and had waited an hour and
+a quarter. But he had just reached the doorstep of departure when her
+brougham, emerging from the evening mist, stopped in front of the house.
+Nick stood there hanging back till she got out, allowing the servants
+only to help her. She saw him--she was less veiled than his mental
+vision of her; but this didn't prevent her pausing to give an order to
+the coachman, a matter apparently requiring some discussion. When she
+came to the door her visitor remarked that he had been waiting an
+eternity; to which she replied that he must make no grievance of
+that--she was too unwell to do him justice. He immediately professed
+regret and sympathy, adding, however, that in that case she had much
+better not have gone out. She made no answer to this--there were three
+servants in the hall who looked as if they might understand at least
+what was not said to them; only when he followed her in she asked if his
+idea had been to stay longer.
+
+"Certainly, if you're not too ill to see me."
+
+"Come in then," Julia said, turning back after having gone to the foot
+of the stairs.
+
+This struck him immediately as a further restriction of his visit: she
+wouldn't readmit him to the drawing-room or to her boudoir; she would
+receive him in the impersonal apartment downstairs where she saw people
+on business. What did she want to do to him? He was prepared by this
+time for a scene of jealousy, since he was sure he had learned to read
+her character justly in feeling that if she had the appearance of a cold
+woman a forked flame in her was liable on occasion to break out. She was
+very still, but from time to time she would fire off a pistol. As soon
+as he had closed the door she said without sitting down:
+
+"I daresay you saw I didn't like that at all."
+
+"My having a sitter in that professional way? I was very much annoyed at
+it myself," Nick answered.
+
+"Why were _you_ annoyed? She's very handsome," Mrs. Dallow perversely
+said.
+
+"I didn't know you had looked at her!" Nick laughed.
+
+Julia had a pause. "Was I very rude?"
+
+"Oh it was all right; it was only awkward for me because you didn't
+know," he replied.
+
+"I did know; that's why I came."
+
+"How do you mean? My letter couldn't have reached you."
+
+"I don't know anything about your letter," Julia cast about her for a
+chair and then seated herself on the edge of a sofa with her eyes on the
+floor.
+
+"She sat to me yesterday; she was there all the morning; but I didn't
+write to tell you. I went at her with great energy and, absurd as it may
+seem to you, found myself very tired afterwards. Besides, in the evening
+I went to see her act."
+
+"Does she act?" asked Mrs. Dallow.
+
+"She's an actress: it's her profession. Don't you remember her that day
+at Peter's in Paris? She's already a celebrity; she has great talent;
+she's engaged at a theatre here and is making a sensation. As I tell
+you, I saw her last night."
+
+"You needn't tell me," Julia returned, looking up at him with a face of
+which the intense, the tragic sadness startled him.
+
+He had been standing before her, but at this he instantly sat down
+close, taking her passive hand. "I want to, please; otherwise it must
+seem so odd to you. I knew she was coming when I wrote to you the day
+before yesterday. But I didn't tell you then because I didn't know how
+it would turn out, and I didn't want to exult in advance over a poor
+little attempt that might come to nothing. Moreover, it was no use
+speaking of the matter at all unless I told you exactly how it had come
+about," Nick went on, explaining kindly and copiously. "It was the
+result of a visit unexpectedly paid me by Gabriel Nash."
+
+"That man--the man who spoke to me?" Her memory of him shuddered into
+life.
+
+"He did what he thought would please you, but I daresay it didn't. You
+met him in Paris and didn't like him; so I judged best to hold my tongue
+about him."
+
+"Do _you_ like him?"
+
+"Very much."
+
+"Great heaven!" Julia ejaculated, almost under her breath.
+
+"The reason I was annoyed was because, somehow, when you came in, I
+suddenly had the air of having got out of those visits and shut myself
+up in town to do something that I had kept from you. And I have been
+very unhappy till I could explain."
+
+"You don't explain--you can't explain," Mrs Dallow declared, turning on
+her companion eyes which, in spite of her studied stillness, expressed
+deep excitement. "I knew it--I knew everything; that's why I came."
+
+"It was a sort of second-sight--what they call a brainwave," Nick
+smiled.
+
+"I felt uneasy, I felt a kind of call; it came suddenly, yesterday. It
+was irresistible; nothing could have kept me this morning."
+
+"That's very serious, but it's still more delightful. You mustn't go
+away again," said Nick. "We must stick together--forever and ever."
+
+He put his arm round her, but she detached herself as soon as she felt
+its pressure. She rose quickly, moving away, while, mystified, he sat
+looking up at her as she had looked a few moments before at him. "I've
+thought it all over; I've been thinking of it all day," she began.
+"That's why I didn't come in."
+
+"Don't think of it too much; it isn't worth it."
+
+"You like it more than anything else. You do--you can't deny it," she
+went on.
+
+"My dear child, what are you talking about?" Nick asked, gently...
+
+"That's what you like--doing what you were this morning; with women
+lolling, with their things off, to be painted, and people like that
+man."
+
+Nick slowly got up, hesitating. "My dear Julia, apart from the surprise
+this morning, do you object to the living model?"
+
+"Not a bit, for you."
+
+"What's the inconvenience then, since in my studio they're only for me?"
+
+"You love it, you revel in it; that's what you want--the only thing you
+want!" Julia broke out.
+
+"To have models, lolling undressed women, do you mean?"
+
+"That's what I felt, what I knew," she went on--"what came over me and
+haunted me yesterday so that I couldn't throw it off. It seemed to me
+that if I could see it with my eyes and have the perfect proof I should
+feel better, I should be quiet. And now I _am_ quiet--after a struggle
+of some hours, I confess. I _have_ seen; the whole thing's before me and
+I'm satisfied."
+
+"I'm not--to me neither the whole thing nor half of it is before me.
+What exactly are you talking about?" Nick demanded.
+
+"About what you were doing this morning. That's your innermost
+preference, that's your secret passion."
+
+"A feeble scratch at something serious? Yes, it was almost serious," he
+said. "But it was an accident, this morning and yesterday: I got on less
+wretchedly than I intended."
+
+"I'm sure you've immense talent," Julia returned with a dreariness that
+was almost droll.
+
+"No, no, I might have had. I've plucked it up: it's too late for it to
+flower. My dear Julia, I'm perfectly incompetent and perfectly
+resigned."
+
+"Yes, you looked so this morning, when you hung over her. Oh she'll
+bring back your talent!"
+
+"She's an obliging and even an intelligent creature, and I've no doubt
+she would if she could," Nick conceded. "But I've received from you all
+the help any woman's destined to give me. No one can do for me again
+what you've done."
+
+"I shouldn't try it again; I acted in ignorance. Oh I've thought it all
+out!" Julia declared. And then with a strange face of anguish resting on
+his own: "Before it's too late--before it's too late!"
+
+"Too late for what?"
+
+"For you to be free--for you to be free. And for me--for me to be free
+too. You hate everything I like!" she flashed out. "Don't pretend, don't
+pretend!" she went on as a sound of protest broke from him.
+
+"I thought you so awfully _wanted_ me to paint," he gasped, flushed and
+staring.
+
+"I do--I do. That's why you must be free, why we must part?"
+
+"Why we must part--?"
+
+"Oh I've turned it well over. I've faced the hard truth. It wouldn't do
+at all!" Julia rang out.
+
+"I like the way you talk of it--as if it were a trimming for your
+dress!" Nick retorted with bitterness. "Won't it do for you to be loved
+and cherished as well as any woman in England?"
+
+She turned away from him, closing her eyes as not to see something
+dangerous. "You mustn't give anything up for me. I should feel it all
+the while and I should hate it. I'm not afraid of the truth, but you
+are."
+
+"The truth, dear Julia? I only want to know it," Nick insisted. "It
+seems to me in fact just what I've got hold of. When two persons are
+united by the tenderest affection and are sane and generous and just, no
+difficulties that occur in the union their life makes for them are
+insurmountable, no problems are insoluble."
+
+She appeared for a moment to reflect upon this: it was spoken in a tone
+that might have touched her. Yet at the end of the moment, lifting her
+eyes, she brought out: "I hate art, as you call it. I thought I did, I
+knew I did; but till this morning I didn't know how much."
+
+"Bless your dear soul, _that_ wasn't art," Nick pleaded. "The real thing
+will be a thousand miles away from us; it will never come into the
+house, _soyez tranquille_. It knows where to look in and where to flee
+shrieking. Why then should you worry?"
+
+"Because I want to understand, I want to know what I'm doing. You're an
+artist: you are, you are!" Julia cried, accusing him passionately.
+
+"My poor Julia, it isn't so easy as that, nor a character one can take
+on from one day to the other. There are all sorts of things; one must be
+caught young and put through the mill--one must see things as they are.
+There are very few professions that goes with. There would be sacrifices
+I never can make."
+
+"Well then, there are sacrifices for both of us, and I can't make them
+either. I daresay it's all right for you, but for me it would be a
+terrible mistake. When I think I'm doing a certain thing I mustn't do
+just the opposite," she kept on as for true lucidity. "There are things
+I've thought of, the things I like best; and they're not what you mean.
+It would be a great deception, and it's not the way I see my life, and
+it would be misery if we don't understand."
+
+He looked at her with eyes not lighted by her words. "If we don't
+understand what?"
+
+"That we're utterly different--that you're doing it all for _me_."
+
+"And is that an objection to me--what I do for you?" he asked.
+
+"You do too much. You're awfully good, you're generous, you're a dear,
+oh yes--a dear. But that doesn't make me believe in it. I didn't at
+bottom, from the first--that's why I made you wait, why I gave you your
+freedom. Oh I've suspected you," Julia continued, "I had my ideas. It's
+all right for you, but it won't do for me: I'm different altogether. Why
+should it always be put upon me when I hate it? What have I done? I was
+drenched with it before." These last words, as they broke forth, were
+attended with a quick blush; so that Nick could as quickly discern in
+them the uncalculated betrayal of an old irritation, an old shame
+almost--her late husband's flat, inglorious taste for pretty things, his
+indifference to every chance to play a public part. This had been the
+humiliation of her youth, and it was indeed a perversity of fate that a
+new alliance should contain for her even an oblique demand for the same
+spirit of accommodation, impose on her the secret bitterness of the same
+concessions. As Nick stood there before her, struggling sincerely with
+the force that he now felt to be strong in her, the intense resolution
+to break with him, a force matured in a few hours, he read a riddle that
+hitherto had baffled him, saw a great mystery become simple. A personal
+passion for him had all but thrown her into his arms (the sort of thing
+that even a vain man--and Nick was not especially vain--might hesitate
+to recognise the strength of); held in check at moments, with a strain
+of the cord that he could still feel vibrate, by her deep, her rare
+ambition, and arrested at the last only just in time to save her
+calculations. His present glimpse of the immense extent of these
+calculations didn't make him think her cold or poor; there was in fact a
+positive strange heat in them and they struck him rather as grand and
+high. The fact that she could drop him even while she longed for
+him--drop him because it was now fixed in her mind that he wouldn't
+after all serve her resolve to be associated, so far as a woman could,
+with great affairs; that she could postpone, and postpone to an
+uncertainty, the satisfaction of an aching tenderness and plan for the
+long run--this exhibition of will and courage, of the larger scheme that
+possessed her, commanded his admiration on the spot. He paid the heavy
+price of the man of imagination; he was capable of far excursions of the
+spirit, disloyalties to habit and even to faith, he was open to rare
+communications. He ached, on his side, for the moment, to convince her
+that he would achieve what he wouldn't, for the vision of his future she
+had tried to entertain shone before him as a bribe and a challenge. It
+struck him there was nothing he couldn't work for enough with her to be
+so worked with by her. Presently he said:
+
+"You want to be sure the man you marry will be prime minister of
+England. But how can you be really sure with any one?"
+
+"I can be really sure some men won't!" Julia returned.
+
+"The only safe thing perhaps would be to-marry Mr. Macgeorge," he
+suggested.
+
+"Possibly not even him."
+
+"You're a prime minister yourself," Nick made answer. "To hold fast to
+you as I hold, to be determined to be of your party--isn't that
+political enough, since you're the incarnation of politics?"
+
+"Ah how you hate them!" she wailed again. "I saw that when I saw you
+this morning. The whole place reeked of your aversion."
+
+"My dear child, the greatest statesmen have had their distractions. What
+do you make of my hereditary talent? That's a tremendous force."
+
+"It wouldn't carry you far." Then she terribly added, "You must be a
+great artist." He tossed his head at the involuntary contempt of this,
+but she went on: "It's beautiful of you to want to give up anything, and
+I like you for it. I shall always like you. We shall be friends, and I
+shall always take an interest--!"
+
+But he stopped her there, made a movement which interrupted her phrase,
+and she suffered him to hold her hand as if she were not afraid of him
+now. "It isn't only for you," he argued gently; "you're a great deal,
+but you're not everything. Innumerable vows and pledges repose upon my
+head. I'm inextricably committed and dedicated. I was brought up in the
+temple like an infant Samuel; my father was a high-priest and I'm a
+child of the Lord. And then the life itself--when _you_ speak of it I
+feel stirred to my depths; it's like a herald's trumpet. Fight _with_
+me, Julia--not against me! Be on my side and we shall do everything. It
+is uplifting to be a great man before the people--to be loved by them,
+to be followed by them. An artist isn't--never, never. Why _should_ he
+be? Don't forget how clever I am."
+
+"Oh if it wasn't for that!" she panted, pale with the effort to resist
+his tone. Then she put it to him: "Do you pretend that if I were to die
+to-morrow you'd stay in the House?"
+
+"If you were to die? God knows! But you do singularly little justice to
+my incentives," he pursued. "My political career's everything to my
+mother."
+
+This but made her say after a moment: "Are you afraid of your mother?"
+
+"Yes, immensely; for she represents ever so many possibilities of
+disappointment and distress. She represents all my father's as well as
+all her own, and in them my father tragically lives again. On the other
+hand I see him in bliss, as I see my mother, over our marriage and our
+life of common aspirations--though of course that's not a consideration
+that I can expect to have power with you."
+
+She shook her head slowly, even smiling with her recovered calmness and
+lucidity. "You'll never hold high office."
+
+"But why not take me as I am?"
+
+"Because I'm abominably keen about that sort of thing--I must recognise
+my keenness. I must face the ugly truth. I've been through the worst;
+it's all settled."
+
+"The worst, I suppose, was when you found me this morning."
+
+"Oh that was all right--for you."
+
+"You're magnanimous, Julia; but evidently what's good enough for me
+isn't good enough for you." Nick spoke with bitterness.
+
+"I don't like you enough--that's the obstacle," she held herself in hand
+to say.
+
+"You did a year ago; you confessed to it."
+
+"Well, a year ago was a year ago. Things are changed to-day."
+
+"You're very fortunate--to be able to throw away a real devotion," Nick
+returned.
+
+She had her pocket-handkerchief in her hand, and at this she quickly
+pressed it to her lips as to check an exclamation. Then for an instant
+she appeared to be listening to some sound from outside. He interpreted
+her movement as an honourable impulse to repress the "Do you mean the
+devotion I was witness of this morning?" But immediately afterwards she
+said something very different: "I thought I heard a ring. I've
+telegraphed for Mrs. Gresham."
+
+He wondered. "Why did you do that?"
+
+"Oh I want her."
+
+He walked to the window, where the curtains had not been drawn, and saw
+in the dusk a cab at the door. When he turned back he went on: "Why
+won't you trust me to make you like me, as you call it, better? If I
+make you like me as well as I like you it will be about enough, I
+think."
+
+"Oh I like you enough for _your_ happiness. And I don't throw away a
+devotion," Mrs. Dallow continued. "I shall be constantly kind to you. I
+shall be beautiful to you."
+
+"You'll make me lose a fortune," Nick after a moment said.
+
+It brought a slight convulsion, instantly repressed, into her face. "Ah
+you may have all the money you want!"
+
+"I don't mean yours," he answered with plenty of expression of his own.
+He had determined on the instant, since it might serve, to tell her what
+he had never breathed to her before. "Mr. Carteret last year promised me
+a pot of money on the day we should be man and wife. He has thoroughly
+set his heart on it."
+
+"I'm sorry to disappoint Mr. Carteret," said Julia. "I'll go and see
+him. I'll make it all right," she went on. "Then your work, you know,
+will bring you an income. The great men get a thousand just for a head."
+
+"I'm only joking," Nick returned with sombre eyes that contradicted this
+profession. "But what things you deserve I should do!"
+
+"Do you mean striking likenesses?"
+
+He watched her a moment. "You do hate it! Pushed to that point, it's
+curious," he audibly mused.
+
+"Do you mean you're joking about Mr. Carteret's promise?"
+
+"No--the promise is real, but I don't seriously offer it as a reason."
+
+"I shall go to Beauclere," Julia said. "You're an hour late," she added
+in a different tone; for at that moment the door of the room was thrown
+open and Mrs. Gresham, the butler pronouncing her name, ushered in.
+
+"Ah don't impugn my punctuality--it's my character!" the useful lady
+protested, putting a sixpence from the cabman into her purse. Nick went
+off at this with a simplified farewell--went off foreseeing exactly what
+he found the next day, that the useful lady would have received orders
+not to budge from her hostess's side. He called on the morrow, late in
+the afternoon, and Julia saw him liberally, in the spirit of her
+assurance that she would be "beautiful" to him, that she had not thrown
+away his devotion; but Mrs. Gresham remained, with whatever delicacies
+of deprecation, a spectator of her liberality. Julia looked at him
+kindly, but her companion was more benignant still; so that what Nick
+did with his own eyes was not to appeal to her to see him a moment
+alone, but to solicit, in the name of this luxury, the second occupant
+of the drawing-room. Mrs. Gresham seemed to say, while Julia said so
+little, "I understand, my poor friend, I know everything--she has told
+me only _her_ side, but I'm so competent that I know yours too--and I
+enter into the whole thing deeply. But it would be as much as my place
+is worth to accommodate you." Still, she didn't go so far as to give him
+an inkling of what he learned on the third day and what he had not gone
+so far as to suspect--that the two ladies had made rapid arrangements
+for a scheme of foreign travel. These arrangements had already been
+carried out when, at the door of the house in Great Stanhope Street, the
+announcement was made him that the subtle creatures had started that
+morning for Paris.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+They spent on their way to Florence several days in Paris, where Peter
+Sherringham had as much free talk with his sister as it often befell one
+member of their family to have with another. He enjoyed, that is, on two
+different occasions, half an hour's gossip with her in her sitting-room
+at the hotel. On one of these he took the liberty of asking her whether
+or no, decidedly, she meant to marry Nick Dormer. Julia expressed to him
+that she appreciated his curiosity, but that Nick and she were nothing
+more than relations and good friends. "He tremendously wants it," Peter
+none the less observed; to which she simply made answer, "Well then, he
+may want!"
+
+After this, for a while, they sat as silent as if the subject had been
+quite threshed out between them. Peter felt no impulse to penetrate
+further, for it was not a habit of the Sherringhams to talk with each
+other of their love-affairs; and he was conscious of the particular
+deterrent that he and Julia entertained in general such different
+sentiments that they could never go far together in discussion. He liked
+her and was sorry for her, thought her life lonely and wondered she
+didn't make a "great" marriage. Moreover he pitied her for being without
+the interests and consolations he himself had found substantial: those
+of the intellectual, the studious order he considered these to be, not
+knowing how much she supposed she reflected and studied and what an
+education she had found in her political aspirations, viewed by him as
+scarce more a personal part of her than the livery of her servants or
+the jewels George Dallow's money had bought. Her relations with Nick
+struck him as queer, but were fortunately none of his business. No
+business of Julia's was sufficiently his to justify him in an attempt to
+understand it. That there should have been a question of her marrying
+Nick was the funny thing rather than that the question should have been
+dropped. He liked his clever cousin very well as he was--enough for a
+vague sense that he might be spoiled by alteration to a brother-in-law.
+Moreover, though not perhaps distinctly conscious of this, Peter pressed
+lightly on Julia's doings from a tacit understanding that in this case
+she would let him off as easily. He couldn't have said exactly what it
+was he judged it pertinent to be let off from: perhaps from irritating
+inquiry as to whether he had given any more tea-parties for gross young
+women connected with the theatre.
+
+Peter's forbearance, however, brought him not quite all the security he
+prefigured. After an interval he indeed went so far as to ask Julia if
+Nick had been wanting in respect to her; but this was an appeal intended
+for sympathy, not for other intervention. She answered: "Dear no--though
+he's very provoking." Thus Peter guessed that they had had a quarrel in
+which it didn't concern him to meddle: he added her epithet and her
+flight from England together, and they made up to his perception one of
+the little magnified embroilments which do duty for the real in
+superficial lives. It was worse to provoke Julia than not, and Peter
+thought Nick's doing so not particularly characteristic of his
+versatility for good. He might wonder why she didn't marry the member
+for Harsh if the subject had pressingly come up between them; but he
+wondered still more why Nick didn't marry that gentleman's great backer.
+Julia said nothing again, as if to give him a chance to address her some
+challenge that would save her from gushing; but as his impulse appeared
+to be to change the subject, and as he changed it only by silence, she
+was reduced to resuming presently:
+
+"I should have thought you'd have come over to see your friend the
+actress."
+
+"Which of my friends? I know so many actresses," Peter pleaded.
+
+"The woman you inflicted on us in this place a year ago--the one who's
+in London now."
+
+"Oh Miriam Rooth? I should have liked to come over, but I've been tied
+fast. Have you seen her there?"
+
+"Yes, I've seen her."
+
+"Do you like her?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"She has a lovely voice," Peter hazarded after a moment.
+
+"I don't know anything about her voice--I haven't heard it."
+
+"But she doesn't act in pantomime, does she?"
+
+"I don't know anything about her acting. I saw her in private--at Nick
+Dormer's studio."
+
+"At Nick's--?" He was interested now.
+
+"What was she doing there?"
+
+"She was sprawling over the room and--rather insolently--staring at me."
+
+If Mrs. Dallow had wished to "draw" her brother she must at this point
+have suspected she succeeded, in spite of his care to divest his tone of
+all emotion. "Why, does he know her so well? I didn't know."
+
+"She's sitting to him for her portrait--at least she was then."
+
+"Oh yes, I remember--I put him up to that. I'm greatly interested. Is
+the portrait good?"
+
+"I haven't the least idea--I didn't look at it. I daresay it's like,"
+Julia threw off.
+
+"But how in the world"--and Peter's interest grew franker--"does Nick
+find time to paint?"
+
+"I don't know. That horrid man brought her."
+
+"Which horrid man?"--he spoke as if they had their choice.
+
+"The one Nick thinks so clever--the vulgar little man who was at your
+place that day and tried to talk to me. I remember he abused theatrical
+people to me--as if I cared anything about them. But he has apparently
+something to do with your girl."
+
+"Oh I recollect him--I had a discussion with him," Peter patiently said.
+
+"How could you? I must go and dress," his sister went on more
+importantly.
+
+"He _was_ clever, remarkably. Miss Rooth and her mother were old friends
+of his, and he was the first person to speak of them to me."
+
+"What a distinction! I thought him disgusting!" cried Julia, who was
+pressed for time and who had now got up.
+
+"Oh you're severe," said Peter, still bland; but when they separated she
+had given him something to think of.
+
+That Nick was painting a beautiful actress was no doubt in part at least
+the reason why he was provoking and why his most intimate female friend
+had come abroad. The fact didn't render him provoking to his kinsman:
+Peter had on the contrary been quite sincere when he qualified it as
+interesting. It became indeed on reflexion so interesting that it had
+perhaps almost as much to do with Sherringham's now prompt rush over to
+London as it had to do with Julia's coming away. Reflexion taught him
+further that the matter was altogether a delicate one and suggested that
+it was odd he should be mixed up with it in fact when, as Julia's own
+affair, he had but wished to keep out of it. It might after all be his
+affair a little as well--there was somehow a still more pointed
+implication of that in his sister's saying to him the next day that she
+wished immensely he would take a fancy to Biddy Dormer. She said more:
+she said there had been a time when she believed he _had_ done
+so--believed too that the poor child herself had believed the same.
+Biddy was far away the nicest girl she knew--the dearest, sweetest,
+cleverest, _best_, and one of the prettiest creatures in England, which
+never spoiled anything. She would make as charming a wife as ever a man
+had, suited to any position, however high, and--Julia didn't mind
+mentioning it, since her brother would believe it whether she mentioned
+it or no--was so predisposed in his favour that he would have no trouble
+at all. In short she herself would see him through--she'd answer for it
+that he'd have but to speak. Biddy's life at home was horrid; she was
+very sorry for her--the child was worthy of a better fate. Peter
+wondered what constituted the horridness of Biddy's life, and gathered
+that it mainly arose from the fact of Julia's disliking Lady Agnes and
+Grace and of her profiting comfortably by that freedom to do so which
+was a fruit of her having given them a house she had perhaps not felt
+the want of till they were in possession of it. He knew she had always
+liked Biddy, but he asked himself--this was the rest of his wonder--why
+she had taken to liking her so extraordinarily just now. He liked her
+himself--he even liked to be talked to about her and could believe
+everything Julia said: the only thing that had mystified him was her
+motive for suddenly saying it. He had assured her he was perfectly
+sensible of her goodness in so plotting out his future, but was also
+sorry if he had put it into any one's head--most of all into the girl's
+own--that he had ever looked at Biddy with a covetous eye. He wasn't in
+the least sure she would make a good wife, but liked her quite too much
+to wish to put any such mystery to the test. She was certainly not
+offered them for cruel experiments. As it happened, really, he wasn't
+thinking of marrying any one--he had ever so many grounds for neglecting
+that. Of course one was never safe against accidents, but one could at
+least take precautions, and he didn't mind telling her that there were
+several he had taken.
+
+"I don't know what you mean, but it seems to me quite the best
+precaution would be to care for a charming, steady girl like Biddy. Then
+you'd be quite in shelter, you'd know the worst that can happen to you,
+and it wouldn't be bad." The objection he had made to this plea is not
+important, especially as it was not quite candid; it need only be
+mentioned that before the pair parted Julia said to him, still in
+reference to their young friend: "Do go and see her and be nice to her;
+she'll save you disappointments."
+
+These last words reverberated for him--there was a shade of the
+portentous in them and they seemed to proceed from a larger knowledge of
+the subject than he himself as yet possessed. They were not absent from
+his memory when, in the beginning of May, availing himself, to save
+time, of the night-service, he crossed from Paris to London. He arrived
+before the breakfast-hour and went to his sister's house in Great
+Stanhope Street, where he always found quarters, were she in town or
+not. When at home she welcomed him, and in her absence the relaxed
+servants hailed him for the chance he gave them to recover their "form."
+In either case his allowance of space was large and his independence
+complete. He had obtained permission this year to take in scattered
+snatches rather than as a single draught the quantum of holiday to which
+he was entitled; and there was, moreover, a question of his being
+transferred to another capital--in which event he believed he might
+count on a month or two in England before proceeding to his new post.
+
+He waited, after breakfast, but a very few minutes before jumping into a
+hansom and rattling away to the north. A part of his waiting indeed
+consisted of a fidgety walk up Bond Street, during which he looked at
+his watch three or four times while he paused at shop windows for fear
+of being a little early. In the cab, as he rolled along, after having
+given an address--Balaklava Place, Saint John's Wood--the fear he might
+be too early took curiously at moments the form of a fear that he should
+be too late: a symbol of the inconsistencies of which his spirit at
+present was full. Peter Sherringham was nervously formed, too nervously
+for a diplomatist, and haunted with inclinations and indeed with designs
+which contradicted each other. He wanted to be out of it and yet dreaded
+not to be in it, and on this particular occasion the sense of exclusion
+was an ache. At the same time he was not unconscious of the impulse to
+stop his cab and make it turn round and drive due south. He saw himself
+launched in the breezy fact while morally speaking he was hauled up on
+the hot sand of the principle, and he could easily note how little these
+two faces of the same idea had in common. However, as the consciousness
+of going helped him to reflect, a principle was a poor affair if it
+merely became a fact. Yet from the hour it did turn to action the action
+_had_ to be the particular one in which he was engaged; so that he was
+in the absurd position of thinking his conduct wiser for the reason
+that it was directly opposed to his intentions.
+
+He had kept away from London ever since Miriam Rooth came over;
+resisting curiosity, sympathy, importunate haunting passion, and
+considering that his resistance, founded, to be salutary, on a general
+scheme of life, was the greatest success he had yet achieved. He was
+deeply occupied with plucking up the feeling that attached him to her,
+and he had already, by various little ingenuities, loosened some of its
+roots. He had suffered her to make her first appearance on any stage
+without the comfort of his voice or the applause of his hand; saying to
+himself that the man who could do the more could do the less and that
+such an act of fortitude was a proof he should keep straight. It was not
+exactly keeping straight to run over to London three months later and,
+the hour he arrived, scramble off to Balaklava Place; but after all he
+pretended only to be human and aimed in behaviour only at the heroic,
+never at the monstrous. The highest heroism was obviously three parts
+tact. He had not written to his young friend that he was coming to
+England and would call upon her at eleven o'clock in the morning,
+because it was his secret pride that he had ceased to correspond with
+her. Sherringham took his prudence where he could find it, and in doing
+so was rather like a drunkard who should flatter himself he had forsworn
+liquor since he didn't touch lemonade.
+
+It is a sign of how far he was drawn in different directions at once
+that when, on reaching Balaklava Place and alighting at the door of a
+small detached villa of the type of the "retreat," he learned that Miss
+Rooth had but a quarter of an hour before quitted the spot with her
+mother--they had gone to the theatre, to rehearsal, said the maid who
+answered the bell he had set tinkling behind a stuccoed garden-wall:
+when at the end of his pilgrimage he was greeted by a disappointment he
+suddenly found himself relieved and for the moment even saved.
+Providence was after all taking care of him and he submitted to
+Providence. He would still be watched over doubtless, even should he
+follow the two ladies to the theatre, send in his card and obtain
+admission to the scene of their experiments. All his keen taste for
+these matters flamed up again, and he wondered what the girl was
+studying, was rehearsing, what she was to do next. He got back into his
+hansom and drove down the Edgware Road. By the time he reached the
+Marble Arch he had changed his mind again, had determined to let Miriam
+alone for that day. It would be over at eight in the evening--he hardly
+played fair--and then he should consider himself free. Instead of
+pursuing his friends he directed himself upon a shop in Bond Street to
+take a place for their performance. On first coming out he had tried, at
+one of those establishments strangely denominated "libraries," to get a
+stall, but the people to whom he applied were unable to accommodate
+him--they hadn't a single seat left. His actual attempt, at another
+library, was more successful: there was no question of obtaining a
+stall, but he might by a miracle still have a box. There was a
+wantonness in paying for a box at a play on which he had already
+expended four hundred pounds; but while he was mentally measuring this
+abyss an idea came into his head which flushed the extravagance with the
+hue of persuasion.
+
+Peter came out of the shop with the voucher for the box in his pocket,
+turned into Piccadilly, noted that the day was growing warm and fine,
+felt glad that this time he had no other strict business than to leave a
+card or two on official people, and asked himself where he should go if
+he didn't go after Miriam. Then it was that he found himself attaching
+a lively desire and imputing a high importance to the possible view of
+Nick Dormer's portrait of her. He wondered which would be the natural
+place at that hour of the day to look for the artist. The House of
+Commons was perhaps the nearest one, but Nick, inconsequent and
+incalculable though so many of his steps, probably didn't keep the
+picture there; and, moreover, it was not generally characteristic of him
+to be in the natural place. The end of Peter's debate was that he again
+entered a hansom and drove to Calcutta Gardens. The hour was early for
+calling, but cousins with whom one's intercourse was mainly a
+conversational scuffle would accept it as a practical illustration of
+that method. And if Julia wanted him to be nice to Biddy--which was
+exactly, even if with a different view, what he wanted himself--how
+could he better testify than by a visit to Lady Agnes--he would have in
+decency to go to see her some time--at a friendly, fraternising hour
+when they would all be likely to be at home?
+
+Unfortunately, as it turned out, they were none of them at home, so that
+he had to fall back on neutrality and the butler, who was, however, more
+luckily, an old friend. Her ladyship and Miss Dormer were absent from
+town, paying a visit; and Mr. Dormer was also away, or was on the point
+of going away for the day. Miss Bridget was in London, but was out;
+Peter's informant mentioned with earnest vagueness that he thought she
+had gone somewhere to take a lesson. On Peter's asking what sort of
+lesson he meant he replied: "Oh I think--a--the a-sculpture, you know,
+sir." Peter knew, but Biddy's lesson in "a-sculpture"--it sounded on the
+butler's lips like a fashionable new art--struck him a little as a
+mockery of the helpful spirit in which he had come to look her up. The
+man had an air of participating respectfully in his disappointment and,
+to make up for it, added that he might perhaps find Mr. Dormer at his
+other address. He had gone out early and had directed his servant to
+come to Rosedale Road in an hour or two with a portmanteau: he was going
+down to Beauclere in the course of the day, Mr. Carteret being
+ill--perhaps Mr. Sherringham didn't know it. Perhaps too Mr. Sherringham
+would catch him in Rosedale Road before he took his train--he was to
+have been busy there for an hour. This was worth trying, and Peter
+immediately drove to Rosedale Road; where in answer to his ring the door
+was opened to him by Biddy Dormer.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+When that young woman saw him her cheek exhibited the prettiest,
+pleased, surprised red he had ever observed there, though far from
+unacquainted with its living tides, and she stood smiling at him with
+the outer dazzle in her eyes, still making him no motion to enter. She
+only said, "Oh Peter!" and then, "I'm all alone."
+
+"So much the better, dear Biddy. Is that any reason I shouldn't come
+in?"
+
+"Dear no--do come in. You've just missed Nick; he has gone to the
+country--half an hour ago." She had on a large apron and in her hand
+carried a small stick, besmeared, as his quick eye saw, with
+modelling-clay. She dropped the door and fled back before him into the
+studio, where, when he followed her, she was in the act of flinging a
+damp cloth over a rough head, in clay, which, in the middle of the room,
+was supported on a high wooden stand. The effort to hide what she had
+been doing before he caught a glimpse of it made her redder still and
+led to her smiling more, to her laughing with a confusion of shyness and
+gladness that charmed him. She rubbed her hands on her apron, she pulled
+it off, she looked delightfully awkward, not meeting Peter's eye, and
+she said: "I'm just scraping here a little--you mustn't mind me. What I
+do is awful, you know. _Please_, Peter, don't look, I've been coming
+here lately to make my little mess, because mamma doesn't particularly
+like it at home. I've had a lesson or two from a lady who exhibits, but
+you wouldn't suppose it to see what I do. Nick's so kind; he lets me
+come here; he uses the studio so little; I do what I want, or rather
+what I can. What a pity he's gone--he'd have been so glad. I'm really
+alone--I hope you don't mind. Peter, _please_ don't look."
+
+Peter was not bent on looking; his eyes had occupation enough in Biddy's
+own agreeable aspect, which was full of a rare element of domestication
+and responsibility. Though she had, stretching her bravery, taken
+possession of her brother's quarters, she struck her visitor as more at
+home and more herself than he had ever seen her. It was the first time
+she had been, to his notice, so separate from her mother and sister. She
+seemed to know this herself and to be a little frightened by it--just
+enough to make him wish to be reassuring. At the same time Peter also,
+on this occasion, found himself touched with diffidence, especially
+after he had gone back and closed the door and settled down to a regular
+call; for he became acutely conscious of what Julia had said to him in
+Paris and was unable to rid himself of the suspicion that it had been
+said with Biddy's knowledge. It wasn't that he supposed his sister had
+told the girl she meant to do what she could to make him propose to her:
+that would have been cruel to her--if she liked him enough to
+consent--in Julia's perfect uncertainty. But Biddy participated by
+imagination, by divination, by a clever girl's secret, tremulous
+instincts, in her good friend's views about her, and this probability
+constituted for Sherringham a sort of embarrassing publicity. He had
+impressions, possibly gross and unjust, in regard to the way women move
+constantly together amid such considerations and subtly
+intercommunicate, when they don't still more subtly dissemble, the hopes
+or fears of which persons of the opposite sex form the subject.
+Therefore poor Biddy would know that if she failed to strike him in the
+right light it wouldn't be for want of an attention definitely called to
+her claims. She would have been tacitly rejected, virtually condemned.
+He couldn't without an impulse of fatuity endeavour to make up for this
+to her by consoling kindness; he was aware that if any one knew it a man
+would be ridiculous who should take so much as that for granted. But no
+one would know it: he oddly enough in this calculation of security left
+Biddy herself out. It didn't occur to him that she might have a secret,
+small irony to spare for his ingenious and magnanimous effort to show
+her how much he liked her in reparation to her for not liking her more.
+This high charity coloured at any rate the whole of his visit to
+Rosedale Road, the whole of the pleasant, prolonged chat that kept him
+there more than an hour. He begged the girl to go on with her work, not
+to let him interrupt it; and she obliged him at last, taking the cloth
+off the lump of clay and giving him a chance to be delightful by
+guessing that the shapeless mass was intended, or would be intended
+after a while, for Nick. He saw she was more comfortable when she began
+again to smooth it and scrape it with her little stick, to manipulate it
+with an ineffectual air of knowing how; for this gave her something to
+do, relieved her nervousness and permitted her to turn away from him
+when she talked.
+
+He walked about the room and sat down; got up and looked at Nick's
+things; watched her at moments in silence--which made her always say in
+a minute that he was not to pass judgement or she could do nothing;
+observed how her position before her high stand, her lifted arms, her
+turns of the head, considering her work this way and that, all helped
+her to be pretty. She repeated again and again that it was an immense
+pity about Nick, till he was obliged to say he didn't care a straw for
+Nick and was perfectly content with the company he found. This was not
+the sort of tone he thought it right, given the conditions, to take; but
+then even the circumstances didn't require him to pretend he liked her
+less than he did. After all she was his cousin; she would cease to be so
+if she should become his wife; but one advantage of her not entering
+into that relation was precisely that she would remain his cousin. It
+was very pleasant to find a young, bright, slim, rose-coloured kinswoman
+all ready to recognise consanguinity when one came back from cousinless
+foreign lands. Peter talked about family matters; he didn't know, in his
+exile, where no one took an interest in them, what a fund of latent
+curiosity about them he treasured. It drew him on to gossip accordingly
+and to feel how he had with Biddy indefeasible properties in
+common--ever so many things as to which they'd always understand each
+other _a demi-mot_. He smoked a cigarette because she begged him--people
+always smoked in studios and it made her feel so much more an artist.
+She apologised for the badness of her work on the ground that Nick was
+so busy he could scarcely ever give her a sitting; so that she had to do
+the head from photographs and occasional glimpses. They had hoped to be
+able to put in an hour that morning, but news had suddenly come that Mr.
+Carteret was worse, and Nick had hurried down to Beauclere. Mr. Carteret
+was very ill, poor old dear, and Nick and he were immense friends. Nick
+had always been charming to him. Peter and Biddy took the concerns of
+the houses of Dormer and Sherringham in order, and the young man felt
+after a little as if they were as wise as a French _conseil de famille_
+and settling what was best for every one. He heard all about Lady Agnes;
+he showed an interest in the detail of her existence that he had not
+supposed himself to possess, though indeed Biddy threw out intimations
+which excited his curiosity, presenting her mother in a light that might
+call on his sympathy.
+
+"I don't think she has been very happy or very pleased of late," the
+girl said. "I think she has had some disappointments, poor dear mamma;
+and Grace has made her go out of town for three or four days in the hope
+of a little change. They've gone down to see an old lady, Lady St.
+Dunstans, who never comes to London now and who, you know--she's
+tremendously old--was papa's godmother. It's not very lively for Grace,
+but Grace is such a dear she'll do anything for mamma. Mamma will go
+anywhere, no matter at what risk of discomfort, to see people she can
+talk with about papa."
+
+Biddy added in reply to a further question that what her mother was
+disappointed about was--well, themselves, her children and all their
+affairs; and she explained that Lady Agnes wanted all kinds of things
+for them that didn't come, that they didn't get or seem likely to get,
+so that their life appeared altogether a failure. She wanted a great
+deal, Biddy admitted; she really wanted everything, for she had thought
+in her happier days that everything was to be hers. She loved them all
+so much and was so proud too: she couldn't get over the thought of their
+not being successful. Peter was unwilling to press at this point, for he
+suspected one of the things Lady Agnes wanted; but Biddy relieved him a
+little by describing her as eager above all that Grace should get
+married.
+
+"That's too unselfish of her," he pronounced, not caring at all for
+Grace. "Cousin Agnes ought to keep her near her always, if Grace is so
+obliging and devoted."
+
+"Oh mamma would give up anything of that sort for our good; she wouldn't
+sacrifice us that way!" Biddy protested. "Besides, I'm the one to stay
+with mamma; not that I can manage and look after her and do everything
+so well as Grace. But, you know, I _want_ to," said Biddy with a liquid
+note in her voice--and giving her lump of clay a little stab for
+mendacious emphasis.
+
+"But doesn't your mother want the rest of you to get married--Percival
+and Nick and you?" Peter asked.
+
+"Oh she has given up Percy. I don't suppose she thinks it would do. Dear
+Nick of course--that's just what she does want."
+
+He had a pause. "And you, Biddy?"
+
+"Oh I daresay. But that doesn't signify--I never shall."
+
+Peter got up at this; the tone of it set him in motion and he took a
+turn round the room. He threw off something cheap about her being too
+proud; to which she replied that that was the only thing for a girl to
+be to get on.
+
+"What do you mean by getting on?"--and he stopped with his hands in his
+pockets on the other side of the studio.
+
+"I mean crying one's eyes out!" Biddy unexpectedly exclaimed; but she
+drowned the effect of this pathetic paradox in a laugh of clear
+irrelevance and in the quick declaration: "Of course it's about Nick
+that she's really broken-hearted."
+
+"What's the matter with Nick?" he went on with all his diplomacy.
+
+"Oh Peter, what's the matter with Julia?" Biddy quavered softly back to
+him, her eyes suddenly frank and mournful. "I daresay you know what we
+all hoped, what we all supposed from what they told us. And now they
+won't!" said the girl.
+
+"Yes, Biddy, I know. I had the brightest prospect of becoming your
+brother-in-law: wouldn't that have been it--or something like that? But
+it's indeed visibly clouded. What's the matter with them? May I have
+another cigarette?" Peter came back to the wide, cushioned bench where
+he had previously lounged: this was the way they took up the subject he
+wanted most to look into. "Don't they know how to love?" he speculated
+as he seated himself again.
+
+"It seems a kind of fatality!" Biddy sighed.
+
+He said nothing for some moments, at the end of which he asked if his
+companion were to be quite alone during her mother's absence. She
+replied that this parent was very droll about that: would never leave
+her alone and always thought something dreadful would happen to her. She
+had therefore arranged that Florence Tressilian should come and stay in
+Calcutta Gardens for the next few days--to look after her and see she
+did no wrong. Peter inquired with fulness into Florence Tressilian's
+identity: he greatly hoped that for the success of Lady Agnes's
+precautions she wasn't a flighty young genius like Biddy. She was
+described to him as tremendously nice and tremendously clever, but also
+tremendously old and tremendously safe; with the addition that Biddy was
+tremendously fond of her and that while she remained in Calcutta Gardens
+they expected to enjoy themselves tremendously. She was to come that
+afternoon before dinner.
+
+"And are you to dine at home?" said Peter.
+
+"Certainly; where else?"
+
+"And just you two alone? Do you call that enjoying yourselves
+tremendously?"
+
+"It will do for me. No doubt I oughtn't in modesty to speak for poor
+Florence."
+
+"It isn't fair to her; you ought to invite some one to meet her."
+
+"Do you mean you, Peter?" the girl asked, turning to him quickly and
+with a look that vanished the instant he caught it.
+
+"Try me. I'll come like a shot."
+
+"That's kind," said Biddy, dropping her hands and now resting her eyes
+on him gratefully. She remained in this position as if under a charm;
+then she jerked herself back to her work with the remark: "Florence will
+like that immensely."
+
+"I'm delighted to please Florence--your description of her's so
+attractive!" Sherringham laughed. And when his companion asked him if he
+minded there not being a great feast, because when her mother went away
+she allowed her a fixed amount for that sort of thing and, as he might
+imagine, it wasn't millions--when Biddy, with the frankness of their
+pleasant kinship, touched anxiously on this economic point
+(illustrating, as Peter saw, the lucidity with which Lady Agnes had had
+in her old age to learn to recognise the occasions when she could be
+conveniently frugal) he answered that the shortest dinners were the
+best, especially when one was going to the theatre. That was his case
+to-night, and did Biddy think he might look to Miss Tressilian to go
+with them? They'd have to dine early--he wanted not to miss a moment.
+
+"The theatre--Miss Tressilian?" she stared, interrupted and in suspense
+again.
+
+"Would it incommode you very much to dine say at 7.15 and accept a place
+in my box? The finger of Providence was in it when I took a box an hour
+ago. I particularly like your being free to go--if you are free."
+
+She began almost to rave with pleasure. "Dear Peter, how good you are!
+They'll have it at any hour. Florence will be so glad."
+
+"And has Florence seen Miss Rooth?"
+
+"Miss Rooth?" the girl repeated, redder than before. He felt on the spot
+that she had heard of the expenditure of his time and attention on that
+young lady. It was as if she were conscious of how conscious he would
+himself be in speaking of her, and there was a sweetness in her
+allowance for him on that score. But Biddy was more confused for him
+than he was for himself. He guessed in a moment how much she had thought
+over what she had heard; this was indicated by her saying vaguely, "No,
+no, I've not seen her." Then she knew she was answering a question he
+hadn't asked her, and she went on: "We shall be too delighted. I saw
+her--perhaps you remember--in your rooms in Paris. I thought her so
+wonderful then! Every one's talking of her here. But we don't go to the
+theatre much, you know: we don't have boxes offered us except when _you_
+come. Poor Nick's too much taken up in the evening. I've wanted awfully
+to see her. They say she's magnificent."
+
+"I don't know," Peter was glad to be able honestly to answer. "I haven't
+seen her."
+
+"You haven't seen her?"
+
+"Never, Biddy. I mean on the stage. In private often--yes," he
+conscientiously added.
+
+"Oh!" Biddy exclaimed, bending her face on Nick's bust again. She asked
+him no question about the new star, and he offered her no further
+information. There were things in his mind pulling him different ways,
+so that for some minutes silence was the result of the conflict. At last
+he said, after an hesitation caused by the possibility that she was
+ignorant of the fact he had lately elicited from Julia, though it was
+more probable she might have learned it from the same source:
+
+"Am I perhaps indiscreet in alluding to the circumstance that Nick has
+been painting Miss Rooth's portrait?"
+
+"You're not indiscreet in alluding to it to me, because I know it."
+
+"Then there's no secret nor mystery about it?"
+
+Biddy just considered. "I don't think mamma knows it."
+
+"You mean you've been keeping it from her because she wouldn't like it?"
+
+"We're afraid she may think papa wouldn't have liked it."
+
+This was said with an absence of humour at which Peter could but show
+amusement, though he quickly recovered himself, repenting of any
+apparent failure of respect to the high memory of his late celebrated
+relative. He threw off rather vaguely: "Ah yes, I remember that great
+man's ideas," and then went on: "May I ask if you know it, the fact
+we're talking of, through Julia or through Nick?"
+
+"I know it from both of them."
+
+"Then if you're in their confidence may I further ask if this
+undertaking of Nick's is the reason why things seem to be at an end
+between them?"
+
+"Oh I don't think she likes it," Biddy had to say.
+
+"Isn't it good?"
+
+"Oh I don't mean the picture--she hasn't seen it. But his having done
+it."
+
+"Does she dislike it so much that that's why she won't marry him?"
+
+Biddy gave up her work, moving away from it to look at it. She came and
+sat down on the long bench on which Sherringham had placed himself. Then
+she broke out: "Oh Peter, it's a great trouble--it's a very great
+trouble; and I can't tell you, for I don't understand it."
+
+"If I ask you," he said, "it's not to pry into what doesn't concern me;
+but Julia's my sister, and I can't after all help taking some interest
+in her life. She tells me herself so little. She doesn't think me
+worthy."
+
+"Ah poor Julia!" Biddy wailed defensively. Her tone recalled to him that
+Julia had at least thought him worthy to unite himself to Bridget
+Dormer, and inevitably betrayed that the girl was thinking of that also.
+While they both thought of it they sat looking into each other's eyes.
+
+"Nick, I'm sure, doesn't treat _you_ that way; I'm sure he confides in
+you; he talks to you about his occupations, his ambitions," Peter
+continued. "And you understand him, you enter into them, you're nice to
+him, you help him."
+
+"Oh Nick's life--it's very dear to me," Biddy granted.
+
+"That must be jolly for him."
+
+"It makes _me_ very happy."
+
+Peter uttered a low, ambiguous groan; then he cried with irritation;
+"What the deuce is the matter with them then? Why can't they hit it off
+together and be quiet and rational and do what every one wants them to?"
+
+"Oh Peter, it's awfully complicated!" the girl sighed with sagacity.
+
+"Do you mean that Nick's in love with her?"
+
+"In love with Julia?"
+
+"No, no, with Miriam Rooth."
+
+She shook her head slowly, then with a smile which struck him as one of
+the sweetest things he had ever seen--it conveyed, at the expense of her
+own prospects, such a shy, generous little mercy of reassurance--"He
+isn't, Peter," she brought out. "Julia thinks it trifling--all that
+sort of thing," she added "She wants him to go in for different
+honours."
+
+"Julia's the oddest woman. I mean I thought she loved him," Peter
+explained. "And when you love a person--!" He continued to make it out,
+leaving his sentence impatiently unfinished, while Biddy, with lowered
+eyes, sat waiting--it so interested her--to learn what you did when you
+loved a person. "I can't conceive her giving him up. He has great
+ability, besides being such a good fellow."
+
+"It's for his happiness, Peter--that's the way she reasons," Biddy set
+forth. "She does it for an idea; she has told me a great deal about it,
+and I see the way she feels."
+
+"You try to, Biddy, because you're such a dear good-natured girl, but I
+don't believe you do in the least," he took the liberty of replying.
+"It's too little the way you yourself would feel. Julia's idea, as you
+call it, must be curious."
+
+"Well, it is, Peter," Biddy mournfully admitted. "She won't risk not
+coming out at the top."
+
+"At the top of what?"
+
+"Oh of everything." Her tone showed a trace of awe of such high views.
+
+"Surely one's at the top of everything when one's in love."
+
+"I don't know," said the girl.
+
+"Do you doubt it?" Peter asked.
+
+"I've never been in love and I never shall be."
+
+"You're as perverse, in your way, as Julia," he returned to this. "But I
+confess I don't understand Nick's attitude any better. He seems to me,
+if I may say so, neither fish nor flesh."
+
+"Oh his attitude's very noble, Peter; his state of mind's wonderfully
+interesting," Biddy pleaded. "Surely _you_ must be in favour of art,"
+she beautifully said.
+
+It made him look at her a moment. "Dear Biddy, your little digs are as
+soft as zephyrs."
+
+She coloured, but she protested. "My little digs? What do you mean?
+Aren't you in favour of art?"
+
+"The question's delightfully simple. I don't know what you're talking
+about. Everything has its place. A parliamentary life," he opined,
+"scarce seems to me the situation for portrait-painting."
+
+"That's just what Nick says."
+
+"You talk of it together a great deal?"
+
+"Yes, Nick's very good to me."
+
+"Clever Nick! And what do you advise him?"
+
+"Oh to _do_ something."
+
+"That's valuable," Peter laughed. "Not to give up his sweetheart for the
+sake of a paint-pot, I hope?"
+
+"Never, never, Peter! It's not a question of his giving up," Biddy
+pursued, "for Julia has herself shaken free. I think she never really
+felt safe--she loved him, but was afraid of him. Now she's only
+afraid--she has lost the confidence she tried to have. Nick has tried to
+hold her, but she has wrested herself away. Do you know what she said to
+me? She said, 'My confidence has gone for ever.'"
+
+"I didn't know she was such a prig!" Julia's brother commented. "They're
+queer people, verily, with water in their veins instead of blood. You
+and I wouldn't be like that, should we?--though you _have_ taken up such
+a discouraging position about caring for a fellow."
+
+"I care for art," poor Biddy returned.
+
+"You do, to some purpose"--and Peter glanced at the bust.
+
+"To that of making you laugh at me."
+
+But this he didn't heed. "Would you give a good man up for 'art'?"
+
+"A good man? What man?"
+
+"Well, say me--if I wanted to marry you."
+
+She had the briefest of pauses. "Of course I would--in a moment. At any
+rate I'd give up the House of Commons," she amended. "That's what Nick's
+going to do now--only you mustn't tell any one."
+
+Peter wondered. "He's going to chuck up his seat?"
+
+"I think his mind is made up to it. He has talked me over--we've had
+some deep discussions. Yes, I'm on the side of art!" she ardently said.
+
+"Do you mean in order to paint--to paint that girl?" Peter went on.
+
+"To paint every one--that's what he wants. By keeping his seat he hasn't
+kept Julia, and she was the thing he cared for most in public life. When
+he has got out of the whole thing his attitude, as he says, will be at
+least clear. He's tremendously interesting about it, Peter," Biddy
+declared; "has talked to me wonderfully--has won me over. Mamma's
+heart-broken; telling _her_ will be the hardest part."
+
+"If she doesn't know," he asked, "why then is she heart-broken?"
+
+"Oh at the hitch about their marriage--she knows that. Their marriage
+has been so what she wanted. She thought it perfection. She blames Nick
+fearfully. She thinks he held the whole thing in his hand and that he
+has thrown away a magnificent opportunity."
+
+"And what does Nick say to her?"
+
+"He says, 'Dear old mummy!'"
+
+"That's good," Peter pronounced.
+
+"I don't know what will become of her when this other blow arrives,"
+Biddy went on. "Poor Nick wants to please her--he does, he does. But, as
+he says, you can't please every one and you must before you die please
+yourself a little."
+
+Nick's kinsman, whose brother-in-law he was to have been, sat looking
+at the floor; the colour had risen to his face while he listened. Then
+he sprang up and took another turn about the room. His companion's
+artless but vivid recital had set his blood in motion. He had taken
+Nick's political prospects very much for granted, thought of them as
+definite and almost dazzling. To learn there was something for which he
+was ready to renounce such honours, and to recognise the nature of that
+bribe, affected our young man powerfully and strangely. He felt as if he
+had heard the sudden blare of a trumpet, yet felt at the same time as if
+he had received a sudden slap in the face. Nick's bribe was "art"--the
+strange temptress with whom he himself had been wrestling and over whom
+he had finally ventured to believe that wisdom and training had won a
+victory. There was something in the conduct of his old friend and
+playfellow that made all his reasonings small. So unexpected, so
+courageous a choice moved him as a reproach and a challenge. He felt
+ashamed of having placed himself so unromantically on his guard, and
+rapidly said to himself that if Nick could afford to allow so much for
+"art" he might surely exhibit some of the same confidence. There had
+never been the least avowed competition between the cousins--their lines
+lay too far apart for that; but they nevertheless rode their course in
+sight of each other, and Peter had now the impression of suddenly seeing
+Nick Dormer give his horse the spur, bound forward and fly over a wall.
+He was put on his mettle and hadn't to look long to spy an obstacle he
+too might ride at. High rose his curiosity to see what warrant his
+kinsman might have for such risks--how he was mounted for such exploits.
+He really knew little about Nick's talent--so little as to feel no right
+to exclaim "What an ass!" when Biddy mentioned the fact which the
+existence of real talent alone could redeem from absurdity. All his
+eagerness to see what Nick had been able to make of such a subject as
+Miriam Rooth came back to him: though it was what mainly had brought him
+to Rosedale Road he had forgotten it in the happy accident of his
+encounter with the girl. He was conscious that if the surprise of a
+revelation of power were in store for him Nick would be justified more
+than he himself would feel reinstated in self-respect; since the courage
+of renouncing the forum for the studio hovered before him as greater
+than the courage of marrying an actress whom one was in love with: the
+reward was in the latter case so much more immediate. Peter at any rate
+asked Biddy what Nick had done with his portrait of Miriam. He hadn't
+seen it anywhere in rummaging about the room.
+
+"I think it's here somewhere, but I don't know," she replied, getting up
+to look vaguely round her.
+
+"Haven't you seen it? Hasn't he shown it to you?"
+
+She rested her eyes on him strangely a moment, then turned them away
+with a mechanical air of still searching. "I think it's in the room, put
+away with its face to the wall."
+
+"One of those dozen canvases with their backs to us?"
+
+"One of those perhaps."
+
+"Haven't you tried to see?"
+
+"I haven't touched them"--and Biddy had a colour.
+
+"Hasn't Nick had it out to show you?"
+
+"He says it's in too bad a state--it isn't finished--it won't do."
+
+"And haven't you had the curiosity to turn it round for yourself?"
+
+The embarrassed look in her face deepened under his insistence and it
+seemed to him that her eyes pleaded with him a moment almost to tears.
+"I've had an idea he wouldn't like it."
+
+Her visitor's own desire, however, had become too sharp for easy
+forbearance. He laid his hand on two or three canvases which proved, as
+he extricated them, to be either blank or covered with rudimentary
+forms. "Dear Biddy, have you such intense delicacy?" he asked, pulling
+out something else.
+
+The inquiry was meant in familiar kindness, for Peter was struck even to
+admiration with her having a sense of honour that all girls haven't. She
+must in this particular case have longed for a sight of Nick's work--the
+work that had brought about such a crisis in his life. But she had
+passed hours in his studio alone without permitting herself a stolen
+peep; she was capable of that if she believed it would please him. Peter
+liked a charming girl's being capable of that--he had known charming
+girls who wouldn't in the least have been--and his question was really a
+form of homage. Biddy, however, apparently discovered some light mockery
+in it, and she broke out incongruously:
+
+"I haven't wanted so much to see it! I don't care for her so much as
+that!"
+
+"So much as what?" He couldn't but wonder.
+
+"I don't care for his actress--for that vulgar creature. I don't like
+her!" said Biddy almost startlingly.
+
+Peter stared. "I thought you hadn't seen her."
+
+"I saw her in Paris--twice. She was wonderfully clever, but she didn't
+charm me."
+
+He quickly considered, saying then all kindly: "I won't inflict the
+thing on you in that case--we'll leave it alone for the present." Biddy
+made no reply to this at first, but after a moment went straight over
+to the row of stacked canvases and exposed several of them to the light.
+"Why did you say you wished to go to the theatre to-night?" her
+companion continued.
+
+Still she was silent; after which, with her back turned to him and a
+little tremor in her voice while she drew forth successively her
+brother's studies, she made answer: "For the sake of your company,
+Peter! Here it is, I think," she added, moving a large canvas with some
+effort. "No, no, I'll hold it for you. Is that the light?"
+
+She wouldn't let him take it; she bade him stand off and allow her to
+place it in the right position. In this position she carefully presented
+it, supporting it at the proper angle from behind and showing her head
+and shoulders above it. From the moment his eyes rested on the picture
+Peter accepted this service without protest. Unfinished, simplified and
+in some portions merely suggested, it was strong, vivid and assured, it
+had already the look of life and the promise of power. Peter felt all
+this and was startled, was strangely affected--he had no idea Nick moved
+with that stride. Miriam, seated, was represented in three-quarters,
+almost to her feet. She leaned forward with one of her legs crossed over
+the other, her arms extended and foreshortened, her hands locked
+together round her knee. Her beautiful head was bent a little,
+broodingly, and her splendid face seemed to look down at life. She had a
+grand appearance of being raised aloft, with a wide regard, a survey
+from a height of intelligence, for the great field of the artist, all
+the figures and passions he may represent. Peter asked himself where his
+kinsman had learned to paint like that. He almost gasped at the
+composition of the thing and at the drawing of the difficult arms. Biddy
+abstained from looking round the corner of the canvas as she held it;
+she only watched, in Peter's eyes, for this gentleman's impression of
+it. That she easily caught, and he measured her impression--her
+impression of _his_ impression--when he went after a few minutes to
+relieve her. She let him lift the thing out of her grasp; he moved it
+and rested it, so that they could still see it, against the high back of
+a chair. "It's tremendously good," he then handsomely pronounced.
+
+"Dear, dear Nick," Biddy murmured, looking at it now.
+
+"Poor, poor Julia!" Peter was prompted to exclaim in a different tone.
+His companion made no rejoinder to this, and they stood another minute
+or two side by side and in silence, gazing at the portrait. At last he
+took up his hat--he had no more time, he must go. "Will you come
+to-night all the same?" he asked with a laugh that was somewhat awkward
+and an offer of a hand-shake.
+
+"All the same?" Biddy seemed to wonder.
+
+"Why you say she's a terrible creature," Peter completed with his eyes
+on the painted face.
+
+"Oh anything for art!" Biddy smiled.
+
+"Well, at seven o'clock then." And Sherringham departed, leaving the
+girl alone with the Tragic Muse and feeling with a quickened rush the
+beauty of that young woman as well as, all freshly, the peculiar
+possibilities of Nick.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+It was not till after the noon of the next day that he was to see Miriam
+Rooth. He wrote her a note that evening, to be delivered to her at the
+theatre, and during the performance she sent round to him a card with
+"All right, come to luncheon to-morrow" scrawled on it in pencil.
+
+When he presented himself at Balaklava Place he learned that the two
+ladies had not come in--they had gone again early to rehearsal; but they
+had left word that he was to be pleased to wait, they would appear from
+one moment to the other. It was further mentioned to him, as he was
+ushered into the drawing-room, that Mr. Dashwood was in possession of
+that ground. This circumstance, however, Peter barely noted: he had been
+soaring so high for the past twelve hours that he had almost lost
+consciousness of the minor differences of earthly things. He had taken
+Biddy Dormer and her friend Miss Tressilian home from the play and after
+leaving them had walked about the streets, had roamed back to his
+sister's house, in a state of exaltation the intenser from his having
+for the previous time contained himself, thinking it more decorous and
+considerate, less invidious and less blatant, not to "rave." Sitting
+there in the shade of the box with his companions he had watched Miriam
+in attentive but inexpressive silence, glowing and vibrating inwardly,
+yet for these fine, deep reasons not committing himself to the spoken
+rapture. Delicacy, it appeared to him, should rule the hour; and indeed
+he had never had a pleasure less alloyed than this little period of
+still observation and repressed ecstasy. Miriam's art lost nothing by
+it, and Biddy's mild nearness only gained. This young lady was virtually
+mute as well--wonderingly, dauntedly, as if she too associated with the
+performer various other questions than that of her mastery of her art.
+To this mastery Biddy's attitude was a candid and liberal tribute: the
+poor girl sat quenched and pale, as if in the blinding light of a
+comparison by which it would be presumptuous even to be annihilated. Her
+subjection, however, was a gratified, a charmed subjection: there was
+beneficence in such beauty--the beauty of the figure that moved before
+the footlights and spoke in music--even if it deprived one of hope.
+Peter didn't say to her in vulgar elation and in reference to her
+whimsical profession of dislike at the studio, "Well, do you find our
+friend so disagreeable now?" and she was grateful to him for his
+forbearance, for the tacit kindness of which the idea seemed to be: "My
+poor child, I'd prefer you if I could; but--judge for yourself--how can
+I? Expect of me only the possible. Expect that certainly, but only
+that." In the same degree Peter liked Biddy's sweet, hushed air of
+judging for herself, of recognising his discretion and letting him off
+while she was lost in the illusion, in the convincing picture of the
+stage. Miss Tressilian did most of the criticism: she broke out
+cheerfully and sonorously from time to time, in reference to the
+actress, "Most striking certainly," or "She _is_ clever, isn't she?" She
+uttered a series of propositions to which her companions found it
+impossible to respond. Miss Tressilian was disappointed in nothing but
+their enjoyment: they didn't seem to think the exhibition as amusing as
+she.
+
+Walking away through the ordered void of Lady Agnes's quarter, with the
+four acts of the play glowing again before him in the smokeless London
+night, Peter found the liveliest thing in his impression the certitude
+that if he had never seen Miriam before and she had had for him none of
+the advantages of association, he would still have recognised in her
+performance the richest interest the theatre had ever offered him. He
+floated in the felicity of it, in the general encouragement of a sense
+of the perfectly _done_, in the almost aggressive bravery of still
+larger claims for an art which could so triumphantly, so exquisitely
+render life. "Render it?" he said to himself. "Create it and reveal it,
+rather; give us something new and large and of the first order!" He had
+_seen_ Miriam now; he had never seen her before; he had never seen her
+till he saw her in her conditions. Oh her conditions--there were many
+things to be said about them; they were paltry enough as yet, inferior,
+inadequate, obstructive, as compared with the right, full, finished
+setting of such a talent; but the essence of them was now, irremovably,
+in our young man's eyes, the vision of how the uplifted stage and the
+listening house transformed her. That idea of her having no character of
+her own came back to him with a force that made him laugh in the empty
+street: this was a disadvantage she reduced so to nothing that obviously
+he hadn't known her till to-night. Her character was simply to hold you
+by the particular spell; any other--the good nature of home, the
+relation to her mother, her friends, her lovers, her debts, the practice
+of virtues or industries or vices--was not worth speaking of. These
+things were the fictions and shadows; the representation was the deep
+substance.
+
+Peter had as he went an intense vision--he had often had it before--of
+the conditions still absent, the great and complete ones, those which
+would give the girl's talent a superior, a discussable stage. More than
+ever he desired them, mentally invoked them, filled them out in
+imagination, cheated himself with the idea that they were possible. He
+saw them in a momentary illusion and confusion: a great academic,
+artistic theatre, subsidised and unburdened with money-getting, rich in
+its repertory, rich in the high quality and the wide array of its
+servants, rich above all in the authority of an impossible
+administrator--a manager personally disinterested, not an actor with an
+eye to the main chance; pouring forth a continuity of tradition,
+striving for perfection, laying a splendid literature under
+contribution. He saw the heroine of a hundred "situations," variously
+dramatic and vividly real; he saw comedy and drama and passion and
+character and English life; he saw all humanity and history and poetry,
+and then perpetually, in the midst of them, shining out in the high
+relief of some great moment, an image as fresh as an unveiled statue. He
+was not unconscious that he was taking all sorts of impossibilities and
+miracles for granted; but he was under the conviction, for the time,
+that the woman he had been watching three hours, the incarnation of the
+serious drama, would be a new and vivifying force. The world was just
+then so bright to him that even Basil Dashwood struck him at first as a
+conceivable agent of his dream.
+
+It must be added that before Miriam arrived the breeze that filled
+Sherringham's sail began to sink a little. He passed out of the
+eminently "let" drawing-room, where twenty large photographs of the
+young actress bloomed in the desert; he went into the garden by a glass
+door that stood open, and found Mr. Dashwood lolling on a bench and
+smoking cigarettes. This young man's conversation was a different
+music--it took him down, as he felt; showed him, very sensibly and
+intelligibly, it must be confessed, the actual theatre, the one they
+were all concerned with, the one they would have to make the miserable
+best of. It was fortunate that he kept his intoxication mainly to
+himself: the Englishman's habit of not being effusive still prevailed
+with him after his years of exposure to the foreign infection. Nothing
+could have been less exclamatory than the meeting of the two men, with
+its question or two, its remark or two, about the new visitor's arrival
+in London; its off-hand "I noticed you last night, I was glad you turned
+up at last" on one side and its attenuated "Oh yes, it was the first
+time; I was very much interested" on the other. Basil Dashwood played a
+part in Yolande and Peter had not failed to take with some comfort the
+measure of his aptitude. He judged it to be of the small order, as
+indeed the part, which was neither that of the virtuous nor that of the
+villainous hero, restricted him to two or three inconspicuous effects
+and three or four changes of dress. He represented an ardent but
+respectful young lover whom the distracted heroine found time to pity a
+little and even to rail at; but it was impressed upon his critic that he
+scarcely represented young love. He looked very well, but Peter had
+heard him already in a hundred contemporary pieces; he never got out of
+rehearsal. He uttered sentiments and breathed vows with a nice voice,
+with a shy, boyish tremor, but as if he were afraid of being chaffed for
+it afterwards; giving the spectator in the stalls the sense of holding
+the prompt-book and listening to a recitation. He made one think of
+country-houses and lawn-tennis and private theatricals; than which there
+couldn't be, to Peter's mind, a range of association more disconnected
+from the actor's art.
+
+Dashwood knew all about the new thing, the piece in rehearsal; he knew
+all about everything--receipts and salaries and expenses and newspaper
+articles, and what old Baskerville said and what Mrs. Ruffler thought:
+matters of superficial concern to his fellow-guest, who wondered, before
+they had sight of Miriam, if she talked with her "walking-gentleman"
+about them by the hour, deep in them and finding them not vulgar and
+boring but the natural air of her life and the essence of her
+profession. Of course she did--she naturally would; it was all in the
+day's work and he might feel sure she wouldn't turn up her nose at the
+shop. He had to remind himself that he didn't care if she didn't, that
+he would really think worse of her if she should. She certainly was in
+deep with her bland playmate, talking shop by the hour: he could see
+this from the fellow's ease of attitude, the air of a man at home and
+doing the honours. He divined a great intimacy between the two young
+artists, but asked himself at the same time what he, Peter Sherringham,
+had to say about it. He didn't pretend to control Miriam's intimacies,
+it was to be supposed; and if he had encouraged her to adopt a
+profession rich in opportunities for comradeship it was not for him to
+cry out because she had taken to it kindly. He had already descried a
+fund of utility in Mrs. Lovick's light brother; but it irritated him,
+all the same, after a while, to hear the youth represent himself as
+almost indispensable. He was practical--there was no doubt of that; and
+this idea added to Peter's paradoxical sense that as regards the matters
+actually in question he himself had not this virtue. Dashwood had got
+Mrs. Rooth the house; it happened by a lucky chance that Laura Lumley,
+to whom it belonged--Sherringham would know Laura Lumley?--wanted to get
+rid, for a mere song, of the remainder of the lease. She was going to
+Australia with a troupe of her own. They just stepped into it; it was
+good air--the best sort of London air to live in, to sleep in, for
+people of their trade. Peter came back to his wonder at what Miriam's
+personal relations with this deucedly knowing gentleman might be, and
+was again able to assure himself that they might be anything in the
+world she liked, for any stake he, the familiar of the Foreign Office,
+had in them. Dashwood told him of all the smart people who had tried to
+take up the new star--the way the London world had already held out its
+hand; and perhaps it was Sherringham's irritation, the crushed sentiment
+I just mentioned, that gave a little heave in the exclamation, "Oh
+that--that's all rubbish: the less of that the better!" At this Mr.
+Dashwood sniffed a little, rather resentful; he had expected Peter to be
+pleased with the names of the eager ladies who had "called"--which
+proved how low a view he took of his art. Our friend explained--it is to
+be hoped not pedantically--that this art was serious work and that
+society was humbug and imbecility; also that of old the great comedians
+wouldn't have known such people. Garrick had essentially his own circle.
+
+"No, I suppose they didn't 'call' in the old narrow-minded time," said
+Basil Dashwood.
+
+"Your profession didn't call. They had better company--that of the
+romantic gallant characters they represented. They lived with _them_, so
+it was better all round." And Peter asked himself--for that clearly
+struck the young man as a dreary period--if _he_ only, for Miriam, in
+her new life and among the futilities of those who tried to lionise her,
+expressed the artistic idea. This at least, Sherringham reflected, was
+a situation that could be improved.
+
+He learned from his companion that the new play, the thing they were
+rehearsing, was an old play, a romantic drama of thirty years before,
+very frequently revived and threadbare with honourable service. Dashwood
+had a part in it, but there was an act in which he didn't appear, and
+this was the act they were doing that morning. Yolande had done all
+Yolande could do; the visitor was mistaken if he supposed Yolande such a
+tremendous hit. It had done very well, it had run three months, but they
+were by no means coining money with it. It wouldn't take them to the end
+of the season; they had seen for a month past that they would have to
+put on something else. Miss Rooth, moreover, wanted a new part; she was
+above all impatient to show her big range. She had grand ideas; she
+thought herself very good-natured to repeat the same stuff for three
+months. The young man lighted another cigarette and described to his
+listener some of Miss Rooth's ideas. He abounded in information about
+her--about her character, her temper, her peculiarities, her little
+ways, her manner of producing some of her effects. He spoke with
+familiarity and confidence, as if knowing more about her than any one
+else--as if he had invented or discovered her, were in a sense her
+proprietor or guarantor. It was the talk of the shop, both with a native
+sharpness and a touching young candour; the expansion of the commercial
+spirit when it relaxes and generalises, is conscious of safety with
+another member of the guild.
+
+Peter at any rate couldn't help protesting against the lame old
+war-horse it was proposed to bring into action, who had been ridden to
+death and had saved a thousand desperate fields; and he exclaimed on
+the strange passion of the good British public for sitting again and
+again through expected situations, watching for speeches they had heard
+and surprises that struck the hour. Dashwood defended the taste of
+London, praised it as loyal, constant, faithful; to which his
+interlocutor retorted with some vivacity that it was faithful to sad
+trash. He justified this sally by declaring the play in rehearsal sad
+trash, clumsy mediocrity with all its convenience gone, and that the
+fault was the want of life in the critical sense of the public, which
+was ignobly docile, opening its mouth for its dose like the pupils of
+Dotheboys Hall; not insisting on something different, on a fresh brew
+altogether. Dashwood asked him if he then wished their friend to go on
+playing for ever a part she had repeated more than eighty nights on end:
+he thought the modern "run" was just what he had heard him denounce in
+Paris as the disease the theatre was dying of. This imputation Peter
+quite denied, wanting to know if she couldn't change to something less
+stale than the greatest staleness of all. Dashwood opined that Miss
+Rooth must have a strong part and that there happened to be one for her
+in the before-mentioned venerable novelty. She had to take what she
+could get--she wasn't a person to cry for the moon. This was a
+stop-gap--she would try other things later; she would have to look round
+her; you couldn't have a new piece, one that would do, left at your door
+every day with the milk. On one point Sherringham's mind might be at
+rest: Miss Rooth was a woman who would do every blessed thing there was
+to do. Give her time and she would walk straight through the repertory.
+She was a woman who would do this--she was a woman who would do that:
+her spokesman employed this phrase so often that Peter, nervous, got up
+and threw an unsmoked cigarette away. Of course she was a woman; there
+was no need of his saying it a hundred times.
+
+As for the repertory, the young man went on, the most beautiful girl in
+the world could give but what she had. He explained, after their visitor
+sat down again, that the noise made by Miss Rooth was not exactly what
+this admirer appeared to suppose. Sherringham had seen the house the
+night before and would recognise that, though good, it was very far from
+great. She had done very well, it was all right, but she had never gone
+above a point which Dashwood expressed in pounds sterling, to the
+edification of his companion, who vaguely thought the figure high. Peter
+remembered that he had been unable to get a stall, but Dashwood insisted
+that "Miriam" had not leaped into commanding fame: that was a thing that
+never happened in fact--it happened only in grotesque works of fiction.
+She had attracted notice, unusual notice for a woman whose name, the day
+before, had never been heard of: she was recognised as having, for a
+novice, extraordinary cleverness and confidence--in addition to her
+looks, of course, which were the thing that had really fetched the
+crowd. But she hadn't been the talk of London; she had only been the
+talk of Gabriel Nash. He wasn't London, more was the pity. He knew the
+esthetic people--the worldly, semi-smart ones, not the frumpy, sickly
+lot who wore dirty drapery; and the esthetic people had run after her.
+Mr. Dashwood sketchily instructed the pilgrim from Paris as to the
+different sects in the great religion of beauty, and was able to give
+him the particular "note" of the critical clique to which Miriam had
+begun so quickly to owe it that she had a vogue. The information made
+our friend feel very ignorant of the world, very uninitiated and buried
+in his little professional hole. Dashwood warned him that it would be a
+long time before the general public would wake up to Miss Rooth, even
+after she had waked up to herself; she would have to do some really big
+thing first. _They_ knew it was in her, the big thing--Peter and he and
+even poor Nash--because they had seen her as no one else had; but London
+never took any one on trust--it had to be cash down. It would take their
+young lady two or three years to pay out her cash and get her
+equivalent. But of course the equivalent would be simply a gold-mine.
+Within its limits, however, certainly, the mark she had made was already
+quite a fairy-tale: there was magic in the way she had concealed from
+the first her want of experience. She absolutely made you think she had
+a lot of it, more than any one else. Mr. Dashwood repeated several times
+that she was a cool hand--a deucedly cool hand, and that he watched her
+himself, saw ideas come to her, saw her have different notions, and more
+or less put them to the test, on different nights. She was always
+alive--she liked it herself. She gave him ideas, long as he had been on
+the stage. Naturally she had a great deal to learn, no end even of quite
+basic things; a cosmopolite like Sherringham would understand that a
+girl of that age, who had never had a friend but her mother--her mother
+was greater fun than ever now--naturally _would_ have. Sherringham
+winced at being dubbed a "cosmopolite" by his young entertainer, just as
+he had winced a moment before at hearing himself lumped in esoteric
+knowledge with Dashwood and Gabriel Nash; but the former of these
+gentlemen took no account of his sensibility while he enumerated a few
+of the elements of the "basic." He was a mixture of acuteness and
+innocent fatuity; and Peter had to recognise in him a rudiment or two of
+criticism when he said that the wonderful thing in the girl was that she
+learned so fast--learned something every night, learned from the same
+old piece a lot more than any one else would have learned from twenty.
+"That's what it is to be a genius," Peter concurred. "Genius is only the
+art of getting your experience fast, of stealing it, as it were; and in
+this sense Miss Rooth's a regular brigand." Dashwood condoned the
+subtlety and added less analytically, "Oh she'll do!" It was exactly in
+these simple words, addressed to her, that her other admirer had phrased
+the same truth; yet he didn't enjoy hearing them on his neighbour's
+lips: they had a profane, patronising sound and suggested displeasing
+equalities.
+
+The two men sat in silence for some minutes, watching a fat robin hop
+about on the little seedy lawn; at the end of which they heard a vehicle
+stop on the other side of the garden-wall and the voices of occupants
+alighting. "Here they come, the dear creatures," said Basil Dashwood
+without moving; and from where they sat Peter saw the small door in the
+wall pushed open. The dear creatures were three in number, for a
+gentleman had added himself to Mrs. Rooth and her daughter. As soon as
+Miriam's eyes took in her Parisian friend she fell into a large, droll,
+theatrical attitude and, seizing her mother's arm, exclaimed
+passionately: "Look where he sits, the author of all my woes--cold,
+cynical, cruel!" She was evidently in the highest spirits; of which Mrs.
+Rooth partook as she cried indulgently, giving her a slap, "Oh get
+along, you gypsy!"
+
+"She's always up to something," Dashwood laughed as Miriam, radiant and
+with a conscious stage tread, glided toward Sherringham as if she were
+coming to the footlights. He rose slowly from his seat, looking at her
+and struck with her beauty: he had been impatient to see her, yet in the
+act his impatience had had a disconcerting check.
+
+He had had time to note that the man who had come in with her was
+Gabriel Nash, and this recognition brought a low sigh to his lips as he
+held out his hand to her--a sigh expressive of the sudden sense that his
+interest in her now could only be a gross community. Of course that
+didn't matter, since he had set it, at the most, such rigid limits; but
+he none the less felt vividly reminded that it would be public and
+notorious, that inferior people would be inveterately mixed up with it,
+that she had crossed the line and sold herself to the vulgar, making him
+indeed only one of an equalised multitude. The way Nash turned up there
+just when he didn't want to see him proved how complicated a thing it
+was to have a friendship with a young woman so clearly booked for
+renown. He quite forgot that the intruder had had this object of
+interest long before his own first view of it and had been present at
+that passage, which he had in a measure brought about. Had Sherringham
+not been so cut out to make trouble of this particular joy he might have
+found some adequate assurance that their young hostess distinguished him
+in the way in which, taking his hand in both of hers, she looked up at
+him and murmured, "Dear old master!" Then as if this were not
+acknowledgment enough she raised her head still higher and, whimsically,
+gratefully, charmingly, almost nobly, kissed him on the lips before the
+other men, before the good mother whose "Oh you honest creature!" made
+everything regular.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+If he was ruffled by some of her conditions there was thus comfort and
+consolation to be drawn from others, beside the essential
+fascination--so small the doubt of that now--of the young lady's own
+society. He spent the afternoon, they all spent the afternoon, and the
+occasion reminded him of pages in _Wilhelm Meister_. He himself could
+pass for Wilhelm, and if Mrs. Rooth had little resemblance to Mignon,
+Miriam was remarkably like Philina. The movable feast awaiting
+them--luncheon, tea, dinner?--was delayed two or three hours; but the
+interval was a source of gaiety, for they all smoked cigarettes in the
+garden and Miriam gave striking illustrations of the parts she was
+studying. Peter was in the state of a man whose toothache has suddenly
+stopped--he was exhilarated by the cessation of pain. The pain had been
+the effort to remain in Paris after the creature in the world in whom he
+was most interested had gone to London, and the balm of seeing her now
+was the measure of the previous soreness.
+
+Gabriel Nash had, as usual, plenty to say, and he talked of Nick's
+picture so long that Peter wondered if he did it on purpose to vex him.
+They went in and out of the house; they made excursions to see what form
+the vague meal was taking; and Sherringham got half an hour alone, or
+virtually alone, with the mistress of his unsanctioned passion--drawing
+her publicly away from the others and making her sit with him in the
+most sequestered part of the little gravelled grounds. There was summer
+enough for the trees to shut out the adjacent villas, and Basil Dashwood
+and Gabriel Nash lounged together at a convenient distance while Nick's
+whimsical friend dropped polished pebbles, sometimes audibly splashing,
+into the deep well of the histrionic simplicity. Miriam confessed that
+like all comedians they ate at queer hours; she sent Dashwood in for
+biscuits and sherry--she proposed sending him round to the grocer's in
+the Circus Road for superior wine. Peter judged him the factotum of the
+little household: he knew where the biscuits were kept and the state of
+the grocer's account. When he himself congratulated her on having so
+useful an inmate she said genially, but as if the words disposed of him,
+"Oh he's awfully handy." To this she added, "You're not, you know";
+resting the kindest, most pitying eyes on him. The sensation they gave
+him was as sweet as if she had stroked his cheek, and her manner was
+responsive even to tenderness. She called him "Dear master" again and
+again, and still often "_Cher maitre_," and appeared to express
+gratitude and reverence by every intonation.
+
+"You're doing the humble dependent now," he said: "you do it
+beautifully, as you do everything." She replied that she didn't make it
+humble enough--she couldn't; she was too proud, too insolent in her
+triumph. She liked that, the triumph, too much, and she didn't mind
+telling him she was perfectly happy. Of course as yet the triumph was
+very limited; but success was success, whatever its quantity; the dish
+was a small one but had the right taste. Her imagination had already
+bounded beyond the first phase unexpectedly great as this had been: her
+position struck her as modest compared with the probably future now
+vivid to her. Peter had never seen her so soft and sympathetic; she had
+insisted in Paris that her personal character was that of the good
+girl--she used the term in a fine loose way--and it was impossible to be
+a better girl than she showed herself this pleasant afternoon. She was
+full of gossip and anecdote and drollery; she had exactly the air he
+would have wished her to have--that of thinking of no end of things to
+tell him. It was as if she had just returned from a long journey and had
+had strange adventures and made wonderful discoveries. She began to
+speak of this and that, then broke off to speak of something else; she
+talked of the theatre, of the "critics," and above all of London, of the
+people she had met and the extraordinary things they said to her, of the
+parts she was going to take up, of lots of new ideas that had come to
+her about the art of comedy. She wanted to do comedy now--to do the
+comedy of London life. She was delighted to find that seeing more of the
+world suggested things to her; they came straight from the fact, from
+nature, if you could call it nature; she was thus convinced more than
+ever that the artist ought to _live_ so as to get on with his business,
+gathering ideas and lights from experience--ought to welcome any
+experience that would give him lights. But work of course _was_
+experience, and everything in one's life that was good was work. That
+was the jolly thing in the actor's trade--it made up for other elements
+that were odious: if you only kept your eyes open nothing could happen
+to you that wouldn't be food for observation and grist to your mill,
+showing you how people looked and moved and spoke, cried and grimaced,
+writhed and dissimulated, in given situations. She saw all round her
+things she wanted to "do"--London bristled with them if you had eyes to
+see. She was fierce to know why people didn't take them up, put them
+into plays and parts, give one a chance with them; she expressed her
+sharp impatience of the general literary _betise_. She had never been
+chary of this particular displeasure, and there were moments--it was an
+old story and a subject of frank raillery to Sherringham--when to hear
+her you might have thought there was no cleverness anywhere but in her
+own splendid impatience. She wanted tremendous things done that she
+might use them, but she didn't pretend to say exactly what they were to
+be, nor even approximately how they were to be handled: her ground was
+rather that if _she_ only had a pen--it was exasperating to have to
+explain! She mainly contented herself with the view that nothing had
+really been touched: she felt that more and more as she saw more of
+people's goings-on.
+
+Peter went to her theatre again that evening and indeed made no scruple
+of going every night for a week. Rather perhaps I should say he made a
+scruple, but a high part of the pleasure of his life during these
+arbitrary days was to overcome it. The only way to prove he could
+overcome it was to go; and he was satisfied, after he had been seven
+times, not only with the spectacle on the stage but with his perfect
+independence. He knew no satiety, however, with the spectacle on the
+stage, which induced for him but a further curiosity. Miriam's
+performance was a thing alive, with a power to change, to grow, to
+develop, to beget new forms of the same life. Peter contributed to it in
+his amateurish way and watched with solicitude the effect of his care
+and the fortune of his hints. He talked it over in Balaklava Place,
+suggested modifications and variations worth trying. She professed
+herself thankful for any refreshment that could be administered to her
+interest in _Yolande_, and with an energy that showed large resource
+touched up her part and drew several new airs from it. Peter's
+liberties bore on her way of uttering certain speeches, the intonations
+that would have more beauty or make the words mean more. She had her
+ideas, or rather she had her instincts, which she defended and
+illustrated, with a vividness superior to argument, by a happy pictorial
+phrase or a snatch of mimicry; but she was always for trying; she liked
+experiments and caught at them, and she was especially thankful when
+some one gave her a showy reason, a plausible formula, in a case where
+she only stood on an intuition. She pretended to despise reasons and to
+like and dislike at her sovereign pleasure; but she always honoured the
+exotic gift, so that Sherringham was amused with the liberal way she
+produced it, as if she had been a naked islander rejoicing in a present
+of crimson cloth.
+
+Day after day he spent most of his time in her society, and Miss Laura
+Lumley's recent habitation became the place in London to which his
+thoughts and his steps were most attached. He was highly conscious of
+his not now carrying out that principle of abstention he had brought to
+such maturity before leaving Paris; but he contented himself with a much
+cruder justification of this lapse than he would have thought adequate
+in advance. It consisted simply in the idea that to be identified with
+the first fresh exploits of a young genius was a delightful experience.
+What was the harm of it when the genius was real? His main security was
+thus that his relations with Miriam had been placed under the protection
+of that idea of approved extravagance. In this department they made a
+very creditable figure and required much less watching and pruning than
+when it had been his effort to adjust them to a worldly plan. He had in
+fine a sense of real wisdom when he pronounced it surely enough that
+this momentary intellectual participation in the girl's dawning fame was
+a charming thing. Charming things were not frequent enough in a busy
+man's life to be kicked out of the way. Balaklava Place, looked at in
+this philosophic way, became almost idyllic: it gave Peter the
+pleasantest impression he had ever had of London.
+
+The season happened to be remarkably fine; the temperature was high, but
+not so high as to keep people from the theatre. Miriam's "business"
+visibly increased, so that the question of putting on the second play
+underwent some revision. The girl persisted, showing in her persistence
+a temper of which Peter had already caught some sharp gleams. It was
+plain that through her career she would expect to carry things with a
+high hand. Her managers and agents wouldn't find her an easy victim or a
+calculable force; but the public would adore her, surround her with the
+popularity that attaches to a good-natured and free-spoken princess, and
+her comrades would have a kindness for her because she wouldn't be
+selfish. They too would, besides representing her body-guard, form in a
+manner a portion of her affectionate public. This was the way her friend
+read the signs, liking her whimsical tolerance of some of her vulgar
+playfellows almost well enough to forgive their presence in Balaklava
+Place, where they were a sore trial to her mother, who wanted her to
+multiply her points of contact only with the higher orders. There were
+hours when Peter seemed to make out that her principal relation to the
+proper world would be to have within two or three years a grand battle
+with it resulting in its taking her, should she let it have her at all,
+absolutely on her own terms: a picture which led our young man to ask
+himself with a helplessness that was not exempt, as he perfectly knew,
+from absurdity, what part _he_ should find himself playing in such a
+contest and if it would be reserved to him to be the more ridiculous as
+a peacemaker or as a heavy backer.
+
+"She might know any one she would, and the only person she appears to
+take any pleasure in is that dreadful Miss Rover," Mrs. Rooth whimpered
+to him more than once--leading him thus to recognise in the young lady
+so designated the principal complication of Balaklava Place. Miss Rover
+was a little actress who played at Miriam's theatre, combining with an
+unusual aptitude for delicate comedy a less exceptional absence of
+rigour in private life. She was pretty and quick and brave, and had a
+fineness that Miriam professed herself already in a position to estimate
+as rare. She had no control of her inclinations, yet sometimes they were
+wholly laudable, like the devotion she had formed for her beautiful
+colleague, whom she admired not only as an ornament of the profession
+but as a being altogether of a more fortunate essence. She had had an
+idea that real ladies were "nasty," but Miriam was not nasty, and who
+could gainsay that Miriam was a real lady? The girl justified herself to
+her patron from Paris, who had found no fault with her; she knew how
+much her mother feared the proper world wouldn't come in if they knew
+that the improper, in the person of pretty Miss Rover, was on the
+ground. What did she care who came and who didn't, and what was to be
+gained by receiving half the snobs in London? People would have to take
+her exactly as they found her--that they would have to learn; and they
+would be much mistaken if they thought her capable of turning snob too
+for the sake of their sweet company. She didn't pretend to be anything
+but what she meant to be, the best general actress of her time; and what
+had that to do with her seeing or not seeing a poor ignorant girl who
+had loved--well, she needn't say what Fanny had done. They had met in
+the way of business; she didn't say she would have run after her. She
+had liked her because she wasn't a slick, and when Fanny Rover had asked
+her quite wistfully if she mightn't come and see her and like her she
+hadn't bristled with scandalised virtue. Miss Rover wasn't a bit more
+stupid or more ill-natured than any one else; it would be time enough to
+shut the door when she should become so.
+
+Peter commended even to extravagance the liberality of such comradeship;
+said that of course a woman didn't go into that profession to see how
+little she could swallow. She was right to live with the others so long
+as they were at all possible, and it was for her and only for her to
+judge how long that might be. This was rather heroic on his part, for
+his assumed detachment from the girl's personal life still left him a
+margin for some forms of uneasiness. It would have made in his spirit a
+great difference for the worse that the woman he loved, and for whom he
+wished no baser lover than himself, should have embraced the prospect of
+consorting only with the cheaper kind. It was all very well, but Fanny
+Rover was simply a rank _cabotine_, and that sort of association was an
+odd training for a young woman who was to have been good enough--he
+couldn't forget that, but kept remembering it as if it might still have
+a future use--to be his admired wife. Certainly he ought to have thought
+of such things before he permitted himself to become so interested in a
+theatrical nature. His heroism did him service, however, for the hour;
+it helped him by the end of the week to feel quite broken in to Miriam's
+little circle. What helped him most indeed was to reflect that she would
+get tired of a good many of its members herself in time; for if it was
+not that they were shocking--very few of them shone with that intense
+light--they could yet be thoroughly trusted in the long run to bore
+you.
+
+There was a lovely Sunday in particular, spent by him almost all in
+Balaklava Place--he arrived so early--when, in the afternoon, every sort
+of odd person dropped in. Miriam held a reception in the little garden
+and insisted on all the company's staying to supper. Her mother shed
+tears to Peter, in the desecrated house, because they had accepted,
+Miriam and she, an invitation--and in Cromwell Road too--for the
+evening. Miriam had now decreed they shouldn't go--they would have so
+much better fun with their good friends at home. She was sending off a
+message--it was a terrible distance--by a cabman, and Peter had the
+privilege of paying the messenger. Basil Dashwood, in another vehicle,
+proceeded to an hotel known to him, a mile away, for supplementary
+provisions, and came back with a cold ham and a dozen of champagne. It
+was all very Bohemian and dishevelled and delightful, very supposedly
+droll and enviable to outsiders; and Miriam told anecdotes and gave
+imitations of the people she would have met if she had gone out, so that
+no one had a sense of loss--the two occasions were fantastically united.
+Mrs. Rooth drank champagne for consolation, though the consolation was
+imperfect when she remembered she might have drunk it, though not quite
+so much perhaps, in Cromwell Road.
+
+Taken in connection with the evening before, the day formed for our
+friend the most complete exhibition of his young woman he had yet
+enjoyed. He had been at the theatre, to which the Saturday night
+happened to have brought the very fullest house she had played to, and
+he came early to Balaklava Place, to tell her once again--he had told
+her half-a-dozen times the evening before--that with the excitement of
+her biggest audience she had surpassed herself, acted with remarkable
+intensity. It pleased her to hear this, and the spirit with which she
+interpreted the signs of the future and, during an hour he spent alone
+with her, Mrs. Rooth being upstairs and Basil Dashwood luckily absent,
+treated him to twenty specimens of feigned passion and character, was
+beyond any natural abundance he had yet seen in a woman. The impression
+could scarcely have been other if she had been playing wild snatches to
+him at the piano: the bright up-darting flame of her talk rose and fell
+like an improvisation on the keys. Later, the rest of the day, he could
+as little miss the good grace with which she fraternised with her
+visitors, finding always the fair word for each--the key to a common
+ease, the right turn to keep vanity quiet and make humility brave. It
+was a wonderful expenditure of generous, nervous life. But what he read
+in it above all was the sense of success in youth, with the future loose
+and big, and the action of that charm on the faculties. Miriam's limited
+past had yet pinched her enough to make emancipation sweet, and the
+emancipation had come at last in an hour. She had stepped into her magic
+shoes, divined and appropriated everything they could help her to,
+become in a day a really original contemporary. He was of course not
+less conscious of that than Nick Dormer had been when in the cold light
+of his studio this more detached observer saw too how she had altered.
+
+But the great thing to his mind, and during these first days the
+irresistible seduction of the theatre, was that she was a rare
+revelation of beauty. Beauty was the principle of everything she did and
+of the way she unerringly did it--an exquisite harmony of line and
+motion and attitude and tone, what was at once most general and most
+special in her performance. Accidents and instincts played together to
+this end and constituted something that was independent of her talent
+or of her merit in a given case, and which as a value to Peter's
+imagination was far superior to any merit and any talent. He could but
+call it a felicity and an importance incalculable, and but know that it
+connected itself with universal values. To see this force in operation,
+to sit within its radius and feel it shift and revolve and change and
+never fail, was a corrective to the depression, the humiliation, the
+bewilderment of life. It transported our troubled friend from the vulgar
+hour and the ugly fact; drew him to something that had no warrant but
+its sweetness, no name nor place save as the pure, the remote, the
+antique. It was what most made him say to himself "Oh hang it, what does
+it matter?" when he reflected that an _homme serieux_, as they said in
+Paris, rather gave himself away, as they said in America, by going every
+night to the same sordid stall at which all the world might stare. It
+was what kept him from doing anything but hover round Miriam--kept him
+from paying any other visits, from attending to any business, from going
+back to Calcutta Gardens. It was a spell he shrank intensely from
+breaking and the cause of a hundred postponements, confusions, and
+absurdities. It put him in a false position altogether, but it made of
+the crooked little stucco villa in Saint John's Wood a place in the
+upper air, commanding the prospect; a nest of winged liberties and
+ironies far aloft above the huddled town. One should live at altitudes
+when one could--they braced and simplified; and for a happy interval he
+never touched the earth.
+
+It was not that there were no influences tending at moments to drag him
+down--an abasement from which he escaped only because he was up so high.
+We have seen that Basil Dashwood could affect him at times as a chunk of
+wood tied to his ankle--this through the circumstance that he made
+Miriam's famous conditions, those of the public exhibition of her
+genius, seem small and prosaic; so that Peter had to remind himself how
+much this smallness was perhaps involved in their being at all. She
+carried his imagination off into infinite spaces, whereas she carried
+Dashwood's only into the box-office and the revival of plays that were
+barbarously bad. The worst was its being so open to him to see that a
+sharp young man really in the business might know better than he.
+Another vessel of superior knowledge--he talked, that is, as if he knew
+better than any one--was Gabriel Nash, who lacked no leisure for
+hatefully haunting Balaklava Place, or in other words appeared to enjoy
+the same command of his time as Peter Sherringham. The pilgrim from
+Paris regarded him with mingled feelings, for he had not forgotten the
+contentious character of their first meeting or the degree to which he
+had been moved to urge upon Nick Dormer's consideration that his
+talkative friend was probably one of the most eminent of asses. This
+personage turned up now as an admirer of the charming creature he had
+scoffed at, and there was much to exasperate in the smooth gloss of his
+inconsistency, at which he never cast an embarrassed glance. He
+practised indeed such loose license of regard to every question that it
+was difficult, in vulgar parlance, to "have" him; his sympathies hummed
+about like bees in a garden, with no visible plan, no economy in their
+flight. He thought meanly of the modern theatre and yet had discovered a
+fund of satisfaction in the most promising of its exponents; and Peter
+could more than once but say to him that he should really, to keep his
+opinions at all in hand, attach more value to the stage or less to the
+interesting a tress. Miriam took her perfect ease at his expense and
+treated him as the most abject of her slaves: all of which was worth
+seeing as an exhibition, on Nash's part, of the beautifully
+imperturbable. When Peter all too grossly pronounced him "damned"
+impudent he always felt guilty later on of an injustice--Nash had so
+little the air of a man with something to gain. He was aware
+nevertheless of a certain itching in his boot-toe when his
+fellow-visitor brought out, and for the most part to Miriam herself, in
+answer to any charge of tergiversation, "Oh it's all right; it's the
+voice, you know--the enchanting voice!" Nash meant by this, as indeed he
+more fully set forth, that he came to the theatre or to the villa simply
+to treat his ear to the sound--the richest then to be heard on earth, as
+he maintained--issuing from Miriam's lips. Its richness was quite
+independent of the words she might pronounce or the poor fable they
+might subserve, and if the pleasure of hearing her in public was the
+greater by reason of the larger volume of her utterance it was still
+highly agreeable to see her at home, for it was there the strictly
+mimetic gift he freely conceded to her came out most. He spoke as if she
+had been formed by the bounty of nature to be his particular recreation,
+and as if, being an expert in innocent joys, he took his pleasure
+wherever he found it.
+
+He was perpetually in the field, sociable, amiable, communicative,
+inveterately contradicted but never confounded, ready to talk to any one
+about anything and making disagreement--of which he left the
+responsibility wholly to others--a basis of harmony. Every one knew what
+he thought of the theatrical profession, and yet who could say he didn't
+regard, its members as embodiments of comedy when he touched with such a
+hand the spring of their foibles?--touched it with an art that made even
+Peter laugh, notwithstanding his attitude of reserve where this
+interloper was concerned. At any rate, though he had committed himself
+as to their general fatuity he put up with their company, for the sake
+of Miriam's vocal vibrations, with a practical philosophy that was all
+his own. And she frankly took him for her supreme, her incorrigible
+adorer, masquerading as a critic to save his vanity and tolerated for
+his secret constancy in spite of being a bore. He was meanwhile really
+not a bore to Peter, who failed of the luxury of being able to regard
+him as one. He had seen too many strange countries and curious things,
+observed and explored too much, to be void of illustration. Peter had a
+sense that if he himself was in the _grandes espaces_ Gabriel had
+probably, as a finer critic, a still wider range. If among Miriam's
+associates Mr. Dashwood dragged him down, the other main sharer of his
+privilege challenged him rather to higher and more fantastic flights. If
+he saw the girl in larger relations than the young actor, who mainly saw
+her in ill-written parts, Nash went a step further and regarded her,
+irresponsibly and sublimely, as a priestess of harmony, a figure with
+which the vulgar ideas of success and failure had nothing to do. He
+laughed at her "parts," holding that without them she would still be
+great. Peter envied him his power to content himself with the pleasures
+he could get; Peter had a shrewd impression that contentment wouldn't be
+the final sweetener of his own repast.
+
+Above all Nash held his attention by a constant element of easy
+reference to Nick Dormer, who, as we know, had suddenly become much more
+interesting to his kinsman. Peter found food for observation, and in
+some measure for perplexity, in the relations of all these clever people
+with each other. He knew why his sister, who had a personal impatience
+of unapplied ideas, had not been agreeably affected by Miriam's prime
+patron and had not felt happy about the attribution of value to "such
+people" by the man she was to marry. This was a side on which he had no
+desire to resemble Julia, for he needed no teaching to divine that Nash
+must have found her accessible to no light--none even about himself. He,
+Peter, would have been sorry to have to confess he couldn't more or less
+understand him. He understood furthermore that Miriam, in Nick's studio,
+might very well have appeared to Julia a formidable force. She was
+younger and would have "seen nothing," but she had quite as much her own
+resources and was beautiful enough to have made Nick compare her with
+the lady of Harsh even if he had been in love with that benefactress--a
+pretension as to which her brother, as we know, entertained doubts.
+
+Peter at all events saw for many days nothing of his cousin, though it
+might have been said that Nick participated by implication at least in
+the life of Balaklava Place. Had he given Julia tangible grounds and was
+his unexpectedly fine rendering of Miriam an act of virtual infidelity?
+In that case to what degree was the girl to be regarded as an accomplice
+in his defection, and what was the real nature of Miriam's esteem for
+her new and (as he might be called) distinguished ally? These questions
+would have given Peter still more to think about had he not flattered
+himself he had made up his mind that they concerned Nick and his sitter
+herself infinitely more than they concerned any one else. That young
+lady meanwhile was personally before him, so that he had no need to
+consult for his pleasure his fresh recollection of the portrait. But he
+thought of this striking production each time he thought of his so
+good-looking kinsman's variety of range. And that happened often, for in
+his hearing Miriam often discussed the happy artist and his
+possibilities with Gabriel Nash, and Nash broke out about them to all
+who might hear. Her own tone on the subject was uniform: she kept it on
+record to a degree slightly irritating that Mr. Dormer had been
+unforgettably--Peter particularly noted "unforgettably"--kind to her.
+She never mentioned Julia's irruption to Julia's brother; she only
+referred to the portrait, with inscrutable amenity, as a direct
+consequence of this gentleman's fortunate suggestion that first day at
+Madame Carre's. Nash showed, however, such a disposition to dwell
+sociably and luminously on the peculiarly interesting character of what
+he called Dormer's predicament and on the fine suspense it was fitted to
+kindle in the breast of the truly discerning, that Peter wondered, as I
+have already hinted, if this insistence were not a subtle perversity, a
+devilish little invention to torment a man whose jealousy was
+presumable. Yet his fellow-pilgrim struck him as on the whole but
+scantly devilish and as still less occupied with the prefigurement of so
+plain a man's emotions. Indeed he threw a glamour of romance over Nick;
+tossed off toward him such illuminating yet mystifying references that
+they operated quite as a bait to curiosity, invested with amusement the
+view of the possible, any wish to follow out the chain of events. He
+learned from Gabriel that Nick was still away, and he then felt he could
+almost submit to instruction, to initiation. The loose charm of these
+days was troubled, however--it ceased to be idyllic--when late on the
+evening of the second Sunday he walked away with Nash southward from
+Saint John's Wood. For then something came out.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SIX
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+It mattered not so much what the doctors thought--and Sir Matthew Hope,
+the greatest of them all, had been down twice in one week--as that Mr.
+Chayter, the omniscient butler, declared with all the authority of his
+position and his experience that Mr. Carteret was very bad indeed. Nick
+Dormer had a long talk with him--it lasted six minutes--the day he
+hurried to Beauclere in response to a telegram. It was Mr. Chayter who
+had taken upon himself to telegraph in spite of the presence in the
+house of Mr. Carteret's nearest relation and only surviving sister, Mrs.
+Lendon. This lady, a large, mild, healthy woman with a heavy tread, a
+person who preferred early breakfasts, uncomfortable chairs and the
+advertisement-sheet of the _Times_, had arrived the week before and was
+awaiting the turn of events. She was a widow and occupied in Cornwall a
+house nine miles from a station, which had, to make up for this
+inconvenience as she had once told Nick, a fine old herbaceous garden.
+She was extremely fond of an herbaceous garden--her main consciousness
+was of herbaceous possibilities. Nick had often seen her--she had always
+come to Beauclere once or twice a year. Her sojourn there made no great
+difference; she was only an "Urania dear" for Mr. Carteret to look
+across the table at when, on the close of dinner, it was time for her to
+retire. She went out of the room always as if it were after some one
+else; and on the gentlemen's "joining" her later--the junction was not
+very close--she received them with an air of gratified surprise.
+
+Chayter honoured Nick with a regard which approached, though not
+improperly competing with it, the affection his master had placed on the
+same young head, and Chayter knew a good many things. Among them he knew
+his place; but it was wonderful how little that knowledge had rendered
+him inaccessible to other kinds. He took upon himself to send for Nick
+without speaking to Mrs. Lendon, whose influence was now a good deal
+like that of some large occasional piece of furniture introduced on a
+contingency. She was one of the solid conveniences that a comfortable
+house would have, but you couldn't talk with a mahogany sofa or a
+folding screen. Chayter knew how much she had "had" from her brother,
+and how much her two daughters had each received on marriage; and he was
+of the opinion that it was quite enough, especially considering the
+society in which they--you could scarcely call it--moved. He knew beyond
+this that they would all have more, and that was why he hesitated little
+about communicating with Nick. If Mrs. Lendon should be ruffled at the
+intrusion of a young man who neither was the child of a cousin nor had
+been formally adopted, Chayter was parliamentary enough to see that the
+forms of debate were observed. He had indeed a slightly compassionate
+sense that Mrs. Lendon was not easily ruffled. She was always down an
+extraordinary time before breakfast--Chayter refused to take it as in
+the least admonitory--but usually went straight into the garden as if to
+see that none of the plants had been stolen in the night, and had in the
+end to be looked for by the footman in some out-of-the-way spot behind
+the shrubbery, where, plumped upon the ground, she was mostly doing
+something "rum" to a flower.
+
+Mr. Carteret himself had expressed no wishes. He slept most of the
+time--his failure at the last had been sudden, but he was rheumatic and
+seventy-seven--and the situation was in Chayter's hands. Sir Matthew
+Hope had opined even on a second visit that he would rally and go on, in
+rudimentary comfort, some time longer; but Chayter took a different and
+a still more intimate view. Nick was embarrassed: he scarcely knew what
+he was there for from the moment he could give his good old friend no
+conscious satisfaction. The doctors, the nurses, the servants, Mrs.
+Lendon, and above all the settled equilibrium of the square thick house,
+where an immutable order appeared to slant through the polished windows
+and tinkle in the quieter bells, all these things represented best the
+kind of supreme solace to which the master was most accessible.
+
+It was judged best that for the first day Nick should not be introduced
+into the darkened room. This was the decision of the two decorous
+nurses, of whom the visitor had had a glimpse and who, with their black
+uniforms and fresh faces of business, suggested the barmaid emulating
+the nun. He was depressed and restless, felt himself in a false
+position, and thought it lucky Mrs. Lendon had powers of placid
+acceptance. They were old acquaintances: she treated him formally,
+anxiously, but it was not the rigour of mistrust. It was much more an
+expression of remote Cornish respect for young abilities and
+distinguished connexions, inasmuch as she asked him rather yearningly
+about Lady Agnes and about Lady Flora and Lady Elizabeth. He knew she
+was kind and ungrudging, and his main regret was for his meagre
+knowledge and poor responses in regard to his large blank aunts. He sat
+in the garden with newspapers and looked at the lowered blinds in Mr.
+Carteret's windows; he wandered round the abbey with cigarettes and
+lightened his tread and felt grave, wishing everything might be over. He
+would have liked much to see Mr. Carteret again, but had no desire that
+Mr. Carteret should see him. In the evening he dined with Mrs. Lendon,
+and she talked to him at his request and as much as she could about her
+brother's early years, his beginnings of life. She was so much younger
+that they appeared to have been rather a tradition of her own youth; but
+her talk made Nick feel how tremendously different Mr. Carteret had been
+at that period from what he, Nick, was to-day. He had published at the
+age of thirty a little volume, thought at the time wonderfully clever,
+called _The Incidence of Rates_; but Nick had not yet collected the
+material for any such treatise. After dinner Mrs. Lendon, who was in
+merciless full dress, retired to the drawing-room, where at the end of
+ten minutes she was followed by Nick, who had remained behind only
+because he thought Chayter would expect it. Mrs. Lendon almost shook
+hands with him again and then Chayter brought in coffee. Almost in no
+time afterwards he brought in tea, and the occupants of the drawing-room
+sat for a slow half-hour, during which the lady looked round at the
+apartment with a sigh and said: "Don't you think poor Charles had
+exquisite taste?"
+
+Fortunately the "local man" was at this moment ushered in. He had been
+upstairs and he smiled himself in with the remark: "It's quite
+wonderful, quite wonderful." What was wonderful was a marked improvement
+in the breathing, a distinct indication of revival. The doctor had some
+tea and chatted for a quarter of an hour in a way that showed what a
+"good" manner and how large an experience a local man could have. When
+he retired Nick walked out with him. The doctor's house was near by and
+he had come on foot. He left the visitor with the assurance that in all
+probability Mr. Carteret, who was certainly picking up, would be able to
+see him on the morrow. Our young man turned his steps again to the abbey
+and took a stroll about it in the starlight. It never looked so huge as
+when it reared itself into the night, and Nick had never felt more fond
+of it than on this occasion, more comforted and confirmed by its beauty.
+When he came back he was readmitted by Chayter, who surveyed him in
+respectful deprecation of the frivolity which had led him to attempt to
+help himself through such an evening in such a way.
+
+He went to bed early and slept badly, which was unusual with him; but it
+was a pleasure to him to be told almost as soon as he appeared that Mr.
+Carteret had asked for him. He went in to see him and was struck with
+the change in his appearance. He had, however, spent a day with him just
+after the New Year and another at the beginning of March, and had then
+noted in him the menace of the final weakness. A week after Julia
+Dallow's departure for the Continent he had again devoted several hours
+to the place and to the intention of telling his old friend how the
+happy event had been brought to naught--the advantage he had been so
+good as to desire for him and to make the condition of a splendid gift.
+Before this, for a few days, he had been keeping back, to announce it
+personally, the good news that Julia had at last set their situation in
+order: he wanted to enjoy the old man's pleasure--so sore a trial had
+her arbitrary behaviour been for a year. If she had offered Mr. Carteret
+a conciliatory visit before Christmas, had come down from London one day
+to lunch with him, this had but contributed to make him subsequently
+exhibit to poor Nick, as the victim of her elegant perversity, a great
+deal of earnest commiseration in a jocose form. Upon his honour, as he
+said, she was as clever and "specious" a woman--this was his odd
+expression--as he had ever seen in his life. The merit of her behaviour
+on that occasion, as Nick knew, was that she had not been specious at
+her lover's expense: she had breathed no doubt of his public purpose and
+had had the strange grace to say that in truth she was older than he, so
+that it was only fair to give his affections time to mature. But when
+Nick saw their hopeful host after the rupture at which we have been
+present he found him in no state to deal with worries: he was seriously
+ailing, it was the beginning of worse things and not a time to put his
+attention to the stretch. After this excursion Nick had gone back to
+town saddened by his patient's now unmistakably settled decline, but
+rather relieved that he had had himself to make no confession. It had
+even occurred to him that the need for making one at all might never
+come up. Certainly it wouldn't if the ebb of Mr. Carteret's strength
+should continue unchecked. He might pass away in the persuasion that
+everything would happen as he wished it, though indeed without enriching
+Nick on his wedding-day to the tune he had promised. Very likely he had
+made legal arrangements in virtue of which his bounty would take effect
+in case of the right event and in that case alone. At present Nick had a
+bigger, an uglier truth to tell--the last three days had made the
+difference; but, oddly enough, though his responsibility had increased
+his reluctance to speak had vanished: he was positively eager to clear
+up a situation over which it was not consistent with his honour to leave
+a shade.
+
+The doctor had been right on coming in after dinner; it was clear in
+the morning that they had not seen the last of Mr. Carteret's power of
+picking up. Chayter, who had waited on him, refused austerely to change
+his opinion with every change in his master's temperature; but the
+nurses took the cheering view that it would do their charge good for Mr.
+Dormer to sit with him a little. One of them remained in the room in the
+deep window-seat, and Nick spent twenty minutes by the bedside. It was
+not a case for much conversation, but his helpless host seemed still to
+like to look at him. There was life in his kind old eyes, a stir of
+something that would express itself yet in some further wise provision.
+He laid his liberal hand on Nick's with a confidence that showed how
+little it was really disabled. He said very little, and the nurse had
+recommended that the visitor himself should not overflow in speech; but
+from time to time he murmured with a faint smile: "To-night's division,
+you know--you mustn't miss it." There was probably to be no division
+that night, as happened, but even Mr. Carteret's aberrations were
+parliamentary. Before Nick withdrew he had been able to assure him he
+was rapidly getting better and that such valuable hours, the young man's
+own, mustn't be wasted. "Come back on Friday if they come to the second
+reading." These were the words with which Nick was dismissed, and at
+noon the doctor said the invalid was doing very well, but that Nick had
+better leave him quiet for that day. Our young man accordingly
+determined to go up to town for the night, and even, should he receive
+no summons, for the next day. He arranged with Chayter that he should be
+telegraphed to if Mr. Carteret were either better or worse.
+
+"Oh he can't very well be worse, sir," Chayter replied inexorably; but
+he relaxed so far as to remark that of course it wouldn't do for Nick
+to neglect the House.
+
+"Oh the House!"--Nick was ambiguous and avoided the butler's eye. It
+would be easy enough to tell Mr. Carteret, but nothing would have
+sustained him in the effort to make a clean breast to Chayter.
+
+He might equivocate about the House, but he had the sense of things to
+be done awaiting him in London. He telegraphed to his servant and spent
+that night in Rosedale Road. The things to be done were apparently to be
+done in his studio: his servant met him there with a large bundle of
+letters. He failed that evening to stray within two miles of
+Westminster, and the legislature of his country reassembled without his
+support. The next morning he received a telegram from Chayter, to whom
+he had given Rosedale Road as an address. This missive simply informed
+him that Mr. Carteret wished to see him; it seemed a sign that he was
+better, though Chayter wouldn't say so. Nick again accordingly took his
+place in the train to Beauclere. He had been there very often, but it
+was present to him that now, after a little, he should go only once
+more--for a particular dismal occasion. All that was over, everything
+that belonged to it was over. He learned on his arrival--he saw Mrs.
+Lendon immediately--that his old friend had continued to pick up. He had
+expressed a strong and a perfectly rational desire to talk with his
+expected visitor, and the doctor had said that if it was about anything
+important they should forbear to oppose him. "He says it's about
+something very important," Mrs. Lendon remarked, resting shy eyes on him
+while she added that she herself was now sitting with her dear brother.
+She had sent those wonderful young ladies out to see the abbey. Nick
+paused with her outside Mr. Carteret's door. He wanted to say something
+rather intimate and all soothing to her in return for her homely
+charity--give her a hint, for which she was far from looking, that
+practically he had now no interest in her brother's estate. This was of
+course impossible; her lack of irony, of play of mind, gave him no
+pretext, and such a reference would be an insult to her simple
+discretion. She was either not thinking of his interest at all, or was
+thinking of it with the tolerance of a nature trained to a hundred
+decent submissions. Nick looked a little into her mild, uninvestigating
+eyes, and it came over him supremely that the goodness of these people
+was singularly pure: they were a part of what was cleanest and sanest
+and dullest in humanity. There had been just a little mocking inflexion
+in Mrs. Lendon's pleasant voice; but it was dedicated to the young
+ladies in the black uniforms--she could perhaps be humorous about
+_them_--and not to the theory of the "importance" of Nick's interview
+with her brother. His arrested desire to let her know he was not greedy
+translated itself into a vague friendliness and into the abrupt, rather
+bewildering words: "I can't tell you half the good I think of you." As
+he passed into Mr. Carteret's room it occurred to him that she would
+perhaps interpret this speech as an acknowledgment of obligation--of her
+good nature in not keeping him away from the rich old man.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+The rich old man was propped up on pillows, and in this attitude,
+beneath the high, spare canopy of his bed, presented himself to Nick's
+picture-seeking vision as a figure in a clever composition or a "story."
+He had gathered strength, though this strength was not much in his
+voice; it was mainly in his brighter eyes and his air of being pleased
+with himself. He put out his hand and said, "I daresay you know why I
+sent for you"; on which Nick sank into the seat he had occupied the day
+before, replying that he had been delighted to come, whatever the
+reason. Mr. Carteret said nothing more about the division or the second
+reading; he only murmured that they were keeping the newspapers for him.
+"I'm rather behind--I'm rather behind," he went on; "but two or three
+quiet mornings will make it all right. You can go back to-night, you
+know--you can easily go back." This was the only thing not quite
+straight that Nick found in him--his making light of his young friend's
+flying to and fro. The young friend sat looking at him with a sense that
+was half compunction and half the idea of the rare beauty of his face,
+to which, strangely, the waste of illness now seemed to have restored
+something of its youth. Mr. Carteret was evidently conscious that this
+morning he shouldn't be able to go on long, so that he must be
+practical and concise. "I daresay you know--you've only to remember," he
+continued.
+
+"I needn't tell you what a pleasure it is to me to see you--there can be
+no better reason than that," was what Nick could say.
+
+"Hasn't the year come round--the year of that foolish arrangement?"
+
+Nick thought a little, asking himself if it were really necessary to
+disturb his companion's earnest faith. Then the consciousness of the
+falsity of his own position surged over him again and he replied: "Do
+you mean the period for which Mrs. Dallow insisted on keeping me
+dangling? Oh _that's_ over!" he almost gaily brought out.
+
+"And are you married--has it come off?" the old man asked eagerly. "How
+long have I been ill?"
+
+"We're uncomfortable, unreasonable people, not deserving of your
+interest. We're not married," Nick said.
+
+"Then I haven't been ill so long?" his host quavered with vague relief.
+
+"Not very long--but things _are_ different," he went on.
+
+The old man's eyes rested on his--he noted how much larger they
+appeared. "You mean the arrangements are made--the day's at hand?"
+
+"There are no arrangements," Nick smiled. "But why should it trouble
+you?"
+
+"What then will you do--without arrangements?" The inquiry was plaintive
+and childlike.
+
+"We shall do nothing--there's nothing to be done. We're not to be
+married--it's all off," said poor Nick. Then he added: "Mrs. Dallow has
+gone abroad."
+
+The old man, motionless among his pillows, gave a long groan. "Ah I
+don't like that."
+
+"No more do I, sir."
+
+"What's the matter? It was so good--so good."
+
+"It wasn't good enough for Julia," Nick declared.
+
+"For Julia? Is Julia so great as that? She told me she had the greatest
+regard for you. You're good enough for the best, my dear boy," Mr.
+Carteret pursued.
+
+"You don't know me: I _am_ disappointing. She had, I believe, a great
+regard for me, but I've forfeited her good opinion."
+
+The old man stared at this cynical announcement: he searched his
+visitor's face for some attenuation of the words. But Nick apparently
+struck him as unashamed, and a faint colour coming into his withered
+cheek indicated his mystification and alarm. "Have you been unfaithful
+to her?" he still considerately asked.
+
+"She thinks so--it comes to the same thing. As I told you a year ago,
+she doesn't believe in me."
+
+"You ought to have made her--you ought to have made her," said Mr.
+Carteret. Nick was about to plead some reason when he continued: "Do you
+remember what I told you I'd give you if you did? Do you remember what I
+told you I'd give you on your wedding-day?"
+
+"You expressed the most generous intentions; and I remember them as much
+as a man may do who has no wish to remind you of them."
+
+"The money's there--I've put it aside."
+
+"I haven't earned it--I haven't earned a penny of it. Give it to those
+who deserve it more," said Nick.
+
+"I don't understand, I don't understand," Mr. Carteret whimpered, the
+tears of weakness in his eyes. His face flushed and he added: "I'm not
+good for much discussion; I'm very much disappointed."
+
+"I think I may say it's not my fault--I've done what I can," Nick
+declared.
+
+"But when people are in love they do more than that."
+
+"Oh it's all over!" said our young man; not caring much now, for the
+moment, how disconcerted his companion might be, so long as he disabused
+him of the idea that they were partners to a bargain. "We've tormented
+each other and we've tormented you--and that's all that has come of it."
+
+His companion's eyes seemed to stare at strange things. "Don't you care
+for what I'd have done for you--shouldn't you have liked it?"
+
+"Of course one likes kindness--one likes money. But it's all over," Nick
+repeated. Then he added: "I fatigue you, I knock you up, with telling
+you these troubles. I only do so because it seems to me right you should
+know. But don't be worried--everything's for the best."
+
+He patted the pale hand reassuringly, inclined himself affectionately,
+but Mr. Carteret was not easily soothed. He had practised lucidity all
+his life, had expected it of others and had never given his assent to an
+indistinct proposition. He was weak, yet not too weak to recognise that
+he had formed a calculation now vitiated by a wrong factor--put his name
+to a contract of which the other side had not been carried out. More
+than fifty years of conscious success pressed him to try to understand;
+he had never muddled his affairs and he couldn't muddle them now. At the
+same time he was aware of the necessity of economising his effort, and
+he would gather that inward force, patiently and almost cunningly, for
+the right question and the right induction. He was still able to make
+his agitation reflective, and it could still consort with his high hopes
+of Nick that he should find himself regarding mere vague, verbal
+comfort, words in the air, as an inadequate guarantee. So after he had
+attached his dim vision to his young friend's face a moment he brought
+out: "Have you done anything bad?"
+
+"Nothing worse than usual," Nick laughed.
+
+"Ah everything should have been better than usual."
+
+"Well, it hasn't been that--that I must say."
+
+"Do you sometimes think of your father?" Mr. Carteret continued.
+
+Nick had a decent pause. "_You_ make me think of him--you've always that
+pleasant effect."
+
+"His name would have lived--it mustn't be lost."
+
+"Yes, but the competition to-day is terrible," Nick returned.
+
+His host considered this as if he found a serious flaw in it; after
+which he began again: "I never supposed you a trifler."
+
+"I'm determined not to be."
+
+"I thought her charming. Don't you love Mrs. Dallow?" Mr. Carteret
+profoundly asked.
+
+"Don't put it to me so to-day, for I feel sore and injured. I don't
+think she has treated me well."
+
+"You should have held her--you shouldn't have let her go," the old man
+returned with unexpected fire.
+
+His visitor flushed at this, so strange was it to receive a lesson in
+energy from a dying octogenarian. Yet after an instant Nick answered
+with due modesty: "I haven't been clever enough, no doubt."
+
+"Don't say that, don't say that--!" Mr. Carteret shrunk from the
+thought. "Don't think I can allow you any easing-off of that sort. I
+know how well you've done. You're taking your place. Several gentlemen
+have told me. Hasn't she felt a scruple, knowing my settlement on you to
+depend----?" he pursued.
+
+"Oh she hasn't known--hasn't known anything about it."
+
+"I don't understand; though I think you explained somewhat a year
+ago"--the poor gentleman gave it up. "I think she wanted to speak to
+me--of any intentions I might have in regard to you--the day she was
+here. Very nicely, very properly she'd have done it, I'm sure. I think
+her idea was that I ought to make any settlement quite independent of
+your marrying her or not marrying her. But I tried to convey to her--I
+don't know whether she understood me--that I liked her too much for
+that, I wanted too much to make sure of her."
+
+"To make sure of me, you mean," said Nick. "And now after all you see
+you haven't."
+
+"Well, perhaps it was that," sighed the old man confusedly.
+
+"All this is very bad for you--we'll talk again," Nick urged.
+
+"No, no--let us finish it now. I like to know what I'm doing. I shall
+rest better when I do know. There are great things to be done; the
+future will be full--the future will be fine," Mr. Carteret wandered.
+
+"Let me be distinct about this for Julia: that if we hadn't been
+sundered her generosity to me would have been complete--she'd have put
+her great fortune absolutely at my disposal," Nick said after a moment.
+"Her consciousness of all that naturally carries her over any particular
+distress in regard to what won't come to me now from another source."
+
+"Ah don't lose it!" the old man painfully pleaded.
+
+"It's in your hands, sir," Nick returned.
+
+"I mean Mrs. Dallow's fortune. It will be of the highest utility. That
+was what your father missed."
+
+"I shall miss more than my father did," said Nick.
+
+"Shell come back to you--I can't look at you and doubt that."
+
+Nick smiled with a slow headshake. "Never, never, never! You look at me,
+my grand old friend, but you don't see me. I'm not what you think."
+
+"What is it--what is it? _Have_ you been bad?" Mr. Carteret panted.
+
+"No, no; I'm not bad. But I'm different."
+
+"Different----?"
+
+"Different from my father. Different from Mrs. Dallow. Different from
+you."
+
+"Ah why do you perplex me?" the old man moaned. "You've done something."
+
+"I don't want to perplex you, but I have done something," said Nick,
+getting up.
+
+He had heard the door open softly behind him and Mrs. Lendon come
+forward with precautions. "What has he done--what has he done?" quavered
+Mr. Carteret to his sister. She, however, after a glance at the patient,
+motioned their young friend away and, bending over the bed, replied, in
+a voice expressive at that moment of an ample provision of vital
+comfort:
+
+"He has only excited you, I'm afraid, a little more than is good for
+you. Isn't your dear old head a little too high?" Nick regarded himself
+as justly banished, and he quitted the room with a ready acquiescence in
+any power to carry on the scene of which Mrs. Lendon might find herself
+possessed. He felt distinctly brutal as he heard his host emit a weak
+exhalation of assent to some change of position. But he would have
+reproached himself more if he had wished less to guard against the
+acceptance of an equivalent for duties unperformed. Mr. Carteret had had
+in his mind, characteristically, the idea of a fine high contract, and
+there was something more to be said about that.
+
+Nick went out of the house and stayed away for two or three hours, quite
+ready to regard the place as quieter and safer without him. He haunted
+the abbey as usual and sat a long time in its simplifying stillness,
+turning over many things. He came back again at the luncheon-hour,
+through the garden, and heard, somewhat to his surprise and greatly to
+his relief, that his host had composed himself promptly enough after
+their agitating interview. Mrs. Lendon talked at luncheon much as if she
+expected her brother to be, as she said, really quite fit again. She
+asked Nick no awkward question; which was uncommonly good of her, he
+thought, considering that she might have said, "What in the world were
+you trying to get out of him?" She only reported to our young man that
+the invalid had every hope of a short interview about half-past seven, a
+_very_ short one: this gentle emphasis was Mrs. Lendon's single tribute
+to the critical spirit. Nick divined that Mr. Carteret's desire for
+further explanations was really strong and had been capable of
+sustaining him through a bad morning, capable even of helping him--it
+would have been a secret and wonderful momentary conquest of
+weakness--to pass it off for a good one. He wished he might make a
+sketch of him, from the life, as he had seen him after breakfast; he had
+a conviction he could make a strong one, which would be a precious
+memento. But he shrank from proposing this--the dear man might think it
+unparliamentary. The doctor had called while Nick was out, and he came
+again at five o'clock without that inmate's seeing him. The latter was
+busy in his room at that hour: he wrote a short letter which took him a
+long time. But apparently there had been no veto on a resumption of
+talk, for at half-past seven his friend sent for him. The nurse at the
+door said, "Only a moment, I hope, sir?" but took him in and then
+withdrew.
+
+The prolonged daylight was in the room and its occupant again
+established on his pile of pillows, but with his head a little lower.
+Nick sat down by him and expressed the hope of not having upset him in
+the morning; but the old man, with fixed, enlarged eyes, took up their
+conversation exactly where they had left it. "What have you done--what
+have you done? Have you associated yourself with some other woman?"
+
+"No, no; I don't think she can accuse me of that."
+
+"Well then she'll come back to you if you take the right way with her."
+
+It might have been droll to hear the poor gentleman, in his situation,
+give his views on the right way with women; but Nick was not moved to
+enjoy that diversion. "I've taken the wrong way. I've done something
+that must spoil my prospects in that direction for ever. I've written a
+letter," the visitor went on; but his companion had already interrupted
+him.
+
+"You've written a letter?"
+
+"To my constituents, informing them of my determination to resign my
+seat."
+
+"To resign your seat?"
+
+"I've made up my mind, after no end of reflexion, dear Mr. Carteret, to
+work on quite other lines. I've a plan of becoming a painter. So I've
+given up the idea of a political life."
+
+"A painter?" Mr. Carteret seemed to turn whiter. "I'm going in for the
+portrait in oils. It sounds absurd, I know, and I'm thus specific only
+to show you I don't in the least expect you to count on me." The invalid
+had continued to stare at first; then his eyes slowly closed and he lay
+motionless and blank. "Don't let it trouble you now; it's a long story
+and rather a poor one; when you get better I'll tell you all about it.
+Well talk it over amicably and I'll bring you to my view," Nick went on
+hypocritically. He had laid his hand again on the hand beside him; it
+felt cold, and as the old man remained silent he had a moment of
+exaggerated fear.
+
+"This is dreadful news"--and Mr. Carteret opened his eyes.
+
+"Certainly it must seem so to you, for I've always kept from you--I was
+ashamed, and my present confusion is a just chastisement--the great
+interest I have always taken in the----!" But Nick broke down with a
+gasp, to add presently, with an intention of the pleasant and a sense of
+the foolish: "In the pencil and the brush." He spoke of his current
+confusion, though his manner might have been thought to show it but
+little. He was himself surprised at his brazen assurance and had to
+recognise that at the point things had come to now he was profoundly
+obstinate and quiet.
+
+"The pencil--the brush? They're not the weapons of a gentleman," Mr.
+Carteret pronounced.
+
+"I was sure that would be your feeling. I repeat that I mention them
+only because you once said you intended to do something for me, as the
+phrase is, and I thought you oughtn't to do it in ignorance."
+
+"My ignorance was better. Such knowledge isn't good for me."
+
+"Forgive me, my dear old friend," Nick kept it bravely up. "When you're
+better you'll see it differently."
+
+"I shall never be better now."
+
+"Ah no," Nick insisted; "it will really do you good after a little.
+Think it over quietly and you'll be glad I've stopped humbugging."
+
+"I loved you--I loved you as my son," the old man wailed.
+
+He sank on his knee beside the bed and leaned over him tenderly. "Get
+better, get better, and I'll be your son for the rest of your life."
+
+"Poor Dormer--poor Dormer!" Mr. Carteret continued to lament.
+
+"I admit that if he had lived I probably shouldn't have done it," said
+Nick. "I daresay I should have deferred to his prejudices even though
+thinking them narrow."
+
+"Do you turn against your father?" his host asked, making, to disengage
+his arm from the young man's touch, an effort betraying the irritation
+of conscious weakness. Nick got up at this and stood a moment looking
+down at him while he went on: "Do you give up your name, do you give up
+your country?"
+
+"If I do something good my country may like it." Nick spoke as if he had
+thought that out.
+
+"Do you regard them as equal, the two glories?"
+
+"Here comes your nurse to blow me up and turn me out," said Nick.
+
+The nurse had come in, but Mr. Carteret directed to her an audible dry,
+courteous "Be so good as to wait till I send for you," which arrested
+her in the large room at some distance from the bed and then had the
+effect of making her turn on her heel with a professional laugh. She
+clearly judged that an old gentleman with the fine manner of his prime
+might still be trusted to take care of himself. When she had gone that
+personage addressed to his visitor the question for which his deep
+displeasure lent him strength. "Do you pretend there's a nobler life
+than a high political career?"
+
+"I think the noble life's doing one's work well. One can do it very ill
+and be very base and mean in what you call a high political career. I
+haven't been in the House so many months without finding that out. It
+contains some very small souls."
+
+"You should stand against them--you should expose them!" stammered Mr.
+Carteret.
+
+"Stand against them, against one's own party!"
+
+The old man contended a moment with this and then broke out: "God
+forgive you, are you a Tory, are you a Tory?"
+
+"How little you understand me!" laughed Nick with a ring of bitterness.
+
+"Little enough--little enough, my boy. Have you sent your electors your
+dreadful letter?"
+
+"Not yet; but it's all ready and I shan't change my mind."
+
+"You will--you will. You'll think better of it. You'll see your duty,"
+said the invalid almost coaxingly.
+
+"That seems very improbable, for my determination, crudely and abruptly
+as, to my great regret, it comes to you here, is the fruit of a long and
+painful struggle. The difficulty is that I see my duty just in this
+other effort."
+
+"An effort? Do you call it an effort to fall away, to sink far down, to
+give up every effort? What does your mother say, heaven help her?" Mr.
+Carteret went on before Nick could answer the other question.
+
+"I haven't told her yet."
+
+"You're ashamed, you're ashamed!" Nick only looked out of the west
+window now--he felt his ears turn hot. "Tell her it would have been
+sixty thousand. I had the money all ready."
+
+"I shan't tell her that," said Nick, redder still.
+
+"Poor woman--poor dear woman!" Mr. Carteret woefully cried.
+
+"Yes indeed--she won't like it."
+
+"Think it all over again; don't throw away a splendid future!" These
+words were uttered with a final flicker of passion--Nick had never heard
+such an accent on his old friend's lips. But he next began to murmur,
+"I'm tired--I'm very tired," and sank back with a groan and with closed
+lips. His guest gently assured him that he had but too much cause to be
+exhausted and that the worst was over now. He smoothed his pillows for
+him and said he must leave him, would send in the nurse. "Come back,
+come back," Mr. Carteret pleaded against that; "come back and tell me
+it's a horrible dream."
+
+Nick did go back very late that evening; his host had sent a message to
+his room. But one of the nurses was on the ground this time and made
+good her opposition watch in hand. The sick-room was shrouded and
+darkened; the shaded candle left the bed in gloom. Nick's interview with
+his venerable friend was the affair of but a moment; the nurse
+interposed, impatient and not understanding. She heard Nick say that he
+had posted his letter now and their companion flash out with an acerbity
+still savouring of the sordid associations of a world he had not done
+with: "Then of course my settlement doesn't take effect!"
+
+"Oh that's all right," Nick answered kindly; and he went off next
+morning by the early train--his injured host was still sleeping. Mrs.
+Lendon's habits made it easy for her to be present in matutinal bloom at
+the young man's hasty breakfast, and she sent a particular remembrance
+to Lady Agnes and (when he should see them) to the Ladies Flora and
+Elizabeth. Nick had a prevision of the spirit in which his mother at
+least would now receive hollow compliments from Beauclere.
+
+The night before, as soon as he had quitted Mr. Carteret, the old man
+said to the nurse that he wished Mr. Chayter instructed to go and fetch
+Mr. Mitton the first thing in the morning. Mr. Mitton was the leading
+solicitor at Beauclere.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+The really formidable thing for Nick had been to tell his mother: a
+truth of which he was so conscious that he had the matter out with her
+the very morning he returned from Beauclere. She and Grace had come back
+the afternoon before from their own enjoyment of rural hospitality, and,
+knowing this--she had written him her intention from the country--he
+drove straight from the station to Calcutta Gardens. There was a little
+room on the right of the house-door known as his own room; but in which
+of a morning, when he was not at home, Lady Agnes sometimes wrote her
+letters. These were always numerous, and when she heard our young man's
+cab she happened to be engaged with them at the big brass-mounted bureau
+that had belonged to his father, where, amid a margin of works of
+political reference, she seemed to herself to make public affairs feel
+the point of her elbow.
+
+She came into the hall to meet her son and to hear about their
+benefactor, and Nick went straight back into the room with her and
+closed the door. It would be in the evening paper and she would see it,
+and he had no right to allow her to wait for that. It proved indeed a
+terrible hour; and when ten minutes later Grace, who had learned
+upstairs her brother's return, went down for further news of him she
+heard from the hall a sound of voices that made her first pause and
+then retrace her steps on tiptoe. She mounted to the drawing-room and
+crept about there, palpitating, looking at moments into the dull street
+and wondering what on earth had taken place. She had no one to express
+her wonder to, for Florence Tressilian had departed and Biddy after
+breakfast betaken herself, in accordance with a custom now inveterate,
+to Rosedale Road. Her mother was unmistakably and passionately crying--a
+fact tremendous in its significance, for Lady Agnes had not often been
+brought so low. Nick had seen her cry, but this almost awful spectacle
+had seldom been offered to Grace, and it now convinced her that some
+dreadful thing had happened.
+
+That was of course in order, after Nick's mysterious quarrel with Julia,
+which had made his mother so ill and was at present followed up with new
+horrors. The row, as Grace mentally phrased it, had had something to do
+with the rupture of the lovers--some deeper depth of disappointment had
+begun to yawn. Grace asked herself if they were talking about Broadwood;
+if Nick had demanded that in the conditions so unpleasantly altered Lady
+Agnes should restore that awfully nice house to its owner. This was
+very possible, but why should he so suddenly have broken out about
+it? And, moreover, their mother, though sore to bleeding about
+the whole business--for Broadwood, in its fresh comfort, was too
+delightful--wouldn't have met this pretension with tears: hadn't she
+already so perversely declared that they couldn't decently continue to
+make use of the place? Julia had said that of course they must go on,
+but Lady Agnes was prepared with an effective rejoinder to that. It
+didn't consist of words--it was to be austerely practical, was to
+consist of letting Julia see, at the moment she should least expect it,
+that they quite wouldn't go on. Lady Agnes was ostensibly waiting for
+this moment--the moment when her renunciation would be most impressive.
+
+Grace was conscious of how she had for many days been moving with her
+mother in darkness, deeply stricken by Nick's culpable--oh he was
+culpable!--loss of his prize, but feeling an obscure element in the
+matter they didn't grasp, an undiscovered explanation that would perhaps
+make it still worse, though it might make _them_, poor things, a little
+better. He had explained nothing, he had simply said, "Dear mother, we
+don't hit it off, after all; it's an awful bore, but we don't"--as if
+that were in the dire conditions an adequate balm for two aching hearts.
+From Julia naturally no flood of light was to be looked for--Julia
+_never_ humoured curiosity--and, though she very often did the thing you
+wouldn't suppose, she was not unexpectedly apologetic in this case.
+Grace recognised that in such a position it would savour of apology for
+her to disclose to Lady Agnes her grounds for having let Nick off; and
+she wouldn't have liked to be the person to suggest to Julia that any
+one looked for anything from her. Neither of the disunited pair blamed
+the other or cast an aspersion, and it was all very magnanimous and
+superior and impenetrable and exasperating. With all this Grace had a
+suspicion that Biddy knew something more, that for Biddy the tormenting
+curtain had been lifted.
+
+Biddy had come and gone in these days with a perceptible air of
+detachment from the tribulations of home. It had made her, fortunately,
+very pretty--still prettier than usual: it sometimes happened that at
+moments when Grace was most angry she had a faint sweet smile which
+might have been drawn from some source of occult consolation. It was
+perhaps in some degree connected with Peter Sherringham's visit, as to
+which the girl had not been superstitiously silent. When Grace asked
+her if she had secret information and if it pointed to the idea that
+everything would be all right in the end, she pretended to know
+nothing--What should she know? she asked with the loveliest arch of
+eyebrows over an unblinking candour--and begged her sister not to let
+Lady Agnes believe her better off than themselves. She contributed
+nothing to their gropings save a much better patience, but she went with
+noticeable regularity, on the pretext of her foolish modelling, to
+Rosedale Road. She was frankly on Nick's side; not going so far as to
+say he had been right, but saying distinctly how sure she was that,
+whatever had happened, he couldn't have helped it, not a mite. This was
+striking, because, as Grace knew, the younger of the sisters had been
+much favoured by Julia and wouldn't have sacrificed her easily. It
+associated itself in the irritated mind of the elder with Biddy's
+frequent visits to the studio and made Miss Dormer ask herself if the
+crisis in Nick's and Julia's business had not somehow been linked to
+that unnatural spot.
+
+She had gone there two or three times while Biddy was working, gone to
+pick up any clue to the mystery that might peep out. But she had put her
+hand on nothing more--it wouldn't have occurred to her to say nothing
+less--than the so dreadfully pointed presence of Gabriel Nash. She once
+found that odd satellite, to her surprise, paying a visit to her
+sister--he had come for Nick, who was absent; she remembered how they
+had met in Paris and how little he had succeeded with them. When she had
+asked Biddy afterwards how she could receive him that way Biddy had
+replied that even she, Grace, would have some charity for him if she
+could hear how fond he was of poor Nick. He had talked to her only of
+Nick--of nothing else. Grace had observed how she spoke of Nick as
+injured, and had noted the implication that some one else, ceasing to be
+fond of him, was thereby condemned in Biddy's eyes. It seemed to Grace
+that some one else had at least a right not to like some of his friends.
+The studio struck her as mean and horrid; and so far from suggesting to
+her that it could have played a part in making Nick and Julia fall out
+she only felt how little its dusty want of consequence, could count, one
+way or the other, for Julia. Grace, who had no opinions on art, saw no
+merit whatever in those "impressions" on canvas from Nick's hand with
+which the place was bestrewn. She didn't at all wish her brother to have
+talent in that direction, yet it was secretly humiliating to her that he
+hadn't more.
+
+Nick meanwhile felt a pang of almost horrified penitence, in the little
+room on the right of the hall, the moment after he had made his mother
+really understand he had thrown up his scat and that it would probably
+be in the evening papers. That she would take this very ill was an idea
+that had pressed upon him hard enough, but she took it even worse than
+he had feared. He measured, in the look she gave him when the full truth
+loomed upon her, the mortal cruelty of her distress; her face was like
+that of a passenger on a ship who sees the huge bows of another vessel
+towering close out of the fog. There are visions of dismay before which
+the best conscience recoils, and though Nick had made his choice on all
+the grounds there were a few minutes in which he would gladly have
+admitted that his wisdom was a dark mistake. His heart was in his
+throat, he had gone too far; he had been ready to disappoint his
+mother--he had not been ready to destroy her.
+
+Lady Agnes, I hasten to add, was not destroyed; she made, after her
+first drowning gasp, a tremendous scene of opposition, in the face of
+which her son could only fall back on his intrenchments. She must know
+the worst, he had thought: so he told her everything, including the
+little story of the forfeiture of his "expectations" from Mr. Carteret.
+He showed her this time not only the face of the matter, but what lay
+below it; narrated briefly the incident in his studio which had led to
+Julia Dallow's deciding she couldn't after all put up with him. This was
+wholly new to Lady Agnes, she had had no clue to it, and he could
+instantly see how it made the event worse for her, adding a hideous
+positive to an abominable negative. He noted now that, distressed and
+distracted as she had been by his rupture with Julia, she had still held
+to the faith that their engagement would come on again; believing
+evidently that he had a personal empire over the mistress of Harsh which
+would bring her back. Lady Agnes was forced to recognise this empire as
+precarious, to forswear the hope of a blessed renewal from the moment
+the question was of base infatuations on his own part. Nick confessed to
+an infatuation, but did his best to show her it wasn't base; that it
+wasn't--since Julia had had faith in his loyalty--for the person of the
+young lady who had been discovered posturing to him and whom he had seen
+but half-a-dozen times in his life. He endeavoured to recall to his
+mother the identity of this young lady, he adverted to the occasion in
+Paris when they all had seen her together. But Lady Agnes's mind and
+memory were a blank on the subject of Miss Miriam Rooth and she wanted
+to hear nothing whatever about her: it was enough that she was the cause
+of their ruin and a part of his pitiless folly. She needed to know
+nothing of her to allude to her as if it were superfluous to give a
+definite name to the class to which she belonged.
+
+But she gave a name to the group in which Nick had now taken his place,
+and it made him feel after the lapse of years like a small, scolded,
+sorry boy again; for it was so far away he could scarcely remember
+it--besides there having been but a moment or two of that sort in his
+happy childhood--the time when this parent had slapped him and called
+him a little fool. He was a big fool now--hugely immeasurable; she
+repeated the term over and over with high-pitched passion. The most
+painful thing in this painful hour was perhaps his glimpse of the
+strange feminine cynicism that lurked in her fine sense of injury. Where
+there was such a complexity of revolt it would have been difficult to
+pick out particular wrongs; but Nick could see that, to his mother's
+imagination, he was most a fool for not having kept his relations with
+the actress, whatever they were, better from Julia's knowledge. He
+remained indeed freshly surprised at the ardour with which she had
+rested her hopes on Julia. Julia was certainly a combination--she was
+accomplished, she was a sort of leading woman and she was rich; but
+after all--putting aside what she might be to a man in love with
+her--she was not the keystone of the universe. Yet the form in which the
+consequences of his apostasy appeared most to come home to Lady Agnes
+was the loss for the Dormer family of the advantages attached to the
+possession of Mrs. Dallow. The larger mortification would round itself
+later; for the hour the damning thing was that Nick had made that lady
+the gift of an unforgivable grievance. He had clinched their separation
+by his letter to his electors--and that above all was the wickedness of
+the letter. Julia would have got over the other woman, but she would
+never get over his becoming a nobody.
+
+Lady Agnes challenged him upon this low prospect exactly as if he had
+embraced it with the malignant purpose of making the return of his late
+intended impossible. She contradicted her premises and lost her way in
+her wrath. What had made him suddenly turn round if he had been in good
+faith before? He had never been in good faith--never, never; he had had
+from his earliest childhood the nastiest hankerings after a vulgar
+little daubing, trash-talking life; they were not in him, the grander,
+nobler aspirations--they never had been--and he had been anything but
+honest to lead her on, to lead them all on, to think he would do
+something: the fall and the shame would have been less for them if they
+had come earlier. Moreover, what need under heaven had he to tell
+Charles Carteret of the cruel folly on his very death-bed?--as if he
+mightn't have let it all alone and accepted the benefit the old man was
+so delighted to confer. No wonder Mr. Carteret would keep his money for
+his heirs if that was the way Nick proposed to repay him; but where was
+the common sense, where was the common charity, where was the common
+decency of tormenting him with such vile news in his last hours? Was he
+trying what he could invent that would break her heart, that would send
+her in sorrow down to her grave? Weren't they all miserable enough and
+hadn't he a ray of pity for his wretched sisters?
+
+The relation of effect and cause, in regard to his sisters'
+wretchedness, was but dimly discernible to Nick, who, however, perceived
+his mother genuinely to consider that his action had disconnected them
+all, still more than she held they were already disconnected, from the
+good things of life. Julia was money, Mr. Carteret was money--everything
+else was the absence of it. If these precious people had been primarily
+money for Nick it after all flattered the distributive impulse in him to
+have taken for granted that for the rest of the family too the
+difference would have been so great. For days, for weeks and months to
+come, the little room on the right of the hall was to vibrate for our
+young man, as if the very walls and window-panes still suffered, with
+the odious trial of his true temper.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+That evening--the evening of his return from Beauclere--he was conscious
+of a keen desire to get away, to go abroad, to leave behind him the
+little chatter his resignation would be sure to produce in an age of
+publicity which never discriminated as to the quality of events. Then he
+felt it decidedly better to stay, to see the business through on the
+spot. Besides, he would have to meet his constituents--would a parcel of
+cheese-eating burgesses ever have been "met" on so queer an
+occasion?--and when that was over the incident would practically be
+closed. Nick had an idea he knew in advance how it would affect him to
+be pointed at as a person who had given up a considerable chance of
+eventual "office" to take likenesses at so much a head. He wouldn't
+attempt down at Harsh to touch on the question of motive; for, given the
+nature of the public mind of Harsh, that would be a strain on his
+faculty of exposition. But as regards the chaff of the political world
+and of society he had a hope he should find chaff enough for retorts. It
+was true that when his mother twitted him in her own effective way he
+had felt rather flattened out; but then one's mother might have a
+heavier hand than any one else. He had not thrown up the House of
+Commons to amuse himself; he had thrown it up to work, to sit quietly
+down and bend over his task. If he should go abroad his parent might
+think he had some weak-minded view of joining Julia and trying, with
+however little hope, to win her back--an illusion it would be singularly
+pernicious to encourage. His desire for Julia's society had succumbed
+for the present at any rate to a dire interruption--he had become more
+and more aware of their speaking a different language. Nick felt like a
+young man who has gone to the Rhineland to "get up" his German for an
+examination--committed to talk, to read, to dream only in the new idiom.
+Now that he had taken his jump everything was simplified, at the same
+time that everything was pitched in a higher and intenser key; and he
+wondered how in the absence of a common dialect he had conversed on the
+whole so happily with Mrs. Dallow. Then he had aftertastes of
+understandings tolerably independent of words. He was excited because
+every fresh responsibility is exciting, and there was no manner of doubt
+he had accepted one. No one knew what it was but himself--Gabriel Nash
+scarcely counted, his whole attitude on the question of responsibility
+being so fantastic--and he would have to ask his dearest friends to take
+him on trust. Rather indeed he would ask nothing of any one, but would
+cultivate independence, mulishness, and gaiety, and fix his thoughts on
+a bright if distant morrow. It was disagreeable to have to remember that
+his task would not be sweetened by a sense of heroism; for if it might
+be heroic to give up the muses for the strife of great affairs, no
+romantic glamour worth speaking of would ever gather round an Englishman
+who in the prime of his strength had given up great or even small
+affairs for the muses. Such an original might himself privately and
+perversely regard certain phases of this inferior commerce as a great
+affair; but who would give him the benefit of that sort of
+confidence--except indeed a faithful, clever, exalted little sister
+Biddy, if he should have the good luck to have one? Biddy was in fact
+all ready for heroic flights and eager to think she might fight the
+battle of the beautiful by her brother's side; so that he had really to
+moderate her and remind her how little his actual job was a crusade with
+bugles and banners and how much a grey, sedentary grind, the charm of
+which was all at the core. You might have an emotion about it, and an
+emotion that would be a help, but this was not the sort of thing you
+could show--the end in view would seem so disproportionately small. Nick
+put it to her that one really couldn't talk to people about the
+"responsibility" of what she would see him pottering at in his studio.
+
+He therefore didn't "run," as he would have said, to winged words any
+more than he was forced to, having, moreover, a sense that apologetic
+work (if apology it should be called to carry the war straight into the
+enemy's country) might be freely left to Gabriel Nash. He laid the
+weight of explanation on his commentators, meeting them all on the firm
+ground of his own amusement. He saw he should live for months in a thick
+cloud of irony, not the finest air of the season, and he adopted the
+weapon to which a person whose use of tobacco is only occasional resorts
+when every one else produces a cigar--he puffed the spasmodic, defensive
+cigarette. He accepted as to what he had done the postulate of the
+obscurely tortuous, abounding so in that sense that his critics were
+themselves bewildered. Some of them felt that they got, as the phrase
+is, little out of him--he rose in his good humour so much higher than
+the "rise" they had looked for--on his very first encounter with the
+world after his scrimmage with his mother. He went to a dinner-party--he
+had accepted the invitation many days before--having seen his
+resignation, in the form of a telegram from Harsh, announced in the
+evening papers. The people he found there had seen it as well, and the
+wittiest wanted to know what he was now going to do. Even the most
+embarrassed asked if it were true he had changed his politics. He gave
+different answers to different persons, but left most of them under the
+impression that he had strange scruples of conscience. This, however,
+was not a formidable occasion, for there had happened to be no one
+present he would have desired, on the old basis, especially to gratify.
+There were real good friends it would be less easy to meet--Nick was
+almost sorry for an hour that he had so many real good friends. If he
+had had more enemies the case would have been simpler, and he was fully
+aware that the hardest thing of all would be to be let off too easily.
+Then he would appear to himself to have been put, all round, on his
+generosity, and his deviation would thus wear its ugliest face.
+
+When he left the place at which he had been dining he betook himself to
+Rosedale Road: he saw no reason why he should go down to the House,
+though he knew he had not done with that yet. He had a dread of behaving
+as if he supposed he should be expected to make a farewell speech, and
+was thankful his eminence was not of a nature to create on such an
+occasion a demand for his oratory. He had in fact nothing whatever to
+say in public--not a vain word, not a sorry syllable. Though the hour
+was late he found Gabriel Nash established in his studio, drawn thither
+by the fine exhilaration of having seen an evening paper. Trying it
+late, on the chance, he had been told by Nick's servant that Nick would
+sleep there that night, and he had come in to wait, he was so eager to
+congratulate him. Nick submitted with a good grace to his society--he
+was tired enough to go to bed, but was restless too--in spite of noting
+now, oddly enough, that Nash's congratulations could add little to his
+fortitude. He had felt a good deal, before, as if he were in this
+philosopher's hands; but since making his final choice he had begun to
+strike himself as all in his own. Gabriel might have been the angel of
+that name, but no angel could assist him much henceforth.
+
+Nash indeed was as true as ever to his genius while he lolled on a divan
+and emitted a series of reflexions that were even more ingenious than
+opportune. Nick walked up and down the room, and it might have been
+supposed from his manner that he was impatient for his friend to
+withdraw. This idea would have been contradicted, however, by the fact
+that subsequently, after the latter had quitted him, he continued to
+perambulate. He had grown used to Gabriel and must now have been
+possessed of all he had to say. That was one's penalty with persons
+whose main gift was for talk, however inspiring; talk engendered a sense
+of sameness much sooner than action. The things a man did were
+necessarily more different from each other than the things he said, even
+if he went in for surprising you. Nick felt Nash could never surprise
+him any more save by mere plain perpetration.
+
+He talked of his host's future, talked of Miriam Rooth and of Peter
+Sherringham, whom he had seen at that young woman's and whom he
+described as in a predicament delightful to behold. Nick put a question
+about Peter's predicament and learned, rather to his disappointment,
+that it consisted only of the fact that he was in love with Miriam. He
+appealed to his visitor to do better than this, and Nash then added the
+touch that Sherringham wouldn't be able to have her. "Oh they've ideas!"
+he said when Nick asked him why.
+
+"What ideas? So has he, I suppose."
+
+"Yes, but they're not the same."
+
+"Well, they'll nevertheless arrange something," Nick opined.
+
+"You'll have to help them a bit. She's in love with another man," Nash
+went on.
+
+"Do you mean with you?"
+
+"Oh, I'm never another man--I'm always more the wrong one than the man
+himself. It's you she's after." And on his friend's asking him what he
+meant by this Nash added: "While you were engaged in transferring her
+image to the tablet of your genius you stamped your own on that of her
+heart."
+
+Nick stopped in his walk, staring. "Ah, what a bore!"
+
+"A bore? Don't you think her formed to please?"
+
+Nick wondered, but didn't conclude. "I wanted to go on with her--now I
+can't."
+
+Nash himself, however, jumped straight to what really mattered. "My dear
+fellow, it only makes her handsomer. I wondered what happy turn she had
+taken."
+
+"Oh, that's twaddle," said Nick, turning away. "Besides, has she told
+you?"
+
+"No, but her mother has."
+
+"Has she told her mother?"
+
+"Mrs. Rooth says not. But I've known Mrs. Rooth to say that which
+isn't."
+
+"Apply that rule then to the information you speak of."
+
+"Well, since you press me, I know more," Gabriel said. "Miriam knows
+you're engaged to a wonderful, rich lady; she told me as much, told me
+she had seen her here. That was enough to set her off--she likes
+forbidden fruit."
+
+"I'm not engaged to any lady whatever. I was," Nick handsomely
+conceded, "but we've altered our minds."
+
+"Ah, what a pity!" his friend wailed.
+
+"Mephistopheles!"--and he stopped again with the point of this.
+
+"Pray then whom do you call Margaret? May I ask if your failure of
+interest in the political situation is the cause of this change in your
+personal one?" Nash went on. Nick signified that he mightn't; whereupon
+he added: "I'm not in the least devilish--I only mean it's a pity you've
+altered your minds, since Miriam may in consequence alter hers. She goes
+from one thing to another. However, I won't tell her."
+
+"I will then!" Nick declared between jest and earnest.
+
+"Would that really be prudent?" his companion asked more completely in
+the frolic key.
+
+"At any rate," he resumed, "nothing would induce me to interfere with
+Peter Sherringham. That sounds fatuous, but to you I don't mind
+appearing an ass."
+
+"The thing would be to get Sherringham, out of spite," Nash threw off,
+"to entangle himself with another woman."
+
+"What good would that do?"
+
+"Ah, Miriam would then begin to think of him."
+
+"Spite surely isn't a conceivable motive--for a healthy man."
+
+The plea, however, found Gabriel ready. "Sherringham's just precisely
+not a healthy man. He's too much in love."
+
+"Then he won't care for another woman."
+
+"He would try to, and that would produce its effect--its effect on
+Miriam."
+
+"You talk like an American novel. Let him try, and God keep us all
+straight." Nick adverted in extreme silence to his poor little Biddy
+and greatly hoped--he would have to see to it a little--that Peter
+wouldn't "try" on _her_. He changed the subject and before Nash withdrew
+took occasion to remark--the occasion was offered by some new allusion
+of the visitor's to the sport he hoped to extract from seeing Nick carry
+out everything to which he stood committed--that the comedy of the
+matter would fall flat and the incident pass unnoticed.
+
+But Nash lost no heart. "Oh, if you'll simply do your part I'll take
+care of the rest."
+
+"If you mean by doing my part minding my business and working like a
+beaver I shall easily satisfy you," Nick replied.
+
+"Ah, you reprobate, you'll become another Sir Joshua, a mere P.R.A.!"
+his companion railed, getting up to go.
+
+When he had gone Nick threw himself back on the cushions of the divan
+and, with his hands locked above his head, sat a long time lost in
+thought. He had sent his servant to bed; he was unmolested. He gazed
+before him into the gloom produced by the unheeded burning-out of the
+last candle. The vague outer light came in through the tall studio
+window and the painted images, ranged about, looked confused in the
+dusk. If his mother had seen him she might have thought he was staring
+at his father's ghost.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+The night Peter Sherringham walked away from Balaklava Place with
+Gabriel Nash the talk of the two men directed itself, as was natural at
+the time, to the question of Miriam's future fame and the pace, as Nash
+called it, at which she would go. Critical spirits as they both were,
+and one of them as dissimulative in passion as the other was paradoxical
+in the absence of it, they yet took her career for granted as completely
+as the simple-minded, a pair of hot spectators in the pit, might have
+done, and exchanged observations on the assumption that the only
+uncertain element would be the pace. This was a proof of general
+subjugation. Peter wished not to show, yet wished to know, and in the
+restlessness of his anxiety was ready even to risk exposure, great as
+the sacrifice might be of the imperturbable, urbane scepticism most
+appropriate to a secretary of embassy. He couldn't rid himself of the
+sense that Nash had got up earlier than he, had had opportunities of
+contact in days already distant, the days of Mrs. Rooth's hungry foreign
+rambles. Something of authority and privilege stuck to him from this,
+and it made Sherringham still more uncomfortable when he was most
+conscious that, at the best, even the trained diplomatic mind would
+never get a grasp of Miriam as a whole. She was constructed to revolve
+like the terraqueous globe; some part or other of her was always out of
+sight or in shadow.
+
+Peter talked to conceal his feelings, and, like many a man practising
+that indirectness, rather lost himself in the wood. They agreed that,
+putting strange accidents aside, the girl would go further than any one
+had gone in England within the memory of man; and that it was a pity, as
+regards marking the comparison, that for so long no one had gone any
+distance worth speaking of. They further agreed that it would naturally
+seem absurd to any one who didn't know, their prophesying such big
+things on such small evidence; and they agreed lastly that the absurdity
+quite vanished as soon as the prophets knew as _they_ knew. Their
+knowledge--they quite recognised this--was simply confidence raised to a
+high point, the communication of their young friend's own confidence.
+The conditions were enormously to make, but it was of the very essence
+of Miriam's confidence that she would make them. The parts, the plays,
+the theatres, the "support," the audiences, the critics, the money were
+all to be found, but she cast a spell that prevented this from seeming a
+serious hitch. One mightn't see from one day to the other what she would
+do or how she would do it, but this wouldn't stay her steps--she would
+none the less go on. She would have to construct her own road, as it
+were, but at the worst there would only be delays in making it. These
+delays would depend on the hardness of the stones she had to break.
+
+As Peter had noted, you never knew where to "have" Gabriel Nash; a truth
+exemplified in his unexpected delight at the prospect of Miriam's
+drawing forth the modernness of the age. You might have thought he would
+loathe that modernness; but he had a joyous, amused, amusing vision of
+it--saw it as something huge and fantastically vulgar. Its vulgarity
+would rise to the grand style, like that of a London railway station,
+and the publicity achieved by their charming charge be as big as the
+globe itself. All the machinery was ready, the platform laid; the
+facilities, the wires and bells and trumpets, the roaring, deafening
+newspaperism of the period--its most distinctive sign--were waiting for
+her, their predestined mistress, to press her foot on the spring and set
+them all in motion. Gabriel brushed in a large, bright picture of her
+progress through the time and round the world, round it and round it
+again, from continent to continent and clime to clime; with populations
+and deputations, reporters and photographers, placards and interviews
+and banquets, steamers, railways, dollars, diamonds, speeches and
+artistic ruin all jumbled into her train. Regardless of expense the
+spectacle would be and thrilling, though somewhat monotonous, the
+drama--a drama more bustling than any she would put on the stage and a
+spectacle that would beat everything for scenery. In the end her divine
+voice would crack, screaming to foreign ears and antipodal barbarians,
+and her clever manner would lose all quality, simplified to a few
+unmistakable knock-down dodges. Then she would be at the fine climax of
+life and glory, still young and insatiate, but already coarse, hard, and
+raddled, with nothing left to do and nothing left to do it with, the
+remaining years all before her and the _raison d'etre_ all behind. It
+would be splendid, dreadful, grotesque.
+
+"Oh, she'll have some good years--they'll be worth having," Peter
+insisted as they went. "Besides, you see her too much as a humbug and
+too little as a real producer. She has ideas--great ones; she loves the
+thing for itself. That may keep a woman serious."
+
+"Her greatest idea must always be to show herself, and fortunately she
+has a great quantity of that treasure to show. I think of her absolutely
+as a real producer, but as a producer whose production is her own
+person. No 'person,' even as fine a one as hers, will stand that for
+more than an hour, so that humbuggery has very soon to lend a hand.
+However," Nash continued, "if she's a fine humbug it will do as well, it
+will perfectly suit the time. We can all be saved by vulgarity; that's
+the solvent of all difficulties and the blessing of this delightful age.
+One doesn't die of it--save in soul and sense: one dies only of minding
+it. Therefore let no man despair--a new hope has dawned."
+
+"She'll do her work like any other worker, with the advantage over many
+that her talent's rare," Peter obliquely answered. "Compared with the
+life of many women that's security and sanity of the highest order. Then
+she can't help her beauty. You can't vulgarise that."
+
+"Oh, can't you?" Gabriel cried.
+
+"It will abide with her till the day of her death. It isn't a mere
+superficial freshness. She's very noble."
+
+"Yes, that's the pity of it," said Nash. "She's a big more or less
+directed force, and I quite admit that she'll do for a while a lot of
+good. She'll have brightened up the world for a great many people--have
+brought the ideal nearer to them and held it fast for an hour with its
+feet on earth and its great wings trembling. That's always something,
+for blest is he who has dropped even the smallest coin into the little
+iron box that contains the precious savings of mankind. Miriam will
+doubtless have dropped a big gold-piece. It will be found in the general
+scramble on the day the race goes bankrupt. And then for herself she'll
+have had a great go at life."
+
+"Oh yes, she'll have got out of her hole--she won't have vegetated,"
+Peter concurred. "That makes her touching to me--it adds to the many
+good reasons for which one may want to help her. She's tackling a big
+job, and tackling it by herself; throwing herself upon the world in good
+faith and dealing with it as she can; meeting alone, in her youth, her
+beauty, her generosity, all the embarrassments of notoriety and all the
+difficulties of a profession of which, if one half's what's called
+brilliant the other's frankly odious."
+
+"She has great courage, but you speak of her as solitary with such a lot
+of us all round her?" Nash candidly inquired.
+
+"She's a great thing for you and me, but we're a small thing for her."
+
+"Well, a good many small things, if they but stick together, may make up
+a mass," Gabriel said. "There must always be the man, you see. He's the
+indispensable element in such a life, and he'll be the last thing she'll
+ever lack."
+
+"What man are you talking about?" Peter asked with imperfect ease.
+
+"The man of the hour, whoever he is. She'll inspire innumerable
+devotions."
+
+"Of course she will, and they'll be precisely a part of the insufferable
+side of her life."
+
+"Insufferable to whom?" Nash demanded. "Don't forget that the
+insufferable side of her life will be just the side she'll thrive on.
+You can't eat your cake and have it, and you can't make omelettes
+without breaking eggs. You can't at once sit by the fire and parade
+about the world, and you can't take all chances without having some
+adventures. You can't be a great actress without the luxury of nerves.
+Without a plentiful supply--or without the right ones--you'll only be
+second fiddle. If you've all the tense strings you may take life for
+your fiddlestick. Your nerves and your adventures, your eggs and your
+cake, are part of the cost of the most expensive of professions. You
+play with human passions, with exaltations and ecstasies and terrors,
+and if you trade on the fury of the elements you must know how to ride
+the storm."
+
+Well, Peter thought it over. "Those are the fine old commonplaces about
+the artistic temperament, but I usually find the artist a very meek,
+decent, little person."
+
+"You _never_ find the artist--you only find his work, and that's all you
+need find. When the artist's a woman, and the woman's an actress,
+meekness and decency will doubtless be there in the right proportions,"
+Nash went on. "Miriam will represent them for you, if you give her her
+cue, with the utmost charm."
+
+"Of course she'll inspire devotions--_that's_ all right," said Peter
+with a wild cheerfulness.
+
+"And of course they'll inspire responses, and with that
+consequence--don't you see?--they'll mitigate her solitude, they'll even
+enliven it," Nash set forth.
+
+"She'll probably box a good many ears: that'll be lively!" Peter
+returned with some grimness.
+
+"Oh magnificent!--it will be a merry life. Yet with its tragic passages,
+its distracted or its pathetic hours," Gabriel insisted. "In short, a
+little of everything."
+
+They walked on without further speech till at last Peter resumed: "The
+best thing for a woman in her situation is to marry some decent
+care-taking man."
+
+"Oh I daresay she'll do that too!" Nash laughed; a remark as a result of
+which his companion lapsed afresh into silence. Gabriel left him a
+little to enjoy this; after which he added: "There's somebody she'd
+marry to-morrow."
+
+Peter wondered. "Do you mean her friend Dashwood?"
+
+"No, no, I mean Nick Dormer."
+
+"She'd marry _him_?" Peter gasped.
+
+"I mean her head's full of him. But she'll hardly get the chance."
+
+Peter watched himself. "Does she like him as much as that?"
+
+"I don't quite know how much you mean, but enough for all practical
+ends."
+
+"Marrying a fashionable actress is hardly a practical end."
+
+"Certainly not, but I'm not speaking from his point of view." Nash was
+perfectly lucid. "Moreover, I thought you just now said it would be such
+a good thing for her."
+
+"To marry Nick Dormer?"
+
+"You said a good decent man, and he's one of the very decentest."
+
+"I wasn't thinking of the individual, but of the protection. It would
+fence her about, settle certain questions, or appear to; it would make
+things safe and comfortable for her and keep a lot of cads and
+blackguards away."
+
+"She ought to marry the prompter or the box-keeper," said Nash. "Then it
+would be all right. I think indeed they generally do, don't they?"
+
+Peter felt for a moment a strong disposition to drop his friend on the
+spot, to cross to the other side of the street and walk away without
+him. But there was a different impulse which struggled with this one and
+after a minute overcame it, the impulse that led to his saying
+presently: "Has she told you she's--a--she's in love with Nick?"
+
+"No, no--that's not the way I know it."
+
+"Has Nick told you then?"
+
+"On the contrary, I've told _him_."
+
+"You've rendered him a questionable service if you've no proof," Peter
+pronounced.
+
+"My proof's only that I've seen her with him. She's charming, poor dear
+thing."
+
+"But surely she isn't in love with every man she's charming to."
+
+"I mean she's charming to _me_," Nash returned. "I see her that way. I
+see her interested--and what it does to her, with her, _for_ her. But
+judge for yourself--the first time you get a chance."
+
+"When shall I get a chance? Nick doesn't come near her."
+
+"Oh he'll come, he'll come; his picture isn't finished."
+
+"You mean _he'll_ be the box-keeper, then?"
+
+"My dear fellow, I shall never allow it," said Gabriel Nash. "It would
+be idiotic and quite unnecessary. He's beautifully arranged--in quite a
+different line. Fancy his taking that sort of job on his hands! Besides,
+she'd never expect it; she's not such a goose. They're very good
+friends--it will go on that way. She's an excellent person for him to
+know; she'll give him lots of ideas of the plastic kind. He would have
+been up there before this, but it has taken him time to play his
+delightful trick on his constituents. That of course is pure amusement;
+but when once his effect has been well produced he'll get back to
+business, and his business will be a very different matter from
+Miriam's. Imagine him writing her advertisements, living on her money,
+adding up her profits, having rows and recriminations with her agent,
+carrying her shawl, spending his days in her rouge-pot. The right man
+for that, if she must have one, will turn up. '_Pour le mariage, non_.'
+She isn't wholly an idiot; she really, for a woman, quite sees things as
+they are."
+
+As Peter had not crossed the street and left Gabriel planted he now
+suffered the extremity of irritation. But descrying in the dim vista of
+the Edgware Road a vague and vigilant hansom he waved his stick with
+eagerness and with the abrupt declaration that, feeling tired, he must
+drive the rest of his way. He offered Nash, as he entered the vehicle,
+no seat, but this coldness was not reflected in the lucidity with which
+that master of every subject went on to affirm that there was of course
+a danger--the danger that in given circumstances Miriam would leave the
+stage.
+
+"Leave it, you mean, for some man?"
+
+"For the man we're talking about."
+
+"For Nick Dormer?" Peter asked from his place in the cab, his paleness
+lighted by its lamps.
+
+"If he should make it a condition. But why should he? why should he make
+_any_ conditions? He's not an ass either. You see it would be a
+bore"--Nash kept it up while the hansom waited--"because if she were to
+do anything of that sort she'd make him pay for the sacrifice."
+
+"Oh yes, she'd make him pay for the sacrifice," Peter blindly concurred.
+
+"And then when he had paid she'd go back to her footlights," Gabriel
+developed from the curbstone as his companion closed the apron of the
+cab.
+
+"I see--she'd go back--good-night," Peter returned. "_Please_ go on!" he
+cried to the driver through the hole in the roof. And while the vehicle
+rolled away he growled to himself: "Of course she would--and quite
+right!"
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+"Judge for yourself when you get a chance," Nash had said to him; and as
+it turned out he was able to judge two days later, for he found his
+cousin in Balaklava Place on the Tuesday following his walk with their
+insufferable friend. He had not only stayed away from the theatre on the
+Monday evening--he regarded this as an achievement of some
+importance--but had not been near Miriam during the day. He had meant to
+absent himself from her company on Tuesday as well; a determination
+confirmed by the fact that the afternoon turned to rain. But when at ten
+minutes to five o'clock he jumped into a hansom and directed his course
+to Saint John's Wood it was precisely upon the weather that he shifted
+the responsibility of his behaviour.
+
+Miriam had dined when he reached the villa, but she was lying down,
+unduly fatigued, before going to the theatre. Mrs. Rooth was, however,
+in the drawing-room with three gentlemen, in two of whom the fourth
+visitor was not startled to recognise Basil Dashwood and Gabriel Nash.
+Dashwood appeared to have become Miriam's brother-in-arms and a second
+child--a fonder one--to Mrs. Rooth; it had reached Peter on some late
+visit that the young actor had finally moved his lodgings into the
+quarter, making himself a near neighbour for all sorts of convenience.
+"Hang his convenience!" Peter thought, perceiving that Mrs. Lovick's
+"Arty" was now altogether one of the family. Oh the family!--it was a
+queer one to be connected with: that consciousness was acute in
+Sherringham's breast to-day as he entered Mrs. Rooth's little circle.
+The place was filled with cigarette-smoke and there was a messy
+coffee-service on the piano, whose keys Basil Dashwood lightly touched
+for his own diversion. Nash, addressing the room of course, was at one
+end of a little sofa with his nose in the air, and Nick Dormer was at
+the other end, seated much at his ease and with a certain privileged
+appearance of having been there often before, though Sherringham knew he
+had not. He looked uncritical and very young, as rosy as a school-boy on
+a half-holiday. It was past five o'clock in the day, but Mrs. Rooth was
+not dressed; there was, however, no want of finish in her elegant
+attitude--the same relaxed grandeur (she seemed to let you understand)
+for which she used to be distinguished at Castle Nugent when the house
+was full. She toyed incongruously, in her unbuttoned wrapper, with a
+large tinsel fan which resembled a theatrical property.
+
+It was one of the discomforts of Peter's position that many of those
+minor matters which are superficially at least most characteristic of
+the histrionic life had power to displease him, so that he was obliged
+constantly to overlook and condone and pretend. He disliked besmoked
+drawing-rooms and irregular meals and untidy arrangements; he could
+suffer from the vulgarity of Mrs. Rooth's apartments, the importunate
+photographs which gave on his nerves, the barbarous absence of signs of
+an orderly domestic life, the odd volumes from the circulating library
+(you could see what they were--the very covers told you--at a glance)
+tumbled about under smeary cups and glasses. He hadn't waited till now
+to feel it "rum" that fate should have let him in for such contacts;
+but as he stood before his hostess and her companions he wondered
+perhaps more than ever why he should. Her companions somehow, who were
+not responsible, didn't keep down his wonder; which was particularly
+odd, since they were not superficially in the least of Bohemian type.
+Almost the first thing that struck him, as happened, in coming into the
+room, was the fresh fact of the high good looks of his cousin, a
+gentleman, to one's taste and for one's faith, in a different enough
+degree from the stiff-collared, conversible Dashwood. Peter didn't hate
+Nick for being of so fine an English grain; he knew rather the brush of
+a new wave of annoyance at Julia's stupid failure to get on with him
+under that good omen.
+
+It was his first encounter with the late member for Harsh since his
+arrival in London: they had been on one side and the other so much taken
+up with their affairs. Since their last meeting Nick had, as we know, to
+his kinsman's perception, really put on a new character: he had done the
+finest stroke of business in the quietest way. This had made him a
+presence to be counted with, and in just the sense in which poor Peter
+desired least to count. Poor Peter, after his somersault in the blue,
+had just lately been much troubled; he was ravaged by contending
+passions; he paid every hour in a torment of unrest for what was false
+in his position, the impossibility of keeping the presentable parts of
+his character together, the opposition of interest and desire. Nick, his
+junior and a lighter weight, had settled _his_ problem and showed no
+wounds; there was something impertinent and mystifying in it. Yet he
+looked, into the bargain, too innocently young and happy, and too
+careless and modest and amateurish, to figure as a rival or even as the
+genius he was apparently going to try to be--the genius that the other
+day, in the studio there with Biddy, Peter had got a startled glimpse of
+his power to become. Julia's brother would have liked to be aware of
+grounds of resentment, to be able to hold she had been badly treated or
+that Nick was basely fatuous, for in that case he might have had the
+resource of taking offence. But where was the outrage of his merely
+being liked by a woman in respect to whom one had definitely denied
+one's self the luxury of pretensions, especially if, as the wrong-doer,
+he had taken no action in the matter? It could scarcely be called
+wrong-doing to call, casually, on an afternoon when the lady didn't seem
+to be there. Peter could at any rate rejoice that Miriam didn't; and he
+proposed to himself suggesting to Nick after a little that they should
+adjourn together--they had such interesting things to talk about.
+Meanwhile Nick greeted him with a friendly freedom in which he could
+read neither confusion nor defiance. Peter was reassured against a
+danger he believed he didn't recognise and puzzled by a mystery he
+flattered himself he hadn't heeded. And he was still more ashamed of
+being reassured than of being puzzled.
+
+It must be recorded that Miriam's absence from the scene was not
+prolonged. Nick, as Sherringham gathered, had been about a quarter of an
+hour in the house, which would have given her, gratified by his
+presence, due time to array herself to come down to him. At all events
+she was in the room, prepared apparently to go to the theatre, very
+shortly after one of her guests had become sensible of how glad he was
+she was out of it. Familiarity had never yet cured him of a certain
+tremor of expectation, and even of suspense, in regard to her entrances;
+a flutter caused by the simple circumstance of her infinite variety. To
+say she was always acting would too much convey that she was often
+fatiguing; since her changing face affected this particular admirer at
+least not as a series of masks, but as a response to perceived
+differences, an intensity of that perception, or still more as something
+richly constructional, like the shifting of the scene in a play or like
+a room with many windows. The image she was to project was always
+incalculable, but if her present denied her past and declined
+responsibility for her future it made a good thing of the hour and kept
+the actual peculiarly fresh. This time the actual was a bright, gentle,
+graceful, smiling, young woman in a new dress, eager to go out, drawing
+on fresh gloves, who looked as if she were about to step into a carriage
+and--it was Gabriel Nash who thus formulated her physiognomy--do a lot
+of London things.
+
+The young woman had time to spare, however, and she sat down and talked
+and laughed and presently gave, as seemed to Peter, a deeper glow to the
+tawdry little room, which could do for others if it had to do for her.
+She described herself as in a state of nervous muddle, exhausted,
+blinded, _abrutie_, with the rehearsals of the forthcoming piece--the
+first night was close at hand, and it was going to be of a vileness:
+they would all see!--but there was no correspondence between this
+account of the matter and her present bravery of mood. She sent her
+mother away--to "put on some clothes or something"--and, left alone with
+the visitors, went to a long glass between the windows, talking always
+to Nick Dormer, and revised and rearranged a little her own attire. She
+talked to Nick, over her shoulder, and to Nick only, as if he were the
+guest to recognise and the others didn't count. She broke out at once on
+his having thrown up his seat, wished to know if the strange story told
+her by Mr. Nash were true--that he had knocked all the hopes of his
+party into pie.
+
+Nick took it any way she liked and gave a pleasant picture of his
+party's ruin, the critical condition of public affairs: he was as yet
+clearly closed to contrition or shame. The pilgrim from Paris, before
+Miriam's entrance, had not, in shaking hands with him, made even a
+roundabout allusion to his odd "game"; he felt he must somehow show good
+taste--so English people often feel--at the cost of good manners. But he
+winced on seeing how his scruples had been wasted, and was struck with
+the fine, jocose, direct turn of his kinsman's conversation with the
+young actress. It was a part of her unexpectedness that she took the
+heavy literal view of Nick's behaviour; declared frankly, though without
+ill nature, that she had no patience with his mistake. She was horribly
+disappointed--she had set her heart on his being a great statesman, one
+of the rulers of the people and the glories of England. What was so
+useful, what was so noble?--how it belittled everything else! She had
+expected him to wear a cordon and a star some day--acquiring them with
+the greatest promptitude--and then to come and see her in her _loge_: it
+would look so particularly well. She talked after the manner of a lovely
+Philistine, except perhaps when she expressed surprise at
+hearing--hearing from Gabriel Nash--that in England gentlemen accoutred
+with those emblems of their sovereign's esteem didn't so far forget
+themselves as to stray into the dressing-rooms of actresses. She
+admitted after a moment that they were quite right and the
+dressing-rooms of actresses nasty places; but she was sorry, for that
+was the sort of thing she had always figured in a corner--a
+distinguished man, slightly bald, in evening dress, with orders,
+admiring the smallness of a satin shoe and saying witty things. Nash was
+convulsed with hilarity at this--such a vision of the British political
+hero. Coming back from the glass and making that critic give her his
+place on the sofa, she seated herself near Nick and continued to
+express her regret at his perversity.
+
+"They all say that--all the charming women, but I shouldn't have looked
+for it from you," Nick replied. "I've given you such an example of what
+I can do in another line."
+
+"Do you mean my portrait? Oh I've got it, with your name and 'M.P.' in
+the corner, and that's precisely why I'm content. 'M.P.' in the corner
+of a picture is delightful, but I want to break the mould: I don't in
+the least insist on your giving specimens to others. And the artistic
+life, when you can lead another--if you've any alternative, however
+modest--is a very poor business. It comes last in dignity--after
+everything else. Ain't I up to my eyes in it and don't I truly know?"
+
+"You talk like my broken-hearted mother," said Nick.
+
+"Does she hate it so intensely?"
+
+"She has the darkest ideas about it--the wildest theories. I can't
+imagine where she gets them; partly I think from a general conviction
+that the 'esthetic'--a horrible insidious foreign disease--is eating the
+healthy core out of English life (dear old English life!) and partly
+from the charming pictures in _Punch_ and the clever satirical articles,
+pointing at mysterious depths of contamination, in the other weekly
+papers. She believes there's a dreadful coterie of uncannily artful and
+desperately refined people who wear a kind of loose faded uniform and
+worship only beauty--which is a fearful thing; that Gabriel has
+introduced me to it; that I now spend all my time in it, and that for
+its sweet sake I've broken the most sacred vows. Poor Gabriel, who, so
+far as I can make out, isn't in any sort of society, however bad!"
+
+"But I'm uncannily artful," Nash objected, "and though I can't afford
+the uniform--I believe you get it best somewhere in South Audley
+Street--I do worship beauty. I really think it's me the weekly papers
+mean."
+
+"Oh I've read the articles--I know the sort!" said Basil Dashwood.
+
+Miriam looked at him. "Go and see if the brougham's there--I ordered it
+early."
+
+Dashwood, without moving, consulted his watch. "It isn't time yet--I
+know more about the brougham than you. I've made a ripping good
+arrangement for her stable--it really costs her nothing," the young
+actor continued confidentially to Peter, near whom he had placed
+himself.
+
+"Your mother's quite right to be broken-hearted," Miriam declared, "and
+I can imagine exactly what she has been through. I should like to talk
+with her--I should like to see her." Nick showed on this easy amusement,
+reminding her she had talked to him while she sat for her portrait in
+quite the opposite sense, most helpfully and inspiringly; and Nash
+explained that she was studying the part of a political duchess and
+wished to take observations for it, to work herself into the character.
+The girl might in fact have been a political duchess as she sat, her
+head erect and her gloved hands folded, smiling with aristocratic
+dimness at Nick. She shook her head with stately sadness; she might have
+been trying some effect for Mary Stuart in Schiller's play. "I've
+changed since that. I want you to be the grandest thing there is--the
+counsellor of kings."
+
+Peter wondered if it possibly weren't since she had met his sister in
+Nick's studio that she had changed, if perhaps she hadn't seen how it
+might give Julia the sense of being more effectually routed to know that
+the woman who had thrown the bomb was one who also tried to keep Nick in
+the straight path. This indeed would involve an assumption that Julia
+might know, whereas it was perfectly possible she mightn't and more than
+possible that if she should she wouldn't care. Miriam's essential
+fondness for trying different ways was always there as an adequate
+reason for any particular way; a truth which, however, sometimes only
+half-prevented the particular way from being vexatious to a particular
+observer.
+
+"Yet after all who's more esthetic than you and who goes in more for the
+beautiful?" Nick asked. "You're never so beautiful as when you pitch
+into it."
+
+"Oh, I'm an inferior creature, of an inferior sex, and I've to earn my
+bread as I can. I'd give it all up in a moment, my odious trade--for an
+inducement."
+
+"And pray what do you mean by an inducement?" Nick demanded.
+
+"My dear fellow, she means you--if you'll give her a permanent
+engagement to sit for you!" Gabriel volunteered. "What singularly crude
+questions you ask!"
+
+"I like the way she talks," Mr. Dashwood derisively said, "when I gave
+up the most brilliant prospects, of very much the same kind as Mr.
+Dormer's, expressly to go on the stage."
+
+"You're an inferior creature too," Miriam promptly pronounced.
+
+"Miss Rooth's very hard to satisfy," Peter observed at this. "A man of
+distinction, slightly bald, in evening dress, with orders, in the corner
+of her _loge_--she has such a personage ready made to her hand and she
+doesn't so much as look at him. Am _I_ not an inducement? Haven't I
+offered you a permanent engagement?"
+
+"Your orders--where are your orders?" she returned with a sweet smile,
+getting up.
+
+"I shall be a minister next year and an ambassador before you know it.
+Then I shall stick on everything that can be had."
+
+"And they call _us_ mountebanks!" cried the girl. "I've been so glad to
+see you again--do you want another sitting?" she went on to Nick as if
+to take leave of him.
+
+"As many as you'll give me--I shall be grateful for all," he made
+answer. "I should like to do you as you are at present. You're totally
+different from the woman I painted--you're wonderful."
+
+"The Comic Muse!" she laughed. "Well, you must wait till our first
+nights are over--I'm _sur les dents_ till then. There's everything to do
+and I've to do it all. That fellow's good for nothing, for nothing but
+domestic life"--and she glanced at Basil Dashwood. "He hasn't an
+idea--not one you'd willingly tell of him, though he's rather useful for
+the stables. We've got stables now--or we try to look as if we had:
+Dashwood's ideas are _de cette force_. In ten days I shall have more
+time."
+
+"The Comic Muse? Never, never," Peter protested. "You're not to go
+smirking through the age and down to posterity--I'd rather see you as
+Medusa crowned with serpents. That's what you look like when you look
+best."
+
+"That's consoling--when I've just bought a lovely new bonnet, all red
+roses and bows. I forgot to tell you just now that when you're an
+ambassador you may propose anything you like," Miriam went on. "But
+forgive me if I make that condition. Seriously speaking, come to me
+glittering with orders and I shall probably succumb. I can't resist
+stars and garters. Only you must, as you say, have them all. I _don't_
+like to hear Mr. Dormer talk the slang of the studio--like that phrase
+just now: it _is_ a fall to a lower state. However, when one's low one
+must crawl, and I'm crawling down to the Strand. Dashwood, see if
+mamma's ready. If she isn't I decline to wait; you must bring her in a
+hansom. I'll take Mr. Dormer in the brougham; I want to talk with Mr.
+Dormer; he must drive with me to the theatre. His situation's full of
+interest." Miriam led the way out of the room as she continued to
+chatter, and when she reached the house-door with the four men in her
+train the carriage had just drawn up at the garden-gate. It appeared
+that Mrs. Rooth was not ready, and the girl, in spite of a remonstrance
+from Nick, who had a sense of usurping the old lady's place, repeated
+her injunction that she should be brought on in a cab. Miriam's
+gentlemen hung about her at the gate, and she insisted on Nick's taking
+his seat in the brougham and taking it first. Before she entered she put
+her hand out to Peter and, looking up at him, held his own kindly. "Dear
+old master, aren't you coming to-night? I miss you when you're not
+there."
+
+"Don't go--don't go--it's too much," Nash freely declared.
+
+"She is wonderful," said Mr. Dashwood, all expert admiration; "she _has_
+gone into the rehearsals tooth and nail. But nothing takes it out of
+her."
+
+"Nothing puts it into you, my dear!" Miriam returned. Then she pursued
+to Peter: "You're the faithful one--you're the one I count on." He was
+not looking at her; his eyes travelled into the carriage, where they
+rested on Nick Dormer, established on the farther seat with his face
+turned toward the farther window. He was the one, faithful or no,
+counted on or no, whom a charming woman had preferred to carry off, and
+there was clear triumph for him in that fact. Yet it pleased, it
+somewhat relieved, his kinsman to see his passivity as not a little
+foolish. Miriam noted something of this in Peter's eyes, for she
+exclaimed abruptly, "Don't kill him--he doesn't care for me!" With which
+she passed into the carriage and let it roll away.
+
+Peter stood watching it till he heard Dashwood again beside him. "You
+wouldn't believe what I make him do the whole thing for--a little rascal
+I know."
+
+"Good-bye; take good care of Mrs. Rooth," said Gabriel Nash, waving a
+bland farewell to the young actor. He gave a smiling survey of the
+heavens and remarked to Sherringham that the rain had stopped. Was he
+walking, was he driving, should they be going in the same direction?
+Peter cared little about his direction and had little account of it to
+give; he simply moved away in silence and with Gabriel at his side. This
+converser was partly an affliction to him; indeed the fact that he
+couldn't only make light of him added to the oppression. It was just to
+him nevertheless to note that he could hold his peace occasionally: he
+had for instance this afternoon taken little part in the talk at
+Balaklava Place. Peter greatly disliked to speak to him of Miriam, but
+he liked Nash himself to make free with her, and even liked him to say
+such things as might be a little viciously and unguardedly contradicted.
+He was not, however, moved to gainsay something dropped by his
+companion, disconnectedly, at the end of a few minutes; a word to the
+effect that she was after all the best-natured soul alive. All the same,
+Nash added, it wouldn't do for her to take possession of a nice life
+like Nick's; and he repeated that for his part he would never allow it.
+It would be on his conscience to interfere. To which Peter returned
+disingenuously that they might all do as they liked--it didn't matter a
+button to _him_. And with an effort to carry off that comedy he changed
+the subject.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+He wouldn't for a moment have admitted that he was jealous of his old
+comrade, but would almost have liked to be accused of it: for this would
+have given him a chance he rather lacked and missed, the right occasion
+to declare with plausibility that motives he couldn't avow had no
+application to his case. How could a man be jealous when he was not a
+suitor? how could he pretend to guard a property which was neither his
+own nor destined to become his own? There could be no question of loss
+when one had nothing at stake, and no question of envy when the
+responsibility of possession was exactly what one prayed to be delivered
+from. The measure of one's susceptibility was one's pretensions, and
+Peter was not only ready to declare over and over again that, thank God,
+he had none: his spiritual detachment was still more complete--he
+literally suffered from the fact that nobody appeared to care to hear
+him say it. He connected an idea of virtue and honour with his attitude,
+since surely it was a high case of conduct to have quenched a personal
+passion for the good of the public service. He had gone over the whole
+question at odd, irrepressible hours; he had returned, spiritually
+speaking, the buffet administered to him all at once, that day in
+Rosedale Road, by the spectacle of the _cranerie_ with which Nick could
+let worldly glories slide. Resolution for resolution he preferred after
+all another sort, and his own _cranerie_ would be shown in the way he
+should stick to his profession and stand up for British interests. If
+Nick had leaped over a wall he would leap over a river. The course of
+his river was already traced and his loins were already girded. Thus he
+was justified in holding that the measure of a man's susceptibility was
+a man's attitude: that was the only thing he was bound to give an
+account of.
+
+He was perpetually giving an account of it to his own soul in default of
+other listeners. He was quite angry at having tasted a sweetness in
+Miriam's assurance at the carriage--door, bestowed indeed with very
+little solemnity, that Nick didn't care for her. Wherein did it concern
+him that Nick cared for her or that Nick didn't? Wherein did it signify
+to him that Gabriel Nash should have taken upon himself to disapprove of
+a union between the young actress and the young painter and to frustrate
+an accident that might perhaps prove fortunate? For those had also been
+cooling words at the hour, though Peter blushed on the morrow to think
+that he felt in them anything but Nash's personal sublimity. He was
+ashamed of having been refreshed, and refreshed by so sickly a
+draught--it being all his theory that he was not in a fever. As for
+keeping an eye on Nick, it would soon become clear to that young man and
+that young man's charming friend that he had quite other uses for his
+eyes. The pair, with Nash to help, might straighten out their
+complications according to their light. He would never speak to Nick of
+Miriam; he felt indeed just now as if he should never speak to Nick of
+anything. He had traced the course of his river, as I say, and the real
+proof would be in the way he should, clearing the air, land on the
+opposite bank. It was a case for action--for vigorous, unmistakable
+action. He had done very little since his arrival in London but moon
+round a _fille de theatre_ who was taken up partly, though she bluffed
+it off, with another man, and partly with arranging new petticoats for a
+beastly old "poetic drama"; but this little waste of time should
+instantly be made up. He had given himself a definite rope, and he had
+danced to the end of his rope, and now he would dance back. That was all
+right--so right that Peter could only express to himself how right it
+was by whistling with extravagance.
+
+He whistled as he went to dine with a great personage the day after his
+meeting with Nick in Balaklava Place; a great personage to whom he had
+originally paid his respects--it was high time--the day before that
+meeting, the previous Monday. The sense of omissions to repair, of a
+superior line to take, perhaps made him study with more zeal to please
+the personage, who gave him ten minutes and asked him five questions. A
+great many doors were successively opened before any palpitating pilgrim
+who was about to enter the presence of this distinguished man; but they
+were discreetly closed again behind Sherringham, and I must ask the
+reader to pause with me at the nearer end of the momentary vista. This
+particular pilgrim fortunately felt he could count on recognition not
+only as a faithful if obscure official in the great hierarchy, but as a
+clever young man who happened to be connected by blood with people his
+lordship had intimately known. No doubt it was simply as the clever
+young man that Peter received the next morning, from the dispenser of
+his lordship's hospitality, a note asking him to dine on the morrow.
+Such cards had come to him before, and he had always obeyed their call;
+he did so at present, however, with a sense of unusual intention. In due
+course his intention was translated into words; before the gentlemen
+left the dining-room he respectfully asked his noble host for some
+further brief and benevolent hearing.
+
+"What is it you want? Tell me now," the master of his fate replied,
+motioning to the rest of the company to pass out and detaining him where
+they stood.
+
+Peter's excellent training covered every contingency: he could always be
+as concise or as diffuse as the occasion required. Even he himself,
+however, was surprised at the quick felicity of the terms in which he
+was conscious of conveying that, were it compatible with higher
+conveniences, he should extremely like to be transferred to duties in a
+more distant quarter of the globe. Indeed, fond as he was of thinking
+himself a man of emotions controlled by civility, it is not impossible
+that a greater candour than he knew glimmered through Peter's expression
+and trembled through his tone as he presented this petition. He had
+aimed at a good manner in presenting it, but perhaps the best of the
+effect produced for his interlocutor was just where it failed, where it
+confessed a secret that the highest diplomacy would have guarded.
+Sherringham remarked to the minister that he didn't care in the least
+where the place might be, nor how little coveted a post; the further
+away the better, and the climate didn't matter. He would only prefer of
+course that there should be really something to do, though he would make
+the best of it even if there were not. He stopped in time, or at least
+thought he did, not to betray his covertly seeking relief from minding
+his having been jilted in a flight to latitudes unfavourable to human
+life. His august patron gave him a sharp look which for a moment seemed
+the precursor of a sharper question; but the moment elapsed and the
+question failed to come. This considerate omission, characteristic of a
+true man of the world and representing quick guesses and still quicker
+indifferences, made our gentleman from that moment his lordship's ardent
+partisan. What did come was a good-natured laugh and the exclamation:
+"You know there are plenty of swamps and jungles, if you want that sort
+of thing," Peter replied that it was very much that sort of thing he did
+want; whereupon his chief continued: "I'll see--I'll see. If anything
+turns up you shall hear."
+
+Something turned up the very next day: our young man, taken at his word,
+found himself indebted to the postman for a note of concise intimation
+that the high position of minister to the smallest of Central American
+republics would be apportioned him. The republic, though small, was big
+enough to be "shaky," and the position, though high, not so exalted that
+there were not much greater altitudes above it to which it was a
+stepping-stone. Peter, quite ready to take one thing with another,
+rejoiced at his easy triumph, reflected that he must have been even more
+noticed at headquarters than he had hoped, and, on the spot, consulting
+nobody and waiting for nothing, signified his unqualified acceptance of
+the place. Nobody with a grain of sense would have advised him to do
+anything else. It made him happier than he had supposed he should ever
+be again; it made him feel professionally in the train, as they said in
+Paris; it was serious, it was interesting, it was exciting, and his
+imagination, letting itself loose into the future, began once more to
+scale the crowning eminence. It was very simple to hold one's course if
+one really tried, and he blessed the variety of peoples. Further
+communications passed, the last enjoining on him to return to Paris for
+a short interval a week later, after which he would be advised of the
+date for his proceeding to his remoter duties.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+The next thing he meanwhile did was to call with his news on Lady Agnes
+Dormer; it is not unworthy of note that he took on the other hand no
+step to make his promotion known to Miriam Rooth. To render it probable
+he should find his aunt he went at the luncheon-hour; and she was indeed
+on the point of sitting down to that repast with Grace. Biddy was not at
+home--Biddy was never at home now, her mother said: she was always at
+Nick's place, she spent her life there, she ate and drank there, she
+almost slept there. What she contrived to do there for so many hours and
+what was the irresistible spell Lady Agnes couldn't pretend she had
+succeeded in discovering. She spoke of this baleful resort only as
+"Nick's place," and spoke of it at first as little as possible. She
+judged highly probable, however, that Biddy would come in early that
+afternoon: there was something or other, some common social duty, she
+had condescended to promise she would perform with Grace. Poor Lady
+Agnes, whom Peter found somehow at once grim and very prostrate--she
+assured her nephew her nerves were all gone--almost abused her younger
+daughter for two minutes, having evidently a deep-seated need of abusing
+some one. I must yet add that she didn't wait to meet Grace's eye before
+recovering, by a rapid gyration, her view of the possibilities of
+things--those possibilities from which she still might squeeze, as a
+parent almost in despair, the drop that would sweeten her cup. "Dear
+child," she had the presence of mind to subjoin, "her only fault is
+after all that she adores her brother. She has a capacity for adoration
+and must always take her gospel from some one."
+
+Grace declared to Peter that her sister would have stayed at home if she
+had dreamed he was coming, and Lady Agnes let him know that she had
+heard all about the hour he had spent with the poor child at Nick's
+place and about his extraordinary good nature in taking the two girls to
+the play. Peter lunched in Calcutta Gardens, spending an hour there
+which proved at first unexpectedly and, as seemed to him, unfairly
+dismal. He knew from his own general perceptions, from what Biddy had
+told him and from what he had heard Nick say in Balaklava Place, that
+his aunt would have been wounded by her son's apostasy; but it was not
+till he saw her that he appreciated the dark difference this young man's
+behaviour had made in the outlook of his family. Evidently that
+behaviour had sprung a dreadful leak in the great vessel of their hopes.
+These were things no outsider could measure, and they were none of an
+outsider's business; it was enough that Lady Agnes struck him really as
+a woman who had received her death-blow. She looked ten years older; she
+was white and haggard and tragic. Her eyes burned with a strange fitful
+fire that prompted one to conclude her children had better look out for
+her. When not filled with this unnatural flame they were suffused with
+comfortless tears; and altogether the afflicted lady was, as he viewed
+her, very bad, a case for anxiety. It was because he had known she would
+be very bad that he had, in his kindness, called on her exactly in this
+manner; but he recognised that to undertake to be kind to her in
+proportion to her need might carry one very far. He was glad he had not
+himself a wronged mad mother, and he wondered how Nick could bear the
+burden of the home he had ruined. Apparently he didn't bear it very far,
+but had taken final, convenient refuge in Rosedale Road.
+
+Peter's judgement of his perverse cousin was considerably confused, and
+not the less so for the consciousness that he was perhaps just now not
+in the best state of mind for judging him at all. At the same time,
+though he held in general that a man of sense has always warrant enough
+in his sense for doing the particular thing he prefers, he could
+scarcely help asking himself whether, in the exercise of a virile
+freedom, it had been absolutely indispensable Nick should work such
+domestic woe. He admitted indeed that that was an anomalous figure for
+Nick, the worker of domestic woe. Then he saw that his aunt's
+grievance--there came a moment, later, when she asserted as much--was
+not quite what her recreant child, in Balaklava Place, had represented
+it--with questionable taste perhaps--to a mocking actress; was not a
+mere shocked quarrel with his adoption of a "low" career, or a horror,
+the old-fashioned horror, of the _louches_ licences taken by artists
+under pretext of being conscientious: the day for this was past, and
+English society thought the brush and the fiddle as good as anything
+else--with two or three exceptions. It was not what he had taken up but
+what he had put down that made the sorry difference, and the tragedy
+would have been equally great if he had become a wine-merchant or a
+horse-dealer. Peter had gathered at first that Lady Agnes wouldn't trust
+herself to speak directly of her trouble, and he had obeyed what he
+supposed the best discretion in making no allusion to it. But a few
+minutes before they rose from table she broke out, and when he
+attempted to utter a word of mitigation there was something that went to
+his heart in the way she returned: "Oh you don't know--you don't know!"
+He felt Grace's eyes fixed on him at this instant in a mystery of
+supplication, and was uncertain as to what she wanted--that he should
+say something more to console her mother or should hurry away from the
+subject. Grace looked old and plain and--he had thought on coming
+in--rather cross, but she evidently wanted something. "You don't know,"
+Lady Agnes repeated with a trembling voice, "you don't know." She had
+pushed her chair a little away from her place; she held her
+pocket-handkerchief pressed hard to her mouth, almost stuffed into it,
+and her eyes were fixed on the floor. She made him aware he did
+virtually know--know what towering piles of confidence and hope had been
+dashed to the earth. Then she finished her sentence unexpectedly--"You
+don't know what my life with my great husband was." Here on the other
+hand Peter was slightly at fault--he didn't exactly see what her life
+with her great husband had to do with it. What was clear to him,
+however, was that they literally had looked for things all in the very
+key of that greatness from Nick. It was not quite easy to see why this
+had been the case--it had not been precisely Peter's own prefigurement.
+Nick appeared to have had the faculty of planting that sort of
+flattering faith in women; he had originally given Julia a tremendous
+dose of it, though she had since shaken off the effects.
+
+"Do you really think he would have done such great things, politically
+speaking?" Peter risked. "Do you consider that the root of the matter
+was so essentially in him?"
+
+His hostess had a pause, looking at him rather hard. "I only think what
+all his friends--all his father's friends--have thought. He was his
+father's son after all. No young man ever had a finer training, and he
+gave from the first repeated proof of the highest ability, the highest
+ambition. See how he got in everywhere. Look at his first seat--look at
+his second," Lady Agnes continued. "Look at what every one says at this
+moment."
+
+"Look at all the papers!" said Grace. "Did you ever hear him speak?" she
+asked. And when Peter reminded her how he had spent his life in foreign
+lands, shut out from such pleasures, she went on: "Well, you lost
+something."
+
+"It was very charming," said Lady Agnes quietly and poignantly.
+
+"Of course he's charming, whatever he does," Peter returned. "He'll be a
+charming artist."
+
+"Oh God help us!" the poor lady groaned, rising quickly.
+
+"He won't--that's the worst," Grace amended. "It isn't as if he'd do
+things people would like, I've been to his place, and I never saw such a
+horrid lot of things--not at all clever or pretty."
+
+Yet her mother, at this, turned upon her with sudden asperity. "You know
+nothing whatever about the matter!" Then she added for Peter that, as it
+happened, her children did have a good deal of artistic taste: Grace was
+the only one who was totally deficient in it. Biddy was very
+clever--Biddy really might learn to do pretty things. And anything the
+poor child could learn was now no more than her duty--there was so
+little knowing what the future had in store for them all.
+
+"You think too much of the future--you take terribly gloomy views," said
+Peter, looking for his hat.
+
+"What other views can one take when one's son has deliberately thrown
+away a fortune?"
+
+"Thrown one away? Do you mean through not marrying----?"
+
+"I mean through killing by his perversity the best friend he ever had."
+
+Peter stared a moment; then with laughter: "Ah but Julia isn't dead of
+it!"
+
+"I'm not talking of Julia," said his aunt with a good deal of majesty.
+"Nick isn't mercenary, and I'm not complaining of that."
+
+"She means Mr. Carteret," Grace explained with all her competence. "He'd
+have done anything if Nick had stayed in the House."
+
+"But he's not dead?"
+
+"Charles Carteret's dying," said Lady Agnes--"his end's dreadfully near.
+He has been a sort of providence to us--he was Sir Nicholas's second
+self. But he won't put up with such insanity, such wickedness, and that
+chapter's closed."
+
+"You mean he has dropped Nick out of his will?"
+
+"Cut him off utterly. He has given him notice."
+
+"The old scoundrel!"--Peter couldn't keep this back. "But Nick will work
+the better for that--he'll depend on himself."
+
+"Yes, and whom shall we depend on?" Grace spoke up.
+
+"Don't be vulgar, for God's sake!" her mother ejaculated with a certain
+inconsequence.
+
+"Oh leave Nick alone--he'll make a lot of money," Peter declared
+cheerfully, following his two companions into the hall.
+
+"I don't in the least care if he does or not," said Lady Agnes. "You
+must come upstairs again--I've lots to say to you yet," she went on,
+seeing him make for his hat. "You must arrange to come and dine with us
+immediately; it's only because I've been so steeped in misery that I
+didn't write to you the other day--directly after you had called. We
+don't give parties, as you may imagine, but if you'll come just as we
+are, for old acquaintance' sake--"
+
+"Just with Nick--if Nick will come--and dear Biddy," Grace interposed.
+
+"Nick must certainly come, as well as dear Biddy, whom I hoped so much
+to find," Peter pronounced. "Because I'm going away--I don't know when
+I, shall see them again."
+
+"Wait with mamma. Biddy will come in now at any moment," Grace urged.
+
+"You're going away?" said Lady Agnes, pausing at the foot of the stairs
+and turning her white face upon him. Something in her voice showed she
+had been struck by his own tone.
+
+"I've had promotion and you must congratulate me. They're sending me out
+as minister to a little hot hole in Central America--six thousand miles
+away. I shall have to go rather soon."
+
+"Oh I'm so glad!" Lady Agnes breathed. Still she paused at the foot of
+the stair and still she gazed.
+
+"How very delightful--it will lead straight off to all sorts of other
+good things!" Grace a little coarsely commented.
+
+"Oh I'm crawling up--I'm an excellency," Peter laughed.
+
+"Then if you dine with us your excellency must have great people to meet
+you."
+
+"Nick and Biddy--they're great enough."
+
+"Come upstairs--come upstairs," said Lady Agnes, turning quickly and
+beginning to ascend.
+
+"Wait for Biddy--I'm going out," Grace continued, extending her hand to
+her kinsman. "I shall see you again--not that you care; but good-bye
+now. Wait for Biddy," the girl repeated in a lower tone, fastening her
+eyes on his with the same urgent mystifying gleam he thought he had
+noted at luncheon.
+
+"Oh I'll go and see her in Rosedale Road," he threw off.
+
+"Do you mean to-day--now?"
+
+"I don't know about to-day, but before I leave England."
+
+"Well, she'll be in immediately," said Grace. "Good-bye to your
+excellency."
+
+"Come up, Peter--_please_ come up," called Lady Agnes from the top of
+the stairs.
+
+He mounted and when he found himself in the drawing-room with her and
+the door closed she expressed her great interest in his fine prospects
+and position, which she wished to hear all about. She rang for coffee
+and indicated the seat he would find most comfortable: it shone before
+him for a moment that she would tell him he might if he wished light a
+cigar. For Peter had suddenly become restless--too restless to occupy a
+comfortable chair; he seated himself in it only to jump up again, and he
+went to the window, while he imparted to his hostess the very little he
+knew about his post, on hearing a vehicle drive up to the door. A strong
+light had just been thrown into his mind, and it grew stronger when,
+looking out, he saw Grace Dormer issue from the house in a hat and a
+jacket which had all the air of having been assumed with extraordinary
+speed. Her jacket was unbuttoned and her gloves still dangling from the
+hands with which she was settling her hat. The vehicle into which she
+hastily sprang was a hansom-cab which had been summoned by the butler
+from the doorstep and which rolled away with her after she had given an
+address.
+
+"Where's Grace going in such a hurry?" he asked of Lady Agnes; to which
+she replied that she hadn't the least idea--her children, at the pass
+they had all come to, knocked about as they liked.
+
+Well, he sat down again; he stayed a quarter of an hour and then he
+stayed longer, and during this time his appreciation of what she had in
+her mind gathered force. She showed him that precious quantity clearly
+enough, though she showed it by no clumsy, no voluntary arts. It looked
+out of her sombre, conscious eyes and quavered in her preoccupied,
+perfunctory tones. She took an extravagant interest in his future
+proceedings, the probable succession of events in his career, the
+different honours he would be likely to come in for, the salary attached
+to his actual appointment, the salary attached to the appointments that
+would follow--they would be sure to, wouldn't they?--and what he might
+reasonably expect to save. Oh he must save--Lady Agnes was an advocate
+of saving; and he must take tremendous pains and get on and be clever
+and fiercely ambitious: he must make himself indispensable and rise to
+the top. She was urgent and suggestive and sympathetic; she threw
+herself into the vision of his achievements and emoluments as if to
+appease a little the sore hunger with which Nick's treachery had left
+her. This was touching to her nephew, who didn't remain unmoved even at
+those more importunate moments when, as she fell into silence, fidgeting
+feverishly with a morsel of fancy-work she had plucked from a table, her
+whole presence became an intense, repressed appeal to him. What that
+appeal would have been had it been uttered was: "Oh Peter, take little
+Biddy; oh my dear young friend, understand your interests at the same
+time that you understand mine; be kind and reasonable and clever; save
+me all further anxiety and tribulation and accept my lovely, faultless
+child from my hands."
+
+That was what Lady Agnes had always meant, more or less, that was what
+Grace had meant, and they meant it with singular lucidity on the present
+occasion, Lady Agnes meant it so much that from one moment to another
+he scarce knew what she might do; and Grace meant it so much that she
+had rushed away in a hansom to fetch her sister from the studio. Grace,
+however, was a fool, for Biddy certainly wouldn't come. The news of his
+promotion had started them off, adding point to their idea of his being
+an excellent match; bringing home to them sharply the sense that if he
+were going away to strange countries he must take Biddy with him--that
+something at all events must be settled about Biddy before he went. They
+had suddenly begun to throb, poor things, with alarm at the ebbing
+hours.
+
+Strangely enough the perception of all this hadn't the effect of
+throwing him on the defensive and still less that of making him wish to
+bolt. When once he had made sure what was in the air he recognised a
+propriety, a real felicity in it; couldn't deny that he was in certain
+ways a good match, since it was quite probable he would go far; and was
+even generous enough--as he had no fear of being materially dragged to
+the altar--to enter into the conception that he might offer some balm to
+a mother who had had a horrid disappointment. The feasibility of
+marrying Biddy was not exactly augmented by the idea that his doing so
+would be a great offset to what Nick had made Lady Agnes suffer; but at
+least Peter didn't dislike his strenuous aunt so much as to wish to
+punish her for her nature. He was not afraid of her, whatever she might
+do; and though unable to grasp the practical relevancy of Biddy's being
+produced on the instant was willing to linger half an hour on the chance
+of successful production.
+
+There was meanwhile, moreover, a certain contagion in Lady Agnes's
+appeal--it made him appeal sensibly to himself, since indeed, as it is
+time to say, the glass of our young man's spirit had been polished for
+that reflexion. It was only at this moment really that he became
+inwardly candid. While making up his mind that his only safety was in
+flight and taking the strong measure of a request for help toward it, he
+was yet very conscious that another and probably still more effectual
+safeguard--especially if the two should be conjoined--lay in the hollow
+of his hand. His sister's words in Paris had come back to him and had
+seemed still wiser than when uttered: "She'll save you disappointments;
+you'd know the worst that can happen to you, and it wouldn't be bad."
+Julia had put it into a nutshell--Biddy would probably save him
+disappointments. And then she was--well, she was Biddy. Peter knew
+better what that was since the hour he had spent with her in Rosedale
+Road. But he had brushed away the sense of it, though aware that in
+doing so he took only half-measures and was even guilty of a sort of
+fraud upon himself. If he was sincere in wishing to put a gulf between
+his future and that sad expanse of his past and present over which
+Miriam had cast her shadow there was a very simple way to do so. He had
+dodged this way, dishonestly fixing on another which, taken alone, was
+far from being so good; but Lady Agnes brought him back to it. She held
+him in well-nigh confused contemplation of it, during which the safety,
+as Julia had called it, of the remedy wrought upon him as he wouldn't
+have believed beforehand, and not least to the effect of sweetening, of
+prettily colouring, the pill. It would be simple and it would deal with
+all his problems; it would put an end to all alternatives, which, as
+alternatives were otherwise putting an end to him, would be an excellent
+thing. It would settle the whole question of his future, and it was high
+time this should be settled.
+
+Peter took two cups of coffee while he made out his future with Lady
+Agnes, but though he drank them slowly he had finished them before Biddy
+turned up. He stayed three-quarters of an hour, saying to himself she
+wouldn't come--why should she come? Lady Agnes stooped to no avowal; she
+really stooped, so far as bald words went, to no part of the business;
+but she made him fix the next day save one for coming to dinner, and her
+repeated declaration that there would be no one else, not another
+creature but themselves, had almost the force of the supplied form for a
+promise to pay. In giving his word that he would come without fail, and
+not write the next day to throw them over for some function he should
+choose to dub obligatory, he felt quite as if he were putting his name
+to such a document. He went away at half-past three; Biddy of course
+hadn't come, and he had been sure she wouldn't. He couldn't imagine what
+Grace's idea had been, nor what pretext she had put forward to her
+sister. Whatever these things Biddy had seen through them and hated
+them. Peter could but like her the more for that.
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+
+Lady Agnes would doubtless have done better, in her own interest or in
+that of her child, to have secured his company for the very next
+evening. This she had indeed attempted, but her application of her
+thought had miscarried, Peter bethinking himself that he was importantly
+engaged. Her ladyship, moreover, couldn't presume to answer for Nick,
+since after all they must of course _have_ Nick, though, to tell the
+truth, the hideous truth, she and her son were scarcely on terms. Peter
+insisted on Nick, wished particularly to see him, and gave his hostess
+notice that he would make each of them forgive everything to the other.
+She returned that all her son had to forgive was her loving him more
+than her life, and she would have challenged Peter, had he allowed it,
+on the general ground of the comparative dignity of the two arts of
+painting portraits and governing nations. Our friend declined the
+challenge: the most he did was to intimate that he perhaps saw Nick more
+vividly as a painter than as a governor. Later he remembered vaguely
+something his aunt had said about their being a governing family.
+
+He was going, by what he could ascertain, to a very queer climate and
+had many preparations to make. He gave his best attention to these, and
+for a couple of hours after leaving Lady Agnes rummaged London for books
+from which he might extract information about his new habitat. It made
+apparently no great figure in literature, and Peter could reflect that
+he was perhaps destined to find a salutary distraction in himself
+filling the void with a volume of impressions. After he had resigned
+himself to necessary ignorance he went into the Park. He treated himself
+to an afternoon or two there when he happened to drop upon London in
+summer--it refreshed his sense of the British interests he would have to
+stand up for. Moreover, he had been hiding more or less, and now all
+that was changed and this was the simplest way not to hide. He met a
+host of friends, made his situation as public as possible and accepted
+on the spot a great many invitations; all subject, however, to the
+mental reservation that he should allow none of them to interfere with
+his being present the first night of Miriam's new venture. He was going
+to the equator to get away from her, but to repudiate the past with some
+decency of form he must show an affected interest, if he could muster
+none other, in an occasion that meant so much for her. The least
+intimate of her associates would do that, and Peter remembered how, at
+the expense of good manners, he had stayed away from her first
+appearance on any stage at all. He would have been shocked had he found
+himself obliged to go back to Paris without giving her at the imminent
+crisis the personal countenance she had so good a right to expect.
+
+It was nearly eight o'clock when he went to Great Stanhope Street to
+dress for dinner and learn that a note awaiting him on the hall-table
+and which bore the marks of hasty despatch had come three or four hours
+before. It exhibited the signature of Miriam Rooth and let him know that
+she positively expected him at the theatre by eleven o'clock the next
+morning, for which hour a dress-rehearsal of the revived play had been
+hurriedly projected, the first night being now definitely fixed for the
+impending Saturday. She counted on his attendance at both ceremonies,
+but with particular reasons for wishing to see him in the morning. "I
+want you to see and judge and tell me," she said, "for my mind's like a
+flogged horse--it won't give another kick." It was for the Saturday he
+had made Lady Agnes his promise; he had thought of the possibility of
+the play in doing so, but had rested in the faith that, from valid
+symptoms, this complication would not occur till the following week. He
+decided nothing on the spot as to the conflict of occupations--it was
+enough to send Miriam three words to the effect that he would sooner
+perish than fail her on the morrow.
+
+He went to the theatre in the morning, and the episode proved curious
+and instructive. Though there were twenty people in the stalls it bore
+little resemblance to those _repetitions generales_ to which, in Paris,
+his love of the drama had often attracted him and which, taking place at
+night, in the theatre closed to the public, are virtually first
+performances with invited spectators. They were to his sense always
+settled and stately, rehearsals of the _premiere_ even more than
+rehearsals of the play. The present occasion was less august; it was not
+so much a concert as a confusion of sounds, and it took audible and at
+times disputatious counsel with itself. It was rough and frank and
+spasmodic, but was lively and vivid and, in spite of the serious
+character of the piece, often exceedingly droll: while it gave
+Sherringham, oddly enough, a more present sense than ever of bending
+over the hissing, smoking, sputtering caldron in which a palatable
+performance is stewed. He looked into the gross darkness that may result
+from excess of light; that is, he understood how knocked up, on the eve
+of production, every one concerned in the preparation of a piece might
+be, with nerves overstretched and glasses blurred, awaiting the test
+and the response, the echo to be given back by the big, receptive,
+artless, stupid, delightful public. Peter's interest had been great in
+advance, and as Miriam since his arrival had taken him much into her
+confidence he knew what she intended to do and had discussed a hundred
+points with her. They had differed about some of them and she had always
+said: "Ah but wait till you see how I shall do it at the time!" That was
+usually her principal reason and her most convincing argument. She had
+made some changes at the last hour--she was going to do several things
+in another way. But she wanted a touchstone, wanted a fresh ear, and, as
+she told Sherringham when he went behind after the first act, that was
+why she had insisted on this private trial, to which a few fresh ears
+were to be admitted. They didn't want to allow it her, the theatre
+people, they were such a parcel of donkeys; but as to what she meant in
+general to insist on she had given them a hint she flattered herself
+they wouldn't soon forget.
+
+She spoke as if she had had a great battle with her fellow-workers and
+had routed them utterly. It was not the first time he had heard her talk
+as if such a life as hers could only be a fighting life and of her frank
+measure of the fine uses of a faculty for making a row. She rejoiced she
+possessed this faculty, for she knew what to do with it; and though
+there might be a certain swagger in taking such a stand in advance when
+one had done the infinitely little she had yet done, she nevertheless
+trusted to the future to show how right she should have been in
+believing a pack of idiots would never hold out against her and would
+know they couldn't afford to. Her assumption of course was that she
+fought for the light and the right, for the good way and the thorough,
+for doing a thing properly if one did it at all. What she had really
+wanted was the theatre closed for a night and the dress-rehearsal, put
+on for a few people, given instead of _Yolande_. That she had not got,
+but she would have it the next time. She spoke as if her triumphs behind
+the scenes as well as before would go by leaps and bounds, and he could
+perfectly see, for the time, that she would drive her coadjutors in
+front of her like sheep. Her tone was the sort of thing that would have
+struck one as preposterous if one hadn't believed in her; but if one did
+so believe it only seemed thrown in with the other gifts. How was she
+going to act that night and what could be said for such a hateful way of
+doing things? She thrust on poor Peter questions he was all unable to
+answer; she abounded in superlatives and tremendously strong objections.
+He had a sharper vision than usual of the queer fate, for a peaceable
+man, of being involved in a life of so violent a rhythm: one might as
+well be hooked to a Catharine-wheel and whiz round in flame and smoke.
+
+It had only been for five minutes, in the wing, amid jostling and
+shuffling and shoving, that they held this conference. Miriam, splendid
+in a brocaded anachronism, a false dress of the beginning of the
+century, and excited and appealing, imperious, reckless and
+good-humoured, full of exaggerated propositions, supreme determinations
+and comic irrelevancies, showed as radiant a young head as the stage had
+ever seen. Other people quickly surrounded her, and Peter saw that
+though, she wanted, as she said, a fresh ear and a fresh eye she was
+liable to rap out to those who possessed these advantages that they
+didn't know what they were talking about. It was rather hard for her
+victims--Basil Dashwood let him into this, wonderfully painted and in a
+dress even more beautiful than Miriam's, that of a young dandy under
+Charles the Second: if you were not in the business you were one kind
+of donkey and if you _were_ in the business you were another kind. Peter
+noted with a certain chagrin that Gabriel Nash had failed; he preferred
+to base his annoyance on that ground when the girl, after the remark
+just quoted from Dashwood, laughing and saying that at any rate the
+thing would do because it would just have to do, thrust vindictively but
+familiarly into the young actor's face a magnificent feather fan. "Isn't
+he too lovely," she asked, "and doesn't he know how to do it?" Dashwood
+had the sense of costume even more than Peter had inferred or supposed
+he minded, inasmuch as it now appeared he had gone profoundly into the
+question of what the leading lady was to wear. He had drawn patterns and
+hunted up stuffs, had helped her to try on her clothes, had bristled
+with ideas and pins. It would not have been quite clear, Peter's ground
+for resenting Nash's cynical absence; it may even be thought singular he
+should have missed him. At any rate he flushed a little when their young
+woman, of whom he inquired whether she hadn't invited her oldest and
+dearest friend, made answer: "Oh he says he doesn't like the
+kitchen-fire--he only wants the pudding!" It would have taken the
+kitchen-fire to account at that point for the red of Sherringham's
+cheek; and he was indeed uncomfortably heated by helping to handle, as
+he phrased it, the saucepans.
+
+This he felt so much after he had returned to his seat, which he forbore
+to quit again till the curtain had fallen on the last act, that in spite
+of the high beauty of that part of the performance of which Miriam
+carried the weight there were moments when his relief overflowed into
+gasps, as if he had been scrambling up the bank of a torrent after an
+immersion. The girl herself, out in the open of her field to win, was of
+the incorruptible faith: she had been saturated to good purpose with the
+great spirit of Madame Carre. That was conspicuous while the play went
+on and she guarded the whole march with fagged piety and passion.
+Sherringham had never liked the piece itself; he held that as barbarous
+in form and false in feeling it did little honour to the British
+theatre; he despised many of the speeches, pitied Miriam for having to
+utter them, and considered that, lighted by that sort of candle, the
+path of fame might very well lead nowhere.
+
+When the ordeal was over he went behind again, where in the
+rose-coloured satin of the silly issue the heroine of the occasion said
+to him: "Fancy my having to drag through that other stuff to-night--the
+brutes!" He was vague about the persons designated in this allusion, but
+he let it pass: he had at the moment a kind of detached foreboding of
+the way any gentleman familiarly connected with her in the future would
+probably form the habit of letting objurgations and some other things
+pass. This had become indeed now a frequent state of mind with him; the
+instant he was before her, near her, next her, he found himself a
+helpless subject of the spell which, so far at least as he was
+concerned, she put forth by contact and of which the potency was
+punctual and absolute: the fit came on, as he said, exactly as some
+esteemed express-train on a great line bangs at a given moment into the
+station. At a distance he partly recovered himself--that was the
+encouragement for going to the shaky republic; but as soon as he entered
+her presence his life struck him as a thing disconnected from his will.
+It was as if he himself had been one thing and his behaviour another; he
+had shining views of this difference, drawn as they might be from the
+coming years--little illustrative scenes in which he saw himself in
+strange attitudes of resignation, always rather sad and still and with a
+slightly bent head. Such images should not have been inspiring, but it
+is a fact that they were something to go upon. The gentleman with the
+bent head had evidently given up something that was dear to him, but it
+was exactly because he had got his price that he was there. "Come and
+see me three or four hours hence," Miriam said--"come, that is, about
+six. I shall rest till then, but I want particularly to talk with you.
+There will be no one else--not the tip of any tiresome nose. You'll do
+me good." So of course he drove up at six.
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+
+"I don't know; I haven't the least idea; I don't care; don't ask
+me!"--it was so he met some immediate appeal of her artistic egotism,
+some challenge of his impression of her at this and that moment. Hadn't
+she frankly better give up such and such a point and return to their
+first idea, the one they had talked over so much? Peter replied to this
+that he disowned all ideas; that at any rate he should never have
+another as long as he lived, and that, so help him heaven, they had
+worried that hard bone more than enough.
+
+"You're tired of me--yes, already," she said sadly and kindly. They were
+alone, her mother had not peeped out and she had prepared herself to
+return to the Strand. "However, it doesn't matter and of course your
+head's full of other things. You must think me ravenously
+selfish--perpetually chattering about my vulgar shop. What will you have
+when one's a vulgar shop-girl? You used to like it, but then you weren't
+an ambassador."
+
+"What do you know about my being a minister?" he asked, leaning back in
+his chair and showing sombre eyes. Sometimes he held her handsomer on
+the stage than off, and sometimes he reversed that judgement. The former
+of these convictions had held his mind in the morning, and it was now
+punctually followed by the other. As soon as she stepped on the boards
+a great and special alteration usually took place in her--she was in
+focus and in her frame; yet there were hours too in which she wore her
+world's face before the audience, just as there were hours when she wore
+her stage face in the world. She took up either mask as it suited her
+humour. To-day he was seeing each in its order and feeling each the
+best. "I should know very little if I waited for you to tell me--that's
+very certain," Miriam returned. "It's in the papers that you've got a
+high appointment, but I don't read the papers unless there's something
+in them about myself. Next week I shall devour them and think them, no
+doubt, inane. It was Basil told me this afternoon of your promotion--he
+had seen it announced somewhere, I'm delighted if it gives you more
+money and more advantages, but don't expect me to be glad that you're
+going away to some distant, disgusting country."
+
+"The matter has only just been settled and we've each been busy with our
+own affairs. But even if you hadn't given me these opportunities," Peter
+went on, "I should have tried to see you to-day, to tell you my news and
+take leave of you."
+
+"Take leave? Aren't you coming to-morrow?"
+
+"Oh yes, I shall see you through that. But I shall rush away the very
+moment it's over."
+
+"I shall be much better then--really I shall," the girl said.
+
+"The better you are the worse you are."
+
+She returned his frown with a beautiful charity. "If it would do you any
+good I'd be bad."
+
+"The worse you are the better you are!" Peter laughed. "You're a
+devouring demon."
+
+"Not a bit! It's you."
+
+"It's I? I like that."
+
+"It's you who make trouble, who are sore and suspicious and supersubtle,
+not taking things as they come and for what they are, but twisting them
+into misery and falsity. Oh I've watched you enough, my dear friend, and
+I've been sorry for you--and sorry as well for myself; for I'm not so
+taken up with myself, in the low greedy sense, as you think. I'm not
+such a base creature. I'm capable of gratitude, I'm capable of
+affection. One may live in paint and tinsel, but one isn't absolutely
+without a soul. Yes, I've got one," the girl went on, "though I do smear
+my face and grin at myself in the glass and practise my intonations. If
+what you're going to do is good for you I'm very glad. If it leads to
+good things, to honour and fortune and greatness, I'm enchanted. If it
+means your being away always, for ever and ever, of course that's
+serious. You know it--I needn't tell you--I regard you as I really don't
+regard any one else. I've a confidence in you--ah it's a luxury! You're
+a gentleman, _mon bon_--ah you're a gentleman! It's just that. And then
+you see, you understand, and that's a luxury too. You're a luxury
+altogether, dear clever Mr. Sherringham. Your being where I shall never
+see you isn't a thing I shall enjoy; I know that from the separation of
+these last months--after our beautiful life in Paris, the best thing
+that ever happened to me or that ever will. But if it's your career, if
+it's your happiness--well, I can miss you and hold my tongue. I _can_ be
+disinterested--I can!"
+
+"What did you want me to come for?" he asked, all attentive and
+motionless. The same impression, the old impression, was with him again;
+the sense that if she was sincere it was sincerity of execution, if she
+was genuine it was the genuineness of doing it well. She did it so well
+now that this very fact was charming and touching. In claiming from him
+at the theatre this hour of the afternoon she had wanted honestly (the
+more as she had not seen him at home for several days) to go over with
+him once again, on the eve of the great night--it would be for her
+second creation the critics would lie so in wait; the first success
+might have been a fluke--some of her recurrent doubts: knowing from
+experience of what good counsel he often was, how he could give a
+worrying question its "settler" at the last. Then she had heard from
+Dashwood of the change in his situation, and that had really from one
+moment to the other made her think sympathetically of his
+preoccupations--led her open-handedly to drop her own. She was sorry to
+lose him and eager to let him know how good a friend she was conscious
+he had been to her. But the expression of this was already, at the end
+of a minute, a strange bedevilment: she began to listen to herself, to
+speak dramatically, to represent. She uttered the things she felt as if
+they were snatches of old play-books, and really felt them the more
+because they sounded so well. This, however, didn't prevent their really
+being as good feelings as those of anybody else, and at the moment her
+friend, to still a rising emotion--which he knew he shouldn't
+still--articulated the challenge I have just recorded, she had for his
+sensibility, at any rate, the truth of gentleness and generosity.
+
+"There's something the matter with you, my dear--you're jealous," Miriam
+said. "You're jealous of poor Mr. Dormer. That's an example of the way
+you tangle everything up. Lord, he won't hurt you, nor me either!"
+
+"He can't hurt me, certainly," Peter returned, "and neither can you; for
+I've a nice little heart of stone and a smart new breastplate of iron.
+The interest I take in you is something quite extraordinary; but the
+most extraordinary thing in it is that it's perfectly prepared to
+tolerate the interest of others."
+
+"The interest of others needn't trouble it much!" Miriam declared. "If
+Mr. Dormer has broken off his marriage to such an awfully fine
+woman--for she's that, your swell of a sister--it isn't for a ranting
+wretch like me. He's kind to me because that's his nature and he notices
+me because that's his business; but he's away up in the clouds--a
+thousand miles over my head. He has got something 'on,' as they say;
+he's in love with an idea. I think it's a shocking bad one, but that's
+his own affair. He's quite _exalte_; living on nectar and ambrosia--what
+he has to spare for us poor crawling things on earth is only a few dry
+crumbs. I didn't even ask him to come to rehearsal. Besides, he thinks
+you're in love with me and that it wouldn't be honourable to cut in.
+He's capable of that--isn't it charming?"
+
+"If he were to relent and give up his scruples would you marry him?"
+Peter asked.
+
+"Mercy, how you chatter about 'marrying'!" the girl laughed. "_C'est la
+maladie anglaise_--you've all got it on the brain."
+
+"Why I put it that way to please you," he explained. "You complained to
+me last year precisely that this was not what seemed generally wanted."
+
+"Oh last year!"--she made nothing of that. Then differently, "Yes, it's
+very tiresome!" she conceded.
+
+"You told me, moreover, in Paris more than once that you wouldn't listen
+to anything but that."
+
+"Well," she declared, "I won't, but I shall wait till I find a husband
+who's charming enough and bad enough. One who'll beat me and swindle me
+and spend my money on other women--that's the sort of man for me. Mr.
+Dormer, delightful as he is, doesn't come up to that."
+
+"You'll marry Basil Dashwood." He spoke it with conviction.
+
+"Oh 'marry'?--call it marry if you like. That's what poor mother
+threatens me with--she lives in dread of it."
+
+"To this hour," he mentioned, "I haven't managed to make out what your
+mother wants. She has so many ideas, as Madame Carre said."
+
+"She wants me to be some sort of tremendous creature--all her ideas are
+reducible to that. What makes the muddle is that she isn't clear about
+the creature she wants most. A great actress or a great lady--sometimes
+she inclines for one and sometimes for the other, but on the whole
+persuading herself that a great actress, if she'll cultivate the right
+people, may _be_ a great lady. When I tell her that won't do and that a
+great actress can never be anything but a great vagabond, then the dear
+old thing has tantrums, and we have scenes--the most grotesque: they'd
+make the fortune, for a subject, of some play-writing rascal, if he had
+the wit to guess them; which, luckily for us perhaps, he never will. She
+usually winds up by protesting--_devinez un peu quoi_!" Miriam added.
+And as her companion professed his complete inability to divine: "By
+declaring that rather than take it that way I must marry _you_."
+
+"She's shrewder than I thought," Peter returned. "It's the last of
+vanities to talk about, but I may state in passing that if you'd marry
+me you should be the greatest of all possible ladies."
+
+She had a beautiful, comical gape. "Lord o' mercy, my dear fellow, what
+natural capacity have I for that?"
+
+"You're artist enough for anything. I shall be a great diplomatist: my
+resolution's firmly taken, I'm infinitely cleverer than you have the
+least idea of, and you shall be," he went on, "a great diplomatist's
+wife."
+
+"And the demon, the devil, the devourer and destroyer, that you are so
+fond of talking about: what, in such a position, do you do with that
+element of my nature? _Ou le fourrez-vous_?" she cried as with a real
+anxiety.
+
+"I'll look after it, I'll keep it under. Rather perhaps I should say
+I'll bribe it and amuse it; I'll gorge it with earthly grandeurs."
+
+"That's better," said Miriam; "for a demon that's kept under is a shabby
+little demon. Don't let's be shabby." Then she added: "Do you really go
+away the beginning of next week?"
+
+"Monday night if possible."
+
+"Ah that's but to Paris. Before you go to your new post they must give
+you an interval here."
+
+"I shan't take it--I'm so tremendously keen for my duties. I shall
+insist on going sooner. Oh," he went on, "I shall be concentrated now."
+
+"I'll come and act there." She met it all--she was amused and amusing.
+"I've already forgotten what it was I wanted to discuss with you," she
+said--"it was some trumpery stuff. What I want to say now is only one
+thing: that it's not in the least true that because my life pitches me
+in every direction and mixes me up with all sorts of people--or rather
+with one sort mainly, poor dears!--I haven't a decent character, I
+haven't common honesty. Your sympathy, your generosity, your patience,
+your precious suggestions, our dear sweet days last summer in Paris, I
+shall never forget. You're the best--you're different from all the
+others. Think of me as you please and make profane jokes about my mating
+with a disguised 'Arty'--I shall think of _you_ only in one way. I've a
+great respect for you. With all my heart I hope you'll be a great
+diplomatist. God bless you, dear clever man."
+
+She got up as she spoke and in so doing glanced at the clock--a movement
+that somehow only added to the noble gravity of her discourse: she was
+considering his time so much more than her own. Sherringham, at this,
+rising too, took out his watch and stood a moment with his eyes bent
+upon it, though without in the least seeing what the needles marked.
+"You'll have to go, to reach the theatre at your usual hour, won't you?
+Let me not keep you. That is, let me keep you only long enough just to
+say this, once for all, as I shall never speak of it again. I'm going
+away to save myself," he frankly said, planted before her and seeking
+her eyes with his own. "I ought to go, no doubt, in silence, in decorum,
+in virtuous submission to hard necessity--without asking for credit or
+sympathy, without provoking any sort of scene or calling attention to my
+fortitude. But I can't--upon my soul I can't. I can go, I can see it
+through, but I can't hold my tongue. I want you to know all about it, so
+that over there, when I'm bored to death, I shall at least have the
+exasperatingly vain consolation of feeling that you do know--and that it
+does neither you nor me any good!"
+
+He paused a moment; on which, as quite vague, she appealed. "That I 'do
+know' what?"
+
+"That I've a consuming passion for you and that it's impossible."
+
+"Oh impossible, my friend!" she sighed, but with a quickness in her
+assent.
+
+"Very good; it interferes, the gratification of it would interfere
+fatally, with the ambition of each of us. Our ambitions are inferior and
+odious, but we're tied fast to them."
+
+"Ah why ain't we simple?" she quavered as if all touched by it. "Why
+ain't we of the people--_comme tout le monde_--just a man and a girl
+liking each other?"
+
+He waited a little--she was so tenderly mocking, so sweetly ambiguous.
+"Because we're precious asses! However, I'm simple enough, after all,
+to care for you as I've never cared for any human creature. You have, as
+it happens, a personal charm for me that no one has ever approached, and
+from the top of your splendid head to the sole of your theatrical shoe
+(I could go down on my face--there, abjectly--and kiss it!) every inch
+of you is dear and delightful to me. Therefore good-bye."
+
+She took this in with wider eyes: he had put the matter in a way that
+struck her. For a moment, all the same, he was afraid she would reply as
+on the confessed experience of so many such tributes, handsome as this
+one was. But she was too much moved--the pure colour that had risen to
+her face showed it--to have recourse to this particular facility. She
+was moved even to the glimmer of tears, though she gave him her hand
+with a smile. "I'm so glad you've said all that, for from you I know
+what it means. Certainly it's better for you to go away. Of course it's
+all wrong, isn't it?--but that's the only thing it can be: therefore
+it's all right, isn't it? Some day when we're both great people we'll
+talk these things over; then we shall be quiet, we shall be rich, we
+shall be at peace--let us hope so at least--and better friends than
+others about us will know." She paused, smiling still, and then said
+while he held her hand: "Don't, _don't_ come to-morrow night."
+
+With this she attempted to draw her hand away, as if everything were
+settled and over; but the effect of her movement was that, as he held
+her tight, he was simply drawn toward her and close to her. The effect
+of this, in turn, was that, releasing her only to possess her the more
+completely, he seized her in his arms and, breathing deeply "I love you,
+you know," clasped her in a long embrace. His demonstration and her
+conscious sufferance, almost equally liberal, so sustained themselves
+that the door of the room had time to open slowly before either had
+taken notice. Mrs. Rooth, who had not peeped in before, peeped in now,
+becoming in this manner witness of an incident she could scarce have
+counted on. The unexpected indeed had for Mrs. Rooth never been an
+insuperable element in things; it was her position in general to be too
+acquainted with all the passions for any crude surprise. As the others
+turned round they saw her stand there and smile, and heard her ejaculate
+with wise indulgence: "Oh you extravagant children!"
+
+Miriam brushed off her tears, quickly but unconfusedly. "He's going
+away, the wretch; he's bidding us farewell."
+
+Peter--it was perhaps a result of his acute agitation--laughed out at
+the "us" (he had already laughed at the charge of puerility), and Mrs.
+Rooth went on: "Going away? Ah then I must have one too!" She held out
+both her hands, and Sherringham, stepping forward to take them, kissed
+her respectfully on each cheek, in the foreign manner, while she
+continued: "Our dear old friend--our kind, gallant gentleman!"
+
+"The gallant gentleman has been promoted to a great post--the proper
+reward of his gallantry," Miriam said. "He's going out as minister to
+some impossible place--where is it?"
+
+"As minister--how very charming! We _are_ getting on." And their
+companion languished up at him with a world of approval.
+
+"Oh well enough. One must take what one can get," he answered.
+
+"You'll get everything now, I'm sure, shan't you?" Mrs. Rooth asked with
+an inflexion that called back to him comically--the source of the sound
+was so different--the very vibrations he had heard the day before from
+Lady Agnes.
+
+"He's going to glory and he'll forget all about us--forget he has ever
+known such low people. So we shall never see him again, and it's better
+so. Good-bye, good-bye," Miriam repeated; "the brougham must be there,
+but I won't take you. I want to talk to mother about you, and we shall
+say things not fit for you to hear. Oh I'll let you know what we
+lose--don't be afraid," she added to Mrs. Rooth. "He's the rising star
+of diplomacy."
+
+"I knew it from the first--I know how things turn out for such people as
+you!" cried the old woman, gazing fondly at Sherringham. "But you don't
+mean to say you're not coming to-morrow night?"
+
+"Don't--don't; it's great folly," Miriam interposed; "and it's quite
+needless, since you saw me to-day."
+
+Peter turned from the mother to the daughter, the former of whom broke
+out to the latter: "Oh you dear rogue, to say one has _seen_ you yet!
+You know how you'll come up to it--you'll be beyond everything."
+
+"Yes, I shall be there--certainly," Peter said, at the door, to Mrs.
+Rooth.
+
+"Oh you dreadful goose!" Miriam called after him. But he went out
+without looking round at her.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SEVENTH
+
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+
+Nick Dormer had for the hour quite taken up his abode at his studio,
+where Biddy usually arrived after breakfast to give him news of the
+state of affairs in Calcutta Gardens and where many letters and
+telegrams were now addressed him. Among such missives, on the morning of
+the Saturday on which Peter Sherringham had promised to dine at the
+other house, was a note from Miriam Rooth, informing Nick that if he
+shouldn't telegraph to put her off she would turn up about half-past
+eleven, probably with her mother, for just one more sitting. She added
+that it was a nervous day for her and that she couldn't keep still, so
+that it would really be very kind to let her come to him as a refuge.
+She wished to stay away from the theatre, where everything was now
+settled--or so much the worse for the others if it wasn't--till the
+evening; in spite of which she should if left to herself be sure to go
+there. It would keep her quiet and soothe her to sit--he could keep her
+quiet (he was such a blessing that way!) at any time. Therefore she
+would give him two or three hours--or rather she would herself ask for
+them--if he didn't positively turn her from the door.
+
+It had not been definite to Nick that he wanted another sitting at all
+for the slight work, as he held it to be, that Miriam had already helped
+him to achieve. He regarded this work as a mere light wind-fall of the
+shaken tree: he had made what he could of it and would have been
+embarrassed to make more. If it was not finished this was because it was
+not finishable; at any rate he had said all he had to say in that
+particular phrase. The young man, in truth, was not just now in the
+highest spirits; his imagination had within two or three days become
+conscious of a check that he tried to explain by the idea of a natural
+reaction. Any decision or violent turn, any need of a new sharp choice
+in one's career, was upsetting, and, exaggerate that importance and
+one's own as little as one would, a deal of flurry couldn't help
+attending, especially in the face of so much scandal, the horrid act,
+odious to one's modesty at the best, of changing one's clothes in the
+marketplace. That made life not at all positively pleasant, yet
+decidedly thrilling, for the hour; and it was well enough till the
+thrill abated. When this occurred, as it inevitably would, the romance
+and the glow of the adventure were exchanged for the chill and the
+prose. It was to these latter elements he had waked up pretty wide on
+this particular morning; and the prospect was not appreciably fresher
+from the fact that he had warned himself in advance it would be dull. He
+had in fact known how dull it would be, but now he would have time to
+learn even better. A reaction was a reaction, but it was not after all a
+catastrophe. It would be a feature of his very freedom that he should
+ask himself if he hadn't made a great mistake; this privilege would
+doubtless even remain within the limits of its nature in exposing him to
+hours of intimate conviction of his madness. But he would live to
+retract his retractations--this was the first thing to bear in mind.
+
+He was absorbed, even while he dressed, in the effort to achieve
+intelligibly to himself some such revolution when, by the first post,
+Miriam's note arrived. At first it did little to help his agility--it
+made him, seeing her esthetic faith as so much stronger and simpler than
+his own, wonder how he should keep with her at her high level. Ambition,
+in her, was always on the rush, and she was not a person to conceive
+that others might in bad moments listen for the trumpet in vain. It
+would never have occurred to her that only the day before he had spent a
+part of the afternoon quite at the bottom of the hill. He had in fact
+turned into the National Gallery and had wandered about there for more
+than an hour, and it was just while he did so that the immitigable
+recoil had begun perversely to make itself felt. The perversity was all
+the greater from the fact that if the experience was depressing this was
+not because he had been discouraged beyond measure by the sight of the
+grand things that had been done--things so much grander than any that
+would ever bear his signature. That variation he was duly acquainted
+with and should know in abundance again. What had happened to him, as he
+passed on this occasion from Titian to Rubens and from Gainsborough to
+Rembrandt, was that he found himself calling the whole exhibited art
+into question. What was it after all at the best and why had people
+given it so high a place? Its weakness, its limits broke upon him;
+tacitly blaspheming he looked with a lustreless eye at the palpable,
+polished, "toned" objects designed for suspension on hooks. That is, he
+blasphemed if it were blasphemy to feel that as bearing on the energies
+of man they were a poor and secondary show. The human force producing
+them was so far from one of the greatest; their place was a small place
+and their connexion with the heroic life casual and slight. They
+represented so little great ideas, and it was great ideas that kept the
+world from chaos. He had incontestably been in much closer relation with
+them a few months before than he was to-day: it made up a great deal
+for what was false and hollow, what was merely personal, in "politics"
+that, were the idea greater or smaller, they could at their best so
+directly deal with it. The love of it had really been much of the time
+at the bottom of his impulse to follow them up; though this was not what
+he had most talked of with his political friends or even with Julia. No,
+political as Julia was, he had not conferred with her much about the
+idea. However, this might have been his own fault quite as much as hers,
+and she in fact took such things, such enthusiasms, for granted--there
+was an immense deal in every way that she took for granted. On the other
+hand, he had often put forward this brighter side of the care for the
+public weal in his discussions with Gabriel Nash, to the end, it is
+true, of making that worthy scoff aloud at what he was pleased to term
+his hypocrisy. Gabriel maintained precisely that there were more ideas,
+more of those that man lived by, in a single room of the National
+Gallery than in all the statutes of Parliament. Nick had replied to this
+more than once that the determination of what man did live by was
+required; to which Nash had retorted (and it was very rarely that he
+quoted Scripture) that it was at any rate not by bread and beans alone.
+The statutes of Parliament gave him bread and beans _tout au plus_.
+
+Nick had at present no pretension of trying this question over again: he
+reminded himself that his ambiguity was subjective, as the philosophers
+said; the result of a mood which in due course would be at the mercy of
+another mood. It made him curse, and cursing, as a finality, lacked
+firmness--one had to drive in posts somewhere under. The greatest time
+to do one's work was when it didn't seem worth doing, for then one gave
+it a brilliant chance, that of resisting the stiffest test of all--the
+test of striking one as too bad. To do the most when there would be the
+least to be got by it was to be most in the spirit of high production.
+One thing at any rate was certain, Nick reflected: nothing on earth
+would induce him to change back again--not even if this twilight of the
+soul should last for the rest of his days. He hardened himself in his
+posture with a good conscience which, had they had a glimpse of it,
+would have made him still more diverting to those who already thought
+him so; and now, by a happy chance, Miriam suddenly supplied the bridge
+correcting the gap in his continuity. If he had made his sketch it was a
+proof he had done her, and that he had done her flashed upon him as a
+sign that she would be still more feasible. Art was _doing_--it came
+back to that--which politics in most cases weren't. He thus, to pursue
+our image, planted his supports in the dimness beneath all cursing, and
+on the platform so improvised was able, in his relief, to dance. He sent
+out a telegram to Balaklava Place requesting his beautiful sitter by no
+manner of means to fail him. When his servant came back it was to usher
+into the studio Peter Sherringham, whom the man had apparently found at
+the door.
+
+The hour was so early for general commerce that Nick immediately guessed
+his visitor had come on some rare errand; but this inference yielded to
+the reflexion that Peter might after all only wish to make up by present
+zeal for not having been near him before. He forgot that, as he had
+subsequently learned from Biddy, their foreign, or all but foreign,
+cousin had spent an hour in Rosedale Road, missing him there but pulling
+out Miriam's portrait, the day of his own last visit to Beauclere. These
+young men were not on a ceremonious footing and it was not in Nick's
+nature to keep a record of civilities rendered or omitted; nevertheless
+he had been vaguely conscious that during a stay in London elastic
+enough on Peter's part he and his kinsman had foregathered less than of
+yore. It was indeed an absorbing moment in the career of each, but even
+while recognising such a truth Nick judged it not impossible that
+Julia's brother might have taken upon himself to resent some
+suppositions failure of consideration for that lady; though this indeed
+would have been stupid and the newly appointed minister (to he had
+forgotten where) didn't often make mistakes. Nick held that as he had
+treated Julia with studious generosity she had nothing whatever to visit
+on him--wherefore Peter had still less. It was at any rate none of that
+gentleman's business. There were only two abatements to disposing in a
+few frank words of all this: one of them Nick's general hatred of
+talking of his private affairs (a reluctance in which he and Peter were
+well matched); and the other a truth involving more of a confession--the
+subtle truth that the most definite and even most soothing result of the
+collapse of his engagement was, as happened, an unprecedented
+consciousness of freedom. Nick's observation was of a different sort
+from his cousin's; he noted much less the signs of the hour and kept
+throughout a looser register of life; nevertheless, just as one of our
+young men had during these days in London found the air peopled with
+personal influences, the concussion of human atoms, so the other, though
+only asking to live without too many questions and work without too many
+rubs, to be glad and sorry in short on easy terms, had become aware of a
+certain social tightness, of the fact that life is crowded and passion
+restless, accident and community inevitable. Everybody with whom one had
+relations had other relations too, and even indifference was a mixture
+and detachment a compromise. The only wisdom was to consent to the
+loss, if necessary, of everything but one's temper and to the ruin, if
+necessary, of everything but one's work. It must be added that Peter's
+relative took precautions against irritation perhaps in excess of the
+danger, as departing travellers about to whiz through foreign countries
+mouth in phrase-books combinations of words they will never use. He was
+at home in clear air and disliked to struggle either for breath or for
+light. He had a dim sense that Peter felt some discomfort from him and
+might have come now to tell him so; in which case he should be sorry for
+the sufferer in various ways. But as soon as that aspirant began to
+speak suspicion reverted to mere ancient kindness, and this in spite
+of the fact that his speech had a slightly exaggerated promptitude,
+like the promptitude of business, which might have denoted
+self-consciousness. To Nick it quickly appeared better to be glad than
+to be sorry: this simple argument was more than sufficient to make him
+glad Peter was there.
+
+"My dear fellow, it's an unpardonable hour, isn't it? I wasn't even sure
+you'd be up, yet had to risk it, because my hours are numbered. I'm
+going away to-morrow," Peter went on; "I've a thousand things to do.
+I've had no talk with you this time such as we used to have of old (it's
+an irreparable loss, but it's your fault, you know), and as I've got to
+rush about all day I thought I'd just catch you before any one else
+does."
+
+"Some one has already caught me, but there's plenty of time," Nick
+returned.
+
+Peter all but asked a question--it fell short. "I see, I see. I'm sorry
+to say I've only a few minutes at best."
+
+"Man of crushing responsibilities, you've come to humiliate me!" his
+companion cried. "I know all about it."
+
+"It's more than I do then. That's not what I've come for, but I shall be
+delighted if I humiliate you a little by the way. I've two things in
+mind, and I'll mention the most difficult first. I came here the other
+day--the day after my arrival in town."
+
+"Ah yes, so you did; it was very good of you"--Nick remembered. "I ought
+to have returned your visit or left a card or written my name--to have
+done something in Great Stanhope Street, oughtn't I? You hadn't got this
+new thing then, or I'd have 'called.'"
+
+Peter eyed him a moment. "I say, what's the matter with you? Am I really
+unforgivable for having taken that liberty?"
+
+"What liberty?" Nick looked now quite innocent of care, and indeed his
+visitor's allusion was not promptly clear. He was thinking for the
+instant all of Biddy, of whom and whose secret inclinations Grace had
+insisted on talking to him. They were none of his business, and if he
+wouldn't for the world have let the girl herself suspect he had violent
+lights on what was most screened and curtained in her, much less would
+he have made Peter a clumsy present of this knowledge. Grace had a queer
+theory that Peter treated Biddy badly--treated them all somehow badly;
+but Grace's zeal (she had plenty of it, though she affected all sorts of
+fine indifference) almost always took the form of her being unusually
+wrong. Nick wanted to do only what Biddy would thank him for, and he
+knew very well what she wouldn't. She wished him and Peter to be great
+friends, and the only obstacle to this was that Peter was too much of a
+diplomatist. Peter made him for an instant think of her and of the hour
+they had lately spent together in the studio in his absence--an hour of
+which Biddy had given him a history full of items and omissions; and
+this in turn brought Nick's imagination back to his visitor's own side
+of the matter. That general human complexity of which the sense had
+lately increased with him, and to which it was owing that any thread one
+might take hold of would probably be the extremely wrong end of
+something, was illustrated by the fact that while poor Biddy was
+thinking of Peter it was ten to one poor Peter was thinking of Miriam
+Rooth. All of which danced before Nick's intellectual vision for a space
+briefer than my too numerous words.
+
+"I pitched into your treasures--I rummaged among your canvases," Peter
+said. "Biddy had nothing whatever to do with it--she maintained an
+attitude of irreproachable reserve. It has been on my conscience all
+these days and I ought to have done penance before. I've been putting it
+off partly because I'm so ashamed of my indiscretion. _Que voulez-vous_,
+my dear chap? My provocation was great. I heard you had been painting
+Miss Rooth, so that I couldn't restrain my curiosity. I simply went into
+that corner and struck out there--a trifle wildly no doubt. I dragged
+the young lady to the light--your sister turned pale as she saw me. It
+was a good deal like breaking open one of your letters, wasn't it?
+However, I assure you it's all right, for I congratulate you both on
+your style and on your correspondent."
+
+"You're as clever, as witty, as humorous as ever, old boy," Nick
+pronounced, going himself into the corner designated by his companion
+and laying his hands on the same canvas. "Your curiosity's the highest
+possible tribute to my little attempt and your sympathy sets me right
+with myself. There she is again," Nick went on, thrusting the picture
+into an empty frame; "you shall see her whether you wish to or not."
+
+"Right with yourself? You don't mean to say you've been wrong!" Peter
+returned, standing opposite the portrait.
+
+"Oh I don't know. I've been kicking up such a row. Anything's better
+than a row."
+
+"She's awfully good--she's awfully true," said Peter. "You've done more
+to her since the other day. You've put in several things."
+
+"Yes, but I've worked distractedly. I've not altogether conformed to the
+good rule about being off with the old love."
+
+"With the old love?"--and the visitor looked hard at the picture.
+
+"Before you're on with the new!" Nick had no sooner uttered these words
+than he coloured: it occurred to him his friend would probably infer an
+allusion to Julia. He therefore added quickly: "It isn't so easy to
+cease to represent an affectionate constituency. Really most of my time
+for a fortnight has been given to letter-writing. They've all been
+unexpectedly charming. I should have thought they'd have loathed and
+despised me. But not a bit of it; they cling to me fondly--they struggle
+with me tenderly. I've been down to talk with them about it, and we've
+passed the most sociable, delightful hours. I've designated my
+successor; I've felt a good deal like the Emperor Charles the Fifth when
+about to retire to the monastery of Yuste. The more I've seen of them in
+this way the more I've liked them, and they declare it has been the same
+with themselves about me. We spend our time assuring each other we
+hadn't begun to know each other till now. In short it's all wonderfully
+jolly, but it isn't business. _C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la
+guerre_."
+
+"They're not so charming as they might be if they don't offer to keep
+you and let you paint."
+
+"They do, almost--it's fantastic," said Nick. "Remember they haven't
+yet seen a daub of my brush."
+
+"Well, I'm sorry for you; we live in too enlightened an age," Peter
+returned. "You can't suffer for art--that grand romance is over. Your
+experience is interesting; it seems to show that at the tremendous pitch
+of civilisation we've reached you can't suffer from anything but
+hunger."
+
+"I shall doubtless," Nick allowed, "do that enough to make up for the
+rest."
+
+"Never, never, when you paint so well as this."
+
+"Oh come, you're too good to be true," Nick said. "But where did you
+learn that one's larder's full in proportion as one's work's fine?"
+
+Peter waived this curious point--he only continued to look at the
+picture; after which he roundly brought out: "I'll give you your price
+for it on the spot."
+
+"Ah you're so magnanimous that you shall have it for nothing!" And Nick,
+touched to gratitude, passed his arm into his visitor's.
+
+Peter had a pause. "Why do you call me magnanimous?"
+
+"Oh bless my soul, it's hers--I forgot!" laughed Nick, failing in his
+turn to answer the other's inquiry. "But you shall have another."
+
+"Another? Are you going to do another?"
+
+"This very morning. That is, I shall begin it. I've heard from her;
+she's coming to sit--a short time hence."
+
+Peter turned away a little at this, releasing himself, and, as if the
+movement had been an effect of his host's words, looked at his watch
+earnestly to dissipate that appearance. He fell back to consider the
+work from further off. "The more you do her the better--she has all the
+qualities of a great model. From that point of view it's a pity she has
+another trade: she might make so good a thing of this one. But how
+shall you do her again?" he asked ingenuously.
+
+"Oh I can scarcely say; we'll arrange something; we'll talk it over.
+It's extraordinary how well she enters into what one wants: she knows
+more than one does one's self. She isn't, as you Frenchmen say, the
+first comer. However, you know all about that, since you invented her,
+didn't you? That's what she says; she's awfully sweet on you," Nick
+kindly pursued. "What I ought to do is to try something as different as
+possible from that thing; not the sibyl, the muse, the tremendous
+creature, but the charming woman, the person one knows, differently
+arranged as she appears _en ville_, she calls it. I'll do something
+really serious and send it to you out there with my respects. It will
+remind you of home and perhaps a little even of me. If she knows it's
+for you she'll throw herself into it in the right spirit. Leave it to
+us, my dear fellow; we'll turn out something splendid."
+
+"It's jolly to hear you, but I shall send you a cheque," said Peter very
+stoutly.
+
+"I suppose it's all right in your position, but you're too proud," his
+kinsman answered.
+
+"What do you mean by my position?"
+
+"Your exaltation, your high connexion with the country, your treating
+with sovereign powers as the representative of a sovereign power. Isn't
+that what they call 'em?"
+
+Peter, who had turned round again, listened to this with his eyes fixed
+on Nick's face while he once more drew forth his watch. "Brute!" he
+exclaimed familiarly, at the same time dropping his eyes on the watch.
+"When did you say you expect your sitter?"
+
+"Oh we've plenty of time; don't be afraid of letting me see you agitated
+by her presence."
+
+"Brute!" Peter again ejaculated.
+
+This friendly personal note cleared the air, made their communication
+closer. "Stay with me and talk to me," said Nick; "I daresay it's good
+for me. It may be the last time I shall see you without having before
+anything else to koo-too."
+
+"Beast!" his kinsman once more, and a little helplessly, threw off;
+though next going on: "Haven't you something more to show me then--some
+other fruit of your genius?"
+
+"Must I bribe you by setting my sign-boards in a row? You know what I've
+done; by which I mean of course you know what I haven't. My genius, as
+you're so good as to call it, has hitherto been dreadfully sterile. I've
+had no time, no opportunity, no continuity. I must go and sit down in a
+corner and learn my alphabet. That thing isn't good; what I shall do for
+you won't be good. Don't protest, my dear fellow; nothing will be fit to
+look at for a long time." After which poor Nick wound up: "And think of
+my ridiculous age! As the good people say (or don't they say it?), it's
+a rum go. It won't be amusing."
+
+"Ah you're so clever you'll get on fast," Peter returned, trying to
+think how he could most richly defy the injunction not to protest.
+
+"I mean it won't be amusing for others," said Nick, unperturbed by this
+levity. "They want results, and small blame to them."
+
+"Well, whatever you do, don't talk like Mr. Gabriel Nash," Peter went
+on. "Sometimes I think you're just going to."
+
+Nick stared a moment. "Ah he never would have said _that_ 'They want
+results, the damned asses'--that would have been more in his key."
+
+"It's the difference of a _nuance_! And are you extraordinarily happy?"
+Peter added as his host now obliged him by arranging half-a-dozen
+canvases so that he could look at them.
+
+"Not so much so, doubtless, as the artistic life ought to make one:
+because all one's people are not so infatuated as one's electors. But
+little by little I'm learning the charm of pig-headedness."
+
+"Your mother's very bad," Peter allowed--"I lunched with her day before
+yesterday."
+
+"Yes, I know, I know"--Nick had such reason to know; "but it's too late,
+too late. I must just peg away here and not mind. I've after all a great
+advantage in my life."
+
+His companion waited impartially to hear. "And that would be--?"
+
+"Well, knowing what I want to do. That's everything, you know."
+
+"It's an advantage, however, that you've only just come in for, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Yes, but the delay and the probation only make me prize it the more.
+I've got it now; and it makes up for the absence of some other things."
+
+Again Peter had a pause. "That sounds a little flat," he remarked at
+last.
+
+"It depends on what you compare it with. It has more point than I
+sometimes found in the House of Commons."
+
+"Oh I never thought I should like that!"
+
+There was another drop during which Nick moved about the room turning up
+old sketches to see if he had anything more to show, while his visitor
+continued to look at the unfinished and in some cases, as seemed,
+unpromising productions already exposed. They were far less interesting
+than the portrait of Miriam Rooth and, it would have appeared, less
+significant of ability. For that particular effort Nick's talent had
+taken an inspired flight. So much Peter thought, as he had thought it
+intensely before; but the words he presently uttered had no visible
+connexion with it. They only consisted of the abrupt inquiry; "Have you
+heard anything from Julia?"
+
+"Not a syllable. Have you?"
+
+"Dear no; she never writes to me."
+
+"But won't she on the occasion of your promotion?"
+
+"I daresay not," said Peter; and this was the only reference to Mrs.
+Dallow that passed between her brother and her late intended. It left a
+slight stir of the air which Peter proceeded to allay by an allusion
+comparatively speaking more relevant. He expressed disappointment that
+Biddy shouldn't have come in, having had an idea she was always in
+Rosedale Road of a morning. That was the other branch of his present
+errand--the wish to see her and give her a message for Lady Agnes, upon
+whom, at so early an hour, he had not presumed to intrude in Calcutta
+Gardens. Nick replied that Biddy did in point of fact almost always turn
+up, and for the most part early: she came to wish him good-morning and
+start him for the day. She was a devoted Electra, laying a cool, healing
+hand on a distracted, perspiring Orestes. He reminded Peter, however,
+that he would have a chance of seeing her that evening, and of seeing
+Lady Agnes; for wasn't he to do them the honour of dining in Calcutta
+Gardens? Biddy, the day before, had arrived full of that excitement.
+Peter explained that this was exactly the sad subject of his actual
+_demarche_: the project of the dinner in Calcutta Gardens had, to his
+exceeding regret, fallen to pieces. The fact was (didn't Nick know it?)
+the night had been suddenly and perversely fixed for Miriam's premiere,
+and he was under a definite engagement with her not to stay away from
+it. To add to the bore of the thing he was obliged to return to Paris
+the very next morning. He was quite awfully sorry, for he had promised
+Lady Agnes: he didn't understand then about Miriam's affair, in regard
+to which he had given a previous pledge. He was more grieved than he
+could say, but he could never fail Miss Rooth: he had professed from the
+first an interest in her which he must live up to a little more. This
+was his last chance--he hadn't been near her at the trying time of her
+first braving of the public. And the second night of the play wouldn't
+do--it must be the first or nothing. Besides, he couldn't wait over till
+Monday.
+
+While Peter recited all his hindrance Nick was occupied in rubbing with
+a cloth a palette he had just scraped. "I see what you mean--I'm very
+sorry too. I'm sorry you can't give my mother this joy--I give her so
+little."
+
+"My dear fellow, you might give her a little more!" it came to Peter to
+say. "It's rather too much to expect _me_ to make up for your
+omissions!"
+
+Nick looked at him with a moment's fixedness while he polished the
+palette; and for that moment he felt the temptation to reply: "There's a
+way you could do that, to a considerable extent--I think you guess
+it--which wouldn't be intrinsically disagreeable." But the impulse
+passed without expressing itself in speech, and he simply brought out;
+"You can make this all clear to Biddy when she comes, and she'll make it
+clear to my mother."
+
+"Poor little Biddy!" Peter mentally sighed, thinking of the girl with
+that job before her; but what he articulated was that this was exactly
+why he had come to the studio. He had inflicted his company on Lady
+Agnes the previous Thursday and had partaken of a meal with her, but had
+not seen Biddy though he had waited for her, had hoped immensely she'd
+come in. Now he'd wait again--dear Bid was thoroughly worth it.
+
+"Patience, patience then--you've always me!" said Nick; to which he
+subjoined: "If it's a question of going to the play I scarcely see why
+you shouldn't dine at my mother's all the same. People go to the play
+after dinner."
+
+"Yes, but it wouldn't be fair, it wouldn't be decent: it's a case when I
+must be in my seat from the rise of the curtain." Peter, about this, was
+thoroughly lucid. "I should force your mother to dine an hour earlier
+than usual and then in return for her courtesy should go off to my
+entertainment at eight o'clock, leaving her and Grace and Biddy
+languishing there. I wish I had proposed in time that they should go
+with me," he continued not very ingenuously.
+
+"You might do that still," Nick suggested.
+
+"Oh at this time of day it would be impossible to get a box."
+
+"I'll speak to Miss Rooth about it if you like when she comes," smiled
+Nick.
+
+"No, it wouldn't do," said Peter, turning away and looking once more at
+his watch. He made tacitly the addition that still less than asking Lady
+Agnes for his convenience to dine early would _this_ be decent, would it
+be thinkable. His taking Biddy the night he dined with her and with Miss
+Tressilian had been something very like a violation of those
+proprieties. He couldn't say that, however, to the girl's brother, who
+remarked in a moment that it was all right, since Peter's action left
+him his own freedom.
+
+"Your own freedom?"--and Peter's question made him turn.
+
+"Why you see now I can go to the theatre myself."
+
+"Certainly; I hadn't thought of that. You'd naturally have been going."
+
+"I gave it up for the prospect of your company at home."
+
+"Upon my word you're too good--I don't deserve such sacrifices," said
+Peter, who read in his kinsman's face that this was not a figure of
+speech but the absolute truth. "Didn't it, however, occur to you that,
+as it would turn out, I might--I even naturally _would_--myself be
+going?" he put forth.
+
+Nick broke into a laugh. "It would have occurred to me if I understood a
+little better--!" But he paused, as still too amused.
+
+"If you understood a little better what?"
+
+"Your situation, simply."
+
+Peter looked at him a moment. "Dine with me to-night by ourselves and at
+a club. We'll go to the theatre together and then you'll understand it."
+
+"With pleasure, with pleasure: we'll have a jolly evening," said Nick.
+
+"Call it jolly if you like. When did you say she was coming?" Peter
+asked.
+
+"Biddy? Oh probably, as I tell you, at any moment."
+
+"I mean the great Miriam," Peter amended.
+
+"The great Miriam, if she's punctual, will be here in about forty
+minutes."
+
+"And will she be likely to find your sister?"
+
+"That will depend, my dear fellow, on whether my sister remains to see
+her."
+
+"Exactly; but the point's whether you'll allow her to remain, isn't it?"
+
+Nick looked slightly mystified. "Why shouldn't she do as she likes?"
+
+"In that case she'll probably go."
+
+"Yes, unless she stays."
+
+"Don't let her," Peter dropped; "send her away." And to explain this he
+added: "It doesn't seem exactly the right sort of thing, fresh young
+creatures like Bid meeting _des femmes de theatre_." His explanation, in
+turn, struck him as requiring another clause; so he went on: "At least
+it isn't thought the right sort of thing abroad, and even in England my
+foreign ideas stick to me."
+
+Even with this amplification, however, his plea evidently still had for
+his companion a flaw; which, after he had considered it a moment, Nick
+exposed in the simple words: "Why, you originally introduced them in
+Paris, Biddy and Miss Rooth. Didn't they meet at your rooms and
+fraternise, and wasn't that much more 'abroad' than this?"
+
+"So they did, but my hand had been forced and she didn't like it," Peter
+answered, suspecting that for a diplomatist he looked foolish.
+
+"Miss Rooth didn't like it?" Nick persisted.
+
+"That I confess I've forgotten. Besides, she wasn't an actress then.
+What I mean is that Biddy wasn't particularly pleased with her."
+
+"Why she thought her wonderful--praised her to the sides. I remember
+that."
+
+"She didn't like her as a woman; she praised her as an actress."
+
+"I thought you said she wasn't an actress then," Nick returned.
+
+Peter had a pause. "Oh Biddy thought so. She has seen her since,
+moreover. I took her the other night, and her curiosity's satisfied."
+
+"It's not of any consequence, and if there's a reason for it I'll bundle
+her off directly," Nick made haste to say. "But the great Miriam seems
+such a kind, good person."
+
+"So she is, charming, charming,"--and his visitor looked hard at him.
+
+"Here comes Biddy now," Nick went on. "I hear her at the door: you can
+warn her yourself."
+
+"It isn't a question of 'warning'--that's not in the least my idea. But
+I'll take Biddy away," said Peter.
+
+"That will be still more energetic."
+
+"No, it will be simply more selfish--I like her company." Peter had
+turned as if to go to the door and meet the girl; but he quickly checked
+himself, lingering in the middle of the room, and the next instant Biddy
+had come in. When she saw him there she also stopped.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+
+"Come on boldly, my dear," said Nick. "Peter's bored to death waiting
+for you."
+
+"Ah he's come to say he won't dine with us to-night!" Biddy stood with
+her hand on the latch.
+
+"I leave town to-morrow: I've everything to do; I'm broken-hearted; it's
+impossible"--Peter made of it again such a case as he could. "Please
+make my peace with your mother--I'm ashamed of not having written to her
+last night."
+
+She closed the door and came in while her brother said to her, "How in
+the world did you guess it?"
+
+"I saw it in the _Morning Post_." And she kept her eyes on their
+kinsman.
+
+"In the _Morning Post_?" he vaguely echoed.
+
+"I saw there's to be a first night at that theatre, the one you took us
+to. So I said, 'Oh he'll go there.'"
+
+"Yes, I've got to do that too," Peter admitted.
+
+"She's going to sit to me again this morning, his wonderful actress--she
+has made an appointment: so you see I'm getting on," Nick pursued to his
+sister.
+
+"Oh I'm so glad--she's so splendid!" The girl looked away from her
+cousin now, but not, though it seemed to fill the place, at the
+triumphant portrait of Miriam Rooth.
+
+"I'm delighted you've come in. I _have_ waited for you," Peter hastened
+to declare to her, though conscious that this was in the conditions
+meagre.
+
+"Aren't you coming to see us again?"
+
+"I'm in despair, but I shall really not have time. Therefore it's a
+blessing not to have missed you here."
+
+"I'm very glad," said Biddy. Then she added: "And you're going to
+America--to stay a long time?"
+
+"Till I'm sent to some better place."
+
+"And will that better place be as far away?"
+
+"Oh Biddy, it wouldn't be better then," said Peter.
+
+"Do you mean they'll give you something to do at home?"
+
+"Hardly that. But I've a tremendous lot to do at home to-day." For the
+twentieth time Peter referred to his watch.
+
+She turned to her brother, who had admonished her that she might bid him
+good-morning. She kissed him and he asked what the news would be in
+Calcutta Gardens; to which she made answer: "The only news is of course
+the great preparations they're making, poor dears, for Peter. Mamma
+thinks you must have had such a nasty dinner the other day," the girl
+continued to the guest of that romantic occasion.
+
+"Faithless Peter!" said Nick, beginning to whistle and to arrange a
+canvas in anticipation of Miriam's arrival.
+
+"Dear Biddy, thank your stars you're not in my horrid profession,"
+protested the personage so designated. "One's bowled about like a
+cricket-ball, unable to answer for one's freedom or one's comfort from
+one moment to another."
+
+"Oh ours is the true profession--Biddy's and mine," Nick broke out,
+setting up his canvas; "the career of liberty and peace, of charming
+long mornings spent in a still north light and in the contemplation, I
+may even say in the company, of the amiable and the beautiful."
+
+"That certainty's the case when Biddy comes to see you," Peter returned.
+
+Biddy smiled at him. "I come every day. Anch'io son pittore! I encourage
+Nick awfully."
+
+"It's a pity I'm not a martyr--she'd bravely perish with me," Nick said.
+
+"You are--you're a martyr--when people say such odious things!" the girl
+cried. "They do say them. I've heard many more than I've repeated to
+you."
+
+"It's you yourself then, indignant and loyal, who are the martyr,"
+observed Peter, who wanted greatly to be kind to her.
+
+"Oh I don't care!"--but she threw herself, flushed and charming, into a
+straight appeal to him. "Don't you think one can do as much good by
+painting great works of art as by--as by what papa used to do? Don't you
+think art's necessary to the happiness, to the greatness of a people?
+Don't you think it's manly and honourable? Do you think a passion for
+it's a thing to be ashamed of? Don't you think the artist--the
+conscientious, the serious one--is as distinguished a member of society
+as any one else?"
+
+Peter and Nick looked at each other and laughed at the way she had got
+up her subject, and Nick asked their kinsman if she didn't express it
+all in perfection. "I delight in general in artists, but I delight still
+more in their defenders," Peter made reply, perhaps a little meagrely,
+to Biddy.
+
+"Ah don't attack me if you're wise!" Nick said.
+
+"One's tempted to when it makes Biddy so fine."
+
+"Well, that's the way she encourages me: it's meat and drink to me,"
+Nick went on. "At the same time I'm bound to say there's a little
+whistling in the dark in it."
+
+"In the dark?" his sister demanded.
+
+"The obscurity, my dear child, of your own aspirations, your mysterious
+ambitions and esthetic views. Aren't there some heavyish shadows there?"
+
+"Why I never cared for politics."
+
+"No, but you cared for life, you cared for society, and you've chosen
+the path of solitude and concentration."
+
+"You horrid boy!" said Biddy.
+
+"Give it up, that arduous steep--give it up and come out with me," Peter
+interposed.
+
+"Come out with you?"
+
+"Let us walk a little or even drive a little. Let us at any rate talk a
+little."
+
+"I thought you had so much to do," Biddy candidly objected.
+
+"So I have, but why shouldn't you do a part of it with me? Would there
+be any harm? I'm going to some tiresome shops--you'll cheer the frugal
+hour."
+
+The girl hesitated, then turned to Nick. "Would there be any harm?"
+
+"Oh it's none of _his_ business!" Peter protested.
+
+"He had better take you home to your mother."
+
+"I'm going home--I shan't stay here to-day," Biddy went on. Then to
+Peter: "I came in a hansom, but I shall walk back. Come that way with
+me."
+
+"With pleasure. But I shall not be able to go in," Peter added.
+
+"Oh that's no matter," said the girl. "Good-bye, Nick."
+
+"You understand then that we dine together--at seven sharp. Wouldn't a
+club, as I say, be best?" Peter, before going, inquired of Nick. He
+suggested further which club it should be; and his words led Biddy, who
+had directed her steps toward the door, to turn a moment as with a
+reproachful question--whether it was for this Peter had given up
+Calcutta Gardens. But her impulse, if impulse it was, had no sequel
+save so far as it was a sequel that Peter freely explained to her, after
+Nick had assented to his conditions, that her brother too had a desire
+to go to Miss Rooth's first night and had already promised to accompany
+him.
+
+"Oh that's perfect; it will be so good for him--won't it?--if he's going
+to paint her again," Biddy responded.
+
+"I think there's nothing so good for him as that he happens to have such
+a sister as you," Peter declared as they went out. He heard at the same
+time the sound of a carriage stopping, and before Biddy, who was in
+front of him, opened the door of the house had been able to say to
+himself, "What a bore--there's Miriam!" The opened door showed him that
+truth--this young lady in the act of alighting from the brougham
+provided by Basil Dashwood's thrifty zeal. Her mother followed her, and
+both the new visitors exclaimed and rejoiced, in their demonstrative
+way, as their eyes fell on their valued friend. The door had closed
+behind Peter, but he instantly and violently rang, so that they should
+be admitted with as little delay as possible, while he stood
+disconcerted, and fearing he showed it, by the prompt occurrence of an
+encounter he had particularly sought to avert. It ministered, moreover,
+a little to this sensibility that Miriam appeared to have come somewhat
+before her time. The incident promised, however, to pass off in a fine
+florid way. Before he knew it both the ladies had taken possession of
+Biddy, who looked at them with comparative coldness, tempered indeed by
+a faint glow of apprehension, and Miriam had broken out:
+
+"We know you, we know you; we saw you in Paris, and you came to my
+theatre a short time ago with Mr. Sherringham!"
+
+"We know your mother, Lady Agnes Dormer. I hope her ladyship's very
+well," said Mrs. Rooth, who had never struck Peter as a more
+objectionable old woman.
+
+"You offered to do a head of me or something or other: didn't you tell
+me you work in clay? I daresay you've forgotten all about it, but I
+should be delighted," Miriam pursued with the richest urbanity. Peter
+was not concerned with her mother's pervasiveness, though he didn't like
+Biddy to see even that; but he hoped his companion would take the
+overcharged benevolence of the young actress in the spirit in which,
+rather to his surprise, it evidently was offered. "I've sat to your
+clever brother many times," said Miriam; "I'm going to sit again. I
+daresay you've seen what we've done--he's too delightful. _Si vous
+saviez comme cela me repose_!" she added, turning for a moment to Peter.
+Then she continued, smiling at Biddy; "Only he oughtn't to have thrown
+up such prospects, you know. I've an idea I wasn't nice to you that day
+in Paris--I was nervous and scared and perverse. I remember perfectly; I
+_was_ odious. But I'm better now--you'd see if you were to know me. I'm
+not a bad sort--really I'm not. But you must have your own friends.
+Happy they--you look so charming! Immensely like Mr. Dormer, especially
+about the eyes; isn't she, mamma?"
+
+"She comes of a beautiful Norman race--the finest, purest strain," the
+old woman simpered. "Mr. Dormer's sometimes so good as to come and see
+us--we're always at home on Sunday; and if some day you found courage to
+come with him you might perhaps find it pleasant, though very different
+of course from the circle in which you habitually move."
+
+Biddy murmured a vague recognition of these wonderful civilities, and
+Miriam commented: "Different, yes; but we're all right, you know. Do
+come," she added. Then turning to Sherringham: "Remember what I told
+you--I don't expect you to-night."
+
+"Oh I understand; I shall come,"--and Peter knew he grew red.
+
+"It will be idiotic. Keep him, keep him away--don't let him," Miriam
+insisted to Biddy; with which, as Nick's portals now were gaping, she
+drew her mother away.
+
+Peter, at this, walked off briskly with Biddy, dropping as he did so:
+"She's too fantastic!"
+
+"Yes, but so tremendously good-looking. I shall ask Nick to take me
+there," the girl said after a moment.
+
+"Well, she'll do you no harm. They're all right, as she says. It's the
+world of art--you were standing up so for art just now."
+
+"Oh I wasn't thinking so much of that kind," she demurred.
+
+"There's only one kind--it's all the same thing. If one sort's good the
+other is."
+
+Biddy walked along a moment. "Is she serious? Is she conscientious?"
+
+"She has the makings of a great artist," Peter opined.
+
+"I'm glad to hear you think a woman can be one."
+
+"In that line there has never been any doubt about it."
+
+"And only in that line?"
+
+"I mean on the stage in general, dramatic or lyric. It's as the actress
+that the woman produces the most complete and satisfactory artistic
+results."
+
+"And only as the actress?"
+
+He weighed it. "Yes, there's another art in which she's not bad."
+
+"Which one do you mean?" asked Biddy.
+
+"That of being charming and good, that of being indispensable to man."
+
+"Oh that isn't an art."
+
+"Then you leave her only the stage. Take it if you like in the widest
+sense."
+
+Biddy appeared to reflect a moment, as to judge what sense this might
+be. But she found none that was wide enough, for she cried the next
+minute: "Do you mean to say there's nothing for a woman but to be an
+actress?"
+
+"Never in my life. I only say that that's the best thing for a woman to
+be who finds herself irresistibly carried into the practice of the arts;
+for there her capacity for them has most application and her incapacity
+for them least. But at the same time I strongly recommend her not to be
+an artist if she can possibly help it. It's a devil of a life."
+
+"Oh I know; men want women not to be anything."
+
+"It's a poor little refuge they try to take from the overwhelming
+consciousness that you're in very fact everything."
+
+"Everything?" And the girl gave a toss. "That's the kind of thing you
+say to keep us quiet."
+
+"Dear Biddy, you see how well we succeed!" laughed Peter.
+
+To which she replied by asking irrelevantly: "Why is it so necessary for
+you to go to the theatre to-night if Miss Rooth doesn't want you to?"
+
+"My dear child, she does want me to. But that has nothing to do with
+it."
+
+"Why then did she say that she doesn't?"
+
+"Oh because she meant just the contrary."
+
+"Is she so false then--is she so vulgar?"
+
+"She speaks a special language; practically it isn't false, because it
+renders her thought and those who know her understand it."
+
+"But she doesn't use it only to those who know her," Biddy returned,
+"since she asked me, who have so little the honour of her acquaintance,
+to keep you away to-night. How am I to know that she meant by that that
+I'm to urge you on to go?"
+
+He was on the point of replying, "Because you've my word for it"; but he
+shrank in fact from giving his word--he had some fine scruples--and
+sought to relieve his embarrassment by a general tribute. "Dear Biddy,
+you're delightfully acute: you're quite as clever as Miss Rooth." He
+felt, however, that this was scarcely adequate and he continued: "The
+truth is that its being important for me to go is a matter quite
+independent of that young lady's wishing it or not wishing it. There
+happens to be a definite intrinsic propriety in it which determines the
+thing and which it would take me long to explain."
+
+"I see. But fancy your 'explaining' to me: you make me feel so
+indiscreet!" the girl cried quickly--an exclamation which touched him
+because he was not aware that, quick as it had been, she had still had
+time to be struck first--though she wouldn't for the world have
+expressed it--with the oddity of such a duty at such a season. In fact
+that oddity, during a silence of some minutes, came back to Peter
+himself: the note had been forced--it sounded almost ignobly frivolous
+from a man on the eve of proceeding to a high diplomatic post. The
+effect of this, none the less, was not to make him break out with "Hang
+it, I _will_ keep my engagement to your mother!" but to fill him with
+the wish to shorten his present strain by taking Biddy the rest of the
+way in a cab. He was uncomfortable, and there were hansoms about that he
+looked at wistfully. While he was so occupied his companion took up the
+talk by an abrupt appeal.
+
+"Why did she say that Nick oughtn't to have resigned his seat?"
+
+"Oh I don't know. It struck her so. It doesn't matter much."
+
+But Biddy kept it up. "If she's an artist herself why doesn't she like
+people to go in for art, especially when Nick has given his time to
+painting her so beautifully? Why does she come there so often if she
+disapproves of what he has done?"
+
+"Oh Miriam's disapproval--it doesn't count; it's a manner of speaking."
+
+"Of speaking untruths, do you mean? Does she think just the reverse--is
+that the way she talks about everything?"
+
+"We always admire most what we can do least," Peter brought forth; "and
+Miriam of course isn't political. She ranks painters more or less with
+her own profession, about which already, new as she is to it, she has no
+illusions. They're all artists; it's the same general sort of thing. She
+prefers men of the world--men of action."
+
+"Is that the reason she likes you?" Biddy mildly mocked.
+
+"Ah she doesn't like me--couldn't you see it?"
+
+The girl at first said nothing; then she asked: "Is that why she lets
+you call her 'Miriam'?"
+
+"Oh I don't, to her face."
+
+"Ah only to mine!" laughed Biddy.
+
+"One says that as one says 'Rachel' of her great predecessor."
+
+"Except that she isn't so great, quite yet, is she?"
+
+"Far from it; she's the freshest of novices--she has scarcely been four
+months on the stage. But no novice has ever been such an adept. She'll
+go very fast," Peter pursued, "and I daresay that before long she'll be
+magnificent."
+
+"What a pity you'll not see that!" Biddy sighed after a pause.
+
+"Not see it?"
+
+"If you're thousands of miles away."
+
+"It is a pity," Peter said; "and since you mention it I don't mind
+frankly telling you--throwing myself on your mercy, as it were--that
+that's why I make such a point of a rare occasion like to-night. I've a
+weakness for the drama that, as you perhaps know, I've never concealed,
+and this impression will probably have to last me in some barren spot
+for many, many years."
+
+"I understand--I understand. I hope therefore it will be charming." And
+the girl walked faster.
+
+"Just as some other charming impressions will have to last," Peter
+added, conscious of keeping up with her by some effort. She seemed
+almost to be running away from him, an impression that led him to
+suggest, after they had proceeded a little further without more words,
+that if she were in a hurry they had perhaps better take a cab. Her face
+was strange and touching to him as she turned it to make answer:
+
+"Oh I'm not in the least in a hurry and I really think I had better
+walk."
+
+"We'll walk then by all means!" Peter said with slightly exaggerated
+gaiety; in pursuance of which they went on a hundred yards. Biddy kept
+the same pace; yet it was scarcely a surprise to him that she should
+suddenly stop with the exclamation:
+
+"After all, though I'm not in a hurry I'm tired! I had better have a
+cab; please call that one," she added, looking about her.
+
+They were in a straight, blank, ugly street, where the small, cheap,
+grey-faced houses had no expression save that of a rueful, unconsoled
+acknowledgment of the universal want of identity. They would have
+constituted a "terrace" if they could, but they had dolefully given it
+up. Even a hansom that loitered across the end of the vista turned a
+sceptical back upon it, so that Sherringham had to lift his voice in a
+loud appeal. He stood with Biddy watching the cab approach them. "This
+is one of the charming things you'll remember," she said, turning her
+eyes to the general dreariness from the particular figure of the
+vehicle, which was antiquated and clumsy. Before he could reply she had
+lightly stepped into the cab; but as he answered, "Most assuredly it
+is," and prepared to follow her she quickly closed the apron.
+
+"I must go alone; you've lots of things to do--it's all right"; and
+through the aperture in the roof she gave the driver her address. She
+had spoken with decision, and Peter fully felt now that she wished to
+get away from him. Her eyes betrayed it, as well as her voice, in a
+look, a strange, wandering ray that as he stood there with his hand on
+the cab he had time to take from her. "Good-bye, Peter," she smiled; and
+as the thing began to rumble away he uttered the same tepid, ridiculous
+farewell.
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+
+At the entrance of Miriam and her mother Nick, in the studio, had
+stopped whistling, but he was still gay enough to receive them with
+every appearance of warmth. He thought it a poor place, ungarnished,
+untapestried, a bare, almost grim workshop, with all its revelations and
+honours still to come. But his visitors smiled on it a good deal in the
+same way in which they had smiled on Bridget Dormer when they met her at
+the door: Mrs. Rooth because vague, prudent approbation was the habit of
+her foolish face--it was ever the least danger; and Miriam because, as
+seemed, she was genuinely glad to find herself within the walls of which
+she spoke now as her asylum. She broke out in this strain to her host
+almost as soon as she had crossed the threshold, commending his
+circumstances, his conditions of work, as infinitely happier than her
+own. He was quiet, independent, absolute, free to do what he liked as he
+liked it, shut up in his little temple with his altar and his divinity;
+not hustled about in a mob of people, having to posture and grin to pit
+and gallery, to square himself at every step with insufferable
+conventions and with the ignorance and vanity of others. He was
+blissfully alone.
+
+"Mercy, how you do abuse your fine profession! I'm sure I never urged
+you to adopt it!" Mrs. Rooth cried, in real bewilderment, to her
+daughter.
+
+"She was abusing mine still more the other day," joked Nick--"telling me
+I ought to be ashamed of it and of myself."
+
+"Oh I never know from one moment to the other--I live with my heart in
+my mouth," sighed the old woman.
+
+"Aren't you quiet about the great thing--about my personal behaviour?"
+Miriam smiled. "My improprieties are all of the mind."
+
+"I don't know what you _call_ your personal behaviour," her mother
+objected.
+
+"You would very soon if it were not what it is."
+
+"And I don't know why you should wish to have it thought you've a wicked
+mind," Mrs. Rooth agreeably grumbled.
+
+"Yes, but I don't see very well how I can make you understand that. At
+any rate," Miriam pursued with her grand eyes on Nick, "I retract what I
+said the other day about Mr. Dormer. I've no wish to quarrel with him on
+the way he has determined to dispose of his life, because after all it
+does suit me very well. It rests me, this little devoted corner; oh it
+rests me! It's out of the row and the dust, it's deliciously still and
+they can't get at me. Ah when art's like this, _a la bonne heure_!" And
+she looked round on such a presentment of "art" in a splendid way that
+produced amusement on the young man's part at its contrast with the
+humble fact. Miriam shone upon him as if she liked to be the cause of
+his mirth and went on appealing to him: "You'll always let me come here
+for an hour, won't you, to take breath--to let the whirlwind pass? You
+needn't trouble yourself about me; I don't mean to impose on you in the
+least the necessity of painting me, though if that's a manner of helping
+you to get on you may be sure it will always be open to you. Do what you
+like with me in that respect; only let me sit here on a high stool,
+keeping well out of your way, and see what you happen to be doing. I'll
+tell you my own adventures when you want to hear them."
+
+"The fewer adventures you have to tell the better, my dear," said Mrs.
+Rooth; "and if Mr. Dormer keeps you quiet he'll add ten years to my
+life."
+
+"It all makes an interesting comment on Mr. Dormer's own quietness, on
+his independence and sweet solitude," Nick observed. "Miss Rooth has to
+work with others, which is after all only what Mr. Dormer has to do when
+he works with Miss Rooth. What do you make of the inevitable sitter?"
+
+"Oh," answered Miriam, "you can say to the inevitable sitter, 'Hold your
+tongue, you brute!'"
+
+"Isn't it a good deal in that manner that I've heard you address your
+comrades at the theatre?" Mrs. Rooth inquired. "That's why my heart's in
+my mouth."
+
+"Yes, but they hit me back; they reply to me--_comme de raison_--as I
+should never think of replying to Mr. Dormer. It's a great advantage to
+him that when he's peremptory with his model it only makes her better,
+adds to her expression of gloomy grandeur."
+
+"We did the gloomy grandeur in the other picture: suppose therefore we
+try something different in this," Nick threw off.
+
+"It _is_ serious, it _is_ grand," murmured Mrs. Rooth, who had taken up
+a rapt attitude before the portrait of her daughter. "It makes one
+wonder what she's thinking of. Beautiful, commendable things--that's
+what it seems to say."
+
+"What can I be thinking of but the tremendous wisdom of my mother?"
+Miriam returned. "I brought her this morning to see that thing--she had
+only seen it in its earliest stage--and not to presume to advise you
+about anything else you may be so good as to embark on. She wanted, or
+professed she wanted, terribly to know what you had finally arrived at.
+She was too impatient to wait till you should send it home."
+
+"Ah send it home--send it home; let us have it always with us!" Mrs.
+Rooth engagingly said. "It will keep us up, up, and up on the heights,
+near the stars--be always for us a symbol and a reminder!"
+
+"You see I was right," Miriam went on; "for she appreciates thoroughly,
+in her own way, and almost understands. But if she worries or distracts
+you I'll send her directly home--I've kept the carriage there on
+purpose. I must add that I don't feel quite safe to-day in letting her
+out of my sight. She's liable to make dashes at the theatre and play
+unconscionable tricks there. I shall never again accuse mamma of a want
+of interest in my profession. Her interest to-day exceeds even my own.
+She's all over the place and she has ideas--ah but ideas! She's capable
+of turning up at the theatre at five o'clock this afternoon to demand
+the repainting of the set in the third act. For myself I've not a word
+more to say on the subject--I've accepted every danger, I've swallowed
+my fate. Everything's no doubt wrong, but nothing can possibly be right.
+Let us eat and drink, for to-night we die. If you say so mamma shall go
+and sit in the carriage, and as there's no means of fastening the doors
+(is there?) your servant shall keep guard over her."
+
+"Just as you are now--be so good as to remain so; sitting just that
+way--leaning back with a smile in your eyes and one hand on the sofa
+beside you and supporting you a little. I shall stick a flower into the
+other hand--let it lie in your lap just as it is. Keep that thing on
+your head--it's admirably uncovered: do you call such an unconsidered
+trifle a bonnet?--and let your head fall back a little. There it
+is--it's found. This time I shall really do something, and it will be as
+different as you like from that other crazy job. Here we go!" It was in
+these irrelevant but earnest words that Nick responded to his sitter's
+uttered vagaries, of which her charming tone and countenance diminished
+the superficial acerbity. He held up his hands a moment, to fix her in
+her limits, and in a few minutes had a happy sense of having begun to
+work.
+
+"The smile in her eyes--don't forget the smile in her eyes!" Mrs. Rooth
+softly chanted, turning away and creeping about the room. "That will
+make it so different from the other picture and show the two sides of
+her genius, the wonderful range between them. They'll be splendid mates,
+and though I daresay I shall strike you as greedy you must let me hope
+you'll send this one home too."
+
+She explored the place discreetly and on tiptoe, talking twaddle as she
+went and bending her head and her eyeglass over various objects with an
+air of imperfect comprehension that didn't prevent Nick's private recall
+of the story of her underhand, commercial habits told by Gabriel Nash at
+the exhibition in Paris the first time her name had fallen on his ear. A
+queer old woman from whom, if you approached her in the right way, you
+could buy old pots--it was in this character that she had originally
+been introduced to him. He had lost sight of it afterwards, but it
+revived again as his observant eyes, at the same time that they followed
+his active hand, became aware of her instinctive, appraising gestures.
+There was a moment when he frankly laughed out--there was so little in
+his poor studio to appraise. Mrs. Rooth's wandering eyeglass and vague,
+polite, disappointed, bent back and head made a subject for a sketch on
+the instant: they gave such a sudden pictorial glimpse of the element of
+race. He found himself seeing the immemorial Jewess in her hold up a
+candle in a crammed back shop. There was no candle indeed and his studio
+was not crammed, and it had never occurred to him before that she was a
+grand-daughter of Israel save on the general theory, so stoutly held by
+several clever people, that few of us are not under suspicion. The late
+Rudolf Roth had at least been, and his daughter was visibly her father's
+child; so that, flanked by such a pair, good Semitic presumptions
+sufficiently crowned the mother. Receiving Miriam's sharp, satiric
+shower without shaking her shoulders she might at any rate have been the
+descendant of a tribe long persecuted. Her blandness was beyond all
+baiting; she professed she could be as still as a mouse. Miriam, on the
+other side of the room, in the tranquil beauty of her attitude--"found"
+indeed, as Nick had said--watched her a little and then declared she had
+best have been locked up at home. Putting aside her free account of the
+dangers to which her mother exposed her, it wasn't whimsical to imagine
+that within the limits of that repose from which the Neville-Nugents
+never wholly departed the elder lady might indeed be a trifle fidgety
+and have something on her mind. Nick presently mentioned that it
+wouldn't be possible for him to "send home" his second performance; and
+he added, in the exuberance of having already got a little into relation
+with his work, that perhaps this didn't matter, inasmuch as--if Miriam
+would give him his time, to say nothing of her own--a third and a fourth
+masterpiece might also some day very well struggle into the light. His
+model rose to this without conditions, assuring him he might count upon
+her till she grew too old and too ugly and that nothing would make her
+so happy as that he should paint her as often as Romney had painted the
+celebrated Lady Hamilton. "Ah Lady Hamilton!" deprecated Mrs. Rooth;
+while Miriam, who had on occasion the candour of a fine acquisitiveness,
+wished to know what particular reason there might be for his not letting
+them have the picture he was now beginning.
+
+"Why I've promised it to Peter Sherringham--he has offered me money for
+it," Nick replied. "However, he's welcome to it for nothing, poor chap,
+and I shall be delighted to do the best I can for him."
+
+Mrs. Rooth, still prowling, stopped in the middle of the room at this,
+while her daughter echoed: "He offered you money--just as we came in?"
+
+"You met him then at the door with my sister? I supposed you had--he's
+taking her home," Nick explained.
+
+"Your sister's a lovely girl--such an aristocratic type!" breathed Mrs.
+Rooth. Then she added: "I've a tremendous confession to make to you."
+
+"Mamma's confessions have to be tremendous to correspond with her
+crimes," said Miriam. "She asked Miss Dormer to come and see us,
+suggested even that you might bring her some Sunday. I don't like the
+way mamma does such things--too much humility, too many _simagrees_,
+after all; but I also said what I could to be nice to her. Your sister
+_is_ charming--awfully pretty and modest. If you were to press me I
+should tell you frankly that it seems to me rather a social muddle, this
+rubbing shoulders of 'nice girls' and _filles de theatre_: I shouldn't
+think it would do your poor young things much good. However, it's their
+own affair, and no doubt there's no more need of their thinking we're
+worse than we are than of their thinking we're better. The people they
+live with don't seem to know the difference--I sometimes make my
+reflexions about the public one works for."
+
+"Ah if you go in for the public's knowing differences you're far too
+particular," Nick laughed. "_D'ou tombez-vous_? as you affected French
+people say. If you've anything at stake on that you had simply better
+not play."
+
+"Dear Mr. Dormer, don't encourage her to be so dreadful; for it _is_
+dreadful, the way she talks," Mrs. Rooth broke in. "One would think we
+weren't respectable--one would think I had never known what I've known
+and been what I've been."
+
+"What one would think, beloved mother, is that you're a still greater
+humbug than you are. It's you, on the contrary, who go down on your
+knees, who pour forth apologies about our being vagabonds."
+
+"Vagabonds--listen to her!--after the education I've given her and our
+magnificent prospects!" wailed Mrs. Rooth, sinking with clasped hands
+upon the nearest ottoman.
+
+"Not after our prospects, if prospects they be: a good deal before them.
+Yes, you've taught me tongues and I'm greatly obliged to you--they no
+doubt give variety as well as incoherency to my conversation; and that
+of people in our line is for the most part notoriously monotonous and
+shoppy. The gift of tongues is in general the sign of your true
+adventurer. Dear mamma, I've no low standard--that's the last thing,"
+Miriam went on. "My weakness is my exalted conception of respectability.
+Ah _parlez-moi de ca_ and of the way I understand it! If I were to go in
+for being respectable you'd see something fine. I'm awfully conservative
+and I know what respectability is, even when I meet people of society on
+the accidental middle ground of either glowering or smirking. I know
+also what it isn't--it isn't the sweet union of well-bred little girls
+('carefully-nurtured,' don't they call them?) and painted she-mummers. I
+should carry it much further than any of these people: I should never
+look at the likes of us! Every hour I live I see that the wisdom of the
+ages was in the experience of dear old Madame Carre--was in a hundred
+things she told me. She's founded on a rock. After that," Miriam went on
+to her host, "I can assure you that if you were so good as to bring Miss
+Dormer to see us we should be angelically careful of her and surround
+her with every attention and precaution."
+
+"The likes of us--the likes of us!" Mrs. Rooth repeated plaintively and
+with a resentment as vain as a failure to sneeze. "I don't know what
+you're talking about and I decline to be turned upside down, I've my
+ideas as well as you, and I repudiate the charge of false humility. I've
+been through too many troubles to be proud, and a pleasant, polite
+manner was the rule of my life even in the days when, God knows, I had
+everything. I've never changed and if with God's help I had a civil
+tongue then, I've a civil tongue now. It's more than you always have, my
+poor, perverse, passionate child. Once a lady always a lady--all the
+footlights in the world, turn them up as high as you will, make no
+difference there. And I think people know it, people who know
+anything--if I may use such an expression--and it's because they know it
+that I'm not afraid to address them in a pleasant way. So I must
+say--and I call Mr. Dormer to witness, for if he could reason with you a
+bit about it he might render several people a service--your conduct to
+Mr. Sherringham simply breaks my heart," Mrs. Rooth concluded, taking a
+jump of several steps in the fine modern avenue of her argument.
+
+Nick was appealed to, but he hung back, drawing with a free hand, and
+while he forbore Miriam took it up. "Mother's good--mother's very good;
+but it's only little by little that you discover how good she is." This
+seemed to leave him at ease to ask their companion, with the
+preliminary intimation that what she had just said was very striking,
+what she meant by her daughter's conduct to old Peter. Before Mrs. Rooth
+could answer this question, however, Miriam broke across with one of her
+own. "Do you mind telling me if you made your sister go off with Mr.
+Sherringham because you knew it was about time for me to turn up? Poor
+Mr. Dormer, I get you into trouble, don't I?" she added quite with
+tenderness.
+
+"Into trouble?" echoed Nick, looking at her head but not at her eyes.
+
+"Well, we won't talk about that!" she returned with a rich laugh.
+
+He now hastened to say that he had nothing to do with his sister's
+leaving the studio--she had only come, as it happened, for a moment. She
+had walked away with Peter Sherringham because they were cousins and old
+friends: he was to leave England immediately, for a long time, and he
+had offered her his company going home. Mrs. Rooth shook her head very
+knowingly over the "long time" Mr. Sherringham would be absent--she
+plainly had her ideas about that; and she conscientiously related that
+in the course of the short conversation they had all had at the door of
+the house her daughter had reminded Miss Dormer of something that had
+passed between them in Paris on the question of the charming young
+lady's modelling her head.
+
+"I did it to make the idea of our meeting less absurd--to put it on the
+footing of our both being artists. I don't ask you if she has talent,"
+said Miriam.
+
+"Then I needn't tell you," laughed Nick.
+
+"I'm sure she has talent and a very refined inspiration. I see something
+in that corner, covered with a mysterious veil," Mrs. Rooth insinuated;
+which led Miriam to go on immediately:
+
+"Has she been trying her hand at Mr. Sherringham?"
+
+"When should she try her hand, poor dear young lady? He's always sitting
+with us," said Mrs. Rooth.
+
+"Dear mamma, you exaggerate. He has his moments--when he seems to say
+his prayers to me; but we've had some success in cutting them down. _Il
+s'est bien detache ces jours-ci_, and I'm very happy for him. Of course
+it's an impertinent allusion for me to make; but I should be so
+delighted if I could think of him as a little in love with Miss Dormer,"
+the girl pursued, addressing Nick.
+
+"He is, I think, just a little--just a tiny bit," her artist allowed,
+working away; while Mrs. Rooth ejaculated to her daughter
+simultaneously:
+
+"How can you ask such fantastic questions when you know he's dying for
+_you_?"
+
+"Oh dying!--he's dying very hard!" cried Miriam. "Mr. Sherringham's a
+man of whom I can't speak with too much esteem and affection and who may
+be destined to perish by some horrid fever (which God forbid!) in the
+unpleasant country he's going to. But he won't have caught his fever
+from your humble servant."
+
+"You may kill him even while you remain in perfect health yourself,"
+said Nick; "and since we're talking of the matter I don't see the harm
+of my confessing that he strikes me as far gone--oh as very bad indeed."
+
+"And yet he's in love with your sister?--_je n'y suis plus_."
+
+"He tries to be, for he sees that as regards you there are difficulties.
+He'd like to put his hand on some nice girl who'd be an antidote to his
+poison."
+
+"Difficulties are a mild name for them; poison even is a mild name for
+the ill he suffers from. The principal difficulty is that he doesn't
+know what the devil he wants. The next is that I don't either--or what
+the devil I want myself. I only know what I don't want," Miriam kept on
+brightly and as if uttering some happy, beneficent truth. "I don't want
+a person who takes things even less simply than I do myself. Mr.
+Sherringham, poor man, must be very uncomfortable, for one side of him's
+in a perpetual row with the other side. He's trying to serve God and
+Mammon, and I don't know how God will come off. What I like in you is
+that you've definitely let Mammon go--it's the only decent way. That's
+my earnest conviction, and yet they call us people light. Dear Mr.
+Sherringham has tremendous ambitions--tremendous _riguardi_, as we used
+to say in Italy. He wants to enjoy every comfort and to save every
+appearance, and all without making a scrap of a sacrifice. He expects
+others--me, for instance--to make all the sacrifices. _Merci_, much as I
+esteem him and much as I owe him! I don't know how he ever came to stray
+at all into our bold, bad, downright Bohemia: it was a cruel trick for
+fortune to play him. He can't keep out of it, he's perpetually making
+dashes across the border, and yet as soon as he gets here he's on pins
+and needles. There's another in whose position--if I were in it--I
+wouldn't look at the likes of us!"
+
+"I don't know much about the matter," Nick brought out after some intent
+smudging, "but I've an idea Peter thinks he has made or at least is
+making sacrifices."
+
+"So much the better--you must encourage him, you must help him."
+
+"I don't know what my daughter's talking about," Mrs. Rooth
+contributed--"she's much too paradoxical for my plain mind. But there's
+one way to encourage Mr. Sherringham--there's one way to help him; and
+perhaps it won't be a worse way for a gentleman of your good nature that
+it will help me at the same time. Can't I look to you, dear Mr. Dormer,
+to see that he does come to the theatre to-night--that he doesn't feel
+himself obliged to stay away?"
+
+"What danger is there of his staying away?" Nick asked.
+
+"If he's bent on sacrifices that's a very good one to begin with,"
+Miriam observed.
+
+"That's the mad, bad way she talks to him--she has forbidden the dear
+unhappy gentleman the house!" her mother cried. "She brought it up to
+him just now at the door--before Miss Dormer: such very odd form! She
+pretends to impose her commands upon him."
+
+"Oh he'll be there--we're going to dine together," said Nick. And when
+Miriam asked him what that had to do with it he went on: "Why we've
+arranged it; I'm going, and he won't let me go alone."
+
+"You're going? I sent you no places," his sitter objected.
+
+"Yes, but I've got one. Why didn't you, after all I've done for you?"
+
+She beautifully thought of it. "Because I'm so good. No matter," she
+added, "if Mr. Sherringham comes I won't act."
+
+"Won't you act for me?"
+
+"She'll act like an angel," Mrs. Rooth protested. "She might do, she
+might be, anything in all the world; but she won't take common pains."
+
+"Of one thing there's no doubt," said Miriam: "that compared with the
+rest of us--poor passionless creatures--mamma does know what she wants."
+
+"And what's that?" Nick inquired, chalking on.
+
+"She wants everything."
+
+"Never, never--I'm much more humble," retorted the old woman; upon
+which her daughter requested her to give then to Mr. Dormer, who was a
+reasonable man and an excellent judge, a general idea of the scope of
+her desires.
+
+As, however, Mrs. Rooth, sighing and deprecating, was not quick to
+acquit herself, the girl tried a short cut to the truth with the abrupt
+demand: "Do you believe for a single moment he'd marry me?"
+
+"Why he has proposed to you--you've told me yourself--a dozen times."
+
+"Proposed what to me?" Miriam rang out. "I've told you _that_ neither a
+dozen times nor once, because I've never understood. He has made
+wonderful speeches, but has never been serious."
+
+"You told me he had been in the seventh heaven of devotion, especially
+that night we went to the foyer of the Francais," Mrs. Rooth insisted.
+
+"Do you call the seventh heaven of devotion serious? He's in love with
+me, _je le veux bien_; he's so poisoned--Mr. Dormer vividly puts it--as
+to require a strong antidote; but he has never spoken to me as if he
+really expected me to listen to him, and he's the more of a gentleman
+from that fact. He knows we haven't a square foot of common ground--that
+a grasshopper can't set up a house with a fish. So he has taken care to
+say to me only more than he can possibly mean. That makes it stand just
+for nothing."
+
+"Did he say more than he can possibly mean when he took formal leave of
+you yesterday--for ever and ever?" the old woman cried.
+
+On which Nick re-enforced her. "And don't you call that--his taking
+formal leave--a sacrifice?"
+
+"Oh he took it all back, his sacrifice, before he left the house."
+
+"Then has that no meaning?" demanded Mrs. Rooth.
+
+"None that I can make out," said her daughter.
+
+"Ah I've no patience with you: you can be stupid when you will--you can
+be even that too!" the poor lady groaned.
+
+"What mamma wishes me to understand and to practise is the particular
+way to be artful with Mr. Sherringham," said Miriam. "There are
+doubtless depths of wisdom and virtue in it. But I see only one
+art--that of being perfectly honest."
+
+"I like to hear you talk--it makes you live, brings you out," Nick
+contentedly dropped. "And you sit beautifully still. All I want to say
+is please continue to do so: remain exactly as you are--it's rather
+important--for the next ten minutes."
+
+"We're washing our dirty linen before you, but it's all right," the girl
+returned, "because it shows you what sort of people we are, and that's
+what you need to know. Don't make me vague and arranged and fine in this
+new view," she continued: "make me characteristic and real; make life,
+with all its horrid facts and truths, stick out of me. I wish you could
+put mother in too; make us live there side by side and tell our little
+story. 'The wonderful actress and her still more wonderful mamma'--don't
+you think that's an awfully good subject?"
+
+Mrs. Rooth, at this, cried shame on her daughter's wanton humour,
+professing that she herself would never accept so much from Nick's good
+nature, and Miriam settled it that at any rate he was some day and in
+some way to do her mother, _really_ do her, and so make her, as one of
+the funniest persons that ever was, live on through the ages.
+
+"She doesn't believe Mr. Sherringham wants to marry me any more than you
+do," the girl, taking up her dispute again after a moment, represented
+to Nick; "but she believes--how indeed can I tell you what she
+believes?--that I can work it so well, if you understand, that in the
+fulness of time I shall hold him in a vice. I'm to keep him along for
+the present, but not to listen to him, for if I listen to him I shall
+lose him. It's ingenious, it's complicated; but I daresay you follow
+me."
+
+"Don't move--don't move," said Nick. "Pardon a poor clumsy beginner."
+
+"No, I shall explain quietly. Somehow--here it's _very_ complicated and
+you mustn't lose the thread--I shall be an actress and make a tremendous
+lot of money, and somehow too (I suppose a little later) I shall become
+an ambassadress and be the favourite of courts. So you see it will all
+be delightful. Only I shall have to go very straight. Mamma reminds me
+of a story I once heard about the mother of a young lady who was in
+receipt of much civility from the pretender to a crown, which indeed he,
+and the young lady too, afterwards more or less wore. The old countess
+watched the course of events and gave her daughter the cleverest advice:
+'_Tiens bon, ma fille_, and you shall sit upon a throne.' Mamma wishes
+me to _tenir bon_--she apparently thinks there's a danger I mayn't--so
+that if I don't sit upon a throne I shall at least parade at the foot of
+one. And if before that, for ten years, I pile up the money, they'll
+forgive me the way I've made it. I should hope so, if I've _tenu bon_!
+Only ten years is a good while to hold out, isn't it? If it isn't Mr.
+Sherringham it will be some one else. Mr. Sherringham has the great
+merit of being a bird in the hand. I'm to keep him along, I'm to be
+still more diplomatic than even he can be."
+
+Mrs. Rooth listened to her daughter with an air of assumed reprobation
+which melted, before the girl had done, into a diverted, complacent
+smile--the gratification of finding herself the proprietress of so much
+wit and irony and grace. Miriam's account of her mother's views was a
+scene of comedy, and there was instinctive art in the way she added
+touch to touch and made point upon point. She was so quiet, to oblige
+her painter, that only her fine lips moved--all her expression was in
+their charming utterance. Mrs. Rooth, after the first flutter of a less
+cynical spirit, consented to be sacrificed to an effect of the really
+high order she had now been educated to recognise; so that she scarce
+hesitated, when Miriam had ceased speaking, before she tittered out with
+the fondest indulgence: '_Comedienne_!' And she seemed to appeal to
+their companion. "Ain't she fascinating? That's the way she does for
+you!"
+
+"It's rather cruel, isn't it," said Miriam, "to deprive people of the
+luxury of calling one an actress as they'd call one a liar? I represent,
+but I represent truly."
+
+"Mr. Sherringham would marry you to-morrow--there's no question of ten
+years!" cried Mrs. Rooth with a comicality of plainness.
+
+Miriam smiled at Nick, deprecating his horror of such talk. "Isn't it
+droll, the way she can't get it out of her head?" Then turning almost
+coaxingly to the old woman: "_Voyons_, look about you: they don't marry
+us like that."
+
+"But they do--_cela se voit tous les jours_. Ask Mr. Dormer."
+
+"Oh never! It would be as if I asked him to give us a practical proof."
+
+"I shall never prove anything by marrying any one," Nick said. "For me
+that question's over."
+
+Miriam rested kind eyes on him. "Dear me, how you must hate me!" And
+before he had time to reply she went on to her mother: "People marry
+them to make them leave the stage; which proves exactly what I say."
+
+"Ah they offer them the finest positions," reasoned Mrs. Rooth.
+
+"Do you want me to leave it then?"
+
+"Oh you can manage if you will!"
+
+"The only managing I know anything about is to do my work. If I manage
+that decently I shall pull through."
+
+"But, dearest, may our work not be of many sorts?"
+
+"I only know one," said Miriam.
+
+At this her mother got up with a sigh. "I see you do wish to drive me
+into the street."
+
+"Mamma's bewildered--there are so many paths she wants to follow, there
+are so many bundles of hay. As I told you, she wishes to gobble them
+all," the girl pursued. Then she added: "Yes, go and take the carriage;
+take a turn round the Park--you always delight in that--and come back
+for me in an hour."
+
+"I'm too vexed with you; the air will do me good," said Mrs. Rooth. But
+before she went she addressed Nick: "I've your assurance that you'll
+bring him then to-night?"
+
+"Bring Peter? I don't think I shall have to drag him," Nick returned.
+"But you must do me the justice to remember that if I should resort to
+force I should do something that's not particularly in my interest--I
+should be magnanimous."
+
+"We must always be that, mustn't we?" moralised Mrs. Rooth.
+
+"How could it affect your interest?" Miriam asked less abstractedly.
+
+"Yes, as you say," her mother mused at their host, "the question of
+marriage has ceased to exist for you."
+
+"Mamma goes straight at it!" laughed the girl, getting up while Nick
+rubbed his canvas before answering. Miriam went to mamma and settled
+her bonnet and mantle in preparation for her drive, then stood a moment
+with a filial arm about her and as if waiting for their friend's
+explanation. This, however, when it came halted visibly.
+
+"Why you said a while ago that if Peter was there you wouldn't act."
+
+"I'll act for _him_," smiled Miriam, inconsequently caressing her
+mother.
+
+"It doesn't matter whom it's for!" Mrs. Rooth declared sagaciously.
+
+"Take your drive and relax your mind," said the girl, kissing her. "Come
+for me in an hour; not later--but not sooner." She went with her to the
+door, bundled her out, closed it behind her and came back to the
+position she had quitted. "_This_ is the peace I want!" she gratefully
+cried as she settled into it.
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+
+Peter Sherringham said so little during the performance that his
+companion was struck by his dumbness, especially as Miriam's acting
+seemed to Nick magnificent. He held his breath while she was on the
+stage--she gave the whole thing, including the spectator's emotion, such
+a lift. She had not carried out her fantastic menace of not exerting
+herself, and, as Mrs. Rooth had said, it little mattered for whom she
+acted. Nick was conscious in watching her that she went through it all
+for herself, for the idea that possessed her and that she rendered with
+extraordinary breadth. She couldn't open the door a part of the way to
+it and let it simply peep in; if it entered at all it must enter in full
+procession and occupy the premises in state.
+
+This was what had happened on an occasion which, as the less tormented
+of our young men felt in his stall, grew larger with each throb of the
+responsive house; till by the time the play was half over it appeared to
+stretch out wide arms to the future. Nick had often heard more applause,
+but had never heard more attention, since they were all charmed and
+hushed together and success seemed to be sitting down with them. There
+had been of course plenty of announcement--the newspapers had abounded
+and the arts of the manager had taken the freest license; but it was
+easy to feel a fine, universal consensus and to recognise everywhere
+the light spring of hope. People snatched their eyes from the stage an
+instant to look at each other, all eager to hand on the torch passed to
+them by the actress over the footlights. It was a part of the impression
+that she was now only showing to the full, for this time she had verse
+to deal with and she made it unexpectedly exquisite. She was beauty,
+melody, truth; she was passion and persuasion and tenderness. She caught
+up the obstreperous play in soothing, entwining arms and, seeming to
+tread the air in the flutter of her robe, carried it into the high
+places of poetry, of art, of style. And she had such tones of nature,
+such concealments of art, such effusions of life, that the whole scene
+glowed with the colour she communicated, and the house, pervaded with
+rosy fire, glowed back at the scene. Nick looked round in the intervals;
+he felt excited and flushed--the night had turned to a feast of
+fraternity and he expected to see people embrace each other. The crowd,
+the agitation, the triumph, the surprise, the signals and rumours, the
+heated air, his associates, near him, pointing out other figures who
+presumably were celebrated but whom he had never heard of, all amused
+him and banished every impulse to question or to compare. Miriam was as
+happy as some right sensation--she would have fed the memory with deep
+draughts.
+
+One of the things that amused him or at least helped to fill his
+attention was Peter's attitude, which apparently didn't exclude
+criticism--rather indeed mainly implied it. This admirer never took his
+eyes off the actress, but he made no remark about her and never stirred
+out of his chair. Nick had had from the first a plan of going round to
+speak to her, but as his companion evidently meant not to move he
+scrupled at being more forward. During their brief dinner together--they
+were determined not to be late--Peter had been silent, quite recklessly
+grave, but also, his kinsman judged, full of the wish to make it clear
+he was calm. In his seat he was calmer than ever and had an air even of
+trying to suggest that his attendance, preoccupied as he was with deeper
+solemnities, was more or less mechanical, the result of a conception of
+duty, a habit of courtesy. When during a scene in the second act--a
+scene from which Miriam was absent--Nick observed to him that one might
+judge from his reserve that he wasn't pleased he replied after a moment:
+"I've been looking for her mistakes." And when Nick made answer to this
+that he certainly wouldn't find them he said again in an odd tone: "No,
+I shan't find them--I shan't find them." It might have seemed that since
+the girl's performance was a dazzling success he regarded his evening as
+rather a failure.
+
+After the third act Nick said candidly: "My dear fellow, how can you sit
+here? Aren't you going to speak to her?"
+
+To which Peter replied inscrutably: "Lord, no, never again. I bade her
+good-bye yesterday. She knows what I think of her form. It's very good,
+but she carries it a little too far. Besides, she didn't want me to
+come, and it's therefore more discreet to keep away from her."
+
+"Surely it isn't an hour for discretion!" Nick cried. "Excuse me at any
+rate for five minutes."
+
+He went behind and reappeared only as the curtain was rising on the
+fourth act; and in the interval between the fourth and the fifth he went
+again for a shorter time. Peter was personally detached, but he
+consented to listen to his companion's vivid account of the state of
+things on the stage, where the elation of victory had lighted up the
+place. The strain was over, the ship in port--they were all wiping their
+faces and grinning. Miriam--yes, positively--was grinning too, and she
+hadn't asked a question about Peter nor sent him a message. They were
+kissing all round and dancing for joy. They were on the eve, worse luck,
+of a tremendous run. Peter groaned irrepressibly for this; it was, save
+for a slight sign a moment later, the only vibration caused in him by
+his cousin's report. There was but one voice of regret that they hadn't
+put on the piece earlier, as the end of the season would interrupt the
+run. There was but one voice too about the fourth act--it was believed
+all London would rush to see the fourth act. The crowd about her was a
+dozen deep and Miriam in the midst of it all charming; she was receiving
+in the ugly place after the fashion of royalty, almost as hedged with
+the famous "divinity," yet with a smile and a word for each. She was
+really like a young queen on her accession. When she saw him, Nick, she
+had kissed her hand to him over the heads of the courtiers. Nick's
+artless comment on this was that she had such pretty manners. It made
+Peter laugh--apparently at his friend's conception of the manners of a
+young queen. Mrs. Rooth, with a dozen shawls on her arm, was as red as
+the kitchen-fire, but you couldn't tell if Miriam were red or pale: she
+was so cleverly, finely made up--perhaps a little too much. Dashwood of
+course was greatly to the fore, but you hadn't to mention his own
+performance to him: he took it all handsomely and wouldn't hear of
+anything but that _her_ fortune was made. He didn't say much indeed, but
+evidently had ideas about her fortune; he nodded significant things and
+whistled inimitable sounds--"Heuh, heuh!" He was perfectly satisfied;
+moreover, he looked further ahead than any one.
+
+It was on coming back to his place after the fourth act that Nick put
+in, for his companion's benefit, most of these touches in his sketch of
+the situation. If Peter had continued to look for Miriam's mistakes he
+hadn't yet found them: the fourth act, bristling with dangers, putting a
+premium on every sort of cheap effect, had rounded itself without a
+flaw. Sitting there alone while Nick was away he had leisure to meditate
+on the wonder of this--on the art with which the girl had separated
+passion from violence, filling the whole place and never screaming; for
+it had often seemed to him in London of old that the yell of theatrical
+emotion rang through the shrinking night like the voice of the Sunday
+newsboy. Miriam had never been more present to him than at this hour;
+but she was inextricably transmuted--present essentially as the romantic
+heroine she represented. His state of mind was of the strangest and he
+was conscious of its strangeness, just as he was conscious in his very
+person of a lapse of resistance which likened itself absurdly to
+liberation. He felt weak at the same time that he felt inspired, and he
+felt inspired at the same time that he knew, or believed he knew, that
+his face was a blank. He saw things as a shining confusion, and yet
+somehow something monstrously definite kept surging out of them. Miriam
+was a beautiful, actual, fictive, impossible young woman of a past age,
+an undiscoverable country, who spoke in blank verse and overflowed with
+metaphor, who was exalted and heroic beyond all human convenience and
+who yet was irresistibly real and related to one's own affairs. But that
+reality was a part of her spectator's joy, and she was not changed back
+to the common by his perception of the magnificent trick of art with
+which it was connected. Before his kinsman rejoined him Peter, taking a
+visiting-card from his pocket, had written on it in pencil a few words
+in a foreign tongue; but as at that moment he saw Nick coming in he
+immediately put it out of view.
+
+The last thing before the curtain rose on the fifth act that young man
+mentioned his having brought a message from Basil Dashwood, who hoped
+they both, on leaving the theatre, would come to supper with him in
+company with Miriam and her mother and several others: he had prepared a
+little informal banquet in honour of so famous a night. At this, while
+the curtain was about to rise, Peter immediately took out his card again
+and added something--he wrote the finest small hand you could see. Nick
+asked him what he was doing, and he waited but an instant. "It's a word
+to say I can't come."
+
+"To Dashwood? Oh I shall go," said Nick.
+
+"Well, I hope you'll enjoy it!" his companion replied in a tone which
+came back to him afterwards.
+
+When the curtain fell on the last act the people stayed, standing up in
+their places for acclamation. The applause shook the house--the recall
+became a clamour, the relief from a long tension. This was in any
+performance a moment Peter detested, but he stood for an instant beside
+Nick, who clapped, to his cousin's diplomatic sense, after the fashion
+of a school-boy at the pantomime. There was a veritable roar while the
+curtain drew back at the side most removed from our pair. Peter could
+see Basil Dashwood holding it, making a passage for the male "juvenile
+lead," who had Miriam in tow. Nick redoubled his efforts; heard the
+plaudits swell; saw the bows of the leading gentleman, who was hot and
+fat; saw Miriam, personally conducted and closer to the footlights, grow
+brighter and bigger and more swaying; and then became aware that his own
+comrade had with extreme agility slipped out of the stalls. Nick had
+already lost sight of him--he had apparently taken but a minute to
+escape from the house; and wondered at his quitting him without a
+farewell if he was to leave England on the morrow and they were not to
+meet at the hospitable Dashwood's. He wondered even what Peter was "up
+to," since, as he had assured him, there was no question of his going
+round to Miriam. He waited to see this young lady reappear three times,
+dragging Dashwood behind her at the second with a friendly arm, to whom,
+in turn, was hooked Miss Fanny Rover, the actress entrusted in the piece
+with the inevitable comic relief. He went out slowly with the crowd and
+at the door looked again for Peter, who struck him as deficient for once
+in finish. He couldn't know that in another direction and while he was
+helping the house to "rise" at its heroine, his kinsman had been
+particularly explicit.
+
+On reaching the lobby Peter had pounced on a small boy in buttons, who
+seemed superfluously connected with a desolate refreshment-room and,
+from the tips of his toes, was peeping at the stage through the glazed
+hole in the door of a box. Into one of the child's hands he thrust the
+card he had drawn again from his waistcoat and into the other the
+largest silver coin he could find in the same receptacle, while he bent
+over him with words of adjuration--words the little page tried to help
+himself to apprehend by instantly attempting to peruse the other words
+written on the card.
+
+"That's no use--it's Italian," said Peter; "only carry it round to Miss
+Rooth without a minute's delay. Place it in her hand and she'll give you
+some object--a bracelet, a glove, or a flower--to bring me back as a
+sign that she has received it. I shall be outside; bring me there what
+she gives you and you shall have another shilling--only fly!"
+
+His small messenger sounded him a moment with the sharp face of London
+wage-earning, and still more of London tip-earning, infancy, and
+vanished as swiftly as a slave of the Arabian Nights. While he waited in
+the lobby the audience began to pour out, and before the urchin had
+come back to him he was clapped on the shoulder by Nick.
+
+"I'm glad I haven't lost you, but why didn't you stay to give her a
+hand?"
+
+"Give her a hand? I hated it."
+
+"My dear man, I don't follow you," Nick said. "If you won't come to
+Dashwood's supper I fear our ways don't lie together."
+
+"Thank him very much; say I've to get up at an unnatural hour." To this
+Peter added: "I think I ought to tell you she may not be there."
+
+"Miss Rooth? Why it's all _for_ her."
+
+"I'm waiting for a word from her--she may change her mind."
+
+Nick showed his interest. "For you? What then have you proposed?"
+
+"I've proposed marriage," said Peter in a strange voice.
+
+"I say--!" Nick broke out; and at the same moment Peter's messenger
+squeezed through the press and stood before him.
+
+"She has given me nothing, sir," the boy announced; "but she says I'm to
+say 'All right!'"
+
+Nick's stare widened. "You've proposed through _him_?"
+
+"Aye, and she accepts. Good-night!"--on which, turning away, Peter
+bounded into a hansom. He said something to the driver through the roof,
+and Nick's eyes followed the cab as it started off. This young man was
+mystified, was even amused; especially when the youth in buttons,
+planted there and wondering too, brought forth:
+
+"Please sir, he told me he'd give me a shilling and he've forgot it."
+
+"Oh I can't pay you for _that_!" Nick laughed. But he fished out a dole,
+though he was vexed at the injury to the supper.
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+
+Peter meanwhile rolled away through the summer night to Saint John's
+Wood. He had put the pressure of strong words on his young friend,
+entreating her to drive home immediately, return there without any one,
+without even her mother. He wished to see her alone and for a purpose he
+would fully and satisfactorily explain--couldn't she trust him? He
+besought her to remember his own situation and throw over her supper,
+throw over everything. He would wait for her with unspeakable impatience
+in Balaklava Place.
+
+He did so, when he got there, but it had taken half an hour.
+Interminable seemed his lonely vigil in Miss Lumley's drawing-room,
+where the character of the original proprietress came out to him more
+than ever before in a kind of afterglow of old sociabilities, a vulgar,
+ghostly reference. The numerous candles had been lighted for him, and
+Mrs. Rooth's familiar fictions lay about; but his nerves forbade him the
+solace of a chair and a book. He walked up and down, thinking and
+listening, and as the long window, the balmy air permitting, stood open
+to the garden, he passed several times in and out. A carriage appeared
+to stop at the gate--then there was nothing; he heard the rare rattle of
+wheels and the far-off hum of London. His impatience was overwrought,
+and though he knew this it persisted; it would have been no easy matter
+for Miriam to break away from the flock of her felicitators. Still less
+simple was it doubtless for her to leave poor Dashwood with his supper
+on his hands. Perhaps she would bring Dashwood with her, bring him to
+time her; she was capable of playing him--that is, of playing Her
+Majesty's new representative to the small far-off State, or even of
+playing them both--that trick. Perhaps the little wretch in
+buttons--Peter remembered now the neglected shilling--only pretending to
+go round with his card, had come back with an invented answer. But how
+could he know, since presumably he couldn't read Italian, that his
+answer would fit the message? Peter was sorry now that he himself had
+not gone round, not snatched Miriam bodily away, made sure of her and of
+what he wanted of her.
+
+When forty minutes had elapsed he regarded it as proved that she
+wouldn't come, and, asking himself what he should do, determined to
+drive off again and seize her at her comrade's feast. Then he remembered
+how Nick had mentioned that this entertainment was not to be held at the
+young actor's lodgings but at some tavern or restaurant the name of
+which he had not heeded. Suddenly, however, Peter became aware with joy
+that this name didn't matter, for there was something at the garden door
+at last. He rushed out before she had had time to ring, and saw as she
+stepped from the carriage that she was alone. Now that she was there,
+that he had this evidence she had listened to him and trusted him, all
+his impatience and bitterness gave way and a flood of pleading
+tenderness took their place in the first words he spoke to her. It was
+far "dearer" of her than he had any right to dream, but she was the best
+and kindest creature--this showed it--as well as the most wonderful. He
+was really not off his head with his contradictory ways; no, before
+heaven he wasn't, and he would explain, he would make everything clear.
+Everything was changed.
+
+She stopped short in the little dusky garden, looking at him in the
+light of the open window. Then she called back to the coachman--they had
+left the garden door open--"Wait for me, mind; I shall want you again."
+
+"What's the matter--won't you stay?" Peter asked. "Are you going out
+again at this absurd hour? I won't hurt you," he gently urged. And he
+went back and closed the garden door. He wanted to say to the coachman,
+"It's no matter--please drive away." At the same time he wouldn't for
+the world have done anything offensive to her.
+
+"I've come because I thought it better to-night, as things have turned
+out, to do the thing you ask me, whatever it may be," she had already
+begun. "That's probably what you calculated I would think, eh? What this
+evening has been you've seen, and I must allow that your hand's in it.
+That you know for yourself--that you doubtless felt as you sat there.
+But I confess I don't imagine what you want of me here now," she added.
+She had remained standing in the path.
+
+Peter felt the irony of her "now" and how it made a fool of him, but he
+had been prepared for this and for much worse. He had begged her not to
+think him a fool, but in truth at present he cared little if she did.
+Very likely he was--in spite of his plea that everything was changed: he
+cared little even himself. However, he spoke in the tone of intense
+reason and of the fullest disposition to satisfy her. This lucidity only
+took still more from the dignity of his change of front: his separation
+from her the day before had had such pretensions to being lucid. But the
+explanation and the justification were in the very fact, the fact that
+had complete possession of him. He named it when he replied to her:
+"I've simply overrated my strength."
+
+"Oh I knew--I knew! That's why I entreated you not to come!" Miriam
+groaned. She turned away lamenting, and for a moment he thought she
+would retreat to her carriage. But he passed his hand into her arm, to
+draw her forward, and after an instant felt her yield.
+
+"The fact is we must have this thing out," he said. Then he added as he
+made her go into the house, bending over her, "The failure of my
+strength--that was just the reason of my coming."
+
+She broke into her laugh at these words, as she entered the
+drawing-room, and it made them sound pompous in their false wisdom. She
+flung off, as a good-natured tribute to the image of their having the
+thing out, a white shawl that had been wrapped round her. She was still
+painted and bedizened, in the splendid dress of her climax, so that she
+seemed protected and alienated by the character she had been acting.
+"Whatever it is you want--when I understand--you'll be very brief, won't
+you? Do you know I've given up a charming supper for you? Mamma has gone
+there. I've promised to go back to them."
+
+"You're an angel not to have let her come with you. I'm sure she wanted
+to," Peter made reply.
+
+"Oh she's all right, but she's nervous." Then the girl added: "Couldn't
+she keep you away after all?"
+
+"Whom are you talking about?" Biddy Dormer was as absent from his mind
+as if she had never existed.
+
+"The charming thing you were with this morning. Is she so afraid of
+obliging me? Oh she'd be so good for you!"
+
+"Don't speak of that," Peter gravely said. "I was in perfect good faith
+yesterday when I took leave of you. I was--I was. But I can't--I can't:
+you're too unutterably dear to me."
+
+"Oh don't--_please_ don't!" Miriam wailed at this. She stood before the
+fireless chimney-piece with one of her hands on it. "If it's only to say
+that, don't you know, what's the use?"
+
+"It isn't only to say that. I've a plan, a perfect plan: the whole thing
+lies clear before me."
+
+"And what's the whole thing?"
+
+He had to make an effort. "You say your mother's nervous. Ah if you knew
+how nervous I am!"
+
+"Well, I'm not. Go on."
+
+"Give it up--give it up!" Peter stammered.
+
+"Give it up?" She fixed him like a mild Medusa.
+
+"I'll marry you to-morrow if you'll renounce; and in return for the
+sacrifice you make for me I'll do more for you than ever was done for a
+woman before."
+
+"Renounce after to-night? Do you call that a plan?" she asked. "Those
+are old words and very foolish ones--you wanted something of that sort a
+year ago."
+
+"Oh I fluttered round the idea at that time; we were talking in the air.
+I didn't really believe I could make you see it then, and certainly you
+didn't see it. My own future, moreover, wasn't definite to me. I didn't
+know what I could offer you. But these last months have made a
+difference--I do know now. Now what I say is deliberate--It's deeply
+meditated. I simply can't live without you, and I hold that together we
+may do great things."
+
+She seemed to wonder. "What sort of things?"
+
+"The things of my profession, of my life, the things one does for one's
+country, the responsibility and the honour of great affairs; deeply
+fascinating when one's immersed in them, and more exciting really--put
+them even at that--than the excitements of the theatre. Care for me only
+a little and you'll see what they are, they'll take hold of you. Believe
+me, believe me," Peter pleaded; "every fibre of my being trembles in
+what I say to you."
+
+"You admitted yesterday it wouldn't do," she made answer. "Where were
+the fibres of your being then?"
+
+"They throbbed in me even more than now, and I was trying, like an ass,
+not to feel them. Where was this evening yesterday--where were the
+maddening hours I've just spent? Ah you're the perfection of
+perfections, and as I sat there to-night you taught me what I really
+want."
+
+"The perfection of perfections?" the girl echoed with the strangest
+smile.
+
+"I needn't try to tell you: you must have felt to-night with such
+rapture what you are, what you can do. How can I give that up?" he
+piteously went on.
+
+"How can _I_, my poor friend? I like your plans and your
+responsibilities and your great affairs, as you call them. _Voyons_,
+they're infantile. I've just shown that I'm a perfection of perfections:
+therefore it's just the moment to 'renounce,' as you gracefully say? Oh
+I was sure, I was sure!" And Miriam paused, resting eyes at once lighted
+and troubled on him as in the effort to think of some arrangement that
+would help him out of his absurdity. "I was sure, I mean, that if you
+did come your poor, dear, doting brain would be quite confused," she
+presently pursued. "I can't be a muff in public just for you,
+_pourtant_. Dear me, why do you like us so much?"
+
+"Like you? I loathe you!"
+
+"_Je le vois parbleu bien_!" she lightly returned. "I mean why do you
+feel us, judge us, understand us so well? I please you because you see,
+because you know; and then for that very reason of my pleasing you must
+adapt me to your convenience, you must take me over, as they say. You
+admire me as an artist and therefore want to put me into a box in which
+the artist will breathe her last. Ah be reasonable; you must let her
+live!"
+
+"Let her live? As if I could prevent her living!" Peter cried with
+unmistakable conviction. "Even if I did wish how could I prevent a
+spirit like yours from expressing itself? Don't talk about my putting
+you in a box, for, dearest child, I'm taking you out of one," he all
+persuasively explained. "The artist is irrepressible, eternal; she'll be
+in everything you are and in everything you do, and you'll go about with
+her triumphantly exerting your powers, charming the world, carrying
+everything before you."
+
+Miriam's colour rose, through all her artificial surfaces, at this all
+but convincing appeal, and she asked whimsically: "Shall you like that?"
+
+"Like my wife to be the most brilliant woman in Europe? I think I can do
+with it."
+
+"Aren't you afraid of me?"
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+"Bravely said. How little you know me after all!" sighed the girl.
+
+"I tell the truth," Peter ardently went on; "and you must do me the
+justice to admit that I've taken the time to dig deep into my feelings.
+I'm not an infatuated boy; I've lived, I've had experience, I've
+observed; in short I know what I mean and what I want. It isn't a thing
+to reason about; it's simply a need that consumes me. I've put it on
+starvation diet, but that's no use--really, it's no use, Miriam," the
+young man declared with a ring that spoke enough of his sincerity. "It
+is no question of my trusting you; it's simply a question of your
+trusting me. You're all right, as I've heard you say yourself; you're
+frank, spontaneous, generous; you're a magnificent creature. Just
+quietly marry me and I'll manage you."
+
+"'Manage' me?" The girl's inflexion was droll; it made him change
+colour.
+
+"I mean I'll give you a larger life than the largest you can get in any
+other way. The stage is great, no doubt, but the world's greater. It's a
+bigger theatre than any of those places in the Strand. We'll go in for
+realities instead of fables, and you'll do them far better than you do
+the fables."
+
+Miriam had listened attentively, but her face that could so show things
+showed her despair at his perverted ingenuity. "Pardon my saying it
+after your delightful tributes to my worth," she returned in a moment,
+"but I've never listened to anything quite so grandly unreal. You think
+so well of me that humility itself ought to keep me silent; nevertheless
+I _must_ utter a few shabby words of sense. I'm a magnificent creature
+on the stage--well and good; it's what I want to be and it's charming to
+see such evidence that I succeed. But off the stage, woe betide us both,
+I should lose all my advantages. The fact's so patent that it seems to
+me I'm very good-natured even to discuss it with you."
+
+"Are you on the stage now, pray? Ah Miriam, if it weren't for the
+respect I owe you!" her companion wailed.
+
+"If it weren't for that I shouldn't have come here to meet you. My gift
+is the thing that takes you: could there be a better proof than that
+it's to-night's display of it that has brought you to this unreason?
+It's indeed a misfortune that you're so sensitive to our poor arts,
+since they play such tricks with your power to see things as they are.
+Without my share of them I should be a dull, empty, third-rate woman,
+and yet that's the fate you ask me to face and insanely pretend you're
+ready to face yourself."
+
+"Without it--without it?" Sherringham cried. "Your own sophistry's
+infinitely worse than mine. I should like to see you without it for the
+fiftieth part of a second. What I ask you to give up is the dusty boards
+of the play-house and the flaring footlights, but not the very essence
+of your being. Your 'gift,' your genius, is yourself, and it's because
+it's yourself that I yearn for you. If it had been a thing you could
+leave behind by the easy dodge of stepping off the stage I would never
+have looked at you a second time. Don't talk to me as if I were a
+simpleton--with your own false simplifications! You were made to charm
+and console, to represent beauty and harmony and variety to miserable
+human beings; and the daily life of man is the theatre for that--not a
+vulgar shop with a turnstile that's open only once in the twenty-four
+hours. 'Without it,' verily!" Peter proceeded with a still, deep heat
+that kept down in a manner his rising scorn and exasperated passion.
+"Please let me know the first time you're without your face, without
+your voice, your step, your exquisite spirit, the turn of your head and
+the wonder of your look!"
+
+Miriam at this moved away from him with a port that resembled what she
+sometimes showed on the stage when she turned her young back upon the
+footlights and then after a few steps grandly swept round again. This
+evolution she performed--it was over in an instant--on the present
+occasion; even to stopping short with her eyes upon him and her head
+admirably erect. "Surely it's strange," she said, "the way the other
+solution never occurs to you."
+
+"The other solution?"
+
+"That _you_ should stay on the stage."
+
+"I don't understand you," her friend gloomed.
+
+"Stay on _my_ stage. Come off your own."
+
+For a little he said nothing; then: "You mean that if I'll do that
+you'll have me?"
+
+"I mean that if it were to occur to you to offer me a little sacrifice
+on your own side it might place the matter in a slightly more attractive
+light."
+
+"Continue to let you act--as my wife?" he appealed. "Is it a real
+condition? Am I to understand that those are your terms?"
+
+"I may say so without fear, because you'll never accept them."
+
+"Would you accept them _from_ me?" he demanded; "accept the manly, the
+professional sacrifice, see me throw up my work, my prospects--of course
+I should have to do that--and simply become your appendage?"
+
+She raised her arms for a prodigious fall. "My dear fellow, you invite
+me with the best conscience in the world to become yours."
+
+"The cases are not equal. You'd make of me the husband of an actress. I
+should make of you the wife of an ambassador."
+
+"The husband of an actress, _c'est bientot dit_, in that tone of scorn!
+If you're consistent," said Miriam, all lucid and hard, "it ought to be
+a proud position for you."
+
+"What do you mean, if I'm consistent?"
+
+"Haven't you always insisted on the beauty and interest of our art and
+the greatness of our mission? Haven't you almost come to blows with poor
+Gabriel Nash about it? What did all that mean if you won't face the
+first consequences of your theory? Either it was an enlightened
+conviction or it was an empty pretence. If you were only talking
+against time I'm glad to know it," she rolled out with a darkening eye.
+"The better the cause, it seems to me, the better the deed; and if the
+theatre _is_ important to the 'human spirit,' as you used to say so
+charmingly, and if into the bargain you've the pull of being so fond of
+me, I don't see why it should be monstrous of you to give us your
+services in an intelligent, indirect way. Of course if you're not
+serious we needn't talk at all; but if you are, with your conception of
+what the actor can do, why is it so base to come to the actor's aid,
+taking one devotion with another? If I'm so fine I'm worth looking after
+a bit, and the place where I'm finest is the place to look after me!"
+
+He had a long pause again, taking her in as it seemed to him he had
+never done. "You were never finer than at this minute, in the deepest
+domesticity of private life. I've no conception whatever of what the
+actor can do, and no theory whatever about the importance of the
+theatre. Any infatuation of that sort has completely dropped from me,
+and for all I care the theatre may go to the dogs--which I judge it
+altogether probably will!"
+
+"You're dishonest, you're ungrateful, you're false!" Miriam flashed. "It
+was the theatre brought you here--if it hadn't been for the theatre I
+never would have looked at you. It was in the name of the theatre you
+first made love to me; it's to the theatre you owe every advantage that,
+so far as I'm concerned, you possess."
+
+"I seem to possess a great many!" poor Peter derisively groaned.
+
+"You might avail yourself better of those you have! You make me angry,
+but I want to be fair," said the shining creature, "and I can't be
+unless you are. You're not fair, nor candid, nor honourable, when you
+swallow your words and abjure your faith, when you throw over old
+friends and old memories for a selfish purpose."
+
+"'Selfish purpose' is, in your own convenient idiom, _bientot dit_,"
+Peter promptly answered. "I suppose you consider that if I truly
+esteemed you I should be ashamed to deprive the world of the light of
+your genius. Perhaps my esteem isn't of the right quality--there are
+different kinds, aren't there? At any rate I've explained to you that I
+propose to deprive the world of nothing at all. You shall be celebrated,
+_allez_!"
+
+"Vain words, vain words, my dear!" and she turned off again in her
+impatience. "I know of course," she added quickly, "that to befool
+yourself with such twaddle you must be pretty bad."
+
+"Yes, I'm pretty bad," he admitted, looking at her dismally. "What do
+you do with the declaration you made me the other day--the day I found
+my cousin here--that you'd take me if I should come to you as one who
+had risen high?"
+
+Miriam thought of it. "I remember--the chaff about the honours, the
+orders, the stars and garters. My poor foolish friend, don't be so
+painfully literal. Don't you know a joke when you see it? It was to
+worry your cousin, wasn't it? But it didn't in the least succeed."
+
+"Why should you wish to worry my cousin?"
+
+"Because he's so provoking!" she instantly answered; after which she
+laughed as if for her falling too simply into the trap he had laid.
+"Surely, at all events, I had my freedom no less than I have it now.
+Pray what explanations should I have owed you and in what fear of you
+should I have gone? However, that has nothing to do with it. Say I did
+tell you that we might arrange it on the day you should come to me
+covered with glory in the shape of little tinkling medals: why should
+you anticipate that transaction by so many years and knock me down such
+a long time in advance? Where's the glory, please, and where are the
+medals?"
+
+"Dearest girl, am I not going to strange parts--a capital
+promotion--next month," he insistently demanded, "and can't you trust me
+enough to believe I speak with a real appreciation of the facts (that
+I'm not lying to you in short) when I tell you I've my foot in the
+stirrup? The glory's dawning. _I_'m all right too."
+
+"What you propose to me, then, is to accompany you _tout bonnement_ to
+your new post. What you propose to me is to pack up and start?"
+
+"You put it in a nutshell." But Peter's smile was strained.
+
+"You're touching--it has its charm. But you can't get anything in any of
+the Americas, you know. I'm assured there are no medals to be picked up
+in those parts--which are therefore 'strange' indeed. That's why the
+diplomatic body hate them all."
+
+"They're on the way, they're on the way!"--he could only feverishly
+hammer. "The people here don't keep us long in disagreeable places
+unless we want to stay. There's one thing you can get anywhere if you've
+ability, and nowhere if you've not, and in the disagreeable places
+generally more than in the others; and that--since it's the element of
+the question we're discussing--is simply success. It's odious to be put
+on one's swagger, but I protest against being treated as if I had
+nothing to offer--to offer a person who has such glories of her own. I'm
+not a little presumptuous ass; I'm a man accomplished and determined,
+and the omens are on my side." Peter faltered a moment and then with a
+queer expression went on: "Remember, after all, that, strictly speaking,
+your glories are also still in the future." An exclamation at these
+words burst from Miriam's lips, but her companion resumed quickly: "Ask
+my official superiors, ask any of my colleagues, if they consider I've
+nothing to offer."
+
+He had an idea as he ceased speaking that she was on the point of
+breaking out with some strong word of resentment at his allusion to the
+contingent nature of her prospects. But it only deepened his wound to
+hear her say with extraordinary mildness: "It's perfectly true that my
+glories are still to come, that I may fizzle out and that my little
+success of to-day is perhaps a mere flash in the pan. Stranger things
+have been--something of that sort happens every day. But don't we talk
+too much of that part of it?" she asked with a weary patience that was
+noble in its effect. "Surely it's vulgar to think only of the noise
+one's going to make--especially when one remembers how utterly _betes_
+most of the people will be among whom one makes it. It isn't to my
+possible glories I cling; it's simply to my idea, even if it's destined
+to betray me and sink me. I like it better than anything else--a
+thousand times better (I'm sorry to have to put it in such a way) than
+tossing up my head as the fine lady of a little coterie."
+
+"A little coterie? I don't know what you're talking about!"--for this at
+least Peter could fight.
+
+"A big coterie, then! It's only that at the best. A nasty, prim,
+'official' woman who's perched on her little local pedestal and thinks
+she's a queen for ever because she's ridiculous for an hour! Oh you
+needn't tell me, I've seen them abroad--the dreariest females--and could
+imitate them here. I could do one for you on the spot if I weren't so
+tired. It's scarcely worth mentioning perhaps all this while--but I'm
+ready to drop." She picked up the white mantle she had tossed off,
+flinging it round her with her usual amplitude of gesture. "They're
+waiting for me and I confess I'm hungry. If I don't hurry they'll eat up
+all the nice things. Don't say I haven't been obliging, and come back
+when you're better. Good-night."
+
+"I quite agree with you that we've talked too much about the vulgar side
+of our question," Peter returned, walking round to get between her and
+the French window by which she apparently had a view of leaving the
+room. "That's because I've wanted to bribe you. Bribery's almost always
+vulgar."
+
+"Yes, you should do better. _Merci_! There's a cab: some of them have
+come for me. I must go," she added, listening for a sound that reached
+her from the road.
+
+Peter listened too, making out no cab. "Believe me, it isn't wise to
+turn your back on such an affection as mine and on such a confidence,"
+he broke out again, speaking almost in a warning tone--there was a touch
+of superior sternness in it, as of a rebuke for real folly, but it was
+meant to be tender--and stopping her within a few feet of the window.
+"Such things are the most precious that life has to give us," he added
+all but didactically.
+
+She had listened once more for a little; then she appeared to give up
+the idea of the cab. The reader need hardly be told that at this stage
+of her youthful history the right way for her lover to take her wouldn't
+have been to picture himself as acting for her highest good. "I like
+your calling the feeling with which I inspire you confidence," she
+presently said; and the deep note of the few words had something of the
+distant mutter of thunder.
+
+"What is it, then, when I offer you everything I have, everything I am,
+everything I shall ever be?"
+
+She seemed to measure him as for the possible success of an attempt to
+pass him. But she remained where she was. "I'm sorry for you, yes, but
+I'm also rather ashamed."
+
+"Ashamed of _me_?"
+
+"A brave offer to see me through--that's what I should call confidence.
+You say to-day that you hate the theatre--and do you know what has made
+you do it? The fact that it has too large a place in your mind to let
+you disown it and throw it over with a good conscience. It has a deep
+fascination for you, and yet you're not strong enough to do so
+enlightened and public a thing as take up with it in my person. You're
+ashamed of yourself for that, as all your constant high claims for it
+are on record; so you blaspheme against it to try and cover your retreat
+and your treachery and straighten out your personal situation. But it
+won't do, dear Mr. Sherringham--it won't do at all," Miriam proceeded
+with a triumphant, almost judicial lucidity which made her companion
+stare; "you haven't the smallest excuse of stupidity, and your
+perversity is no excuse whatever. Leave her alone altogether--a poor
+girl who's making her way--or else come frankly to help her, to give her
+the benefit of your wisdom. Don't lock her up for life under the
+pretence of doing her good. What does one most good is to see a little
+honesty. You're the best judge, the best critic, the best observer, the
+best _believer_, that I've ever come across: you're committed to it by
+everything you've said to me for a twelvemonth, by the whole turn of
+your mind, by the way you've followed us up, all of us, from far back.
+If an art's noble and beneficent one shouldn't be afraid to offer it
+one's arm. Your cousin isn't: he can make sacrifices."
+
+"My cousin?" Peter amazedly echoed. "Why, wasn't it only the other day
+you were throwing his sacrifices in his teeth?"
+
+Under this imputation on her straightness Miriam flinched but for an
+instant. "I did that to worry _you_," she smiled.
+
+"Why should you wish to worry me if you care so little about me?"
+
+"Care little about you? Haven't I told you often, didn't I tell you
+yesterday, how much I care? Ain't I showing it now by spending half the
+night here with you--giving myself away to all those cynics--taking all
+this trouble to persuade you to hold up your head and have the courage
+of your opinions?"
+
+"You invent my opinions for your convenience," said Peter all undaunted.
+"As long ago as the night I introduced you, in Paris, to Mademoiselle
+Voisin, you accused me of looking down on those who practise your art. I
+remember how you came down on me because I didn't take your friend
+Dashwood seriously enough. Perhaps I didn't; but if already at that time
+I was so wide of the mark you can scarcely accuse me of treachery now."
+
+"I don't remember, but I daresay you're right," Miriam coldly meditated.
+"What I accused you of then was probably simply what I reproach you with
+now--the germ at least of your deplorable weakness. You consider that we
+do awfully valuable work, and yet you wouldn't for the world let people
+suppose you really take our side. If your position was even at that time
+so false, so much the worse for you, that's all. Oh it's refreshing,"
+his formidable friend exclaimed after a pause during which Peter seemed
+to himself to taste the full bitterness of despair, so baffled and
+cheapened he intimately felt--"oh it's refreshing to see a man burn his
+ships in a cause that appeals to him, give up something precious for it
+and break with horrid timidities and snobberies! It's the most beautiful
+sight in the world."
+
+Poor Peter, sore as he was, and with the cold breath of failure in his
+face, nevertheless burst out laughing at this fine irony. "You're
+magnificent, you give me at this moment the finest possible illustration
+of what you mean by burning one's ships. Verily, verily there's no one
+like you: talk of timidity, talk of refreshment! If I had any talent for
+it I'd go on the stage to-morrow, so as to spend my life with you the
+better."
+
+"If you'll do that I'll be your wife the day after your first
+appearance. That would be really respectable," Miriam said.
+
+"Unfortunately I've no talent."
+
+"That would only make it the more respectable."
+
+"You're just like poor Nick," Peter returned--"you've taken to imitating
+Gabriel Nash. Don't you see that it's only if it were a question of my
+going on the stage myself that there would be a certain fitness in your
+contrasting me invidiously with Nick and in my giving up one career for
+another? But simply to stand in the wing and hold your shawl and your
+smelling-bottle--!" he concluded mournfully, as if he had ceased to
+debate.
+
+"Holding my shawl and my smelling-bottle is a mere detail, representing
+a very small part of the whole precious service, the protection and
+encouragement, for which a woman in my position might be indebted to a
+man interested in her work and as accomplished and determined as you
+very justly describe yourself."
+
+"And would it be your idea that such a man should live on the money
+earned by an exhibition of the person of his still more accomplished and
+still more determined wife?"
+
+"Why not if they work together--if there's something of his spirit and
+his support in everything she does?" Miriam demanded. "_Je vous
+attendais_ with the famous 'person'; of course that's the great stick
+they beat us with. Yes, we show it for money, those of us who have
+anything decent to show, and some no doubt who haven't, which is the
+real scandal. What will you have? It's only the envelope of the idea,
+it's only our machinery, which ought to be conceded to us; and in
+proportion as the idea takes hold of us do we become unconscious of the
+clumsy body. Poor old 'person'--if you knew what _we_ think of it! If
+you don't forget it that's your own affair: it shows you're dense before
+the idea."
+
+"That _I_'m dense?"--and Peter appealed to their lamplit solitude, the
+favouring, intimate night that only witnessed his defeat, as if this
+outrage had been all that was wanting.
+
+"I mean the public is--the public who pays us. After all, they expect us
+to look at _them_ too, who are not half so well worth it. If you should
+see some of the creatures who have the face to plant themselves there in
+the stalls before one for three mortal hours! I daresay it would be
+simpler to have no bodies, but we're all in the same box, and it would
+be a great injustice to the idea, and we're all showing ourselves all
+the while; only some of us are not worth paying."
+
+"You're extraordinarily droll, but somehow I can't laugh at you," he
+said, his handsome face drawn by his pain to a contraction sufficiently
+attesting the fact. "Do you remember the second time I ever saw you--the
+day you recited at my place?" he abruptly asked; a good deal as if he
+were taking from his quiver an arrow which, if it was the last, was also
+one of the sharpest.
+
+"Perfectly, and what an idiot I was, though it was only yesterday!"
+
+"You expressed to me then a deep detestation of the sort of
+self-exposure to which the profession you were taking up would commit
+you. If you compared yourself to a contortionist at a country fair I'm
+only taking my cue from you."
+
+"I don't know what I may have said then," replied Miriam, whose steady
+flight was not arrested by this ineffectual bolt; "I was no doubt
+already wonderful for talking of things I know nothing about. I was only
+on the brink of the stream and I perhaps thought the water colder than
+it is. One warms it a bit one's self when once one's in. Of course I'm a
+contortionist and of course there's a hateful side, but don't you see
+how that very fact puts a price on every compensation, on the help of
+those who are ready to insist on the _other_ side, the grand one, and
+especially on the sympathy of the person who's ready to insist most and
+to keep before us the great thing, the element that makes up for
+everything?"
+
+"The element--?" Peter questioned with a vagueness that was pardonably
+exaggerated. "Do you mean your success?"
+
+"I mean what you've so often been eloquent about," she returned with an
+indulgent shrug--"the way we simply stir people's souls. Ah there's
+where life can help us," she broke out with a change of tone, "there's
+where human relations and affections can help us; love and faith and joy
+and suffering and experience--I don't know what to call 'em! They
+suggest things, they light them up and sanctify them, as you may say;
+they make them appear worth doing." She became radiant a while, as if
+with a splendid vision; then melting into still another accent, which
+seemed all nature and harmony and charity, she proceeded: "I must tell
+you that in the matter of what we can do for each other I have a
+tremendously high ideal. I go in for closeness of union, for identity of
+interest. A true marriage, as they call it, must do one a lot of good!"
+
+He stood there looking at her for a time during which her eyes
+sustained his penetration without a relenting gleam, some lapse of
+cruelty or of paradox. But with a passionate, inarticulate sound he
+turned away, to remain, on the edge of the window, his hands in his
+pockets, gazing defeatedly, doggedly, into the featureless night, into
+the little black garden which had nothing to give him but a familiar
+smell of damp. The warm darkness had no relief for him, and Miriam's
+histrionic hardness flung him back against a fifth-rate world, against a
+bedimmed, star-punctured nature which had no consolation--the bleared,
+irresponsive eyes of the London firmament. For the brief space of his
+glaring at these things he dumbly and helplessly raged. What he wanted
+was something that was not in _that_ thick prospect. What was the
+meaning of this sudden, offensive importunity of "art," this senseless,
+mocking catch, like some irritating chorus of conspirators in a bad
+opera, in which her voice was so incongruously conjoined with Nick's and
+in which Biddy's sweet little pipe had not scrupled still more
+bewilderingly to mingle? Art might yield to damnation: what commission
+after all had he ever given it to better him or bother him? If the
+pointless groan in which Peter exhaled a part of his humiliation had
+been translated into words, these words would have been as heavily
+charged with a genuine British mistrust of the uncanny principle as if
+the poor fellow speaking them had never quitted his island. Several
+acquired perceptions had struck a deep root in him, but an immemorial,
+compact formation lay deeper still. He tried at the present hour to rest
+on it spiritually, but found it inelastic; and at the very moment when
+most conscious of this absence of the rebound or of any tolerable ease
+he felt his vision solicited by an object which, as he immediately
+guessed, could only add to the complication of things.
+
+An undefined shape hovered before him in the garden, halfway between the
+gate and the house; it remained outside of the broad shaft of lamplight
+projected from the window. It wavered for a moment after it had become
+aware of his observation and then whisked round the corner of the lodge.
+This characteristic movement so effectually dispelled the mystery--it
+could only be Mrs. Rooth who resorted to such conspicuous
+secrecies--that, to feel the game up and his interview over, he had no
+need to see the figure reappear on second thoughts and dodge about in
+the dusk with a sportive, vexatious vagueness. Evidently Miriam's
+warning of a few minutes before had been founded: a cab had deposited
+her anxious mother at the garden door. Mrs. Rooth had entered with
+precautions; she had approached the house and retreated; she had effaced
+herself--had peered and waited and listened. Maternal solicitude and
+muddled calculations had drawn her from a feast as yet too imperfectly
+commemorative. The heroine of the occasion of course had been
+intolerably missed, so that the old woman had both obliged the company
+and quieted her own nerves by jumping insistently into a hansom and
+rattling up to Saint John's Wood to reclaim the absentee. But if she had
+wished to be in time she had also desired not to be impertinent, and
+would have been still more embarrassed to say what she aspired to
+promote than to phrase what she had proposed to hinder. She wanted to
+abstain tastefully, to interfere felicitously, and, more generally and
+justifiably--the small hours having come--to see what her young charges
+were "up to." She would probably have gathered that they were
+quarrelling, and she appeared now to be motioning to Peter to know if it
+were over. He took no notice of her signals, if signals they were; he
+only felt that before he made way for the poor, odious lady there was
+one small spark he might strike from Miriam's flint.
+
+Without letting her guess that her mother was on the premises he turned
+again to his companion, half-expecting she would have taken her chance
+to regard their discussion as more than terminated and by the other
+egress flit away from him in silence. But she was still there; she was
+in the act of approaching him with a manifest intention of kindness, and
+she looked indeed, to his surprise, like an angel of mercy.
+
+"Don't let us part so harshly," she said--"with your trying to make me
+feel as if I were merely disobliging. It's no use talking--we only hurt
+each other. Let us hold our tongues like decent people and go about our
+business. It isn't as if you hadn't any cure--when you've such a capital
+one. Try it, try it, my dear friend--you'll see! I wish you the highest
+promotion and the quickest--every success and every reward. When you've
+got them all, some day, and I've become a great swell too, we'll meet on
+that solid basis and you'll be glad I've been dreadful now."
+
+"Surely before I leave you I've a right to ask you this," he answered,
+holding fast in both his own the cool hand of farewell she had chosen
+finally to torment him with. "Are you ready to follow up by a definite
+promise your implied assurance that I've a remedy?"
+
+"A definite promise?" Miriam benignly gazed--it was the perfection of
+indirectness. "I don't 'imply' that you've a remedy. I declare it on the
+house-tops. That delightful girl--"
+
+"I'm not talking of any delightful girl but you!" he broke in with a
+voice that, as he afterwards learned, struck Mrs. Rooth's ears in the
+garden with affright. "I simply hold you, under pain of being convicted
+of the grossest prevarication, to the strict sense of what you said ten
+minutes ago."
+
+"Ah I've said so many things! One has to do that to get rid of you. You
+rather hurt my hand," she added--and jerked it away in a manner showing
+that if she was an angel of mercy her mercy was partly for herself.
+
+"As I understand you, then, I may have some hope if I do renounce my
+profession?" Peter pursued. "If I break with everything, my prospects,
+my studies, my training, my emoluments, my past and my future, the
+service of my country and the ambition of my life, and engage to take up
+instead the business of watching your interests so far as I may learn
+how and ministering to your triumphs so far as may in me lie--if after
+further reflexion I decide to go through these preliminaries, have I
+your word that I may definitely look to you to reward me with your
+precious hand?"
+
+"I don't think you've any right to put the question to me now," she
+returned with a promptitude partly produced perhaps by the clear-cut
+form his solemn speech had given--there was a charm in the sound of
+it--to each item of his enumeration. "The case is so very contingent, so
+dependent on what you ingeniously call your further reflexion. While you
+really reserve everything you ask me to commit myself. If it's a
+question of further reflexion why did you drag me up here? And then,"
+she added, "I'm so far from wishing you to take any such monstrous
+step."
+
+"Monstrous you call it? Just now you said it would be sublime."
+
+"Sublime if it's done with spontaneity, with passion; ridiculous if it's
+done 'after further reflexion.' As you said, perfectly, a while ago, it
+isn't a thing to reason about."
+
+"Ah what a help you'd be to me in diplomacy!" Peter yearningly cried.
+"Will you give me a year to consider?"
+
+"Would you trust _me_ for a year?"
+
+"Why not, if I'm ready to trust you for life?"
+
+"Oh I shouldn't be free then, worse luck. And how much you seem to take
+for granted one must like you!"
+
+"Remember," he could immediately say, "that you've made a great point of
+your liking me. Wouldn't you do so still more if I were heroic?"
+
+She showed him, for all her high impatience now, the interest of a long
+look. "I think I should pity you in such a cause. Give it all to _her_;
+don't throw away a real happiness!"
+
+"Ah you can't back out of your position with a few vague and even rather
+impertinent words!" Peter protested. "You accuse me of swallowing my
+opinions, but you swallow your pledges. You've painted in heavenly
+colours the sacrifice I'm talking of, and now you must take the
+consequences."
+
+"The consequences?"
+
+"Why my coming back in a year to square you."
+
+"Ah you're a bore!"--she let him have it at last. "Come back when you
+like. I don't wonder you've grown desperate, but fancy _me_ then!" she
+added as she looked past him at a new interlocutor.
+
+"Yes, but if he'll square you!" Peter heard Mrs. Rooth's voice respond
+all persuasively behind him. She had stolen up to the window now, had
+passed the threshold, was in the room, but her daughter had not been
+startled. "What is it he wants to do, dear?" she continued to Miriam.
+
+"To induce me to marry him if he'll go upon the stage. He'll practise
+over there--where he's going--and then come back and appear. Isn't it
+too dreadful? Talk him out of it, stay with him, soothe him!" the girl
+hurried on. "You'll find some drinks and some biscuits in the
+cupboard--keep him with you, pacify him, give him _his_ little supper.
+Meanwhile I'll go to mine; I'll take the brougham; don't follow!"
+
+With which words Miriam bounded into the garden, her white drapery
+shining for an instant in the darkness before she disappeared. Peter
+looked about him to pick up his hat, but while he did so heard the bang
+of the gate and the quick carriage get into motion. Mrs. Rooth appeared
+to sway violently and in opposed directions: that of the impulse to rush
+after Miriam and that of the extraordinary possibility to which the
+young lady had alluded. She was in doubt, yet at a venture, detaining
+him with a maternal touch, she twinkled up at their visitor like an
+insinuating glow-worm. "I'm so glad you came."
+
+"I'm not. I've got nothing by it," Peter said as he found his hat.
+
+"Oh it was so beautiful!" she declared.
+
+"The play--yes, wonderful. I'm afraid it's too late for me to avail
+myself of the privilege your daughter offers me. Good-night."
+
+"Ah it's a pity; won't you take _anything_?" asked Mrs. Rooth. "When I
+heard your voice so high I was scared and hung back." But before he
+could reply she added: "Are you really thinking of the stage?"
+
+"It comes to the same thing."
+
+"Do you mean you've proposed?"
+
+"Oh unmistakably."
+
+"And what does she say?"
+
+"Why you heard: she says I'm an ass."
+
+"Ah the little wretch!" laughed Mrs. Rooth. "Leave her to me. I'll help
+you. But you are mad. Give up nothing--least of all your advantages."
+
+"I won't give up your daughter," said Peter, reflecting that if this was
+cheap it was at any rate good enough for Mrs. Rooth. He mended it a
+little indeed by adding darkly: "But you can't make her take me."
+
+"I can prevent her taking any one else."
+
+"Oh _can_ you?" Peter cried with more scepticism than ceremony.
+
+"You'll see--you'll see." He passed into the garden, but, after she had
+blown out the candles and drawn the window to, Mrs. Rooth went with him.
+"All you've got to do is to be yourself--to be true to your fine
+position," she explained as they proceeded. "Trust me with the
+rest--trust me and be quiet."
+
+"How can one be quiet after this magnificent evening?"
+
+"Yes, but it's just that!" panted the eager old woman. "It has launched
+her so on this sea of dangers that to make up for the loss of the old
+security (don't you know?) we must take a still firmer hold."
+
+"Aye, of what?" Peter asked as Mrs. Rooth's comfort became vague while
+she stopped with him at the garden door.
+
+"Ah you know: of the _real_ life, of the true anchor!" Her hansom was
+waiting for her and she added: "I kept it, you see; but a little
+extravagance on the night one's fortune has come!--"
+
+Peter stared. Yes, there were people whose fortune had come; but he
+managed to stammer: "Are you following her again?"
+
+"For you--for you!" And she clambered into the vehicle. From the seat,
+enticingly, she offered him the place beside her. "Won't you come too? I
+know he invited you." Peter declined with a quick gesture and as he
+turned away he heard her call after him, to cheer him on his lonely
+walk: "I shall keep this up; I shall never lose sight of her!"
+
+
+
+
+BOOK EIGHTH
+
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+
+When Mrs. Dallow returned to London just before London broke up the fact
+was immediately known in Calcutta Gardens and was promptly communicated
+to Nick Dormer by his sister Bridget. He had learnt it in no other
+way--he had had no correspondence with Julia during her absence. He
+gathered that his mother and sisters were not ignorant of her
+whereabouts--he never mentioned her name to them--but as to this he was
+not sure if the source of their information had been the _Morning Post_
+or a casual letter received by the inscrutable Biddy. He knew Biddy had
+some epistolary commerce with Julia; he had an impression Grace
+occasionally exchanged letters with Mrs. Gresham. Biddy, however, who,
+as he was also well aware, was always studying what he would like,
+forbore to talk to him about the absent mistress of Harsh beyond once
+dropping the remark that she had gone from Florence to Venice and was
+enjoying gondolas and sunsets too much to leave them. Nick's comment on
+this was that she was a happy woman to have such a go at Titian and
+Tintoret: as he spoke, and for some time afterwards, the sense of how he
+himself should enjoy a like "go" made him ache with ineffectual longing.
+
+He had forbidden himself at the present to think of absence, not only
+because it would be inconvenient and expensive, but because it would be
+a kind of retreat from the enemy, a concession to difficulty. The enemy
+was no particular person and no particular body of persons: not his
+mother; not Mr. Carteret, who, as he heard from the doctor at Beauclere,
+lingered on, sinking and sinking till his vitality appeared to have the
+vertical depth of a gold-mine; not his pacified constituents, who had
+found a healthy diversion in returning another Liberal wholly without
+Mrs. Dallow's aid (she had not participated even to the extent of a
+responsive telegram in the election); not his late colleagues in the
+House, nor the biting satirists of the newspapers, nor the brilliant
+women he took down at dinner-parties--there was only one sense in which
+he ever took them down; not in short his friends, his foes, his private
+thoughts, the periodical phantom of his shocked father: the enemy was
+simply the general awkwardness of his situation. This awkwardness was
+connected with the sense of responsibility so greatly deprecated by
+Gabriel Nash, Gabriel who had ceased to roam of late on purpose to miss
+as few scenes as possible of the drama, rapidly growing dull alas, of
+his friend's destiny; but that compromising relation scarcely drew the
+soreness from it. The public flurry produced by his collapse had only
+been large enough to mark the flatness of our young man's position when
+it was over. To have had a few jokes cracked audibly at your expense
+wasn't an ordeal worth talking of; the hardest thing about it was merely
+that there had not been enough of them to yield a proportion of good
+ones. Nick had felt in fine the benefit of living in an age and in a
+society where number and pressure have, for the individual figure,
+especially when it's a zero, compensations almost equal to their
+cruelties.
+
+No, the pinch for his conscience after a few weeks had passed was simply
+an acute mistrust of the superficiality of performance into which the
+desire to justify himself might hurry him. That desire was passionate
+as regards Julia Dallow; it was ardent also as regards his mother; and,
+to make it absolutely uncomfortable, it was complicated with the
+conviction that neither of them would know his justification even when
+she should see it. They probably couldn't know it if they would, and
+very certainly wouldn't if they could. He assured himself, however, that
+this limitation wouldn't matter; it was their affair--his own was simply
+to have the right sort of thing to show. The work he was now attempting
+wasn't the right sort of thing, though doubtless Julia, for instance,
+would dislike it almost as much as if it were. The two portraits of
+Miriam, after the first exhilaration of his finding himself at large,
+filled him with no private glee; they were not in the direction in which
+he wished for the present really to move. There were moments when he
+felt almost angry, though of course he held his tongue, when by the few
+persons who saw them they were pronounced wonderfully clever. That they
+were wonderfully clever was just the detestable thing in them, so active
+had that cleverness been in making them seem better than they were.
+There were people to whom he would have been ashamed to show them, and
+these were the people whom it would give him most pleasure some day to
+please. Not only had he many an hour of disgust at his actual work, but
+he thought he saw as in an ugly revelation that nature had cursed him
+with an odious facility and that the lesson of his life, the sternest
+and wholesomest, would be to keep out of the trap it had laid for him.
+He had fallen into this trap on the threshold and had only scrambled out
+with his honour. He had a talent for appearance, and that was the fatal
+thing; he had a damnable suppleness and a gift of immediate response, a
+readiness to oblige, that made him seem to take up causes which he
+really left lying, enabled him to learn enough about them in an hour to
+have all the air of having converted them to his use. Many people used
+them--that was the only thing to be said--who had taken them in much
+less. He was at all events too clever by half, since this pernicious
+overflow had wrecked most of his attempts. He had assumed a virtue and
+enjoyed assuming it, and the assumption had cheated his father and his
+mother and his affianced wife and his rich benefactor and the candid
+burgesses of Harsh and the cynical reporters of the newspapers. His
+enthusiasms had been but young curiosity, his speeches had been young
+agility, his professions and adhesions had been like postage-stamps
+without glue: the head was all right, but they wouldn't stick. He stood
+ready now to wring the neck of the irrepressible vice that certainly
+would tend to nothing so much as to get him into further trouble. His
+only real justification would be to turn patience--his own of
+course--inside out; yet if there should be a way to misread that recipe
+his humbugging genius could be trusted infallibly to discover it. Cheap
+and easy results would dangle before him, little amateurish
+conspicuities at exhibitions helped by his history; putting it in his
+power to triumph with a quick "What do you say to that?" over those he
+had wounded. The fear of this danger was corrosive; it poisoned even
+lawful joys. If he should have a striking picture at the Academy next
+year it wouldn't be a crime; yet he couldn't help suspecting any
+conditions that would enable him to be striking so soon. In this way he
+felt quite enough how Gabriel Nash had "had" him whenever railing at his
+fever for proof, and how inferior as a productive force the desire to
+win over the ill-disposed might be to the principle of quiet growth.
+Nash had a foreign manner of lifting up his finger and waving it before
+him, as if to put an end to everything, whenever it became, in
+conversation or discussion, to any extent a question whether any one
+would "like" anything.
+
+It was presumably in some degree at least a due respect for the
+principle of quiet growth that kept Nick on the spot at present, made
+him stick fast to Rosedale Road and Calcutta Gardens and deny himself
+the simplifications of absence. Do what he would he couldn't despoil
+himself of the impression that the disagreeable was somehow connected
+with the salutary, and the "quiet" with the disagreeable, when
+stubbornly borne; so he resisted a hundred impulses to run away to Paris
+or to Florence, coarse forms of the temptation to persuade himself by
+material motion that he was launched. He stayed in London because it
+seemed to him he was there more conscious of what he had undertaken, and
+he had a horror of shirking the consciousness. One element in it indeed
+was his noting how little convenience he could have found in a foreign
+journey even had his judgement approved such a subterfuge. The stoppage
+of his supplies from Beauclere had now become an historic fact, with
+something of the majesty of its class about it: he had had time to see
+what a difference this would make in his life. His means were small and
+he had several old debts, the number of which, as he believed, loomed
+large to his mother's imagination. He could never tell her she
+exaggerated, because he told her nothing of that sort in these days:
+they had no intimate talk, for an impenetrable partition, a tall,
+bristling hedge of untrimmed misconceptions, had sprung up between them.
+Poor Biddy had made a hole in it through which she squeezed from side to
+side, to keep up communications, at the cost of many rents and
+scratches; but Lady Agnes walked straight and stiff, never turning her
+head, never stopping to pluck the least little daisy of consolation. It
+was in this manner she wished to signify that she had accepted her
+wrongs. She draped herself in them as in a Roman mantle and had never
+looked so proud and wasted and handsome as now that her eyes rested only
+on ruins.
+
+Nick was extremely sorry for her, though he marked as a dreadful want of
+grace her never setting a foot in Rosedale Road--she mentioned his
+studio no more than if it had been a private gambling-house or something
+worse; sorry because he was well aware that for the hour everything must
+appear to her to have crumbled. The luxury of Broadwood would have to
+crumble: his mind was very clear about that. Biddy's prospects had
+withered to the finest, dreariest dust, and Biddy indeed, taking a
+lesson from her brother's perversities, seemed little disposed to better
+a bad business. She professed the most peace-making sentiments, but when
+it came really to doing something to brighten up the scene she showed
+herself portentously corrupt. After Peter Sherringham's heartless flight
+she had wantonly slighted an excellent opportunity to repair her
+misfortune. Lady Agnes had reason to infer, about the end of June, that
+young Mr. Grindon, the only son--the other children being girls--of an
+immensely rich industrial and political baronet in the north, was
+literally waiting for the faintest sign. This reason she promptly
+imparted to her younger daughter, whose intelligence had to take it in
+but who had shown it no other consideration. Biddy had set her charming
+face as a stone; she would have nothing to do with signs, and she,
+practically speaking, wilfully, wickedly refused a magnificent offer, so
+that the young man carried his high expectations elsewhere. How much in
+earnest he had been was proved by the fact that before Goodwood had come
+and gone he was captured by Lady Muriel Macpherson. It was superfluous
+to insist on the frantic determination to get married written on such an
+accident as that. Nick knew of this episode only through Grace, and he
+deplored its having occurred in the midst of other disasters.
+
+He knew or he suspected something more as well--something about his
+brother Percival which, should it come to light, no phase of their
+common history would be genial enough to gloss over. It had usually been
+supposed that Percy's store of comfort against the ills of life was
+confined to the infallibility of his rifle. He was not sensitive, and
+his use of that weapon represented a resource against which common
+visitations might have spent themselves. It had suddenly come to Nick's
+ears, however, that he cultivated a concurrent support in the person of
+a robust countrywoman, housed in an ivied corner of Warwickshire, in
+whom he had long been interested and whom, without any flourish of
+magnanimity, he had ended by making his wife. The situation of the
+latest born of the pledges of this affection, a blooming boy--there had
+been two or three previously--was therefore perfectly regular and of a
+nature to make a difference in the worldly position, as the phrase ran,
+of his moneyless uncle. If there be degrees in the absolute and Percy
+had an heir--others, moreover, supposedly following--Nick would have to
+regard himself as still more moneyless than before. His brother's last
+step was doubtless, given the case, to be commended; but such
+discoveries were enlivening only when made in other families, and Lady
+Agnes would scarcely enjoy learning to what tune she had become a
+grandmother.
+
+Nick forbore from delicacy to intimate to Biddy that he thought it a
+pity she couldn't care for Mr. Grindon; but he had a private sense that
+if she had been capable of such a feat it would have lightened a little
+the weight he himself had to carry. He bore her a slight grudge, which
+lasted till Julia Dallow came back; when the circumstance of the girl's
+being summoned immediately down to Harsh created a diversion that was
+perhaps after all only fanciful. Biddy, as we know, entertained a
+theory, which Nick had found occasion to combat, that Mrs. Dallow had
+not treated him perfectly well; therefore in going to Harsh the very
+first time that relative held out a hand to her so jealous a little
+sister must have recognised a special inducement. The inducement might
+have been that the relative had comfort for her, that she was acting by
+her cousin's direct advice, that they were still in close communion on
+the question of the offers Biddy was not to accept, that in short
+Peter's sister had taken upon herself to see that their young friend
+should remain free for the day of the fugitive's inevitable return. Once
+or twice indeed Nick wondered if Julia had herself been visited, in a
+larger sense, by the thought of retracing her steps--if she wished to
+draw out her young friend's opinion as to how she might do that
+gracefully. During the few days she was in town Nick had seen her twice
+in Great Stanhope Street, but neither time alone. She had said to him on
+one of these occasions in her odd, explosive way: "I should have thought
+you'd have gone away somewhere--it must be such a bore." Of course she
+firmly believed he was staying for Miriam, which he really was not; and
+probably she had written this false impression off to Peter, who, still
+more probably, would prefer to regard it as just. Nick was staying for
+Miriam only in the sense that he should very glad of the money he might
+receive for the portrait he was engaged in painting. That money would be
+a great convenience to him in spite of the obstructive ground Miriam had
+taken in pretending--she had blown half a gale about it--that he had
+had no right to dispose of such a production without her consent. His
+answer to this was simply that the purchaser was so little of a stranger
+that it didn't go, so to speak, out of the family, out of hers. It
+didn't matter, Miriam's retort that if Mr. Sherringham had formerly been
+no stranger he was utterly one now, so that nothing would ever less
+delight him than to see her hated image on his wall. He would back out
+of the bargain and Nick be left with the picture on his hands. Nick
+jeered at this shallow theory and when she came to sit the question
+served as well as another to sprinkle their familiar silences with
+chaff. He already knew something, as we have seen, of the conditions in
+which his distracted kinsman had left England; and this connected
+itself, in casual meditation, with some of the calculations imputable to
+Julia and to Biddy. There had naturally been a sequel to the queer
+behaviour perceptible in Peter, at the theatre, on the eve of his
+departure--a sequel lighted by a word of Miriam's in the course of her
+first sitting to Nick after her great night. "Fancy"--so this
+observation ran--"fancy the dear man finding time in the press of all
+his last duties to ask me to marry him!"
+
+"He told me you had found time in the press of all yours to say you
+would," Nick replied. And this was pretty much all that had passed on
+the subject between them--save of course her immediately making clear
+that Peter had grossly misinformed him. What had happened was that she
+had said she would do nothing of the sort. She professed a desire not to
+be confronted again with this obnoxious theme, and Nick easily fell in
+with it--quite from his own settled inclination not to handle that kind
+of subject with her. If Julia had false ideas about him, and if Peter
+had them too, his part of the business was to take the simplest course
+to establish the falsity. There were difficulties indeed attached even
+to the simplest course, but there would be a difficulty the less if one
+should forbear to meddle in promiscuous talk with the general,
+suggestive topic of intimate unions. It is certain that in these days
+Nick cultivated the practice of forbearances for which he didn't
+receive, for which perhaps he never would receive, due credit.
+
+He had been convinced for some time that one of the next things he
+should hear would be that Julia Dallow had arranged to marry either Mr.
+Macgeorge or some other master of multitudes. He could think of that
+now, he found--think of it with resignation even when Julia, before his
+eyes, looked so handsomely forgetful that her appearance had to be taken
+as referring still more to their original intimacy than to his
+comparatively superficial offence. What made this accomplishment of his
+own remarkable was that there was something else he thought of quite as
+much--the fact that he had only to see her again to feel by how great a
+charm she had in the old days taken possession of him. This charm
+operated apparently in a very direct, primitive way: her presence
+diffused it and fully established it, but her absence left comparatively
+little of it behind. It dwelt in the very facts of her person--it was
+something she happened physically to be; yet--considering that the
+question was of something very like loveliness--its envelope of
+associations, of memories and recurrences, had no great destiny. She
+packed it up and took it away with her quite as if she had been a woman
+who had come to sell a set of laces. The laces were as wonderful as ever
+when taken out of the box, but to admire again their rarity you had to
+send for the woman. What was above all remarkable for our young man was
+that Miriam Rooth fetched a fellow, vulgarly speaking, very much less
+than Julia at the times when, being on the spot, Julia did fetch. He
+could paint Miriam day after day without any agitating blur of vision;
+in fact the more he saw of her the clearer grew the atmosphere through
+which she blazed, the more her richness became one with that of the
+flowering work. There are reciprocities and special sympathies in such a
+relation; mysterious affinities they used to be called, divinations of
+private congruity. Nick had an unexpressed conviction that if, according
+to his defeated desire, he had embarked with Mrs. Dallow in this
+particular quest of a great prize, disaster would have overtaken them on
+the deep waters. Even with the limited risk indeed disaster had come;
+but it was of a different kind and it had the advantage for him that now
+she couldn't reproach and denounce him as the cause of it--couldn't do
+so at least on any ground he was obliged to recognise. She would never
+know how much he had cared for her, how much he cared for her still;
+inasmuch as the conclusive proof for himself was his conscious
+reluctance to care for another woman--evidence she positively misread.
+Some day he would doubtless try to do that; but such a day seemed as yet
+far off, and he had meanwhile no spite, no vindictive impulse, to help
+him. The soreness that mingled with his liberation, the sense of
+indignity even, as of a full cup suddenly dashed by a blundering hand
+from his lips, demanded certainly a balm; but it found the balm, for the
+time, in another passion, not in a rancorous exercise of the same--a
+passion strong enough to make him forget what a pity it was he was not
+so formed as to care for two women at once.
+
+As soon as Julia returned to England he broke ground to his mother on
+the subject of her making the mistress of Broadwood understand that she
+and the girls now regarded their occupancy of that estate as absolutely
+over. He had already, several weeks before, picked a little at the arid
+tract of that indicated surrender, but in the interval the soil appeared
+to have formed again to a considerable thickness. It was disagreeable to
+him to call his parent's attention to the becoming course, and
+especially disagreeable to have to emphasise it and discuss it and
+perhaps clamour for it. He would have liked the whole business to be
+tacit--a little triumph of silent delicacy. But he found reasons to
+suspect that what in fact would be most tacit was Julia's certain
+endurance of any chance failure of that charm. Lady Agnes had a theory
+that they had virtually--"practically" as she said--given up the place,
+so that there was no need of making a splash about it; but Nick
+discovered in the course of an exploration of Biddy's view more rigorous
+perhaps than any to which he had ever subjected her, that none of their
+property had been removed from the delightful house--none of the things
+(there were ever so many things) heavily planted there when their mother
+took possession. Lady Agnes was the proprietor of innumerable articles
+of furniture, relics and survivals of her former greatness, and moved
+about the world with a train of heterogeneous baggage; so that her quiet
+overflow into the spaciousness of Broadwood had had all the luxury of a
+final subsidence. What Nick had to propose to her now was a dreadful
+combination, a relapse into the conditions she most hated--seaside
+lodgings, bald storehouses in the Marylebone Road, little London rooms
+crammed with objects that caught the dirt and made them stuffy. He was
+afraid he should really finish her, and he himself was surprised in a
+degree at his insistence. He wouldn't have supposed he should have cared
+so much, but he found he did care intensely. He cared enough--it says
+everything--to explain to his mother that her retention of Broadwood
+would show "practically" (since that was her great word) for the
+violation of an agreement. Julia had given them the place on the
+understanding that he was to marry her, and once he was definitely not
+to marry her they had no right to keep the place. "Yes, you make the
+mess and _we_ pay the penalty!" the poor lady flashed out; but this was
+the only overt protest she made--except indeed to contend that their
+withdrawal would be an act ungracious and offensive to Julia. She looked
+as she had looked during the months that succeeded his father's death,
+but she gave a general, a final grim assent to the proposition that, let
+their kinswoman take it as she would, their own duty was unmistakably
+clear.
+
+It was Grace who was principal representative of the idea that Julia
+would be outraged by such a step; she never ceased to repeat that she
+had never heard of anything so "nasty." Nick would have expected this of
+Grace, but he felt rather bereft and betrayed when Biddy murmured to him
+that _she_ knew--that there was really no need of their sacrificing
+their mother's comfort to an extravagant scruple. She intimated that if
+Nick would only consent to their going on with Broadwood as if nothing
+had happened--or rather as if everything had happened--she would answer
+for the feelings of the owner. For almost the first time in his life
+Nick disliked what Biddy said to him, and he gave her a sharp rejoinder,
+a taste of the general opinion that they all had enough to do to answer
+for themselves. He remembered afterwards the way she looked at
+him--startled, even frightened and with rising tears--before turning
+away. He held that they should judge better how Julia would take it
+after they had thrown up the place; and he made it his duty to arrange
+that his mother should formally advise her, by letter, of their
+intending to depart at once. Julia could then protest to her heart's
+content. Nick was aware that for the most part he didn't pass for
+practical; he could imagine why, from his early years, people should
+have joked him about it. But this time he was determined to rest on a
+rigid view of things as they were. He didn't sec his mother's letter,
+but he knew that it went. He felt she would have been more loyal if she
+had shown it to him, though of course there could be but little question
+of loyalty now. That it had really been written, however, very much on
+the lines he dictated was clear to him from the subsequent surprise
+which Lady Agnes's blankness didn't prevent his divining.
+
+Julia acknowledged the offered news, but in unexpected terms: she had
+apparently neither resisted nor protested; she had simply been very glad
+to get her house back again and had not accused any of them of
+nastiness. Nick saw no more of her letter than he had seen of his
+mother's, but he was able to say to Grace--to their parent he was
+studiously mute--"My poor child, you see after all that we haven't
+kicked up such a row." Grace shook her head and looked gloomy and deeply
+wise, replying that he had no cause to triumph--they were so far from
+having seen the end of it yet. Thus he guessed that his mother had
+complied with his wish on the calculation that it would be a mere form,
+that Julia would entreat them not to be so fantastic and that he himself
+would then, in the presence of her wounded surprise, consent to a quiet
+continuance, so much in the interest--the air of Broadwood had a
+purity!--of the health of all of them. But since Julia jumped at their
+sacrifice he had no chance to be mollified: he had all grossly to
+persist in having been right.
+
+At bottom probably he was a little surprised at Julia's so prompt
+assent. Literally speaking, it was not perfectly graceful. He was sorry
+his mother had been so deceived, but was sorrier still for Biddy's
+mistake--it showed she might be mistaken about other things. Nothing was
+left now but for Lady Agnes to say, as she did substantially whenever
+she saw him: "We're to prepare to spend the autumn at Worthing then or
+some other horrible place? I don't know their names: it's the only thing
+we can afford." There was an implication in this that if he expected her
+to drag her girls about to country-houses in a continuance of the
+fidgety effort to work them off he must understand at once that she was
+now too weary and too sad and too sick. She had done her best for them
+and it had all been vain and cruel--now therefore the poor creatures
+must look out for themselves. To the grossness of Biddy's misconduct she
+needn't refer, nor to the golden opportunity that young woman had
+forfeited by her odious treatment of Mr. Grindon. It was clear that this
+time Lady Agnes was incurably discouraged; so much so as to fail to
+glean the dimmest light from the fact that the girl was really making a
+long stay at Harsh. Biddy went to and fro two or three times and then in
+August fairly settled there; and what her mother mainly saw in her
+absence was the desire to keep out of the way of household reminders of
+her depravity. In fact, as turned out, Lady Agnes and Grace gathered
+themselves together in the first days of that month for another visit to
+the very old lady who had been Sir Nicholas's godmother; after which
+they went somewhere else--so that the question of Worthing had not
+immediately to be faced.
+
+Nick stayed on in London with the obsession of work humming in his ears;
+he was joyfully conscious that for three or four months, in the empty
+Babylon, he would have ample stores of time. But toward the end of
+August he got a letter from Grace in which she spoke of her situation
+and of her mother's in a manner that seemed to impose on him the doing
+of something tactful. They were paying a third visit--he knew that in
+Calcutta Gardens lady's-maids had been to and fro with boxes,
+replenishments of wardrobes--and yet somehow the outlook for the autumn
+was dark. Grace didn't say it in so many words, but what he read between
+the lines was that they had no more invitations. What, therefore, in
+pity's name was to become of them? People liked them well enough when
+Biddy was with them, but they didn't care for her mother and her, that
+prospect _tout pur_, and Biddy was cooped up indefinitely with Julia.
+This was not the manner in which Grace had anciently alluded to her
+sister's happy visits at Harsh, and the change of tone made Nick wince
+with a sense of all that had collapsed. Biddy was a little fish worth
+landing in short, scantly as she seemed disposed to bite, and Grace's
+rude probity could admit that she herself was not.
+
+Nick had an inspiration: by way of doing something tactful he went down
+to Brighton and took lodgings, for several weeks, in the general
+interest, the very quietest and sunniest he could find. This he intended
+as a kindly surprise, a reminder of how he had his mother's and sisters'
+comfort at heart, how he could exert himself and save them trouble. But
+he had no sooner concluded his bargain--it was a more costly one than he
+had at first calculated--than he was bewildered and befogged to learn
+that the persons on whose behalf he had so exerted himself were to pass
+the autumn at Broadwood with Julia. That daughter of privilege had taken
+the place into familiar use again and was now correcting their former
+surprise at her crude indifference--this was infinitely characteristic
+of Julia--by inviting them to share it with her. Nick wondered vaguely
+what she was "up to"; but when his mother treated herself to the line
+irony of addressing him an elaborately humble request for his consent to
+their accepting the merciful refuge--she repeated this expression three
+times--he replied that she might do exactly as she liked: he would only
+mention that he shouldn't feel himself at liberty to come and see her
+there. This condition proved apparently to Lady Agnes's mind no
+hindrance, and she and her daughters were presently reinstated in the
+very apartments they had learned so to love. This time in fact it was
+even better than before--they had still fewer expenses. The expenses
+were Nick's: he had to pay a forfeit to the landlady at Brighton for
+backing out of his contract. He said nothing to his mother about that
+bungled business--he was literally afraid; but a sad event just then
+reminded him afresh how little it was the moment for squandering money.
+Mr. Carteret drew his last breath; quite painlessly it seemed, as the
+closing scene was described at Beauclere when the young man went down to
+the funeral. Two or three weeks later the contents of his will were made
+public in the _Illustrated London News_, where it definitely appeared
+that he left a very large fortune, not a penny of which was to go to
+Nick. The provision for Mr. Chayter's declining years was remarkably
+handsome.
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+
+Miriam had mounted at a bound, in her new part, several steps in the
+ladder of fame, and at the climax of the London season this fact was
+brought home to her from hour to hour. It produced a thousand
+solicitations and entanglements, and she rapidly learned that to be
+celebrated takes up almost as much of one's own time as of other
+people's. Even though, as she boasted, she had reduced to a science the
+practice of "working" her mother--she made use of the good lady socially
+to the utmost, pushing her perpetually into the breach--there was many a
+juncture at which it was clear that she couldn't too much disoblige
+without hurting her cause. She made almost an income out of the
+photographers--their appreciation of her as a subject knew no
+bounds--and she supplied the newspapers with columns of characteristic
+copy. To the gentlemen who sought speech of her on behalf of these
+organs she poured forth, vindictively, floods of unscrupulous romance;
+she told them all different tales, and, as her mother told them others
+more marvellous yet, publicity was cleverly caught by rival versions,
+which surpassed each other in authenticity. The whole case was
+remarkable, was unique; for if the girl was advertised by the
+bewilderment of her readers she seemed to every sceptic, on his going to
+see her, as fine as if he had discovered her for himself. She was still
+accommodating enough, however, from time to time, to find an hour to
+come and sit to Nick Dormer, and he helped himself further by going to
+her theatre whenever he could. He was conscious Julia Dallow would
+probably hear of this and triumph with a fresh sense of how right she
+had been; but the reflexion only made him sigh resignedly, so true it
+struck him as being that there are some things explanation can never
+better, can never touch.
+
+Miriam brought Basil Dashwood once to see her portrait, and Basil, who
+commended it in general, directed his criticism mainly to two
+points--its not yet being finished and its not having gone into that
+year's Academy. The young actor audibly panted; he felt the short breath
+of Miriam's rapidity, the quick beat of her success, and, looking at
+everything now from the standpoint of that speculation, could scarcely
+contain his impatience at the painter's clumsy slowness. He thought the
+latter's second attempt much better than his first, but somehow it ought
+by that time to be shining in the eye of the public. He put it to their
+friend with an air of acuteness--he had those felicities--that in every
+great crisis there is nothing like striking while the iron is hot. He
+even betrayed the conviction that by putting on a spurt Nick might wind
+up the job and still get the Academy people to take him in. Basil knew
+some of them; he all but offered to speak to them--the case was so
+exceptional; he had no doubt he could get something done. Against the
+appropriation of the work by Peter Sherringham he explicitly and loudly
+protested, in spite of the homeliest recommendations of silence from
+Miriam; and it was indeed easy to guess how such an arrangement would
+interfere with his own conception of the eventual right place for the
+two portraits--the vestibule of the theatre, where every one going in
+and out would see them suspended face to face and surrounded by
+photographs, artistically disposed, of the young actress in a variety of
+characters. Dashwood showed superiority in his jump to the contention
+that so exhibited the pictures would really help to draw. Considering
+the virtue he attributed to Miriam the idea was exempt from narrow
+prejudice.
+
+Moreover, though a trifle feverish, he was really genial; he repeated
+more than once, "Yes, my dear sir, you've done it this time." This was a
+favourite formula with him; when some allusion was made to the girl's
+success he greeted it also with a comfortable "This time she _has_ done
+it." There was ever a hint of fine judgement and far calculation in his
+tone. It appeared before he went that this time even he himself had done
+it--he had taken up something that would really answer. He told Nick
+more about Miriam, more certainly about her outlook at that moment, than
+she herself had communicated, contributing strongly to our young man's
+impression that one by one every gage of a great career was being
+dropped into her cup. Nick himself tasted of success vicariously for the
+hour. Miriam let her comrade talk only to contradict him, and
+contradicted him only to show how indifferently she could do it. She
+treated him as if she had nothing more to learn about his folly, but as
+if it had taken intimate friendship to reveal to her the full extent of
+it. Nick didn't mind her intimate friendships, but he ended by disliking
+Dashwood, who gave on his nerves--a circumstance poor Julia, had it come
+to her knowledge, would doubtless have found deplorably significant.
+Miriam was more pleased with herself than ever: she now made no scruple
+of admitting that she enjoyed all her advantages. She had a fuller
+vision of how successful success could be; she took everything as it
+came--dined out every Sunday and even went into the country till the
+Monday morning; kept a hundred distinguished names on her lips and
+abounded in strange tales of the people who were making up to her. She
+struck Nick as less strenuous than she had been hitherto, as making even
+an aggressive show of inevitable laxities; but he was conscious of no
+obligation to rebuke her for it--the less as he had a dim vision that
+some effect of that sort, some irritation of his curiosity, was what she
+desired to produce. She would perhaps have liked, for reasons best known
+to herself, to look as if she were throwing herself away, not being able
+to do anything else. He couldn't talk to her as if he took a deep
+interest in her career, because in fact he didn't; she remained to him
+primarily and essentially a pictorial object, with the nature of whose
+vicissitudes he was concerned--putting common charity and his personal
+good nature of course aside--only so far as they had something to say in
+her face. How could he know in advance what turn of her experience,
+twist of her life, would say most?--so possible was it even that
+complete failure or some incalculable perversion (innumerable were the
+queer traps that might be set for her) would only make her for his
+particular purpose more precious.
+
+When she had left him at any rate, the day she came with Basil Dashwood,
+and still more on a later occasion, that of his turning back to his work
+after putting her into her carriage, and otherwise bare-headedly
+manifesting, the last time, for that year apparently, that he was to see
+her--when she had left him it occurred to him in the light of her quick
+distinction that there were deep differences in the famous artistic
+life. Miriam was already in a glow of glory--which, moreover, was
+probably but a faint spark in relation to the blaze to come; and as he
+closed the door on her and took up his palette to rub it with a dirty
+cloth the little room in which his own battle was practically to be
+fought looked woefully cold and grey and mean. It was lonely and yet at
+the same time was peopled with unfriendly shadows--so thick he foresaw
+them gather in winter twilights to come--the duller conditions, the
+longer patiences, the less immediate and less personal joys. His late
+beginning was there and his wasted youth, the mistakes that would still
+bring forth children after their image, the sedentary solitude, the grey
+mediocrity, the poor explanations, the effect of foolishness he dreaded
+even from afar of in having to ask people to wait, and wait longer, and
+wait again, for a fruition which to their sense at least might well
+prove a grotesque anti-climax. He yearned enough over it, however it
+should figure, to feel that this possible pertinacity might enter into
+comparison even with such a productive force as Miriam's. That was after
+all in his bare studio the most collective dim presence, the one that
+kept him company best as he sat there and that made it the right place,
+however wrong--the sense that it was to the thing in itself he was
+attached. This was Miriam's case too, but the sharp contrast, which she
+showed him she also felt, was in the number of other things she got with
+the thing in itself.
+
+I hasten to add that our young man had hours when this last mystic value
+struck him as requiring for its full operation no adjunct whatever--as
+being in its own splendour a summary of all adjuncts and apologies. I
+have related that the great collections, the National Gallery and the
+Museum, were sometimes rather a series of dead surfaces to him; but the
+sketch I have attempted of him will have been inadequate if it fails to
+suggest that there were other days when, as he strolled through them, he
+plucked right and left perfect nosegays of reassurance. Bent as he was
+on working in the modern, which spoke to him with a thousand voices, he
+judged it better for long periods not to haunt the earlier masters,
+whose conditions had been so different--later he came to see that it
+didn't matter much, especially if one kept away; but he was liable to
+accidental deflexions from this theory, liable in particular to feel the
+sanctity of the great portraits of the past. These were the things the
+most inspiring, in the sense that while generations, while worlds had
+come and gone, they seemed far most to prevail and survive and testify.
+As he stood before them the perfection of their survival often struck
+him as the supreme eloquence, the virtue that included all others,
+thanks to the language of art, the richest and most universal. Empires
+and systems and conquests had rolled over the globe and every kind of
+greatness had risen and passed away, but the beauty of the great
+pictures had known nothing of death or change, and the tragic centuries
+had only sweetened their freshness. The same faces, the same figures
+looked out at different worlds, knowing so many secrets the particular
+world didn't, and when they joined hands they made the indestructible
+thread on which the pearls of history were strung.
+
+Miriam notified her artist that her theatre was to close on the tenth of
+August, immediately after which she was to start, with the company, on a
+tremendous tour of the provinces. They were to make a lot of money, but
+they were to have no holiday, and she didn't want one; she only wanted
+to keep at it and make the most of her limited opportunities for
+practice; inasmuch as at that rate, playing but two parts a year--and
+such parts: she despised them!--she shouldn't have mastered the
+rudiments of her trade before decrepitude would compel her to lay it by.
+The first time she came to the studio after her visit with Dashwood she
+sprang up abruptly at the end of half an hour, saying she could sit no
+more--she had had enough and to spare of it. She was visibly restless
+and preoccupied, and though Nick had not waited till now to note that
+she had more moods in her list than he had tints on his palette he had
+never yet seen her sensibility at this particular pitch. It struck him
+rather as a waste of passion, but he was ready to let her go. She looked
+round the place as if suddenly tired of it and then said mechanically,
+in a heartless London way, while she smoothed down her gloves, "So
+you're just going to stay on?" After he had confessed that this was his
+dark purpose she continued in the same casual, talk-making manner: "I
+daresay it's the best thing for you. You're just going to grind, eh?"
+
+"I see before me an eternity of grinding."
+
+"All alone by yourself in this dull little hole? You _will_ be
+conscientious, you _will_ be virtuous."
+
+"Oh my solitude will be mitigated--I shall have models and people."
+
+"What people--what models?" Miriam asked as she arranged her hat before
+the glass.
+
+"Well, no one so good as you."
+
+"That's a prospect!" the girl laughed--"for all the good you've got out
+of me!"
+
+"You're no judge of that quantity," said Nick, "and even I can't measure
+it just yet. Have I been rather a bore and a brute? I can easily believe
+it; I haven't talked to you--I haven't amused you as I might. The truth
+is that taking people's likenesses is a very absorbing, inhuman
+occupation. You can't do much to them besides."
+
+"Yes, it's a cruel honour to pay them."
+
+"Cruel--that's too much," he objected.
+
+"I mean it's one you shouldn't confer on those you like, for when it's
+over it's over: it kills your interest in them. After you've finished
+them you don't like them any more at all."
+
+"Surely I like _you_," Nick returned, sitting tilted back before his
+picture with his hands in his pockets.
+
+"We've done very well: it's something not to have quarrelled"--and she
+smiled at him now, seeming more "in" it. "I wouldn't have had you slight
+your work--I wouldn't have had you do it badly. But there's no fear of
+that for you," she went on. "You're the real thing and the rare bird. I
+haven't lived with you this way without seeing that: you're the sincere
+artist so much more than I. No, no, don't protest," she added with one
+of her sudden, fine transitions to a deeper tone. "You'll do things that
+will hand on your name when my screeching is happily over. Only you do
+seem to me, I confess, rather high and dry here--I speak from the point
+of view of your comfort and of my personal interest in you. You strike
+me as kind of lonely, as the Americans say--rather cut off and isolated
+in your grandeur. Haven't you any confreres--fellow-artists and people
+of that sort? Don't they come near you?"
+
+"I don't know them much," Nick humbly confessed. "I've always been
+afraid of them, and how can they take me seriously?"
+
+"Well, _I_'ve got confreres, and sometimes I wish I hadn't! But does
+your sister never come near you any more," she asked, "or is it only the
+fear of meeting me?"
+
+He was aware of his mother's theory that Biddy was constantly bundled
+home from Rosedale Road at the approach of improper persons: she was as
+angry at this as if she wouldn't have been more so had her child
+suffered exposure; but the explanation he gave his present visitor was
+nearer the truth. He reminded her that he had already told her--he had
+been careful to do this, so as not to let it appear she was
+avoided--that his sister was now most of the time in the country,
+staying with an hospitable relation.
+
+"Oh yes," the girl rejoined to this, "with Mr. Sherringham's sister,
+Mrs.--what's her name? I always forget." And when he had pronounced the
+word with a reluctance he doubtless failed sufficiently to conceal--he
+hated to talk of Julia by any name and didn't know what business Miriam
+had with her--she went on: "That's the one--the beauty, the wonderful
+beauty. I shall never forget how handsome she looked the day she found
+me here. I don't in the least resemble her, but I should like to have a
+try at that type some day in a comedy of manners. But who the devil will
+write me a comedy of manners? There it is! The danger would be, no
+doubt, that I should push her _a la charge_."
+
+Nick listened to these remarks in silence, saying to himself that if she
+should have the bad taste--which she seemed trembling on the brink
+of--to make an allusion to what had passed between the lady in question
+and himself he should dislike her beyond remedy. It would show him she
+was a coarse creature after all. Her good genius interposed, however, as
+against this hard penalty, and she quickly, for the moment at least,
+whisked away from the topic, demanding, since they spoke of comrades and
+visitors, what had become of Gabriel Nash, whom she hadn't heard of for
+so many days.
+
+"I think he's tired of me," said Nick; "he hasn't been near me either.
+But after all it's natural--he has seen me through."
+
+"Seen you through? Do you mean," she laughed, "seen through you? Why
+you've only just begun."
+
+"Precisely, and at bottom he doesn't like to see me begin. He's afraid I
+shall do something."
+
+She wondered--as with the interest of that. "Do you mean he's jealous?"
+
+"Not in the least, for from the moment one does anything one ceases to
+compete with him. It leaves him the field more clear. But that's just
+the discomfort for him--he feels, as you said just now, kind of lonely:
+he feels rather abandoned and even, I think, a little betrayed. So far
+from being jealous he yearns for me and regrets me. The only thing he
+really takes seriously is to speculate and understand, to talk about the
+reasons and the essence of things: the people who do that are the
+highest. The applications, the consequences, the vulgar little effects,
+belong to a lower plane, for which one must doubtless be tolerant and
+indulgent, but which is after all an affair of comparative accidents and
+trifles. Indeed he'll probably tell me frankly the next time I see him
+that he can't but feel that to come down to small questions of
+action--to the small prudences and compromises and simplifications of
+practice--is for the superior person really a fatal descent. One may be
+inoffensive and even commendable after it, but one can scarcely pretend
+to be interesting. '_Il en faut comme ca_,' but one doesn't haunt them.
+He'll do his best for me; he'll come back again, but he'll come back
+sad, and finally he'll fade away altogether. Hell go off to Granada or
+somewhere."
+
+"The simplifications of practice?" cried Miriam. "Why they're just
+precisely the most blessed things on earth. What should we do without
+them?"
+
+"What indeed?" Nick echoed. "But if we need them it's because we're not
+superior persons. We're awful Philistines."
+
+"I'll be one with _you_," the girl smiled. "Poor Nash isn't worth
+talking about. What was it but a small question of action when he
+preached to you, as I know he did, to give up your seat?"
+
+"Yes, he has a weakness for giving up--he'll go with you as far as that.
+But I'm not giving up any more, you see. I'm pegging away, and that's
+gross."
+
+"He's an idiot--_n'en parlons plus_!" she dropped, gathering up her
+parasol but lingering.
+
+"Ah I stick to him," Nick said. "He helped me at a difficult time."
+
+"You ought to be ashamed to confess it."
+
+"Oh you _are_ a Philistine!" Nick returned.
+
+"Certainly I am," she declared, going toward the door--"if it makes me
+one to be sorry, awfully sorry and even rather angry, that I haven't
+before me a period of the same sort of unsociable pegging away that you
+have. For want of it I shall never really be good. However, if you don't
+tell people I've said so they'll never know. Your conditions are far
+better than mine and far more respectable: you can do as many things as
+you like in patient obscurity while I'm pitchforked into the _melee_ and
+into the most improbable fame--all on the back of a solitary _cheval de
+bataille_, a poor broken-winded screw. I read it clear that I shall be
+condemned for the greater part of the rest of my days--do you see
+that?--to play the stuff I'm acting now. I'm studying Juliet and I want
+awfully to do her, but really I'm mortally afraid lest, making a success
+of her, I should find myself in such a box. Perhaps the brutes would
+want Juliet for ever instead of my present part. You see amid what
+delightful alternatives one moves. What I long for most I never shall
+have had--five quiet years of hard all-round work in a perfect company,
+with a manager more perfect still, playing five hundred things and never
+being heard of at all. I may be too particular, but that's what I should
+have liked. I think I'm disgusting with my successful crudities. It's
+discouraging; it makes one not care much what happens. What's the use,
+in such an age, of being good?"
+
+"Good? Your haughty claim," Nick laughed, "is that you're bad."
+
+"I mean _good_, you know--there are other ways. Don't be stupid." And
+Miriam tapped him--he was near her at the door--with her parasol.
+
+"I scarcely know what to say to you," he logically pleaded, "for
+certainly it's your fault if you get on so fast."
+
+"I'm too clever--I'm a humbug."
+
+"That's the way I used to be," said Nick.
+
+She rested her brave eyes on him, then turned them over the room slowly;
+after which she attached them again, kindly, musingly--rather as if he
+had been a fine view or an interesting object--to his face. "Ah, the
+pride of that--the sense of purification! He 'used' to be forsooth! Poor
+me! Of course you'll say, 'Look at the sort of thing I've undertaken to
+produce compared with the rot you have.' So it's all right. Become great
+in the proper way and don't expose me." She glanced back once more at
+the studio as if to leave it for ever, and gave another last look at the
+unfinished canvas on the easel. She shook her head sadly, "Poor Mr.
+Sherringham--with _that_!" she wailed.
+
+"Oh I'll finish it--it will be very decent," Nick said.
+
+"Finish it by yourself?"
+
+"Not necessarily. You'll come back and sit when you return to London."
+
+"Never, never, never again."
+
+He wondered. "Why you've made me the most profuse offers and promises."
+
+"Yes, but they were made in ignorance and I've backed out of them. I'm
+capricious too--_faites la part de ca_. I see it wouldn't do--I didn't
+know it then. We're too far apart--I _am_, as you say, a Philistine."
+And as he protested with vehemence against this unscrupulous bad faith
+she added: "You'll find other models. Paint Gabriel Nash."
+
+"Gabriel Nash--as a substitute for you?"
+
+"It will be a good way to get rid of him. Paint Mrs. Dallow too," Miriam
+went on as she passed out of the door he had opened for her--"paint Mrs.
+Dallow if you wish to eradicate the last possibility of a throb."
+
+It was strange that, since only a moment before he had been in a state
+of mind to which the superfluity of this reference would have been the
+clearest thing about it, he should now have been moved to receive it
+quickly, naturally, irreflectively, receive it with the question: "The
+last possibility? Do you mean in her or in me?"
+
+"Oh in you. I don't know anything about 'her.'"
+
+"But that wouldn't be the effect," he argued with the same supervening
+candour. "I believe that if she were to sit to me the usual law would be
+reversed."
+
+"The usual law?"
+
+"Which you cited a while since and of which I recognised the general
+truth. In the case you speak of," he said, "I should probably make a
+shocking picture."
+
+"And fall in love with her again? Then for God's sake risk the daub!"
+Miriam laughed out as she floated away to her victoria.
+
+
+
+
+XLIX
+
+
+She had guessed happily in saying to him that to offer to paint Gabriel
+Nash would be the way to get rid of that visitant. It was with no such
+invidious purpose indeed that our young man proposed to his intermittent
+friend to sit; rather, as August was dusty in the London streets, he had
+too little hope that Nash would remain in town at such a time to oblige
+him. Nick had no wish to get rid of his private philosopher; he liked
+his philosophy, and though of course premeditated paradox was the light
+to read him by he yet had frequently and incidentally an inspired
+unexpectedness. He remained in Rosedale Road the man who most produced
+by his presence the effect of company. All the other men of Nick's
+acquaintance, all his political friends, represented, often very
+communicatively, their own affairs, their own affairs alone; which when
+they did it well was the most their host could ask of them. But Nash had
+the rare distinction that he seemed somehow to figure _his_ affairs, the
+said host's, and to show an interest in them unaffected by the ordinary
+social limitations of capacity. This relegated him to the class of high
+luxuries, and Nick was well aware that we hold our luxuries by a fitful
+and precarious tenure. If a friend without personal eagerness was one of
+the greatest of these it would be evident to the simplest mind that by
+the law of distribution of earthly boons such a convenience should be
+expected to forfeit in duration what it displayed in intensity. He had
+never been without a suspicion that Nash was too good to last, though
+for that matter nothing had yet confirmed a vague apprehension that his
+particular manner of breaking up or breaking down would be by his
+wishing to put so fresh a recruit in relation with other disciples.
+
+That would practically amount to a catastrophe, Nick felt; for it was
+odd that one could both have a great kindness for him and not in the
+least, when it came to the point, yearn for a view of his personal
+extensions. His originality had always been that he appeared to have
+none; and if in the first instance he had introduced his bright, young,
+political prodigy to Miriam and her mother, that was an exception for
+which Peter Sherringham's interference had been mainly responsible. All
+the same, however, it was some time before Nick ceased to view it as
+perhaps on the awkward books that, to complete his education as it were,
+Gabriel would wish him to converse a little with spirits formed by a
+like tonic discipline. Nick had an instinct, in which there was no
+consciousness of detriment to Nash, that the pupils, possibly even the
+imitators, of such a genius would be, as he mentally phrased it,
+something awful. He could be sure, even Gabriel himself could be sure,
+of his own reservations, but how could either of them be sure of those
+of others? Imitation is a fortunate homage only in proportion as it
+rests on measurements, and there was an indefinable something in Nash's
+doctrine that would have been discredited by exaggeration or by zeal.
+Providence happily appeared to have spared it this ordeal; so that Nick
+had after months still to remind himself how his friend had never
+pressed on his attention the least little group of fellow-mystics, never
+offered to produce them for his edification. It scarcely mattered now
+that he was just the man to whom the superficial would attribute that
+sort of tail: it would probably have been hard, for example, to persuade
+Lady Agnes or Julia Dallow or Peter Sherringham that he was not most at
+home in some dusky, untidy, dimly-imagined suburb of "culture," a region
+peopled by unpleasant phrasemongers who thought him a gentleman and who
+had no human use but to be held up in the comic press--which was,
+moreover, probably restrained by decorum from touching upon the worst of
+their aberrations.
+
+Nick at any rate never ran his academy to earth nor so much as skirted
+the suburb in question; never caught from the impenetrable background of
+his life the least reverberation of flitting or of flirting, the
+fainting esthetic ululation. There had been moments when he was even
+moved to anxiety by the silence that poor Gabriel's own faculty of sound
+made all about him--when at least it reduced to plainer elements (the
+mere bald terms of lonely singleness and thrift, of the lean philosophic
+life) the mystery he could never wholly dissociate from him, the air as
+of the transient and occasional, the likeness to curling vapour or
+murmuring wind or shifting light. It was, for instance, a symbol of this
+unclassified state, the lack of all position as a name in cited lists,
+that Nick in point of fact had no idea where he lived, would not have
+known how to go and see him or send him a doctor if he had heard he was
+ill. He had never walked with him to any door of Gabriel's own, even to
+pause at the threshold, though indeed Nash had a club, the Anonymous, in
+some improbable square, of which he might be suspected of being the only
+member--one had never heard of another--where it was vaguely understood
+letters would some day or other find him. Fortunately he pressed with
+no sharpness the spring of pity--his whole "form" was so easy a grasp
+of the helm of consciousness, which he would never let go. He would
+never consent to any deformity, but would steer his course straight
+through the eventual narrow pass and simply go down over the horizon.
+
+He in any case turned up Rosedale Road one day after Miriam had left
+London; he had just come back from a fortnight in Brittany, where he had
+drawn refreshment from the tragic sweetness of--well, of everything. He
+was on his way somewhere else--was going abroad for the autumn but was
+not particular what he did, professing that he had come back just to get
+Nick utterly off his mind. "It's very nice, it's very nice; yes, yes, I
+see," he remarked, giving a little, general, assenting sigh as his eyes
+wandered over the simple scene--a sigh which for a suspicious ear would
+have testified to an insidious reaction.
+
+Nick's ear, as we know, was already suspicious; a fact accounting for
+the expectant smile--it indicated the pleasant apprehension of a theory
+confirmed--with which he returned: "Do you mean my pictures are nice?"
+
+"Yes, yes, your pictures and the whole thing."
+
+"The whole thing?"
+
+"Your existence in this little, remote, independent corner of the great
+city. The disinterestedness of your attitude, the persistence of your
+effort, the piety, the beauty, in short the edification, of the whole
+spectacle."
+
+Nick laughed a little ruefully. "How near to having had enough of me you
+must be when you speak of me as edifying!" Nash changed colour slightly
+at this; it was the first time in his friend's remembrance that he had
+given a sign of embarrassment. "_Vous allez me lacher_, I see it coming;
+and who can blame you?--for I've ceased to be in the least spectacular.
+I had my little hour; it was a great deal, for some people don't even
+have that. I've given you your curious case and I've been generous; I
+made the drama last for you as long as I could. You'll 'slope,' my dear
+fellow--you'll quietly slope; and it will be all right and inevitable,
+though I shall miss you greatly at first. Who knows whether without you
+I shouldn't still have been 'representing' Harsh, heaven help me? You
+rescued me; you converted me from a representative into an
+example--that's a shade better. But don't I know where you must be when
+you're reduced to praising my piety?"
+
+"Don't turn me away," said Nash plaintively; "give me a cigarette."
+
+"I shall never dream of turning you away; I shall cherish you till the
+latest possible hour. I'm only trying to keep myself in tune with the
+logic of things. The proof of how I cling is that precisely I want you
+to sit to me."
+
+"To sit to you?" With which Nick could fancy his visitor a little blank.
+
+"Certainly, for after all it isn't much to ask. Here we are and the
+hour's peculiarly propitious--long light days with no one coming near
+me, so that I've plenty of time. I had a hope I should have some orders:
+my younger sister, whom you know and who's a great optimist, plied me
+with that vision. In fact we invented together a charming little sordid
+theory that there might be rather a 'run' on me from the chatter (such
+as it was) produced by my taking up this line. My sister struck out the
+idea that a good many of the pretty ladies would think me interesting
+and would want to be done. Perhaps they do, but they've controlled
+themselves, for I can't say the run has commenced. They haven't even
+come to look, but I daresay they don't yet quite take it in. Of course
+it's a bad time--with every one out of town; though you know they might
+send for me to come and do them at home. Perhaps they will when they
+settle down. A portrait-tour of a dozen country-houses for the autumn
+and winter--what do you say to that for the ardent life? I know I
+excruciate you," Nick added, "but don't you see how it's in my interest
+to try how much you'll still stand?"
+
+Gabriel puffed his cigarette with a serenity so perfect that it might
+have been assumed to falsify these words. "Mrs. Dallow will send for
+you--_vous allez voir ca_," he said in a moment, brushing aside all
+vagueness.
+
+"She'll send for me?"
+
+"To paint her portrait; she'll recapture you on that basis. She'll get
+you down to one of the country-houses, and it will all go off as
+charmingly--with sketching in the morning, on days you can't hunt, and
+anything you like in the afternoon, and fifteen courses in the evening;
+there'll be bishops and ambassadors staying--as if you were a
+'well-known,' awfully clever amateur. Take care, take care, for, fickle
+as you may think me, I can read the future: don't imagine you've come to
+the end of me yet. Mrs. Dallow and your sister, of both of whom I speak
+with the greatest respect, are capable of hatching together the most
+conscientious, delightful plan for you. Your differences with the
+beautiful lady will be patched up and you'll each come round a little
+and meet the other halfway. The beautiful lady will swallow your
+profession if you'll swallow hers. She'll put up with the palette if
+you'll put up with the country-house. It will be a very unusual one in
+which you won't find a good north room where you can paint. You'll go
+about with her and do all her friends, all the bishops and ambassadors,
+and you'll eat your cake and have it, and every one, beginning with your
+wife, will forget there's anything queer about you, and everything will
+be for the best in the best of worlds; so that, together--you and
+she--you'll become a great social institution and every one will think
+she has a delightful husband; to say nothing of course of your having a
+delightful wife. Ah my dear fellow, you turn pale, and with reason!"
+Nash went lucidly on: "that's to pay you for having tried to make me let
+you have it. You have it then there! I may be a bore"--the emphasis of
+this, though a mere shade, testified to the first personal resentment
+Nick had ever heard his visitor express--"I may be a bore, but once in a
+while I strike a light, I make things out. Then I venture to repeat,
+'Take care, take care.' If, as I say, I respect _ces dames_ infinitely
+it's because they will be acting according to the highest wisdom of
+their sex. That's the sort of thing women do for a man--the sort of
+thing they invent when they're exceptionally good and clever. When
+they're not they don't do so well; but it's not for want of trying.
+There's only one thing in the world better than their incomparable
+charm: it's their abysmal conscience. Deep calleth unto deep--the one's
+indeed a part of the other. And when they club together, when they
+earnestly consider, as in the case we're supposing," Nash continued,
+"then the whole thing takes a lift; for it's no longer the virtue of the
+individual, it's that of the wondrous sex."
+
+"You're so remarkable that, more than ever, I must paint you," Nick
+returned, "though I'm so agitated by your prophetic words that my hand
+trembles and I shall doubtless scarcely be able to hold my brush. Look
+how I rattle my easel trying to put it into position. I see it all there
+just as you show it. Yes, it will be a droll day, and more modern than
+anything yet, when the conscience of women makes out good reasons for
+men's not being in love with them. You talk of their goodness and
+cleverness, and it's certainly much to the point. I don't know what else
+they themselves might do with those graces, but I don't see what man can
+do with them but be fond of them where he finds them."
+
+"Oh you'll do it--you'll do it!" cried Nash, brightly jubilant.
+
+"What is it I shall do?"
+
+"Exactly what I just said; if not next year then the year after, or the
+year after that. You'll go halfway to meet her and she'll drag you about
+and pass you off. You'll paint the bishops and become a social
+institution. That is, you'll do it if you don't take great care."
+
+"I shall, no doubt, and that's why I cling to you. You must still look
+after me," Nick went on. "Don't melt away into a mere improbable
+reminiscence, a delightful, symbolic fable--don't if you can possibly
+help it. The trouble is, you see, that you can't really keep hold very
+tight, because at bottom it will amuse you much more to see me in
+another pickle than to find me simply jogging down the vista of the
+years on the straight course. Let me at any rate have some sort of
+sketch of you as a kind of feather from the angel's wing or a photograph
+of the ghost--to prove to me in the future that you were once a solid
+sociable fact, that I didn't invent you, didn't launch you as a deadly
+hoax. Of course I shall be able to say to myself that you can't have
+been a fable--otherwise you'd have a moral; but that won't be enough,
+because I'm not sure you won't have had one. Some day you'll peep in
+here languidly and find me in such an attitude of piety--presenting my
+bent back to you as I niggle over some interminable botch--that I shall
+give cruelly on your nerves and you'll just draw away, closing the door
+softly. You'll be gentle and considerate about it and spare me, you
+won't even make me look round. You'll steal off on tiptoe, never, never
+to return."
+
+Gabriel consented to sit; he professed he should enjoy it and be glad to
+give up for it his immediate foreign commerce, so vague to Nick, so
+definite apparently to himself; and he came back three times for the
+purpose. Nick promised himself a deal of interest from this experiment,
+for with the first hour of it he began to feel that really as yet, given
+the conditions under which he now studied him, he had never at all
+thoroughly explored his friend. His impression had been that Nash had a
+head quite fine enough to be a challenge, and that as he sat there day
+by day all sorts of pleasant and paintable things would come out in his
+face. This impression was not gainsaid, but the whole tangle grew
+denser. It struck our young man that he had never _seen_ his subject
+before, and yet somehow this revelation was not produced by the sense of
+actually seeing it. What was revealed was the difficulty--what he saw
+was not the measurable mask but the ambiguous meaning. He had taken
+things for granted which literally were not there, and he found things
+there--except that he couldn't catch them--which he had not hitherto
+counted in or presumed to handle. This baffling effect, eminently in the
+line of the mystifying, so familiar to Nash, might have been the result
+of his whimsical volition, had it not appeared to our artist, after a
+few hours of the job, that his sitter was not the one who enjoyed it
+most. He was uncomfortable, at first vaguely and then definitely
+so--silent, restless, gloomy, dim, as if on the test the homage of a
+directer attention than he had ever had gave him less pleasure than he
+would have supposed. He had been willing to judge of this in good
+faith; but frankly he rather suffered. He wasn't cross, but was clearly
+unhappy, and Nick had never before felt him contract instead of
+expanding.
+
+It was all accordingly as if a trap had been laid for him, and our young
+man asked himself if it were really fair. At the same time there was
+something richly rare in such a relation between the subject and the
+artist, and Nick was disposed to go on till he should have to stop for
+pity or for shame. He caught eventually a glimmer of the truth
+underlying the strangeness, guessed that what upset his friend was
+simply the reversal, in such a combination, of his usual terms of
+intercourse. He was so accustomed to living upon irony and the
+interpretation of things that it was new to him to be himself
+interpreted and--as a gentleman who sits for his portrait is always
+liable to be--interpreted all ironically. From being outside of the
+universe he was suddenly brought into it, and from the position of a
+free commentator and critic, an easy amateurish editor of the whole
+affair, reduced to that of humble ingredient and contributor. It
+occurred afterwards to Nick that he had perhaps brought on a catastrophe
+by having happened to throw off as they gossiped or languished, and not
+alone without a cruel intention, but with an impulse of genuine
+solicitude: "But, my dear fellow, what will you do when you're old?"
+
+"Old? What do you call old?" Nash had replied bravely enough, but with
+another perceptible tinge of irritation. "Must I really remind you at
+this time of day that that term has no application to such a condition
+as mine? It only belongs to you wretched people who have the incurable
+superstition of 'doing'; it's the ignoble collapse you prepare for
+yourselves when you cease to be able to do. For me there'll be no
+collapse, no transition, no clumsy readjustment of attitude; for I
+shall only _be_, more and more, with all the accumulations of
+experience, the longer I live."
+
+"Oh I'm not particular about the term," said Nick. "If you don't call it
+old, the ultimate state, call it weary--call it final. The accumulations
+of experience are practically accumulations of fatigue."
+
+"I don't know anything about weariness. I live freshly--it doesn't
+fatigue me."
+
+"Then you need never die," Nick declared.
+
+"Certainly; I daresay I'm indestructible, immortal."
+
+Nick laughed out at this--it would be such fine news to some people. But
+it was uttered with perfect gravity, and it might very well have been in
+the spirit of that gravity that Nash failed to observe his agreement to
+sit again the next day. The next and the next and the next passed, but
+he never came back.
+
+True enough, punctuality was not important for a man who felt that he
+had the command of all time. Nevertheless his disappearance "without a
+trace," that of a personage in a fairy-tale or a melodrama, made a
+considerable impression on his friend as the months went on; so that,
+though he had never before had the least difficulty about entering into
+the play of Gabriel's humour, Nick now recalled with a certain fanciful
+awe the special accent with which he had ranked himself among
+imperishable things. He wondered a little if he hadn't at last,
+balancing always on the stretched tight-rope of his wit, fallen over on
+the wrong side. He had never before, of a truth, been so nearly witless,
+and would have to have gone mad in short to become so singularly simple.
+Perhaps indeed he was acting only more than usual in his customary
+spirit--thoughtfully contributing, for Nick's enlivenment, a purple rim
+of mystery to an horizon now so dreadfully let down. The mystery at any
+rate remained; another shade of purple in fact was virtually added to
+it. Nick had the prospect, for the future, of waiting to see, all
+curiously, when Nash would turn up, if ever, and the further
+diversion--it almost consoled him for the annoyance of being left with a
+second unfinished thing on his hands--of imagining in the portrait he
+had begun an odd tendency to fade gradually from the canvas. He couldn't
+catch it in the act, but he could have ever a suspicion on glancing at
+it that the hand of time was rubbing it away little by little--for all
+the world as in some delicate Hawthorne tale--and making the surface
+indistinct and bare of all resemblance to the model. Of course the moral
+of the Hawthorne tale would be that his personage would come back in
+quaint confidence on the day his last projected shadow should have
+vanished.
+
+
+
+
+L
+
+
+One day toward the end of March of the following year, in other words
+more than six months after Mr. Nash's disappearance, Bridget Dormer came
+into her brother's studio and greeted him with the effusion that
+accompanies a return from an absence. She had been staying at
+Broadwood--she had been staying at Harsh. She had various things to tell
+him about these episodes, about his mother, about Grace, about her small
+subterraneous self, and about Percy's having come, just before, over to
+Broadwood for two days; the longest visit with which, almost since they
+could remember, the head of the family had honoured their common parent.
+Nick noted indeed that this demonstration had apparently been taken as a
+great favour, and Biddy loyally testified to the fact that her elder
+brother was awfully jolly and that his presence had been a pretext for
+tremendous fun. Nick accordingly asked her what had passed about his
+marriage--what their mother had said to him.
+
+"Oh nothing," she replied; and Percy had said nothing to Lady Agnes and
+not a word to herself. This partly explained, for his junior, the
+consequent beatitude--none but cheerful topics had been produced; but he
+questioned the girl further--to a point which led her to say: "Oh I
+daresay that before long she'll write to her."
+
+"Who'll write to whom?"
+
+"Mamma'll write to Percy's wife. I'm sure he'd like it. Of course we
+shall end by going to see her. He was awfully disappointed at what he
+found in Spain--he didn't find anything."
+
+Biddy spoke of his disappointment almost with commiseration, for she was
+evidently inclined this morning to a fresh and kindly view of things.
+Nick could share her feeling but so far as was permitted by a
+recognition merely general of what his brother must have looked for. It
+might have been snipe and it might have been bristling boars. Biddy was
+indeed brief at first about everything, in spite of all the weeks that
+had gone since their last meeting; for he quickly enough saw she had
+something behind--something that made her gay and that she wanted to
+come to quickly. He was vaguely vexed at her being, fresh from
+Broadwood, so gay as that; for--it was impossible to shut one's eyes to
+the fact--what had practically come to pass in regard to that rural
+retreat was exactly what he had desired to avert. All winter, while it
+had been taken for granted his mother and sisters were doing what he
+wished, they had been doing precisely what he hated. He held Biddy
+perhaps least responsible, and there was no one he could exclusively
+blame. He washed his hands of the matter and succeeded fairly well, for
+the most part, in forgetting he was not pleased. Julia herself in truth
+appeared to have been the most active member of the little group united
+to make light of his decencies. There had been a formal restitution of
+Broadwood, but the three ladies were there more than ever, with the
+slight difference that they were mainly there with its mistress. Mahomet
+had declined to go any more to the mountain, so the mountain had
+virtually come to Mahomet.
+
+After their long visit in the autumn Lady Agnes and her girls had come
+back to town; but they had gone down again for Christmas and Julia had
+taken this occasion to write to Nick that she hoped very much he
+wouldn't refuse them all his own company for just a little scrap of the
+supremely sociable time. Nick, after reflexion, judged it best not to
+refuse, so that he passed, in the event, four days under his cousin's
+roof. The "all" proved a great many people, for she had taken care to
+fill the house. She took the largest view of hospitality and Nick had
+never seen her so splendid, so free-handed, so gracefully active. She
+was a perfect mistress of the revels; she had arranged some ancient
+bravery for every day and for every night. The Dormers were so much in
+it, as the phrase was, that after all their discomfiture their fortune
+seemed in an hour to have come back. There had been a moment when, in
+extemporised charades, Lady Agnes, an elderly figure being required,
+appeared on the point of undertaking the part of the housekeeper at a
+castle, who, dropping her _h_'s, showed sheeplike tourists about; but
+she waived the opportunity in favour of her daughter Grace. Even Grace
+had a great success; Grace dropped her _h_'s as with the crash of
+empires. Nick of course was in the charades and in everything, but Julia
+was not; she only invented, directed, led the applause. When nothing
+else was forward Nick "sketched" the whole company: they followed him
+about, they waylaid him on staircases, clamouring to be allowed to sit.
+He obliged them so far as he could, all save Julia, who didn't clamour;
+and, growing rather red, he thought of Gabriel Nash while he bent over
+the paper. Early in the new year he went abroad for six weeks, but only
+as far as Paris. It was a new Paris for him then; a Paris of the Rue
+Bonaparte and three or four professional friends--he had more of these
+there than in London; a Paris of studios and studies and models, of
+researches and revelations, comparisons and contrasts, of strong
+impressions and long discussions and rather uncomfortable economies,
+small cafes, bad fires and the general sense of being twenty again.
+
+While he was away his mother and sisters--Lady Agnes now sometimes wrote
+to him--returned to London for a month, and before he was again
+established in Rosedale Road they went back for a third course of
+Broadwood. After they had been there five days--and this was the salt of
+the whole feast--Julia took herself off to Harsh, leaving them in
+undisturbed possession. They had remained so--they wouldn't come up to
+town till after Easter. The trick was played, and Biddy, as I have
+mentioned, was now very content. Her brother presently learned, however,
+that the reason of this was not wholly the success of the trick; unless
+indeed her further ground were only a continuation of it. She was not in
+London as a forerunner of her mother; she was not even as yet in
+Calcutta Gardens. She had come to spend a week with Florry Tressilian,
+who had lately taken the dearest little flat in a charming new place,
+just put up, on the other side of the Park, with all kinds of lifts and
+tubes and electricities. Florry had been awfully nice to her--had been
+with them ever so long at Broadwood while the flat was being painted and
+prepared--and mamma had then let her, let Biddy, promise to come to her,
+when everything was ready, so that they might have a happy old maids'
+(for they _were_, old maids now!) house-warming together. If Florry
+could by this time do without a chaperon--she had two latchkeys and went
+alone on the top of omnibuses, and her name was in the Red Book--she was
+enough of a duenna for another girl. Biddy referred with sweet cynical
+eyes to the fine happy stride she had thus taken in the direction of
+enlightened spinsterhood; and Nick hung his head, immensely abashed and
+humiliated, for, modern as he had fatuously supposed himself, there were
+evidently currents more modern yet.
+
+It so happened that on this particular morning he had drawn out of a
+corner his interrupted study of Gabriel Nash; on no further
+curiosity--he had only been looking round the room in a rummaging
+spirit--than to see how much or how little of it remained. It had become
+to his view so dim an adumbration--he was sure of this, and it pressed
+some spring of melancholy mirth--that it didn't seem worth putting away,
+and he left it leaning against a table as if it had been a blank canvas
+or a "preparation" to be painted over. In this posture it attracted
+Biddy's attention, for on a second glance it showed distinguishable
+features. She had not seen it before and now asked whom it might
+represent, remarking also that she could almost guess, yet not quite:
+she had known the original but couldn't name him.
+
+"Six months ago, for a few days, it represented Gabriel Nash," Nick
+replied. "But it isn't anybody or anything now."
+
+"Six months ago? What's the matter with it and why don't you go on?"
+
+"What's the matter with it is more than I can tell you. But I can't go
+on because I've lost my model."
+
+She had an almost hopeful stare. "Is he beautifully dead?"
+
+Her brother laughed out at the candid cheerfulness, hopefulness almost,
+with which this inquiry broke from her. "He's only dead to me. He has
+gone away."
+
+"Where has he gone?"
+
+"I haven't the least idea."
+
+"Why, have you quarrelled?"--Biddy shone again.
+
+"Quarrelled? For what do you take us? Docs the nightingale quarrel with
+the moon?"
+
+"I needn't ask which of you is the moon," she said.
+
+"Of course I'm the nightingale. But, more literally," Nick continued,
+"Nash has melted back into the elements--he's part of the great air of
+the world." And then as even with this lucidity he saw the girl still
+mystified: "I've a notion he has gone to India and at the present moment
+is reclining on a bank of flowers in the vale of Cashmere."
+
+Biddy had a pause, after which she dropped: "Julia will be glad--she
+dislikes him so."
+
+"If she dislikes him why should she be glad he's so enviably placed?"
+
+"I mean about his going away. She'll be glad of that."
+
+"My poor incorrigible child," Nick cried, "what has Julia to do with
+it?"
+
+"She has more to do with things than you think," Biddy returned with all
+her bravery. Yet she had no sooner uttered the words than she
+perceptibly blushed. Hereupon, to attenuate the foolishness of her
+blush--only it had the opposite effect--she added: "She thinks he has
+been a bad element in your life."
+
+Nick emitted a long strange sound. "She thinks perhaps, but she doesn't
+think enough; otherwise she'd arrive at this better thought--that she
+knows nothing whatever about my life."
+
+"Ah brother," the girl pleaded with solemn eyes, "you don't imagine what
+an interest she takes in it. She has told me many times--she has talked
+lots to me about it." Biddy paused and then went on, an anxious little
+smile shining through her gravity as if from a cautious wonder as to how
+much he would take: "She has a conviction it was Mr. Nash who made
+trouble between you."
+
+"Best of little sisters," Nick pronounced, "those are thoroughly
+second-rate ideas, the result of a perfectly superficial view. Excuse my
+possibly priggish tone, but they really attribute to my dear detached
+friend a part he's quite incapable of playing. He can neither make
+trouble nor take trouble; no trouble could ever either have come out of
+him or have got into him. Moreover," our young man continued, "if Julia
+has talked to you so much about the matter there's no harm in my talking
+to you a little. When she threw me over in an hour it was on a perfectly
+definite occasion. That occasion was the presence in my studio of a
+dishevelled, an abandoned actress."
+
+"Oh Nick, she has not thrown you over!" Biddy protested. "She has
+not--I've proof."
+
+He felt at this direct denial a certain stir of indignation and looked
+at the girl with momentary sternness. "Has she sent you here to tell me
+this? What do you mean by proof?"
+
+Biddy's eyes, at these questions, met her brother's with a strange
+expression, and for a few seconds, while she looked entreatingly into
+them, she wavered there with parted lips and vaguely stretched out her
+hands. The next minute she had burst into tears--she was sobbing on his
+breast. He said "Hallo!" and soothed her; but it was very quickly over.
+Then she told him what she meant by her proof and what she had had on
+her mind ever since her present arrival. It was a message from Julia,
+but not to say--not to say what he had questioned her about just before;
+though indeed, more familiar now that he had his arm round her, she
+boldly expressed the hope it might in the end come to the same thing.
+Julia simply wanted to know--- she had instructed her to sound him
+discreetly--if Nick would undertake her portrait; and she wound up this
+experiment in "sounding" by the statement that their beautiful kinswoman
+was dying to sit.
+
+"Dying to sit?" echoed Nick, whose turn it was this time to feel his
+colour rise.
+
+"At any moment you like after Easter, when she comes up. She wants a
+full-length and your very best, your most splendid work."
+
+Nick stared, not caring that he had blushed. "Is she serious?"
+
+"Ah Nick--serious!" Biddy reasoned tenderly. She came nearer again and
+he thought her again about to weep. He took her by the shoulders,
+looking into her eyes.
+
+"It's all right if she knows _I_ am. But why doesn't she come like any
+one else? I don't refuse people!"
+
+"Nick, dearest Nick!" she went on, her eyes conscious and pleading. He
+looked into them intently--as well as she could he play at sounding--and
+for a moment, between these young persons, the air was lighted by the
+glimmer of mutual searchings and suppressed confessions. Nick read deep
+and then, suddenly releasing his sister, turned away. She didn't see his
+face in that movement, but an observer to whom it had been presented
+might have fancied it denoted a foreboding that was not exactly a dread,
+yet was not exclusively a joy.
+
+The first thing he made out in the room, when he could distinguish, was
+Gabriel Nash's portrait, which suddenly filled him with an unreasoning
+rancour. He seized it and turned it about, jammed it back into its
+corner with its face against the wall. This small diversion might have
+served to carry off the embarrassment with which he had finally averted
+himself from Biddy. The embarrassment, however, was all his own; none of
+it was reflected in the way she resumed, after a silence in which she
+had followed his disposal of the picture:
+
+"If she's so eager to come here--for it's here she wants to sit, not in
+Great Stanhope Street, never!--how can she prove better that she doesn't
+care a bit if she meets Miss Rooth?"
+
+"She won't meet Miss Rooth," Nick replied rather dryly.
+
+"Oh I'm sorry!" said Biddy. She was as frank as if she had achieved a
+virtual victory, and seemed to regret the loss of a chance for Julia to
+show an equal mildness. Her tone made her brother laugh, but she went on
+with confidence: "She thought it was Mr. Nash who made Miss Rooth come."
+
+"So he did, by the way," said Nick.
+
+"Well then, wasn't that making trouble?"
+
+"I thought you admitted there was no harm in her being here."
+
+"Yes, but _he_ hoped there'd be."
+
+"Poor Nash's hopes!" Nick laughed. "My dear child, it would take a
+cleverer head than you or me, or even Julia, who must have invented that
+wise theory, to say what they were. However, let us agree that even if
+they were perfectly fiendish my good sense has been a match for them."
+
+"Oh Nick, that's delightful!" chanted Biddy. Then she added: "Do you
+mean she doesn't come any more?"
+
+"The dishevelled actress? She hasn't been near me for months."
+
+"But she's in London--she's always acting? I've been away so much I've
+scarcely observed," Biddy explained with a slight change of note.
+
+"The same silly part, poor creature, for nearly a year. It appears that
+that's 'success'--in her profession. I saw her in the character several
+times last summer, but haven't set foot in her theatre since."
+
+Biddy took this in; then she suggested; "Peter wouldn't have liked
+that."
+
+"Oh Peter's likes--!" Nick at his easel, beginning to work, conveniently
+sighed.
+
+"I mean her acting the same part for a year."
+
+"I'm sure I don't know; he has never written me a word."
+
+"Nor me either," Biddy returned.
+
+There was another short silence, during which Nick brushed at a panel.
+It ended in his presently saying: "There's one thing certainly Peter
+_would_ like--that is simply to be here to-night. It's a great
+night--another great night--for the abandoned one. She's to act Juliet
+for the first time."
+
+"Ah how I should like to see her!" the girl cried.
+
+Nick glanced at her; she sat watching him. "She has sent me a stall; I
+wish she had sent me two. I should have been delighted to take you."
+
+"Don't you think you could get another?" Biddy quavered.
+
+"They must be in tremendous demand. But who knows after all?" Nick
+added, at the same moment looking round. "Here's a chance--here's quite
+an extraordinary chance!"
+
+His servant had opened the door and was ushering in a lady whose
+identity was indeed justly reflected in those words. "Miss Rooth!" the
+man announced; but he was caught up by a gentleman who came next and who
+exclaimed, laughing and with a gesture gracefully corrective: "No,
+no--no longer Miss Rooth!"
+
+Miriam entered the place with her charming familiar grandeur--entered
+very much as she might have appeared, as she appeared every night, early
+in her first act, at the back of the stage, by the immemorial middle
+door. She might exactly now have been presenting herself to the house,
+taking easy possession, repeating old movements, looking from one to the
+other of the actors before the footlights. The rich "Good-morning" she
+threw into the air, holding out her right hand to Biddy and then giving
+her left to Nick--as she might have given it to her own brother--had
+nothing to tell of intervals or alienations. She struck Biddy as still
+more terrible in her splendid practice than when she had seen her
+before--the practice and the splendour had now something almost royal.
+The girl had had occasion to make her curtsey to majesties and
+highnesses, but the flutter those effigies produced was nothing to the
+way in which at the approach of this young lady the agitated air seemed
+to recognise something supreme. So the deep mild eyes she bent on Biddy
+were not soothing, though for that matter evidently intended to soothe.
+Biddy wondered Nick could have got so used to her--he joked at her as
+she loomed--and later in the day, still under the great impression of
+this incident, she even wondered that Peter could have full an impunity.
+It was true that Peter apparently didn't quite feel one.
+
+"You never came--you never came," Miriam said to her kindly and sadly;
+and Biddy, recognising the allusion, the invitation to visit the actress
+at home, had to explain how much she had been absent from London and
+then even that her brother hadn't proposed to take her.
+
+"Very true--he hasn't come himself. What's he doing now?" asked Miss
+Rooth, standing near her young friend but looking at Nick, who had
+immediately engaged in conversation with his other visitor, a gentleman
+whose face came back to the girl. She had seen this gentleman on the
+stage with the great performer--that was it, the night Peter took her to
+the theatre with Florry Tressilian. Oh that Nick would only do something
+of that sort now! This desire, quickened by the presence of the strange,
+expressive woman, by the way she scattered sweet syllables as if she
+were touching the piano-keys, combined with other things to make our
+young lady's head swim--other things too mingled to name, admiration and
+fear and dim divination and purposeless pride and curiosity and
+resistance, the impulse to go away and the determination to (as she
+would have liked fondly to fancy it) "hold her ground." The actress
+courted her with a wondrous voice--what was the matter with the actress
+and what did she want?--and Biddy tried in return to give an idea of
+what Nick was doing. Not succeeding very well she was about to appeal to
+her brother, but Miriam stopped her with the remark that it didn't
+signify; besides, Dashwood was telling Nick something--something they
+wanted him to know. "We're in a great excitement--he has taken a
+theatre," Miriam added.
+
+"Taken a theatre?" Biddy was vague.
+
+"We're going to set up for ourselves. He's going to do for me
+altogether. It has all been arranged only within a day or two. It
+remains to be seen how it will answer," Miriam smiled. Biddy murmured
+some friendly hope, and the shining presence went on: "Do you know why
+I've broken in here to-day after a long absence--interrupting your poor
+brother so basely, taking up his precious time? It's because I'm so
+nervous."
+
+"About your first night?" Biddy risked.
+
+"Do you know about that--are you coming?" Miriam had caught at it.
+
+"No, I'm not coming--I haven't a place."
+
+"Will you come if I send you one?"
+
+"Oh but really it's too beautiful of you!" breathed the girl.
+
+"You shall have a box; your brother shall bring you. They can't squeeze
+in a pin, I'm told; but I've kept a box, I'll manage it. Only if I do,
+you know, mind you positively come!" She sounded it as the highest of
+favours, resting her hand on Biddy's.
+
+"Don't be afraid. And may I bring a friend--the friend with whom I'm
+staying?"
+
+Miriam now just gloomed. "Do you mean Mrs. Dallow?"
+
+"No, no--Miss Tressilian. She puts me up, she has got a flat. Did you
+ever see a flat?" asked Biddy expansively. "My cousin's not in London."
+Miriam replied that she might bring whom she liked and Biddy broke out
+to her brother: "Fancy what kindness, Nick: we're to have a box to-night
+and you're to take me!"
+
+Nick turned to her a face of levity which struck her even at the time as
+too cynically free, but which she understood when the finer sense of it
+subsequently recurred to her. Mr. Dashwood interposed with the remark
+that it was all very well to talk about boxes, but that he didn't see
+how at that time of day the miracle was to be worked.
+
+"You haven't kept one as I told you?" Miriam demanded.
+
+"As you told me, my dear? Tell the lamb to keep its tenderest mutton
+from the wolves!"
+
+"You shall have one: we'll arrange it," Miriam went on to Biddy.
+
+"Let me qualify that statement a little, Miss Dormer," said Basil
+Dashwood. "We'll arrange it if it's humanly possible."
+
+"We'll arrange it even if it's inhumanly _im_possible--that's just the
+point," Miriam declared to the girl. "Don't talk about trouble--what's
+he meant for but to take it? _Cela s'annonce bien_, you see," she
+continued to Nick: "doesn't it look as if we should pull beautifully
+together?" And as he answered that he heartily congratulated her--he was
+immensely interested in what he had been told--she exclaimed after
+resting her eyes on him a moment: "What will you have? It seemed
+simpler! It was clear there had to be some one." She explained further
+to Nick what had led her to come in at that moment, while Dashwood
+approached Biddy with a civil assurance that they would see, they would
+leave no stone unturned, though he would not have taken upon himself to
+promise.
+
+Miriam reminded Nick of the blessing he had been to her nearly a year
+before, on her other first night, when she was all impatient and on
+edge; how he had let her come and sit there for hours--helped her to
+possess her soul till the evening and to keep out of harm's way. The
+case was the same at present, with the aggravation indeed that he would
+understand--Dashwood's nerves as well as her own: Dashwood's were a
+great deal worse than hers. Everything was ready for Juliet; they had
+been rehearsing for five months--it had kept her from going mad from the
+treadmill of the other piece--and he, Nick, had occurred to her again,
+in the last intolerable hours, as the friend in need, the salutary
+stop-gap, no matter how much she worried him. She shouldn't be turned
+out? Biddy broke away from Basil Dashwood: she must go, she must hurry
+off to Miss Tressilian with her news. Florry might make some other
+stupid engagement for the evening: she must be warned in time. The girl
+took a flushed, excited leave after having received a renewal of
+Miriam's pledge and even heard her say to Nick that he must now give
+back the seat already sent him--they should be sure to have another use
+for it.
+
+
+
+
+LI
+
+
+That night at the theatre and in the box--the miracle had been wrought,
+the treasure found--Nick Dormer pointed out to his two companions the
+stall he had relinquished, which was close in front; noting how oddly it
+remained during the whole of the first act vacant. The house was beyond
+everything, the actress beyond any one; though to describe again so
+famous an occasion--it has been described repeatedly by other
+reporters--is not in the compass of the closing words of a history
+already too sustained. It is enough to say that these great hours marked
+an era in contemporary art and that for those who had a spectator's
+share in them the words "revelation," "incarnation," "acclamation,"
+"demonstration," "ovation"--to name only a few, and all accompanied by
+the word "extraordinary"--acquired a new force. Miriam's Juliet was an
+exquisite image of young passion and young despair, expressed in the
+truest, divinest music that had ever poured from tragic lips. The great
+childish audience, gaping at her points, expanded there before her like
+a lap to catch flowers.
+
+During the first interval our three friends in the box had plenty to
+talk about, and they were so occupied with it that for some time they
+failed to observe a gentleman who had at last come into the empty stall
+near the front. This discovery was presently formulated by Miss
+Tressilian in the cheerful exclamation: "Only fancy--there's Mr.
+Sherringham!" This of course immediately became a high wonder--a wonder
+for Nick and Biddy, who had not heard of his return; and the prodigy was
+quickened by the fact that he gave no sign of looking for them or even
+at them. Having taken possession of his place he sat very still in it,
+staring straight before him at the curtain. His abrupt reappearance held
+the seeds of anxiety both for Biddy and for Nick, so that it was mainly
+Miss Tressilian who had freedom of mind to throw off the theory that he
+had come back that very hour--had arrived from a long journey. Couldn't
+they see how strange he was and how brown, how burnt and how red, how
+tired and how worn? They all inspected him, though Biddy declined Miss
+Tressilian's glass; but he was evidently indifferent to notice and
+finally Biddy, leaning back in her chair, dropped the fantastic words:
+
+"He has come home to marry Juliet!"
+
+Nick glanced at her and then replied: "What a disaster--to make such a
+journey as that and to be late for the fair!"
+
+"Late for the fair?"
+
+"Why she's married--these three days. They did it very quietly; Miriam
+says because her mother hated it and hopes it won't be much known! All
+the same she's Basil Dashwood's wedded wife--he has come in just in time
+to take the receipts for Juliet. It's a good thing, no doubt, for there
+are at least two fortunes to be made out of her, and he'll give up the
+stage." Nick explained to Miss Tressilian, who had inquired, that the
+gentleman in question was the actor who was playing Mercutio, and he
+asked Biddy if she hadn't known that this was what they were telling him
+in Rosedale Road that morning. She replied that she had understood
+nothing but that she was to be where she was, and she sank considerably
+behind the drapery of the box. From this cover she was able to launch,
+creditably enough, the exclamation:
+
+"Poor, poor Peter!"
+
+Nick got up and stood looking at poor, poor Peter. "He ought to come
+round and speak to us, but if he doesn't see us I suppose he doesn't."
+He quitted the box as to go to the restored exile, and I may add that as
+soon as he had done so Florence Tressilian bounded over to the dusk in
+which Biddy had nestled. What passed immediately between these young
+ladies needn't concern us: it is sufficient to mention that two minutes
+later Miss Tressilian broke out:
+
+"Look at him, dearest; he's turning his head this way!"
+
+"Thank you, I don't care to watch his turns," said Biddy; and she
+doubtless demeaned herself in the high spirit of these words. It
+nevertheless happened that directly afterwards she had certain knowledge
+of his having glanced at his watch as if to judge how soon the curtain
+would rise again, as well as of his having then jumped up and passed
+quickly out of his place. The curtain had risen again without his
+reappearing and without Nick's returning. Indeed by the time Nick
+slipped in a good deal of the third act was over; and even then, even
+when the curtain descended, Peter had not come back. Nick sat down in
+silence to watch the stage, to which the breathless attention of his
+companions seemed attached, though Biddy after a moment threw round at
+him a single quick look. At the end of the act they were all occupied
+with the recalls, the applause and the responsive loveliness of Juliet
+as she was led out--Mercutio had to give her up to Romeo--and even for a
+few minutes after the deafening roar had subsided nothing was said among
+the three. At last Nick began:
+
+"It's quite true he has just arrived; he's in Great Stanhope Street.
+They've given him several weeks, to make up for the uncomfortable way
+they bundled him off--to get there in time for some special business
+that had suddenly to be gone into--when he first went out: he tells me
+they even then promised that. He got into Southampton only a few hours
+ago, rushed up by the first train he could catch and came off here
+without any dinner."
+
+"Fancy!" said Miss Tressilian; while Biddy more generally asked if Peter
+might be in good health and appeared to have been happy. Nick replied
+that he described his post as beastly but didn't seem to have suffered
+from it. He was to be in England probably a month, he was awfully brown,
+he sent his love to Biddy. Miss Tressilian looked at his empty stall and
+was of the opinion that it would be more to the point if he were to come
+in to see her.
+
+"Oh he'll turn up; we had a goodish talk in the lobby where he met me. I
+think he went out somewhere."
+
+"How odd to come so many thousand miles for this and then not to stay!"
+Biddy fluted.
+
+"Did he come on purpose for this?" Miss Tressilian asked.
+
+"Perhaps he's gone out to get his dinner!" joked Biddy.
+
+Her friend suggested that he might be behind the scenes, but Nick cast
+doubts; whereupon Biddy asked if he himself were not going round. At
+this moment the curtain rose; Nick said he would go in the next
+interval. As soon as it came he quitted the box, remaining absent while
+it lasted.
+
+All this time, in the house, there was no sign of Peter. Nick reappeared
+only as the fourth act was beginning and uttered no word to his
+companions till it was over. Then, after a further delay produced by
+renewed vociferous proofs of the personal victory won, he depicted his
+visit to the stage and the wonderful sight of Miriam on the field of
+battle. Miss Tressilian inquired if he had found Mr. Sherringham with
+her; to which he replied that, save across the footlights, she had not
+been in touch with him. At this a soft exclamation broke from Biddy.
+"Poor Peter! Where is he, then?"
+
+Nick seemed to falter. "He's walking the streets."
+
+"Walking the streets?"
+
+"I don't know--I give it up!" our young man replied; and his tone, for
+some minutes, reduced his companions to silence. But a little later
+Biddy said:
+
+"Was it for him this morning she wanted that place--when she asked you
+to give yours back?"
+
+"For him exactly. It's very odd she had just managed to keep it--for all
+the good use he makes of it! She told me just now that she heard from
+him, at his post, a short time ago, to the effect that he had seen in a
+newspaper a statement she was going to do Juliet and that he firmly
+intended, though the ways and means were not clear to him--his leave of
+absence hadn't yet come out and he couldn't be sure when it would
+come--to be present on her first night; whereby she must do him the
+service to provide him a place. She thought this a speech rather in the
+air, so that in the midst of all her cares she took no particular pains
+about the matter. She had an idea she had really done with him for a
+long time. But this afternoon what does he do but telegraph to her from
+Southampton that he keeps his appointment and counts on her for a stall?
+Unless she had got back mine she wouldn't have been able to help him.
+When she was in Rosedale Road this morning she hadn't received his
+telegram; but his promise, his threat, whatever it was, came back to
+her: she had a vague foreboding and thought that on the chance she had
+better hold something ready. When she got home she found his telegram,
+and she told me he was the first person she saw in the house, through
+her fright when she came on in the second act. It appears she was
+terrified this time, and it lasted half through the play."
+
+"She must be rather annoyed at his having gone away," Miss Tressilian
+observed.
+
+"Annoyed? I'm not so sure!" laughed Nick.
+
+"Ah here he comes back!" cried Biddy, behind her fan, while the absentee
+edged into his seat in time for the fifth act. He stood there a moment,
+first looking round the theatre; then he turned his eyes to the box
+occupied by his relatives, smiling and waving his hand.
+
+"After that he'll surely come and see you," said Miss Tressilian.
+
+"We shall see him as we go out," Biddy returned: "he must lose no more
+time."
+
+Nick looked at him with a glass, then exclaiming: "Well, I'm glad he has
+pulled himself together!"
+
+"Why what's the matter with him--if he wasn't disappointed of his seat?"
+Miss Tressilian demanded.
+
+"The matter with him is that a couple of hours ago he had a great
+shock."
+
+"A great shock?"
+
+"I may as well mention it at last," Nick went on. "I had to say
+something to him in the lobby there when we met--something I was pretty
+sure he couldn't like. I let him have it full in the face--it seemed to
+me better and wiser. I let him know that Juliet's married."
+
+"Didn't he know it?" asked Biddy, who, with her face raised, had
+listened in deep stillness to every word that fell from her brother.
+
+"How should he have known it? It has only just taken place, and they've
+been so clever, for reasons of their own--those people move among a lot
+of considerations that are absolutely foreign to us--about keeping it
+out of the papers. They put in a lot of lies and they leave out the real
+things."
+
+"You don't mean to say Mr. Sherringham wanted to _marry_ her!" Miss
+Tressilian gasped.
+
+"Don't ask me what he wanted--I daresay we shall never know. One thing's
+very certain--that he didn't like my news, dear old Peter, and that I
+shan't soon forget the look in his face as he turned away from me and
+slipped out into the street. He was too much upset--he couldn't trust
+himself to come back; he had to walk about--he tried to walk it off."
+
+"Let us hope, then, he _has_ walked it off!"
+
+"Ah poor fellow--he couldn't hold out to the end; he has had to come
+back and look at her once more. He knows she'll be sublime in these last
+scenes."
+
+"Is he so much in love with her as that? What difference does it make
+for an actress if she _is_ mar--?" But in this rash inquiry Miss
+Tressilian suddenly checked herself.
+
+"We shall probably never know how much he has been in love with her, nor
+what difference it makes. We shall never know exactly what he came back
+for, nor why he couldn't stand it out there any longer without relief,
+nor why he scrambled down here all but straight from the station, nor
+why after all, for the last two hours, he has been roaming the streets.
+And it doesn't matter, for it's none of our business. But I'm sorry for
+him--she is going to be sublime," Nick added. The curtain was rising on
+the tragic climax of the play.
+
+Miriam Rooth was sublime; yet it may be confided to the reader that
+during these supreme scenes Bridget Dormer directed her eyes less to the
+inspired actress than to a figure in the stalls who sat with his own
+gaze fastened to the stage. It may further be intimated that Peter
+Sherringham, though he saw but a fragment of the performance, read
+clear, at the last, in the intense light of genius with which this
+fragment was charged, that even so after all he had been rewarded for
+his formidable journey. The great trouble of his infatuation subsided,
+leaving behind it something appreciably deep and pure. This pacification
+was far from taking place at once, but it was helped on, unexpectedly to
+him--it began to work at least--the very next night he saw the play,
+through the whole of which he then sat. He felt somehow recalled to the
+real by the very felicity of this experience, the supreme exhibition
+itself. He began to come back as from a far-off province of his history
+where miserable madness had reigned. He had been baffled, he had got his
+answer; it must last him--that was plain. He didn't fully accept it the
+first week or the second; but he accepted it sooner than he could have
+supposed had he known what it was to be when he paced at night, under
+the southern stars, the deck of the ship bearing him to England.
+
+It had been, as we know, Miss Tressilian's view, and even Biddy's, that
+evening, that Peter Sherringham would join them as they left the
+theatre. This view, however, was not confirmed by the event, for our
+troubled gentleman vanished utterly--disappointingly crude behaviour on
+the part of a young diplomatist who had distinguished himself--before
+any one could put a hand on him. And he failed to make up for his
+crudity by coming to see any one the next day, or even the next. Indeed
+many days elapsed and very little would have been known about him had it
+not been that, in the country, Mrs. Dallow knew. What Mrs. Dallow knew
+was eventually known to Biddy Dormer; and in this way it could be
+established in his favour that he had remained some extraordinarily
+small number of days in London, had almost directly gone over to Paris
+to see his old chief. He came back from Paris--Biddy learnt this not
+from Julia, but in a much more immediate way: she knew it by his
+pressing the little electric button at the door of Florence Tressilian's
+flat one day when the good Florence was out and she herself was at home.
+He made on this occasion a very long visit. The good Florence knew it
+not much later, you may be sure--and how he had got their address from
+Nick--and she took an extravagant pleasure in it. Mr. Sherringham had
+never been to see _her_--the like of her--in his life: therefore it was
+clear what had made him begin. When he had once begun he kept it up, and
+Miss Tressilian's pleasure grew.
+
+Good as she was, she could remember without the slightest relenting what
+Nick Dormer had repeated to them at the theatre about the dreary side of
+Peter's present post. However, she was not bound to make a stand at this
+if persons more nearly concerned, Lady Agnes and the girl herself,
+didn't mind it. How little _they_ minded it, and Grace and Julia Dallow
+and even Nick, was proved in the course of a meeting that took place at
+Harsh during the Easter holidays. The mistress of that seat had a small
+and intimate party to celebrate her brother's betrothal. The two ladies
+came over from Broadwood; even Nick, for two days, went back to his old
+hunting-ground, and Miss Tressilian relinquished for as long a time the
+delights of her newly arranged flat. Peter Sherringham obtained an
+extension of leave, so that he might go back to his legation with a
+wife. Fortunately, as it turned out, Biddy's ordeal, in the more or less
+torrid zone, was not cruelly prolonged, for the pair have already
+received a superior appointment. It is Lady Agnes's proud opinion that
+her daughter is even now shaping their destiny. I say "even now," for
+these facts bring me very close to contemporary history. During those
+two days at Harsh Nick arranged with the former mistress of his fate the
+conditions, as they might be called, under which she should sit to him;
+and every one will remember in how recent an exhibition general
+attention was attracted, as the newspapers said in describing the
+private view, to the noble portrait of a lady which was the final
+outcome of that arrangement. Gabriel Nash had been at many a private
+view, but he was not at that one.
+
+These matters are highly recent, however, as I say; so that in glancing
+about the little circle of the interests I have tried to evoke I am
+suddenly warned by a sharp sense of modernness. This renders it
+difficult to me, for instance, in taking leave of our wonderful Miriam,
+to do much more than allude to the general impression that her
+remarkable career is even yet only in its early prime. Basil Dashwood
+has got his theatre, and his wife--people know now she _is_ his
+wife--has added three or four new parts to her repertory; but every one
+is agreed that both in public and in private she has a great deal more
+to show. This is equally true of Nick Dormer, in regard to whom I may
+finally say that his friend Nash's predictions about his reunion with
+Mrs. Dallow have not up to this time been justified. On the other hand,
+I must not omit to add, this lady has not, at the latest accounts,
+married Mr. Macgeorge. It is very true there has been a rumour that Mr.
+Macgeorge is worried about her--has even ceased at all fondly to believe
+in her.
+
+
+
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