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 lIndustrie 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 no particular
tension of the visual sense would have been required to embrace the
character of the four persons in question. As a solicitation of the eye on
definite grounds, they too constituted a successful plastic fact; and even
the most superficial observer would have perceived them to be striking
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 nights notice. They
had about them the indefinable professional look of the British traveller
abroad; that 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 illustrated very favourably 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 productions, in
their way, and ranged there motionless, on their green bench, they 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 moreover they 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 vla 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. A very close observer
would have guessed 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
mourning, as if for 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 recognize in
Paris. Cold, still and considerably worn, it was neither stupid nor hard,
but 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 perceived that she trod the earth in a manner suggesting that
in a world where she had long since discovered that one couldnt have
ones 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 closely
crinkled flaxen hair, reproduced in different shades in her children, made a
sort of looped silken canopy, like the marquee at a garden-party. Her
daughters were tall, like herself that was visible even as they sat
there and one of them, the younger evidently, was very pretty: a
straight, slender, gray-eyed English girl, with a good figure
and a fresh complexion. The sister, who was not pretty, was also straight
and slender and gray-eyed. But the gray, in this case, was not so pure, nor
were the slenderness and the straightness 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 straight nose and 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 abroad, 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 is sometimes qualified by an apprehension of
undue literalness, but it almost revels as soon as such a danger is
dispelled. 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. For
his mother and sisters, for instance, his dreaminess was notorious. 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 a period during which these good
people
might have appeared to have come, individually, to the Palais de
lIndustrie 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? inquired the other Miss Dormer, making no movement at all.
I dare say Peter wont come. Hell leave
us here to cool our heels.
Oh, Nick, dear! Biddy exclaimed in a sweet
little voice of protest. It was plainly her theory that Peter would come,
and even, a little, her apprehension 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 sons
eyes, and then observed:
Everything seems very dreadful. I should think
Biddy had better sit still. Hasnt she seen enough horrors up
above?
I dare say that if Peter comes Julia will 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 doesnt care a rap about
art. Its a fearful bore looking at fine things with Julia, Nick
rejoined.
Wont you go with him, Grace? said
Biddy, appealing to her sister.
I think she has awfully good taste! Grace
exclaimed, not answering this inquiry.
Dont 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 shed say
herself, the young man replied. About some things she has very
good taste, but about this kind of thing she has no taste at all.
Thats better, I think. said Lady
Agnes, turning her eyes
again to the kind of thing that her son appeared to
designate.
Shes 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. Mightnt you go and
order lunch, in that place, you know? she asked of her mother.
Then we would come back when it was ready.
My dear child, I cant 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.
I mean Peter, if he comes. I am sure hes 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 youre 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 cant imagine what youve got against
him, her ladyship murmured, gravely.
Dear mother, its a disappointed
fondness, Nick argued. They wont answer ones notes;
they wont 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
its a very busy time at the Embassy; there are sure to he
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.
Doesnt Julia write to you, doesnt she
answer you the very day? Grace inquired, looking at Nick as if she
were the courageous one.
He hesitated a moment, returning her glance with a certain
severity. What do you know about my correspondence? No doubt I ask too
much, he went on; I am so attached to them. Dear old Peter, dear
old Julia!
Shes younger than you, my dear! cried
the elder girl, still resolute.
Yes, nineteen days.
Im glad you know her birthday.
She knows yours; she always gives you
something, Lady Agnes resumed, to her son.
Her taste is good then, isnt it,
Nick? Grace Dormer continued.
She makes charming presents; but, dear mother, it
isnt her taste. Its her husbands.
Her husbands?
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 thats all right, she
added, as if this might have been taken for a complaint of the limitations
of Julias bounty. She has to select, among so many, and
thats a proof of taste, her ladyship went on.
You cant say she doesnt choose lovely
ones, Grace remarked to her brother, in a tone of some triumph.
My dear, they are all lovely. George Dallows
judgement was so sure, he was incapable of making a mistake, Nicholas
Dormer returned.
I dont 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 is good enough for one to talk of.
She did him a great honour.
I dare say; but he was not unworthy of it. No such
intelligent collection of beautiful objects has been made in England in our
time.
You think too much of beautiful objects,
returned her ladyship.
I thought you were just now implying that I
thought too little.
Its 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
Dormer
pursued, with a kind of dull irreconcilability. His name ought to have
been Tallow.
You are not saying what Julia would like, if
thats what you are trying to say, her brother remarked.
Dont be vulgar, Grace, said Lady
Agnes.
I know Peter Sherringhams birthday!
Biddy broke out innocently, as a pacific diversion. She had passed her hand
into her brothers arm, to signify her readiness to go with him, while
she scanned the remoter portions 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.
Hes too much older than you, my dear,
Grace rejoined, discouragingly.
Thats why Ive noticed it
hes thirty-four. Do you call that too old? I dont care for
slobbering infants! Biddy cried.
Dont be vulgar, Lady Agnes enjoined
again.
Come, Bid, well go and be vulgar together;
for thats what we are, Im afraid, her brother said to her.
Well go and look at all these low works of art.
Do you really think its necessary to the
childs development? Lady Agnes demanded, as the pair turned
away. Nicholas Dormer was struck as by a kind of challenge, and he paused,
lingering a moment, with his little sister on his arm. What weve
been through this morning in this place, and what youve 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, dont do the British matron! he exclaimed,
good-humouredly.
British matron is soon said! I dont know
what they are coming to.
How odd that you should have been struck only with
the disagreeable things, when, for myself, I have felt it to be the most
interesting, the most suggestive morning I have passed for ever so many
months!
Oh, Nick, Nick! Lady Agnes murmured, with a
strange depth of feeling.
I like them better in London they are much
less unpleasant, said Grace Dormer.
They are things you can look at, her
ladyship went on. We certainly make the better show.
The subject doesnt matter; its the
treatment, the treatment! Biddy announced, in a voice like the tinkle
of a silver bell.
Poor little Bid! her brother cried, breaking
into a laugh.
How can I learn to model, mamma dear, if I
dont look at things and if I dont study them? the girl
continued.
This inquiry 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, its such an exhibition of
artistic life. Its 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
summersaults or commit deeds of violence, to make people notice them. After
that, no doubt, a good many will be quieter. But I dont know; to-day
Im 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, looking
down at his sister with a smile. Its the same great, many-headed
effort, and any ground thats gained by an individual, any spark
thats struck in any province, is of use and of suggestion to all the
others. We are all in the same boat.
We, do you say, my dear? Are you really setting up
for an artist? Lady Agnes asked.
Nick hesitated a moment. 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 Dont be vulgar! But she suppressed these
words, if she had intended them, and uttered others, 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 she failed to follow him; yet
something in the tone of her exclamation seemed to denote that she had
understood him only too well.
We are all in the same boat, Biddy repeated,
smiling at her.
Not me, if you please! Lady Agnes replied.
Its 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 that her brother had just
proclaimed, in some degree an effective cause.
Theres 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.
Im fond of young schools, like this movement
in sculpture, Nick remarked, with his slightly provoking serenity.
Theyre old enough to know better!
Maynt 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 to say something that he had on his mind. Apparently, however, he
judged the occasion on the whole not good enough, 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 Lady Agnes with a deep fold in his
forehead.
For her, 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,
she went on; but sometimes I dont 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
this time 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 discovered with satisfaction that they had escaped.
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; it was before the marble image of a
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,
oughtnt I, Nick? his sister inquired of him, after a moment.
Ah, my poor child, what shall I say?
Dont you think I have 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 youve seen
me.
Do you call that trying? her brother asked,
smiling at her.
Ah, Nick! murmured the girl, sensitively.
Then, with more spirit, she went on: And please, what do
you?
Well, this, for instance; 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 a Florentine of the time of Lorenzo.
Biddy looked at the image a moment. Ah,
thats not trying; thats succeeding.
Not altogether; its only trying
seriously.
Well, why shouldnt I be serious?
Mother wouldnt like it. She has inherited
the queer old superstition that art is pardonable only so long as its
bad so long as its 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 cant do without time
and singleness of purpose), she regards as just the dangerous, the criminal
element. Its the oddest hind-part-before view, the drollest
immorality.
She doesnt want one to be
professional, Biddy remarked, as if she could do justice to every
system.
Better leave it alone, then: there are duffers
enough.
I dont 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 was silent a moment, while they continued their
tour of observation. She noticed how her brother passed over some things
quickly, his first glance sufficing to show him whether they were worth
another, and recognized in a moment the figures that had something in them.
His tone puzzled her, 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 that she
could rarely tell whether a picture was good or bad until she had looked at
it for ten minutes; and 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 was exceedingly clever. It was the consciousness of this that
made her remark at last: I dont so much care whether or no I
please mamma, if I please you.
Oh, dont lean on me. Im a wretched
broken reed. Im no use really! Nick Dormer
exclaimed.
Do you mean youre a duffer? Biddy
asked, alarmed.
Frightful, frightful!
So that you mean to give up your work to
let it alone, as you advise me?
It has never been my work, Biddy. If it had, it
would be different. I should stick to it.
And you wont stick to it? the
girl exclaimed, 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 is simpler than
that?
One thing, dear Biddy: no talent at all!
Well, yours is so real, you cant help
it.
We shall see, we shall see, said Nicholas
Dormer. Let us go look at that big group.
We shall see if its real? Biddy went
on, as she accompanied him.
No; we shall see if I cant 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 which
he found himself tempted to deplore. The present was far from being 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 on this occasion
the emotions, 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
manifold suggestions looking to 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
power of quickening sensibly the life of reflection and of observation
within him. It was a good while since the reflections engendered by his
situation there 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 which was not prevented
from being agreeable by the nervous quality in it. Dormer 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 mans 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 care enough
for them.
For several years Nicholas Dormer had not omitted to see
the Salon, which the general voice, this season, pronounced not particularly
good. None the less, it was the exhibition of this season that, for some
cause connected with his crisis, made him think fast, produced
that effect which he had spoken of to his mother as a sense of artistic
life. The precinct of the marbles and bronzes appealed 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, spoke to him with the
voice of old associations, of other visits, of companionships that were
closed 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 root 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 the exhibition. He felt that it would
help him to settle something. At the moment he made this reflection 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 girls attention followed her brothers,
resting with his on a young man who faced them without seeing them, engaged
as he was in imparting to two persons who were with him his ideas about one
of the works exposed to view. What Biddy discerned 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 it to be observed. Bridget Dormer, who
was quick, estimated him immediately as a gentleman, but a gentleman unlike
any other gentleman she had ever seen. She would have taken him for a
foreigner, 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 excellent English,
nor yet that the English of this young man was not excellent. It had, on the
contrary, a conspicuous and aggressive perfection, and Biddy was sure that
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 gentlemans companions was less operative, save that she made the
rapid reflection that they were people whom in any country, from China to
Peru, one 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, voluminous 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 she was not
unaware that it gave 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 little while it struck Biddy as very long on her
own. Both of these ladies were clad in light, thin, scanty 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. Biddys 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
forward with an extended hand. Nick greeted him and said it was a happy
chance he was uncommonly glad to see him.
I never come across you I dont know
why, Nick remarked, while the two, smiling, looked each other up and
down, like men reunited after a long interval.
Oh, it seems to me theres reason enough: our
paths in life are so different. Nicks friend had a great deal of
manner, as was evinced by his fashion of saluting her without knowing
her.
Different, yes, but not so different as that.
Dont we both live in London, after all, and in the nineteenth
century?
Ah, my dear Dormer, excuse me: I dont live
in the nineteenth century.
Jamais de la vie!
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
rejoined, in a tone which appeared to imply 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 Agness 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 looked at
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
she dropped her eye-glass and laid down the greasy document. What does
it signify? I dare say its all nasty, Grace continued; and she
added, inconsequently: If Peter comes hes sure to be
particular.
Let him be particular to come, first! her
ladyship exclaimed, turning a cold eye upon the waiter.
Poulet chasseur, filets mignons, sauce
béarnaise, the man suggested.
You will 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 interposed 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 upon 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 life-time 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 is
absurdly dear, she hinted 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.
Nothing further passed, in the way of conversation with
her mother, while they waited for the latters 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
cant mention her! Grace responded.
Its better not to mention her, but to leave
it alone.
Yet he never mentions her of himself.
In some cases that is supposed to show that people
like people though of course something more than that is
required, Lady Agnes continued to meditate. Sometimes I think
hes thinking of her; then at others I cant fancy what
hes thinking of.
It would be awfully suitable, said Grace,
biting her roll.
Her mother was silent a moment, as if she were 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 declared.
Poor Julia! Lady Agnes exclaimed; and her
tone suggested that she knew more about that than she was ready to
state.
It isnt as if she wasnt 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 he is thats what I sometimes
wonder!
Grace Dormer looked at her mother a moment. Why,
mother, isnt he going to be like papa? She waited for an answer
that didnt come; after which she pursued: I thought you thought
him so like him already.
Well, I dont, said Lady Agnes,
quietly.
Who is, then? Certainly Percy
isnt.
Lady Agnes was silent a moment. There is no one
like your father.
Dear papa! Grace exclaimed. Then, with a
rapid transition: It would be so jolly for all of us; she would be so
nice to us.
She is 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
ejaculation of a moment before.
It does her some, if one looks out for her. I do,
and I think she knows it, Grace declared. One can, at any rate,
keep other women off.
Dont meddle! youre very clumsy,
was her mothers 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; thats whats
so nice in Julia. Her fortune would be thrown in; he wouldnt appear to
have married her for it.
If he does, he wont, said Lady Agnes,
a trifle obscurely.
Yes, thats whats so charming. And he
could do anything then, couldnt he?
Well, your father had no fortune, to speak
of.
Yes, but didnt Uncle Percy help
him?
His wife helped him, said Lady Agnes.
Dear mamma! the girl exclaimed.
Theres 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 are not so easy, responded Lady
Agnes. It will all depend on Nicks behaviour. He can stop it
to-morrow.
Grace Dormer stared; she evidently thought
Mr Carterets beneficence a part of the scheme of nature.
How could he stop it?
By not being serious. It isnt so hard to
prevent people giving you money.
Serious? Grace repeated. Does he want
him to be a prig, like Lord Egbert?
Yes, he does. And what hell do for him
hell do for him only if he marries Julia.
Has he told you? Grace inquired. And then,
before her mother could answer, she exclaimed: Im delighted at
that!
He hasnt told me, but thats the way
things happen. Lady Agnes was less optimistic than her daughter, and
such optimism as she cultivated was a thin tissue, with a sense of things as
they are showing through it. If Nick becomes rich, Charles Carteret
will make him more so. If he doesnt, he wont give him a
shilling.
Oh, mamma! Grace protested.
Its all very well to say that in public life
money isnt necessary, as it used to be, her ladyship went on,
broodingly. Those who say so dont know anything about it.
Its always necessary.
Her daughter was visibly affected by the gloom of her
manner, and felt impelled to evoke, as a corrective, a more cheerful idea.
I dare say; but theres the fact isnt there?
that poor papa had so little.
Yes, and theres 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 cried, 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 dye do, Cousin Agnes? How dye do,
little Grace? Peter Sherringham said, laughing and shaking hands with
them; and three minutes later he was settled in his chair at their table, on
which the first elements of the repast 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 ambassadors,
arriving, on his return by the night-train, only early that morning. There
had accordingly been a delay in his receiving Nick Dormers 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 sons
neglect of this courteous form; she said: 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 are here so
quietly, not to go out, not to seem to appeal to the ambassador. He said,
Oh, mother, well keep out of it; a friendly note will do.
I dont know, definitely, what he wanted to keep out of, except
its anything like gaiety. The Embassy isnt gay, I know. But
Im sure his note was friendly, wasnt it? I dare say youll
see for yourself; hes different directly he gets abroad; he
doesnt seem to care. Lady Agnes paused a moment, not carrying
out this particular elucidation; then she resumed: He said you would
have seen Julia and that you would understand everything from her. And when
I asked how she would know, he said, Oh, she knows
everything!
He never said a word to me about Julia,
Peter Sherringham rejoined. 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 that moment at an hotel in
the Rue de la Paix, but had only been there since that morning: he had seen
her before coming 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 would remember her, poor Dallows
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 25th. It would make seven weeks that she would 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, theyre very nice to her,
Sherringham said.
Well, I hope so! Grace Dormer qualified.
Why didnt you make her come here?
I proposed it, but she wouldnt.
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 well do that, Lady Agnes
declared. Nick went to ask about her at the Westminster.
She gave that up; they wouldnt give her the
rooms she wanted, her usual set.
Shes delightfully particular! Grace
murmured. Then she added: She does like pictures,
doesnt she?
Peter Sherringham stared. Oh, I dare say. But
thats not what she has in her head this morning. She has some news
from London; shes immensely excited.
What has she in her head? Lady Agnes
asked.
Whats her news from London? Grace
demanded.
She wants Nick to stand.
Nick to stand? both the ladies cried.
She undertakes to bring him in for Harsh.
Mr Pinks is dead the fellow, you know, that 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
nights papers.
Imagine, Nick never mentioned it! said Lady
Agnes.
Dont you know, mother? abroad he only
reads foreign papers.
Oh, I know. Ive no patience with him,
her ladyship continued. Dear Julia!
Its 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,
se fait forte, as they say here, to put him in.
Im sure if she can she will, Grace
reflected.
Dear, dear Julia! And Nick can do something for
himself, said the mother of this candidate.
I have no doubt he can do anything, Peter
Sherringham returned, good-naturedly. Then, Do you mean in
expenses? he inquired.
Ah, Im afraid he cant do much in
expenses, poor dear boy! And its dreadful how little we can look to
Percy.
Well, I dare say you may look to Julia. I think
thats her idea.
Delightful Julia! Lady Agnes ejaculated.
If poor Sir Nicholas could have known! Of course he must go straight
home, she added.
He wont like that, said Grace.
Then hell have to go without liking
it.
It will rather spoil your little
excursion, if youve only just come, Peter suggested; and
the great Biddys, if shes enjoying Paris.
We may stay, perhaps with Julia to protect
us, said Lady Agnes.
Ah, she wont stay; shell go over for
her man.
Her man?
The fellow that stands, whoever he is; especially
if hes Nick. These last words caused the eyes of Peter
Sherringhams companions to meet again, and he went on:
Shell 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 theyll
have him.
If theyll 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 its a great name, Cousin Agnes
a very great name.
One of the greatest, simply, said Lady
Agnes, smiling.
Its the best name in the world! Grace
Dormer subjoined.
All the same it didnt 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 didnt they immediately put him in somewhere
else?
How one sees that you live abroad, Peter! There
happens to have been the most extraordinary lack of openings I never
saw anything like it for a year. Theyve had their hand on him,
keeping him all ready. I dare say theyve telegraphed to him.
And he hasnt told you?
Lady Agnes hesitated. Hes so odd when
hes 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 its because he knows hes
so clever.
So he is, dear old boy. But what does he do, what
has he been doing, in a positive way?
He has been painting.
Ah, not seriously! Lady Agnes protested.
Thats 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 are always calling
on him.
He speaks magnificently, Grace attested.
Thats another of the things I lose, living
in far countries. And hes doing the Salon now, with the great
Biddy?
Just the things in this part. I cant think
what keeps them so long, Lady Agnes rejoined. Did you ever see
such a dreadful place?
Sherringham stared. Arent the things good? I
had an idea
Good? cried Lady Agnes. Theyre
too odious, too wicked.
Ah, said Peter, laughing, thats
what people fall into, if they live abroad. The French oughtnt to live
abroad.
Here they come, Grace announced, at this
point; but theyve got a strange man with them.
Thats 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 suggested; and while he remains
so conspicuous our eyes may rest on him briefly. 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 sometime
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, and had the
further distinction that it often struck superficial observers with a
certain foreignness of cast. The deeper sort, however, usually perceived
that it was 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, it would have been impossible to be more modern than Peter
Sherringham, and more of ones class and ones country. But this
did not prevent a portion of the community 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 looked like a Titian.
Peters 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 no doubt quickly perceived, hovering for a moment outside
the group. Biddy said nothing to Peter Sherringham, but there was no
flatness in a silence which afforded such opportunities for a pretty smile.
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 have seen you very often
before.
Ah, repetition recurrence: we havent
yet, in the study of how to live, abolished that clumsiness, have we?
Mr Nash genially inquired. Its a poverty in the
supernumeraries that we dont pass once for all, but come round and
cross
again, like a procession at the theatre. Its a shabby economy that
ought to have been managed better. The right thing would be just
one appearance, and the procession, regardless of expense, forever
and forever different.
The company was occupied in placing itself at table, so
that the only disengaged attention, for the moment, was Graces, to
whom, as her eyes rested on him, the young man addressed these last words
with a smile. Alas, its a very shabby idea, isnt it? The
world isnt 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? Im much obliged to
her! observed Nicholas Dormer. Nash, please sit by my mother,
with Peter on her other side.
My dear, it isnt Julia, Lady Agnes
remarked, earnestly, to her son. Every one wants you. Havent you
heard from your people? Didnt you know the seat was vacant?
Nick was looking round the table, to see what was on it.
Upon my word I dont remember. What else have you ordered,
mother?
Theres some buf braisé,
my dear, and afterwards some galantine. Here is 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
men, sil vous plaît. My dear fellow, how can I stand?
how can I sit? Wheres the money to come from?
The money? Why, from Jul Grace began,
but immediately caught her mothers eye.
Poor Julia, how you do work her! Nick
exclaimed. Nash, I recommend the asparagus-tips. Mother, hes my
best friend; do look after him.
I have an impression I have breakfasted I
am not sure, Nash observed.
With those beautiful ladies? Try again;
youll find out.
The money can be managed; the expenses are very
small and the seat is certain, Lady Agnes declared, not, apparently,
heeding her sons injunction in respect to Nash.
Rather if Julia goes down! her elder
daughter exclaimed.
Perhaps Julia wont 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 recognize her brothers 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 separated.
Deluded, misguided, infatuated persons!
Gabriel 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! But meanwhile Peter Sherringham said to Nick
Julias here, you know. You must go and see
her.
Nick looked at him for an instant rather hard, as if to
say You too? But Peters eyes appeared to answer, No,
no, not I; upon which his cousin rejoined: Of course Ill
go and see her. Ill 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?
Its an excellent place, said Lady
Agnes, coldly, I imagine you have never been there. Its 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.
Its pockets we rather lack, so many of us.
There are plenty of Harshes, Nick Dormer observed.
I dont know what you mean, Lady Agnes
said to Gabriel, with considerable majesty.
Peter Sherringham also addressed him with an Oh,
its all
right; they come down on you like a shot! and the young man continued,
ingenuously
Do you mean to say you have to pay to get into
that place that its not you that are paid?
Into that place? Lady Agnes repeated,
blankly.
Into the House of Commons. That you dont get
a high salary?
My dear Nash, youre delightful: dont
leave me dont leave me! Nick cried; while his mother
looked at him with an eye that demanded: Who is this extraordinary
person?
What then did you think pocket-boroughs
were? Peter Sherringham asked.
Mr Nashs facial radiance rested on him.
Why, boroughs that filled your pocket. To do that sort of thing
without a bribe cest trop fort!
He lives at Samarcand, Nick Dormer explained
to his mother, who coloured perceptibly. What do you advise me?
Ill 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.
Shes of excellent counsel, said Peter Sherringham.
Gabriel Nash smiled across the table at Dormer.
The lady first the lady first! I have not a word to suggest as
against any idea of hers.
We must not sit here too long, there will be so
much to do, said Lady Agnes, anxiously, perceiving a certain slowness
in the service of the buf braisé.
Biddy had been up to this moment mainly occupied in
looking, covertly and at intervals, 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 they are dreadful.
No, not dreadful only inferior, the
personage impugned protested. Everything is 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
dry.
Ah, then! And her neighbour shook his head
sadly. He turned, after this, to Biddy, saying to her: 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 are persons theatrical; the younger one is trying to go upon the
stage.
And are you assisting her? Biddy asked,
pleased that she had guessed so nearly right.
Not in the least Im rather heading
her off. I consider it the lowest of the arts.
Lower than politics? asked Peter
Sherringham, who was listening to this.
Dear, no, I wont 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 dont consider the dramatic art a low one. On
the contrary, it seems to me to include all the others.
Yes thats a view. I think its
the view of my friends.
Of your friends?
Two ladies old acquaintances whom I
met in Paris a week ago and whom I have 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 have really
anything to say to the theatre.
It can easily be managed. Do you believe in the
theatre? asked Gabriel Nash.
Passionately, Sherringham confessed.
Dont you?
Before Mr Nash had had time to answer Biddy had
interposed with a sigh: How I wish I could go but in Paris I
cant!
Ill take you, Biddy I vow Ill
take you.
But the plays, Peter, the girl objected.
Mamma says theyre worse than the pictures.
Oh, well arrange that: they shall do one at
the Français on purpose for a delightful little English
girl.
Can you make them?
I can make them do anything I choose.
Ah, then, its the theatre that believes in
you, said Gabriel Nash.
It would be ungrateful if it didnt!
Peter Sherringham laughed.
Lady Agnes had withdrawn herself from between him and
Mr Nash, 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, isnt the actor more honest?
Lady Agnes turned to her son and exclaimed with spirit:
Think of your great father, Nicholas!
He was an honest man; that perhaps is why he
couldnt 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
Nicks 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: isnt 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 is more than half a Jewess.
It is as good as Rachel Félix,
Sherringham said.
The names as good, but not the talent. The
girl is magnificently stupid.
And more than half a Jewess? Dont you
believe it! Sherringham exclaimed.
Dont believe shes a Jewess?
Biddy asked, still more interested in Miriam Rooth.
No, no that shes stupid, really. If
she is, shell be the first.
Ah, you may judge for yourself, Nash
rejoined, if youll come to-morrow afternoon to Madame
Carré, Rue de Constantinople, à
lentresol.
Madame Carré? Why, Ive already a note
from her I found it this morning on my return to Paris asking
me to look in at five oclock and listen to a jeune
Anglaise.
Thats my arrangement I obtained the
favour. The ladies want an opinion, and dear old Carré has consented
to see them and to give one. Gladys will recite something and the venerable
artist will pass judgement.
Sherringham remembered that he had his note in his
pocket,
and he took it out and looked it over. She wishes to make her a little
audience she says shell do better with that and she asks
me because Im 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 see an old French actress
and to hear an English amateur recite?
Nick looked round from his talk with his mother and
Grace. Ill go anywhere with you, so that, as Ive told you,
I may not lose sight of you, may keep hold of you.
Poor Mr Nash. why is he so useful? Lady
Agnes demanded with a laugh.
He steadies me, mother.
Oh, I wish youd 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 inquired.
No, but I want to see something, to know
something.
Madame Carré is wonderful in her way, but
she is hardly company for a little English girl.
Im not little, Im only too big; and
she goes, the person you speak of.
For a professional purpose, and with her good
mother, smiled Gabriel Nash. I think Lady Agnes would hardly
venture
Oh, Ive seen her good mother! said
Biddy, as if she had an impression of what the worth of that protection
might be.
Yes, but you havent heard her. Its
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, as she does sometimes still dans le
monde as no one else does, in my rooms.
Make her come, then; we can go
there!
One of these days!
And the young lady Miriam, Edith, Gladys
make her come too.
Sherringham looked at Nash, and the latter exclaimed:
Oh, youll have no difficulty; shell jump at it!
Very good; Ill 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, youre not for helping the young lady, how came you to
arrange this interview with the great model?
Precisely to stop her. The great model will find
her very bad. Her judgements, as you probably know, are
Rhadamanthine.
Poor girl! said Biddy. I think
youre cruel.
Never mind; Ill look after them, said
Sherringham.
And how can Madame Carré judge, if the girl
recites English?
Shes so intelligent that she could judge if
she recited Chinese, Peter declared.
Thats true, but the jeune Anglaise
recites also in French, said Gabriel Nash.
Then she isnt stupid.
And in Italian, and in several more tongues, for
aught I know.
Sherringham was visibly interested. Very good;
well 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
mothers side. On the fathers, on the other hand, I imagine, only
a Jew stockbroker in the city.
Then theyre rich or ought to
be, Sherringham suggested.
Ought to be ah, theres 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 lived upon till to-day this and another resource.
Her husband, as she has often told me, had the artistic temperament;
thats 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
constituted the most palpable
part of her heritage. 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, havent we? asked Gabriel Nash, with childlike trust
and I have 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 it and smashed it. It was the last of the
little phase. It was not, however, as you have seen, the last of
Mrs Rooth. I saw her afterwards in London, and I met 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 dont 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 is 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 dare say 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 are both very clever, said Gabriel Nash,
and Rudolf Roth, as I happen to know, was indeed the designation of
Maud Vavasours papa. But, as far as the question of derogation goes,
one might as well drown as starve, for what connection is not a
misalliance when one happens to have the cumbersome, the unaccommodating
honour of being a Neville-Nugent of Castle Nugent? Such was the high lineage
of Mauds 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 is like him and she is 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 upon 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 is that?
Its a domain of immeasurable extent and
almost inconceivable splendour, but I fear it isnt to be found in any
prosaic earthly geography! Lady Agnes rested her eyes on the
tablecloth, as if she were not sure a liberty had not been taken with her,
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 appeared to
have been strongly kindled by the sketch of Miriam Rooth, challenging him
sociably, reminded him that he had a short time before assigned a low place
to the dramatic art and had not yet answered his question as to whether he
believed in the theatre. This gave Nash an opportunity to go on:
I dont know that I understand your question;
there are different ways of taking it. Do I think its 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 lime-light, and to other ladies and gentlemen who
are bored and stupid and dont know what to do with their evening.
Its a commercial and social convenience which may be infinitely
worked. But important artistically, intellectually? How can it be
so poor, so limited a form?
Dear me, it strikes me as so rich, so various! Do
you think its poor and limited, Nick? Sherringham
added, appealing to his kinsman.
I think whatever Nash thinks. I have no opinion
to-day but his.
This answer of Nick Dormers drew the eyes of his
mother and sisters to him, and caused his friend to exclaim that he was not
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 said to Sherringham. I understand you perfectly. Its a
phase like another. Ive been through it jai
été comme ça.
And you went, then, very often to the
Théâtre Français, and it was there I saw you. I place
you now.
Im 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 couldnt rest till I had told her that I hung upon her
lips.
Thats just what I told her,
returned Sherringham.
She was very kind to me. She said, Vous
me rendez des forces.
Thats just what she said to me!
And we have remained very good friends.
So have we! laughed Sherringham.
And such perfect art as hers: do you mean to say you dont
consider that important such a rare dramatic
intelligence?
Im afraid you read the feuilletons.
You catch their phrases, Gabriel Nash blandly rejoined. Dramatic
intelligence is never rare; nothing is more common.
Then why have we so many bad 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
didnt do that? And reflect that that enables them to succeed!
Of course, always, there are numbers of people on the stage who are no
actors at all, for its even easier to our poor humanity to be
ineffectively stupid and vulgar than to bring down the house.
Its not easy, by what I can see, to produce,
completely, any artistic effect, Sherringham declared; and those
that the actor produces are among the most moving that we know. Youll
not persuade me that to watch such an actress as Madame Carré was not
an education of the taste, an enlargement of ones 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. Its 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, wont it? when
the essentially brutal nature of the modern audience is still more
perceived, when it has been properly analyzed: 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 speculations of the day, 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, before eleven oclock. Fancy putting
the exquisite before such a tribunal as that! Theres not even a
question of it. The dramatist wouldnt if he could, and in nine cases
out of ten he couldnt 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 didnt defer to them (not so much, at least), and
thats why they are less and less actable. If they are touched
the large fellows its only to be mutilated and trivialized.
Besides, they had a simpler civilization 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 are 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
demanded.
No, but I read them when they are extraordinarily
good, and I dont go to plays. I read Balzac, for instance I
encounter the magnificent portrait of Valérie Marneffe, in La
Cousine Bette.
And you contrast it with the poverty of Emile
Augiers Séraphine in Les Lionnes Pauvres? I was
awaiting you there. Thats 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 have seen Madame Carré in parts, in the
modern repertory, which she has made as vivid to me, caused to abide as
ineffaceably in my memory, as Valérie Marneffe. She is the Balzac, as
one may say, of actresses.
The miniaturist, as it were, of
whitewashers! Nash rejoined, laughing.
It might have been guessed that Sherringham was
irritated, but the other disputant was so good-humoured that he abundantly
recognized his own obligation to appear so.
You would be magnanimous if you thought the young
lady you have introduced to our old friend would be important.
She might be much more so than she ever will
be.
Lady Agnes got up, to terminate the scene, and even to
signify that enough had been said about people and questions she had never
heard of. Every one else rose, the waiter brought Nick the receipt of the
bill, and Sherringham went on, to his interlocutor
Perhaps she will 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 have never seen her, I shall find something in her.
What do you say, Biddy, shall I take an interest in her?
Biddy hesitated a moment, coloured a little, felt a
certain embarrassment in being publicly treated as an oracle.
If shes not nice I dont 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 : Dear me, what chance has a girl of mine with
a man whos 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 the part of
Nicholas, and a strange eagerness on Peters, learned apparently in
Paris, to discuss, with a person who had a tone she never had been exposed
to, topics irrelevant and uninteresting, the practical effect of
which was to make light of her presence. Let us leave this let
us leave this! she almost moaned. The party moved together towards the
door of departure, and her ruffled spirit was not soothed by hearing her son
remark to his terrible friend: You know you dont leave us
I stick to you!
At this Lady Agnes broke out and interposed:
Excuse me for reminding you that you are going to call on
Julia.
Well, cant Nash also come to call on Julia?
Thats just what I want that she should see him.
Peter Sherringham came humanely to her ladyships
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 will introduce him to my
sister, a much more positive quantity.
It is easy to see wholl have the best of
it! Grace Dormer exclaimed; and Gabriel 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 have a little corner at the
Embassy, Sherringham continued.
You are very kind. You must bring him, then,
to-morrow Rue de Constantinople.
At five oclock dont be
afraid.
Oh, dear! said Biddy, 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
that his friend had disappeared. Biddy had attached herself to Peter, and
Grace apparently had not encouraged Mr Nash.
Lady Agness idea had been that her son should go
straight from the Palais de lIndustrie 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 brilliant kinswoman and as she
knew that her daughters desired it, she was quite ready to postpone their
visit, if this sacrifice should contribute to a speedy confrontation for
Nick. She was eager that he should talk with Mrs Dallow, and eager that
he should be eager himself; but it presently appeared that he was really not
anything that could impartially be called so. His view was that she and the
girls should go to the Hôtel de Hollande without delay and should
spend the rest of the day with Julia, if they liked. 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 ladys
imagination travel. And now that idea appealed to him less than a ramble in
search of old books and prints, for she was sure this was what he had in his
head. Julia would be flattered if she knew it, but of course she must not
know it. Lady Agnes was already thinking of the most honourable explanations
she could give of the young mans 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
her relations 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 were not some telegrams.
He freely consented to do so much as this, and having
called a cab, that she might go her way with the girls, he 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 often her anxiety was apt to
increase: she had come to recognize it as a sign that he was slipping away
from her. She drove off with a vague sense that at any rate she and the
girls might do something towards 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 he counted on and which made him
speak of English affairs and even of English domestic politics as local. Of
course they were local, and was not that 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 had not seen it a thousand times!), she wished she might
have thought of Peters influence with her son as exerted a little more
in favour of localism. She had a sense that he would not abbreviate the
boys ill-timed flânerie. However, he had been very nice:
he had invited them all to dine with him that evening at a convenient
restaurant, promising to bring Julia and one of his colleagues. So much as
this he had been willing to do to make sure that 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 conclusion of this reflection is, perhaps, best indicated
by the circumstance of her ladyships remarking, after a minute, to her
younger daughter, who sat opposite to her in the voiture de place,
that it would do no harm if she should get a new hat, and that the article
might be purchased that afternoon.
A French hat, mamma? said Grace. Oh,
do wait till she gets home!
I think they are prettier here, you know,
Biddy rejoined; and Lady Agnes said, simply, I dare say theyre
cheaper.
What was in her mind, in fact, was, I dare say Peter thinks them
becoming. It will be seen that she had plenty of spiritual occupation,
the sum of which was not diminished 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, for she had
taken for granted that Julia would be in a manner waiting for them. How did
she know that Nick was not coming? When people were in Paris for a few days
they didnt mope in the house; but Julia might have waited a little
longer or might have left an explanation. Was she then not so much in
earnest about Nicks standing? Didnt she recognize the importance
of being there to see him about it? Lady Agnes wondered whether Julias
behaviour were a sign that she was already tired of the way this young
gentleman treated her. Perhaps she had gone out because an instinct told her
that its being important he should see her early would make no difference
with him told her that he wouldnt come. Her heart sank as she
glanced at this possibility that Julia was already tired, for she, on her
side, had an instinct there were still more tiresome things in store. She
had disliked having to tell Mrs Dallow that Nick wouldnt see her
till the evening, but now she disliked still more her not being there to
hear it. She even resented a little her kinswomans not having reasoned
that she and the girls would come in any event, and not thought them worth
staying in for. It occurred to her that she would perhaps have gone to their
hotel, which was a good way up the Rue de Rivoli, near the Palais Royal, and
she directed the cabman to drive to that establishment.
As he jogged along she took in some degree the measure
of what that might mean, Julias 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 to her
would not 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
poor Grace. Lady Agnes knew that she was not particularly fond of poor
Grace, and was even able to guess the reason the manner in which
Grace betrayed the most that they wanted to make sure of her. She remembered
how long the girl had stayed the last time she had gone to Harsh. She had
gone for an acceptable week, and she had been in the house a
month. She took a private, heroic vow that Grace should not go near the
place again for a year; that is, not unless Nick and Julia were married
before this. If that were to happen she shouldnt care. She recognized
that it was not absolutely everything that Julia should be in love with
Nick; it was also better she should dislike his mother and sisters after
than before. Lady Agnes did justice to the natural rule in virtue of which
it usually comes to pass that a woman doesnt get on with her
husbands 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
she 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 is 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 she was far from finding everything in
Paris amusing. She had no aptitude for aimlessness, and moreover she thought
it vulgar. If she had found Julias 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 ladyships
presuppositions of cheapness were wofully belied.
Who in the world is your funny friend? Peter
Sherringham meanwhile asked of his kinsman. He lost no time as they walked
together.
Ah, theres something else you lost by going
to Cambridge you lost Gabriel Nash!
He sounds like an Elizabethan dramatist,
Sherringham said. But I havent lost him, since it appears now
that I shall not be able to have you without him.
Oh, as for that, wait a little. Im going to
try him again, but I dont know how he wears. What I mean is that you
have probably lost his freshness. I have an idea he has become 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
suggestive paradox. 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 summersaults in the
blue, and wondered how far he could go. Hes 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 isnt
so good.
I see you more than suspect that. May it not
simply be that hes an ass?
That would be the whole I shall see in time
but it certainly isnt one of the parts. It may be the effect,
but it isnt the cause, and its for the cause that I claim an
interest. I imagine you think hes an ass on account of what he said
about the theatre, his pronouncing it a coarse art.
To differ about him that reason will do,
said Sherringham. The only bad one would be one that shouldnt
preserve our difference. You neednt tell me you agree with him, for
frankly I dont care.
Then your passion still burns? Nick Dormer
asked.
My passion?
I dont mean for any individual exponent of
the contestable 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, its still my little hobby: my little
folly, if you like. I dont see that I get tired of it. What will you
have? Strong predilections are rather a blessing; they are simplifying. I am
fond of representation the representation of life: I like it better,
I think, than the real thing. You like it, too,
so you have no right to cast the stone. You like it best done one way and I
another; and our preference, on either side, has a deep root in us. There is
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 give him his lift) seem to me
innumerable he can carry it to a delicacy! and I take great
pleasure in observing them, in recognizing them and comparing them.
Its an amusement like another: I dont pretend to call it by any
exalted name; but in this vale of friction it will serve. One can lose
ones self in it, and it has this 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? Sherringham abruptly asked.
Dont be ashamed of it, or it will be ashamed
of you. I ought to discriminate. You are distinguished among my friends and
relations by being a rising young diplomatist; but you know I always want
the further distinction, the last analysis. Therefore I surmise that you are
conspicuous among rising young diplomatists for the infatuation that you
describe in such pretty terms.
You evidently believe that it will prevent me from
rising very high. But pastime for pastime, is it any idler than
yours?
Than mine?
Why, you have half a dozen, while I only allow
myself the luxury of one. For the theatre is my sole vice, really. Is this
more wanton, say, than to devote weeks to ascertaining in what particular
way your friend Mr Nash may be a twaddler? Thats not my ideal of
choice recreation, but I would undertake to do it sooner. Youre a
young statesman (who happens to be 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 its representation in oils or do you practise
water-colours too? You even go much further than I, for I study my art of
predilection only in the works of others. I dont aspire to leave works
of my own. Youre a painter, possibly a great one; but Im not an
actor. Nick Dormer declared that he would certainly become one
he was 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.
Hes not at all complicated; hes 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 him for
is that he hasnt any at all. It makes him so cool.
By Jove, you match him there! Its an
attribute to be tolerated. How does he manage it?
I havent the least idea I dont
know that he is tolerated. I dont think any one has ever
detected the process. His means, his profession, his belongings have never
anything to do with the question. He doesnt shade off into other
people; hes as neat as an outline cut out of paper with scissors. I
like him, therefore, because in intercourse with him you know what
youve got hold of. With most men you dont: to pick the flower
you must break off the whole dusty, thorny, worldly branch; you find you are
taking up in your grasp all sorts of other people and things, dangling
accidents and conditions. Poor Nash has none of those ramifications;
hes the solitary blossom.
My dear fellow, you would be better for a little
of the same pruning! Sherringham exclaimed; and the young men
continued their walk and their gossip, jerking each other this way and that
with a sociable roughness consequent on their having been boys together.
Intimacy had reigned, of old, between the little Sherringhams and the little
Dormers, united by country contiguity and by the circumstance that there was
first-cousinship, not neglected, among the parents, Lady Agnes standing in
this convertible 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. Since then many things had
altered, but not the deep foundation of sociability. 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 taken its course
later, in university years. Bricket, however, had remained accessible to
Windrush, and Windrush to Bricket, to which 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 international comparison, 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, who died wifeless and
childless. The new baronet, so different from his father (though he recalled
at some points the uncle after whom he had been named) that Nick had to make
it up by aspirations of resemblance, 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 which the British rifle had spared.
Lady Agnes, meanwhile, settled with her girls in a gabled, latticed house in
a creditable quarter, though it was still a little raw, 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
ladyships behalf was not an incitement to grandeur.
Nick had a room under his mothers roof, which he
mainly used to dress for dinner when he dined 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 quarter
of the town, 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 scarcely would 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. To express a disposition to regard whims of this sort
as a pure extravagance 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 Nicks providence, 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 ungracefully
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 Nick could be looked to not to
betray such a confidence; for Mr Carterets 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 Nicholass
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,
clustering about an immense brown old abbey. When Lady Agness
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 victory, under his fathers 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 general
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, it has since burnt out),
had rendered almost brilliant. 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 Lady
Agnes regarded it as famous as his son had been to stand), which the
boys 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
Nicks 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, almost bullying man. It
was to a certain extent a comfort that poor Sir Nicholas, who had been
witness of the bright hour, passed away before the darkness. He died, with
all his hopes on his second sons head, unconscious of near disaster,
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 sort of paternal dedication, a solemn 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 boys 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 upon him the great mission of carrying out the unachieved
and reviving a silent voice. 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 Sir Nicholass 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 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 he
was willing enough to rest. 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.
Nicks 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 strange enough to
each other to give a taste 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 only agreed. 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, recognized
that he had 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;
it was the moral type of which, on the whole, he thought least favourably.
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 Dormers 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, all the amusing tints and tones, 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
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 reinforced by Julia.
Peter Sherringham, the next day, reminded Nick that he
had promised to be present with him at Madame Carrés interview
with the ladies introduced to her by Gabriel Nash; and in the afternoon, in
accordance with 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 a comédie de salon, 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, and Gabriel Nash wandered about the room, looking 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, a record of movements in the air.
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 to her added to his amused, charmed sense that it was a
miracle, that his extraordinary old friend had seen things that 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 actors art was so systematic that
it had an antiquarian side, and at the risk of representing him as attached
to a 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 come too late for 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
actors art, in general, is 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 she had suffered the day before, at the Salon, under the
challenging eyes of Maud Vavasour. It was plain at the present hour, that
Miss Vavasour would have run away had she not felt
that the persons present would prevent her escape. Her aspect made Nick
Dormer 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 trembling 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 forbear to interpose, even as against his
conscience, to keep the occasion from being too cruel. There were occasions
indeed that could scarcely 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, and
Peter addressed himself to Mrs Rooth. There was no use as yet in saying
anything to the girl; she 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 Miriams, 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 Sherringhams. Its either this, and
she rolled her eyes expressively about the room, or its I
dont know too much what!
Perhaps were too many, Peter hazarded,
to her daughter. But really, youll find, after you fairly begin,
that youll 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 word she
spoke, however, though uttered in a deep, serious tone, had not the note of
sensibility: Oh, I dont 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 slowly got up to
meet her, hanging her head a little and looking at her from under her brows.
There was no sentiment in her face only a kind of vacancy of terror
which had not even the merit of being fine of its kind, for it seemed stupid
and superstitious. Yet the head was good, he perceived at the same moment;
it was strong and salient and made to tell at a distance. Madame
Carré scarcely noticed her at first, greeting her only in her order,
with the others, and pointing to seats, composing the circle with smiles and
gestures, as if they were all before the prompters box. The old
actress presented herself to a casual glance as a red-faced woman in a wig,
with beady eyes, a hooked nose and pretty hands; but Nick Dormer, who had a
perception of physiognomy, speedily observed that these free characteristics
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, like an old valuable time-piece, 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 in
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, cest une plaisanterie, she
went on, to Mrs Rooth; whereas you and your daughter,
chère madame I am sure that 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 insinuatingly: She knows
four languages.
Madame Carré gave one of her histrionic stares,
throwing back her head. Thats three too many. The thing is to do
something with one of them.
Were very much in earnest, continued
Mrs Rooth, who spoke excellent French.
Im glad to hear it il ny a
que ça. La tête est bien the
head is very good, she said, looking at the girl. But let us
see, my dear child, what youve 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 upon the three men.
Un beau regard it carries well, Madame
Carré hinted. But even as she spoke Miss Rooths fine gaze was
suffused again, and the next moment she had begun to weep. Nick Dormer
sprung up; he felt embarrassed and intrusive there was such an
indelicacy in sitting there to watch a poor girls struggle with
timidity. There was a momentary confusion; Mrs Rooths tears were
seen also to flow; Gabriel Nash began to laugh, 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, if their
presence was oppressive to 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 Gabriel Nash explained judiciously to the
other men that she would be worse if they were to go away. 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 girl was
quickly better, and Madame Carré, on the sofa beside her, held her
hand and emitted a perfect music of reassurance. The nerves, the
nerves they are half of our trade. Have as many as you like, if
youve got something else too. Voyons do you know
anything?
I know some pieces.
Some pieces of the
répertoire?
Miriam Rooth stared as if she didnt 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 isnt the
comedy.
It is only to show you how she has been
educated.
Ah, chère madame, there is no education
that matters! I mean save the right one. Your daughter must have a language,
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 oughtnt to be an actress; you ought to
be a governess.
Oh, dont tell us that: its to escape
from that! pleaded Mrs Rooth.
Im very sure your daughter will escape from
that, Peter Sherringham was moved to remark.
Oh, if you could help her! the lady
exclaimed, pathetically.
She has certainly all the qualities that strike
the eye, said Peter.
You are most kind, sir!
Mrs Rooth declared, elegantly draping herself.
She knows Célimène; I have heard her
do Célimène, Gabriel Nash said to Madame
Carré.
And she knows Juliet, and 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 interposed.
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; shes
made for that, Nick Dormer ventured to observe to Mrs Rooth;
partly because he was struck with the girls capacity as a model,
partly to mitigate the crudity of inexpressive spectatorship.
So all the artists say. I have 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 am sure it would make her
celebrated.
And me too, said Nick, laughing.
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. Its a pity, because I like to catch
them wild.
Oh, shes wild enough, if thats all!
And thats the very point, the question of where to try,
Mrs Rooth went on. Into what do I launch her upon what
dangerous, stormy sea? Ive thought of it so anxiously.
Try here try the French public:
theyre so much the most serious, said Gabriel Nash.
Ah, no, try the English: theres such a rare
opening! Sherringham exclaimed, in quick opposition.
Ah, it isnt the public, dear gentlemen.
Its the private side, the other people its the life
its the moral atmosphere.
Je ne connais quune scène
la nôtre, Madame Carré asserted. I have been
informed there is no other.
And very correctly, said Gabriel Nash.
The theatre in our countries is puerile and barbarous.
There is something to be done for it, and perhaps
mademoiselle is the person to do it, Sherringham suggested,
contentiously.
Ah, but, en attendant, what can it do for
her? Madame Carré asked.
Well, anything that I can help it to do,
said Peter Sherringham, who was more and more struck with the girls
rich type. Miriam Rooth sat in silence, while this discussion went on,
looking from one speaker to the other with a suspended, literal air.
Ah, if your part is marked out, I congratulate
you, mademoiselle! said the old actress, underlining the words as she
had often underlined such words 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 mothers 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?
thats what I ask, the good lady continued, with a persistent
candour which elicited a peal of unceremonious but sociable laughter from
Gabriel Nash.
The purest tone
quest-ce-que-cest que ça? Madame Carré
demanded, in the finest manner of modern comedy.
We are very, very respectable,
Mrs Rooth went on, smiling and achieving lightness, too. What I
want to do is to place my daughter where the conduct and the picture
of
conduct, in which she should take part wouldnt be absolutely
dreadful. Now, chère madame, how about all that? how about the
conduct in the French theatre the things she should see, the things
she should hear?
I dont think I know what you are talking
about. They are the things she may see and hear everywhere; only they are
better done, they are better said. 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 stick. I know no other conduct.
But there are characters, there are situations,
which I dont 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 shouldnt 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 is good? Your plays must be even more ingenious than I
supposed.
We havent any plays, said Gabriel
Nash.
People will write them for Miss Rooth it
will be a new era, Peter Sherringham rejoined, with wanton, or at any
rate combative, optimism.
Will you, sir will you do
something? A sketch of some truly noble female type? the old lady
asked, engagingly.
Oh, I know what you do with our pieces to
show your superior virtue! Madame Carré broke in, before he had
time to reply that he wrote nothing but diplomatic memoranda. Bad
women? Je nai joué que ça, madame.
Really bad? I tried to make them real!
I can say
LAventurière, Miriam interrupted, in a cold
voice which seemed to hint at a want of participation in the maternal
solicitudes.
Confer on 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 round her; then, having taken off her hat and
given it to her mother, she stood on the designated spot with her eyes on
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 visitors 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 its rather the case with you
other English, and I have 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. Thats hard enough to merit
Paradise. Everything else is base humbug! Voila, chère madame, the
answer I have for your scruples!
Its admirable admirable; and I am
glad my friend Dormer here has had the great advantage of hearing you utter
it! Gabriel Nash exclaimed, looking at Nick.
Nick thought it, in effect, a speech denoting an
intelligence of the question, but he rather resented the idea that Nash
should assume that 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 girls 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; and her eyes gazed straight out of the window, at the houses
on the opposite side in the Rue de Constantinople.
Mrs Rooth had listened to Madame Carré with
startled, respectful attention, but Nick, considering her, was very sure
that she had not understood her hostesss little lesson. Yet this did
not prevent her from exclaiming in answer to him: 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 mobile brows, was pale and regular, with a
strange, strong, tragic beauty. I dont know whats 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 made her commence, giving her the first
line of the speech of Clorinde: Vous ne me fuyez pas, mon enfant,
aujourdhui. But still the girl hesitated, and for an instant
she appeared to make a vain, convulsive effort. In this effort 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 during this moment she was 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 girls 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
came quavering from her young throat. She delivered the lines of Clorinde,
in the fine interview with Célie, in the third act of the play, 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, and when it was
over it had not precisely been a triumph for Miriam Rooth. Sherringham
forbore to look at Gabriel Nash, and Madame Carré said: I think
you have 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;
its 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, Ill warrant. said their
hostess. They mimic as if for the deaf, they emphasize as if 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;
thats 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 rejoinder to which the old actress
exclaimed: Oh, you English, you are dune
légèreté à faire rougir. If you havent
a home you must make one. In our profession its the first
requisite.
But where? Thats what I ask! said
Mrs Rooth.
Why not here? Sherringham inquired.
Oh, here! And the good lady shook her head,
with a world of suggestions.
Come and live in London, and then I shall be able
to paint your daughter, Nick Dormer interposed.
Is that all that it will take, my dear
fellow? asked Gabriel Nash.
Ah, London is full of memories,
Mrs Rooth went on. My father had a great house there we
always came up. But all thats over.
Study here, and go to London to appear, said
Peter Sherringham, feeling frivolous even as he spoke.
To appear in French?
No, in the language of Shakespeare.
But we cant study that here.
Monsieur Sherringham means that he will give you
lessons, Madame Carré explained. Let me not fail to say
it hes an excellent critic.
How do you know that you who are
perfect? asked Sherringham: an inquiry to which the answer was
forestalled by the girls rousing herself to make it public that she
could recite the Nights of Alfred de Musset.
Diable! said the actress,
thats more than I can! But 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 Mussets 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 look.
Sherringham had
supposed Miriam was abashed by the flatness of her first performance, but
now he perceived that she could not have been conscious of this; she was
rather exhilarated and emboldened. She made a muddle 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 but a dim idea of their
meaning. When she had finished Madame Carré passed no judgement; she
only said, 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 hes more profound
than La Fontaine; and after some deliberation and delay Miriam broke
into The Lotos-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 generalization which could be
very present to him was that she uttered these dissimilar compositions in
exactly the same tone a solemn, droning, dragging measure, adopted
with an intention of pathos, a crude idea of style. It was
funereal, and at the same time it was rough and childish. Sherringham
thought her English performance less futile than her French, but he could
see that Madame Carré listened to it with even less pleasure. In the
way the girl wailed forth some of her Tennysonian lines he detected a
possibility of a thrill. 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 cant call me either ill-mannered or ill-natured. Im the
showman of the occasion, moreover, and I avert myself, leaving you to judge.
If theres a thing in life I hate, its this idiotic new fashion
of the drawing-room recitation, and the insufferable creatures who practise
it, who prevent conversation and whom, as they are beneath it, you
cant punish by criticism. Therefore what I am is only too magnanimous
bringing these benighted women here, paying with my person, stifling
my just repugnance.
At the same time that Sherringham pronounced privately
that the manner in which Miss Rooth had acquitted herself offered no element
of interest, he remained conscious that something surmounted and survived
her failure, something that would perhaps be worth taking hold of. 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 felicity and, in spite of their suggesting too much the
school-girl in the tableau-vivant, a sort of 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 expressions than the simple and striking
gloom which, as yet, had mainly graced it. In short the plastic quality of
her person was the only definite sign of a vocation. He almost hated to have
to recognize this; he had seen that quality so often when it meant nothing
at all that he had come at last to regard it as almost a guarantee of
incompetence. He knew Madame Carré valued it, by itself, so little
that she counted it out in measuring an histrionic nature; when it was not
accompanied with other properties which helped and completed it she was near
considering it as a positive hindrance to success success of the only
kind that she esteemed. Far oftener than he, 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 attenuating their stupidity if the miracle
were workable. But that particular miracle never was. The qualities she
deemed most interesting were not the gifts, but the conquests the
effects the actor had worked hard for, had wrested by unwearying 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 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 Mademoiselle Rachel as a great
artist 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 embodying one or two primary aids, a voice
and an eye, but essentially formed by work, unremitting and ferocious work.
I dont care a straw for your handsome girls, she said;
but bring me the one who is ready to drudge the tenth part of the way
Rachel drudged, and Ill forgive her her beauty.
Of course,
notez bien, Rachel wasnt a bête: thats a
gift, if you like!
Mrs Rooth, who was evidently very proud of the
figure her daughter had made, appealed to Madame Carré rashly and
serenely, for a verdict; but fortunately this ladys 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 said to his hostess:
Well, is there anything in her?
Nothing that I can see. Shes loud and
coarse.
Shes very much afraid; you must allow for
that.
Afraid of me, immensely, but not a bit afraid of
her authors nor of you! added Madame Carré smiling.
Arent you prejudiced by what Mr Nash
has told you?
Why prejudiced? He only told me she was very
handsome!
And dont you think she is?
Admirable. But Im not a photographer nor a
dressmaker. I cant do anything with that.
The head is 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 didnt perceive in what
she did a single nuance, a single inflection or intention. But not
one, mon cher. I dont think shes intelligent.
But dont they often seem stupid at
first?
Say always!
Then dont some succeed even when they
are handsome?
When they are handsome they always succeed
in one way or another.
You dont 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 will look very well.
She interests you so little that you dont
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 have a great deal to learn; but you have
force. The principal things sont encore à dégager, but
they will come. You must work.
I think she has ideas, said
Mrs Rooth.
She gets them from you, Madame Carré
replied.
I must say, if its to be our
theatre Im relieved. I think its safer, the good lady
continued.
Ours is dangerous, no doubt.
You mean you are more severe, said the
girl.
Your mother is right, the actress smiled;
you have ideas.
But what shall we do then how shall we
proceed? Mrs Rooth inquired.
She made this appeal, plaintively and vaguely, to the
three gentlemen; but they had collected a few steps off and were talking
together, so that it failed to reach them.
Work work work! exclaimed the
actress.
In English I can play Shakespeare. I want to play
Shakespeare, Miriam remarked.
Thats fortunate, as in English you
havent anyone else to play.
But hes so great and hes so
pure! said Mrs Rooth.
That also seems very fortunate for you!
Madame Carré phrased.
You think me actually pretty bad, dont
you? the girl demanded, with her serious face.
Mon Dieu, que vous dirai-je? Of course
youre 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 ny a que ça.
Work like a horse, night and day. Besides, M. Sherringham, as he says,
will help you.
Sherringham, hearing his name, turned round, and the
girl appealed to him. Will you help me, really?
To find her voice, Madame Carré
interposed.
The voice, when its worth anything, comes
from the heart; so I suppose thats where to look for it, Gabriel
Nash suggested.
Much you know; you havent 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 reflection that he
liked her better when she was lugubrious; for 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
ladys introducer he had had to face the necessity of saying something
optimistic about her, which was not particularly easy. Mr Nash had said
with his bland smile, And what impression does my young friend
make? to which it appeared to Sherringham that uncomfortable
consistency compelled him to reply that there was evidently a good deal in
her. He was far from being sure of that. At the same time the young lady,
both with the exaggerated points of her person and the poverty
of her instinct of expression, constituted a kind of challenge
presented herself to him as a subject for inquiry, a problem, a piece of
work, an explorable country. She was too bad to jump at, and yet she was too
individual to overlook, especially when she rested her tragic eyes on him
with the appeal of her deep Really? This appeal sounded as if it
were in a certain way 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 persons studies for the stage may be an interest of as high
an order as any other artistic consideration.
Mr Nash has rendered us the great service of
introducing us to Madame Carré, and Im sure were
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 in the prettiest way in the
world.
Mademoiselle, you are not so rough; the tone of
that is very juste. A la bonne heure; work work!
the actress exclaimed. There was an inflection there, or very nearly.
Practise it till youve 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.
Im an old playgoer, and I have unbounded
belief in my own judgement.
Old, sir, is too much to say, Mrs Rooth
remonstrated. My daughter knows your high position, but she is very
direct. You will always find her so. Perhaps youll say there are less
honourable faults. Well come to see you with pleasure. Oh, Ive
been at the Embassy, when I was her age. Therefore why shouldnt she go
to-day? That was in Lord Davenants time.
A few people are coming to tea with me to-morrow.
Perhaps you will come then, at five oclock.
It will remind me of the dear old times,
said Mrs Rooth.
Thank you; Ill try and do better
to-morrow, Miriam remarked, very sweetly.
You do better every minute! Sherringham
exclaimed, looking at Madame Carré in emphasis of this
declaration.
She is finding her voice, the actress
responded.
She is finding a friend! cried
Mrs Rooth.
And dont forget, when you come to London, my
hope that youll come and see me, Nick Dormer said to
the girl. To try and paint you that would do me good!
She is finding even two, said Madame
Carré
Its to make up for one Ive lost!
And Miriam looked with very good stage-scorn at Gabriel Nash.
Its he that thinks Im bad.
You say that to make me drive you home; you know
it will, Nash returned.
Well 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, while she sighed: Ah, la
jeunesse! youd always have that, my child, if you were the
greatest goose on earth!
At Peter Sherringhams, the next day, Miriam Rooth
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 Carrés 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 Carrés the two ladies
had gracefully declined Mr Nashs offered cab and had taken their
way homeward on foot, 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 to the
young lady as he went. Their pace was regulated by the mothers, who
walked in advance, 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 stiffness 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, not, apparently, from any intention of
concealment, but from the habit of associating with people whom she
didnt 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 showed that she was clever, though he
guessed that this was the intention 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 lOpéra and the Place de
la Bourse. Sherringham had occasionally passed through this dim by-way, but
he had never noticed the tall, stale maison meublée, whose
aspect, that of a third-rate provincial inn, was an illustration of
Mrs Rooths shrunken standard.
We would ask you to come up, but its quite
at the top and we havent 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 that I should want to do something, so that we can stop
living like pigs?
Sherringham recognized eventually, the next day, that
though it might be rather painful 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
sort of tacit opposition, to deprive hers, ornamental as it was, of a
reason. He had only to see them all together to perceive that she
couldnt pass for having come to meet them even her
mothers 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 nor 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, sitting in couples and rows on sofas (there were
several in addition to Julia and
the Dormers; mainly the wives, with their husbands, of Sherringhams
fellow-secretaries), scarcely one of whom he felt that he might count upon
to say something gushing when the girl should have finished.
Miss Rooth gave a representation of Juliet drinking her
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 revealed to Sherringham on
this occasion. She flowed so copiously, keeping the floor and rejoicing
visibly in her opportunity, that Sherringham 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 didnt believe in Signor Ruggieri denoted a very stiff
ambition and a kind of misplaced perseverance. 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 that Madame Carré was not there. It was present to him that she
would have deemed the exhibition, with its badness, its assurance, the
absence of criticism, almost indecent.
His only new impression of the girl 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 she 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 frightened; there was certainly a moment when even Julia was scared,
for the first time that he had ever seen her. The space was too small; the
cries, the rushes of the dishevelled girl were too near. Lady Agnes, much of
the time, wore the countenance she might have worn at the theatre during a
play in which pistols were fired; and indeed the manner of the young reciter
had become more spasmodic, more explosive. It appeared, however, that the
company in general thought her
very clever and successful; which showed, to Sherringhams sense, how
little they understood the matter. Poor Biddy was immensely struck, and grew
flushed and absorbed 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 near
her, murmuring: Oh, thank you, thank you so much. I never saw anything
so beautiful, so grand.
She looked very red and very pretty as she said this.
Peter Sherringham liked her enough to notice and to like her better when she
looked prettier than usual. As he turned away he heard Miriam answer, with
rather an ungracious irrelevance: I have seen you before, three days
ago, at the Salon, with Mr Dormer. Yes, I know hes your brother.
I have made his acquaintance since. He wants to paint my portrait. Do you
think hell do it well? He was afraid Miriam was something of a
brute, and also somewhat grossly vain. This impression would perhaps have
been confirmed if a part of the rest of the short conversation of the two
girls had reached his ear. Biddy ventured to remark 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 to do something.
Thank you, said Miriam, with a laugh.
I think I had rather not passer par toute la famille!
Then she added: If your brothers an artist, I dont
understand how hes in Parliament.
Oh, he isnt in Parliament now; we only hope
he will be.
Oh, I see.
And he isnt an artist, either, Biddy
felt herself conscientiously bound to subjoin.
Then he isnt anything, said Miss
Rooth.
Well hes immensely clever.
Oh, I see, Miss Rooth again replied.
Mr Nash has puffed him up so.
I dont know Mr Nash, said Biddy,
guilty of a little dryness, and also of a little misrepresentation, and
feeling rather snubbed.
Well, you neednt 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
observation, made with a certain 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 Peters friends, and made speeches to Miss
Rooth of the kind, Biddy supposed, that 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 Biddys.
Sherringham noticed his young kinswoman turn away, still blushing, to go and
sit near her mother again, leaving Miriam engaged with the two men. It
appeared to have come over Biddy that for a moment she had been strangely
spontaneous and bold and had paid a little of the penalty. The seat next her
mother was occupied by Mrs Rooth, toward whom Lady Agness head
had inclined itself with a preoccupied air of benevolence. He had an idea
that 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 she turned out so dazzling she forgot this calculation and rejoiced in
what she innocently supposed to be her triumph. She kept away from Julia,
however; she didnt 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, in rather a detached way, in the corner of a
sofa, saying something which led her to remark in reply: Ah, I dare
say its extremely fine, but I dont care for tragedy when it
treads on ones toes. Shes like a cow who has kicked over the
milking-pail. She ought to be tied up!
My poor Julia, it isnt extremely fine; it
isnt fine at all, Sherringham rejoined, with some
irritation.
Excuse me. I thought that was why you invited
us.
I thought she was different, Sherringham
said.
Ah, if you dont care for her, so much the
better. It has always seemed to me that you make too much of those
people.
Oh, I do care for her in a way, too. Shes
interesting. His sister gave him a momentary mystified glance, and he
added, And shes awful! He felt stupidly annoyed, and he
was ashamed of his annoyance, for he could have assigned no reason for it.
It didnt make it less, for the moment, to
see Gabriel Nash approach Mrs Dallow, introduced by Nick Dormer. He gave
place to the two young men with a certain alacrity, for he had a sense of
being put in the wrong, in respect to the heroine of the occasion, by
Nashs very presence. He remembered that it had been 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 cousins friend joy of a colloquy with
Mrs Dallow. Sherringhams life was spent with people, he was used
to people, and both as a host and as a guest he carried them, in general,
lightly. He could observe, especially in the former capacity, without
uneasiness, take the temperature without anxiety. But at present his company
oppressed him; he felt himself nervous, which was the thing in the world
that he had always held to be least an honour to a gentleman dedicated to
diplomacy. He was vexed with the levity in himself which had made him call
them together on so poor a pretext, and yet he was vexed with the stupidity
in them which made them think, as they evidently did, that the pretext was
sufficient. He inwardly groaned at the precipitancy with which he had
saddled himself with the Tragic Muse (a tragic muse who was noisy and pert),
and yet he 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.
Gabriel Nash dropped into a chair by the arm of
Julias sofa, Nick Dormer 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: Its very awkward
when people are told one is clever.
Its awkward if one isnt, said
Mr Nash, smiling.
Yes, but so few people are enough to be
talked about.
Isnt that just the reason why such a matter,
such an exception, ought to be mentioned to them? asked Gabriel Nash.
They mightnt find it out for themselves. Of course, however, as
you say, there ought to be a certainty; then they are surer to know it.
Dormers a dear fellow, but hes rash and superficial.
Mrs Dallow, at this, turned her glance a second
time upon her interlocutor; but during the rest of the conversation she
rarely repeated the movement. If she liked Nick Dormer extremely (and it may
without further 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 extend tolerances to others for the sake of
an individual she loved: the tolerance was usually consumed in the loving;
there was nothing left over. If the affection that isolates and simplifies
its object may be distinguished from the affection that seeks communications
and contacts for it, Julia Dallows belonged wholly to the former
class. She was not so much jealous as rigidly direct. She desired no
experience for the familiar and yet partly mysterious kinsman in whom she
took an interest that she would not have desired for herself; and, indeed,
the cause of her interest in him was partly the vision of his helping her to
the particular emotion that she did desire the emotion of great
affairs and of public action. To have such ambitions for him appeared to her
the greatest honour she could do him; her conscience was in it as well as
her inclination, and her scheme, in her conception, 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 connections, a suspicion of
them and a supply of unwrought contempt ready for them. 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
inveterately 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
incongruities, though probably he would have admitted that if a sore spot
remained the hand of a woman would be sure to touch it. In dining with her
brother and with the Dormers, two evenings before, Mrs Dallow had been
moved to exclaim that Peter and Nick knew the most extraordinary people. As
regards Peter the attitudinizing girl and her mother now pointed that moral
with sufficient vividness; so that there was little arrogance in taking a
similar quality for granted in the conceited man at her elbow, who sat there
as if he would 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 instead of this he said something about
the pleasures of the monologue, as the distraction that had just been
offered was called by the French. He intimated that in his opinion these
pleasures were mainly for the performers. They had all, at any rate, given
Miss Rooth a charming afternoon; that, of course, was what
Mrs Dallows kind brother had mainly intended in arranging the
little party. (Mrs Dallow hated to hear him call her brother
kind; the term seemed offensively patronizing.) 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 hurled one against the rocks. As she made no response to
this proposition Gabriel Nash asked her if she had not been struck with the
main sign of the time, the preponderance of the mountebank, the glory and
renown, the personal favour, that he enjoyed. Hadnt 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 dont know what you mean,
Mrs Dallow said. I know nothing of any such people.
Arent 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 dare say it depends on the places one goes to.
If theyre everywhere and Mrs Dallow paused a moment
I dont go everywhere.
I dont 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, Nash continued, with friendly instructiveness.
Mrs Dallow got up at this she didnt 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 went on to remark that Mr Sherringham was quite right
to offer Miss Rooth an afternoons 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 that her mother is, on her
behalf. Particular about the sort of people they meet the tone, the
standard. Im bound to say theyre like you: they dont go
everywhere. That spirit is meritorious; it should be recognized and
rewarded.
Mrs Dallow said nothing for a moment; she looked
vaguely round the room, but not at Miriam Rooth. Nevertheless she presently
dropped, in allusion to her, the words: Shes dreadfully
vulgar.
Ah, dont say that to my friend Dormer!
Gabriel Nash exclaimed.
Are you and he such great friends?
Mrs Dallow asked, looking at him.
Great enough to make me hope we shall be
greater.
Again, for a moment, she said nothing; then she went on
Why shouldnt I say to him that shes
vulgar?
Because he admires her so much; he wants to paint
her.
To paint her?
To paint her portrait.
Oh, I see. I dare say shed do for
that.
Gabriel Nash laughed gaily. If thats your
opinion of her you are not very complimentary to the art he aspires to
practise.
He aspires to practise? Mrs Dallow
repeated.
Havent 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 demand of her neighbour, in a certain
tone, Are you an artist?
I try to be, Nash replied, smiling;
but I work in such a difficult material.
He spoke this with such a clever suggestion of
unexpected reference that, in spite of herself, Mrs Dallow said after
him
Difficult material?
I work in life!
At this Mrs Dallow turned away, leaving Nash 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 that he drew from the
dead one. This, indeed, would not fully have explained the abruptness with
which she dropped their conversation. Gabriel Nash, however, was used to
sudden collapses, and even to sudden ruptures, on the part of his
interlocutors, and no man had more the secret of remaining gracefully with
his ideas on his hands. He saw Mrs Dallow approach Nick Dormer, who was
talking with one of the ladies of the Embassy, and apparently signify to him
that she wished to speak to him. He got up, they had a minutes
conversation, and then he turned and took leave of his fellow-visitor.
Mrs Dallow said a word to her brother, Dormer joined her, and then they
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 had not been with her. The young man
stopped a moment; 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 lOpéra; youll find me
there. Gabriel prepared to compass his own departure, but before doing
so he addressed himself to the duty of saying a few words of civility to
Lady Agnes. This proved difficult, for on one side she was defended by the
wall of the room and on the other rendered inaccessible by Miriams
mother, who clung to her with a quickly-rooted fidelity, showing no symptom
of desistance. Gabriel compromised on her daughter Grace, who said to
him:
You were talking with my cousin,
Mrs Dallow.
To her rather than with her, Nash
smiled.
Ah, shes very charming, said
Grace.
Shes very beautiful, Nash
rejoined.
And very clever, Miss Dormer continued.
Very, very intelligent. His conversation
with the young lady went little further than this, and he presently took
leave of Peter Sherringham; remarking to him, as he shook hands, that he was
very sorry for him. But he had courted his fate.
What do you mean by my fate? Sherringham
asked.
Youve got them for life.
Why for life, when I now lucidly and courageously
recognize that she isnt good?
Ah, but shell become so, said Gabriel
Nash.
Do you think that? Sherringham inquired,
with a candour which made his visitor laugh.
You will thats more to the
purpose! Gabriel exclaimed, as he went away.
Ten minutes later Lady Agnes substituted a general vague
assent to all further particular ones and, with her daughters, withdrew from
Mrs Rooth and from the rest of the company. 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 didnt know how but
she does! There was no suggestion of disappointment in this.
Sherringham held her hand a moment. Ah, its
you who know how, dear Biddy! he answered; and he was conscious that
if the occasion had been more private he would lawfully have kissed her.
Presently three others of his guests departed, and
Mr Nashs assurance that he had them for life recurred to him as
he observed that Mrs Rooth and her daughter 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 leave him
absolutely alone with the two ladies. Miriam quitted Mrs Lovick, who
had attempted, with no great subtlety, to engage her, and came up to
Sherringham 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 dont seem to suspect how that sort of thing
takes it out of you.
Sherringham apologized, extravagantly, for not having
seen that she had the proper quantity of 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 had been brought in, the wide shade of
which shed a fair glow upon the tea-service, the little plates of
comestibles. 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 in serious want of food 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, vaguely, with his hands in his pockets, not knowing exactly what
to say and instinctively avoiding, now, the theatrical question (there were
moments when he was plentifully tired of it), she broke out abruptly:
Confess that you think me intolerably bad!
Intolerably no.
Only tolerably! I think thats
worse.
Every now and then you do something very
clever, Sherringham said.
How many such things did I do to-day?
Oh, three or four. I dont know that I
counted very carefully.
She raised her cup to her lips, looking at him over the
rim of it a proceeding which gave her eyes a strange expression.
It bores you, and you think it disagreeable, she said in a
moment a girl always talking about herself. He protested
that she could never bore him, and she went on: Oh, I dont want
compliments I want the 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 wont be
serious. Im awfully serious. There was something that caught his
attention in the way she said 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 doesnt come the
first day, she pursued. I cant see everything at once; but
I can see a little more step by step as I go: cant
I?
Thats the way thats the
way, said Sherringham. If you see the things to do, the art of
doing them will come, if you hammer away. The great point is to see
them.
Yes; and you dont think me clever enough for
that.
Why do you say so, when Ive asked you to
come here on purpose?
Youve asked me to come, but Ive had no
success.
On the contrary; every one thought you
wonderful.
Oh, they dont know! said Miriam Rooth.
Youve not said a word to me. I dont mind your not having
praised me; that would be too banal. But if Im bad and I
know Im dreadful I wish you would talk to me about
it.
Its delightful to talk to you,
Sherringham said.
No, it isnt, but its kind, she
answered, looking away from him.
Her voice had a quality, as she uttered these words,
which
made him exclaim. Every now and then you say
something!
She turned her eyes back to him, smiling. I
dont want it to come by accident. Then she added: If
theres any good to be got from trying, from showing ones self,
how can it come unless one hears the simple truth, the truth that turns one
inside out? Its all for that to know what one is, if ones
a stick!
You have great courage, you have rare
qualities, said Sherringham. She had begun to touch him, to seem
different: he was glad she had not gone.
For a moment she made no response to this, putting down
her empty cup and looking vaguely over the table, as if to select something
more to eat. Suddenly she raised her head and broke out with vehemence:
I will, I will, I will!
Youll do what you want, evidently.
I will succeed I will be great. Of course I
know too little, Ive seen too little. But Ive always liked it;
Ive never liked anything else. I used to learn things, and to do
scenes, and to rant about the room, when I was 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 of intercourse, which appeared to plead that
she was capable at least of embracing that side of the profession she
desired to adopt. He perceived 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, she would observe
and learn what to do, what not to do: it would be a kind of school. But she
couldnt, 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, right or wrong except
Mrs Delamere and poor Ruggieri. She supposed they had told her a great
deal, but perhaps they hadnt, and she was perfectly willing to give it
up if it was bad. Evidently Madame Carré thought so; she thought it
was horrid. Wasnt 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; 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 didnt think she could work she might have heard something
that would show her. But she didnt think her even good enough to
criticize; for that wasnt criticism, telling her her head was good. Of
course her head was good; she didnt need travel up to the quartiers
excentriques to find that out. It was her mother the way she
talked who gave that idea, that she wanted to be elegant, and very
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 right way.
Didnt she know, Miriam herself, that that was the only thing
to think of? But any one would be kind to her mother who knew what a dear
she was. She doesnt know when its right or wrong, but
shes a perfect saint, said the girl, obscuring considerably her
vindication. She doesnt mind when I say things over by the hour,
dinning them into her ears while she sits there and reads. Shes a
tremendous reader; shes awfully up in literature. She taught me
everything herself I mean all that sort of thing. Of course Im
not so fond of reading; I go in for the book of life. Sherringham
wondered whether her mother had not, at any rate, taught her that phrase,
and thought it highly probable. It would give on my nerves,
the life I lead her, Miriam continued; but shes really a
delicious woman.
The oddity of this epithet made Sherringham 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 a revolution of
curiosity in him, re-awakened his sympathy. Her mixture, as it spread itself
before one, was a quickening spectacle: she was intelligent and clumsy
she was underbred and fine. Certainly she was very various, and that
was rare; not at all at this moment the heavy-eyed, frightened creature who
had pulled herself together with such an effort at Madame
Carrés, 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 that she really possessed the celebrated artistic
temperament, the nature that made people provoking and
interesting? That Sherringham himself was of that shifting complexion is
perhaps proved by his odd capacity for being of two different minds at very
nearly the same time. Miriam was pretty now, with likeable looks and
charming usual eyes. Yes, there were things he could do for her; he had
already forgotten the chill of Mr Nashs irony, of his prophecy.
He was even scarcely conscious how much, in general, he detested hints,
insinuations, favours asked obliquely and plaintively: that was doubtless
also because the girl was so pretty and so fraternizing. Perhaps indeed it
was unjust to qualify it as roundabout, the manner in which Miss Rooth
conveyed to him that it was open to him not only to pay for lessons for her,
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 Sherringham now found himself thinking about
was not so much its largeness as that it would be rather interesting to go
with them sometimes and point the moral (the technical one), showing her the
things he liked, the things he disapproved. She repeated her declaration
that she recognized the fallacy of her mothers views about
noble heroines and about 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. Its a great muddle, I know, but she cant
bear anything coarse and quite right, too. I shouldnt, either,
if I didnt have to. But I dont care where I go if I can act, or
who they are if theyll help me. I want to act thats what
I want to do; I dont want to meddle in peoples affairs. I can
look out for myself Im all right! the girl
exclaimed, roundly, frankly, with a ring of honesty which made her crude and
pure. As for doing the bad ones, Im not afraid of
that.
The bad ones?
The bad women, in the plays like Madame
Carré. Ill do anything.
I think youll do best what you are,
remarked Sherringham, laughing. Youre a strange girl.
Je crois bien! Doesnt one have to be,
to want to go and exhibit ones self to a loathsome crowd, on a
platform, with trumpets and a big drum, for money to parade
ones body and ones soul?
Sherringham looked at her a moment: her face changed
constantly; now there was a little flush and a noble delicacy in it.
Give it up; youre too good for it, he
said, abruptly.
Never, never never till Im
pelted!
Then stay on here a bit; Ill 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,
hes the best friend weve ever had; hes 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 cant say enough. They make the
most obliging offers; they want you to know their brother.
Oh, I say, hes no brother of mine,
Mr Lovick protested, good-naturedly.
They think hell be so suggestive, hell
put us up to the right things, Mrs Rooth went on.
Its just a little brother of mine
such a dear, 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 over!
Yes, it makes it rather awkward,
Mrs Lovick amiably conceded. He has gone on the stage, poor dear
boy; he acts rather well.
He tried for the diplomatic service, but he
didnt precisely dazzle his examiners, Mr Lovick
remarked.
Edmunds very nasty about him. There are lots
of gentlemen on the stage; hes not the first.
Its such a comfort to hear that, said
Mrs Rooth.
Im much obliged to you. Has he got a
theatre? Miriam asked.
My dear young lady, he hasnt even got an
engagement, replied the young mans unsympathizing
brother-in-law.
He hasnt been at it very long, but Im
sure hell get on. Hes immensely in earnest, and hes 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 dont care for his looks, but I
should like his tips, said Miriam, smiling.
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!
Mr Lovick declared, but so jocosely that it was not embarrassing.
Oh, sir, Im sure youre fond of
him, Mrs Rooth remonstrated, as the party passed together into
the ante-chamber.
No, really, I like some of the others four
or five of them; but I dont like Arty.
Well make it up to him, then;
well like him, Miriam declared, gaily; and her voice
rang in the staircase (Sherringham went a little way with them), with a
charm which her host had not perceived in her sportive note the day
before.
Nick Dormer found his friend Nash, that evening, on the
spot he had designated, smoking a cigar in the warm, bright night, in front
of the café at the corner of the square before the Opera. He sat down
with him, but at the end of five minutes he 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
cant talk here, he said to his companion. I dont
care where we go. It will be pleasant to walk; well stroll away to the
quartiers sérieux. Each time I come to Paris, at the end of
three days, I take the boulevard, with its conventional grimace, into
greater disfavour. 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
railing 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 died by fire hung over them awhile, 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 emphasize, to compare. They fell into discussion, into
confidence, into inquiry, sympathetic or satiric, and into explanation which
needed in turn to be explained. The balmy night, the time for talk, the
amusement of Paris, the memory of young confabulations gave a quality to the
occasion. Nick had already forgotten the little brush he had had with
Mrs Dallow, when they quitted Peters tea-party together, and that
he had been almost disconcerted by the manner in which she characterized the
odious man he had taken it into his head to present to her. Impertinent and
fatuous she had called him; and when Nick began to explain that he was
really neither of these things, though he could imagine his manner might
sometimes suggest them, she had declared that she didnt wish to argue
about him or even to hear of him again. Nick had not counted on her liking
Gabriel Nash, but he had thought it wouldnt matter much if she should
dislike him a little. He had given himself the diversion, which he had not
dreamed would be cruel to any one concerned, of seeing what she would make
of a type she had never encountered before. She had made even less than he
expected, and her implication that he had played her a trick had been
irritating enough to prevent him from reflecting that the fault 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 he, on his side, had made
of his charming cousin.
Upon my word, my dear fellow, I dont regard
that as a fair question, was the answer. Besides, if you think
Mrs Dallow charming, what on earth need it matter to you what I think?
The superiority of one mans opinion over anothers is never so
great as when the opinion is about a woman.
It was to help me to find out what I think of
yourself, said Nick Dormer.
Oh, that youll never do. I shall bother 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 I recall it, is distinctly so much to the good in my day.
Shes the perfect type of the object raised, or bred, and
everything about her is homogeneous, from the angle of her elbow to the way
she drops that vague, conventional, dry little Oh! which
dispenses with all further performance. That sort of completeness is always
satisfying. But I didnt satisfy her, and she didnt understand
me. I dont think they usually understand.
Shes no worse than I, then.
Ah, she didnt try.
No, she doesnt try. But she probably thought
you conceited, 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 have an idea a good many people think that. It appears to me
so droll. I suppose its a result of my little system.
Your little system?
Oh, its nothing wonderful. Only 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 advertize, no power to conciliate, no axe to
grind. Im not a savage ah, far from it but I really
think Im perfectly independent.
Oh, thats always provoking! laughed
Nick.
So it would appear, to the great majority of
ones 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 are 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. Its natural enough; we are 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 wont get in, people generally
hate you.
Your metaphor is very lame, said Nick;
its the overcrowded boat that goes to the bottom.
Oh, Ill give it another leg or two! Boats
can be big, in the infinite of space, and a doctrine is 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 turned my somersault long ago.
And now, of course, youre at the head of the
regenerate; for, in your turn, you all form a select school of
porpoises.
Not a bit, and I know nothing about heads, in the
sense you mean. Ive grown a tail, if you will; Im the merman
wandering free. Its a delightful trade!
Before they had gone many steps further Nick Dormer
stopped short and said to his companion: I say, my dear fellow, do you
mind mentioning to me whether you are the greatest humbug and charlatan on
earth, or a genuine intelligence, one that has sifted things for
itself?
I do puzzle you Im so sorry,
Nash replied, benignly. But Im 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 youre an for thinking
youre not wise.
I dare say its my manner; theyre so
unused to candour.
Why dont you try another? Nick
inquired.
One has the manner that one can; and mine,
moreover, is a part of my little system.
Ah, if youve got a little system youre
no better than any one else, said Nick, going on.
I dont pretend to be better, for we are all
miserable sinners; I only pretend to be bad in a pleasanter, brighter way,
by what I can see. Its the simplest thing in the world; I just take
for granted a certain brightness in life, a certain frankness. What is
essentially kinder than that, what is more harmless? But the tradition of
dreariness, of stodginess, of dull, dense, literal prose, has so sealed
peoples eyes that they have ended by thinking the most normal thing in
the world the most fantastic. Why be dreary, in our little day? No one can
tell me why, and almost every one calls me names for simply asking the
question. But I keep 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 companions arm.
My persistence is systematic: dont you see what I mean? I
wont be dreary no, no, no; and I wont recognize the
necessity, or even, if there is any way out of it, the accident of
dreariness in the life that surrounds me. Thats enough to make people
stare: theyre so stupid!
They think youre impertinent, Dormer
remarked.
At this his companion stopped him short, with an
ejaculation of pain, and, turning his eyes, Nick saw under the lamps of the
quay that he had brought a vivid blush into Nashs face. I
dont strike you that way? Gabriel asked,
reproachfully.
Oh, me! Wasnt it just admitted that I
dont in the least make you out?
Thats the last thing! Nash murmured,
as if he were thinking the idea over, with an air of genuine distress.
But with a little patience well clear it up together, if you
care enough about it, he added, more cheerfully. He let his friend go
on again and he continued: Heaven help us all! what do people mean by
impertinence? There are many, I think, who dont understand its nature
or its limits; and upon my word I have 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 have encountered men and women
who thought you were impertinent if you were not so stupid as they. The only
impertinence is aggression, and I indignantly protest that I am never guilty
of that clumsiness. Ah, for what do they take one, with
their presumptions? Even to defend myself, sometimes, I have to
make believe to myself that I care. I always feel as if I didnt
successfully make others think so. Perhaps they see an impertinence in that.
But I dare say 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 ones self. Thats really not my
case, for I find my capacity for pleasure deplorably below the mark
Ive set. Thats why, as I have told you, I cultivate it, I try to
bring it up. And I am actuated by positive benevolence; I have that
pretension. Thats what I mean by being the same to every one, by
having only one manner. If one is conscious and ingenious to that end,
whats the harm, when ones 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? asked
Nick Dormer.
Why, that we are only here for dreariness.
Its impossible to grant it sometimes, if you wish to withhold it
ever.
And what do you mean by dreariness? Thats
modern slang, and its terribly vague. Many good things are dreary
virtue and decency and charity and perseverance and courage and
honour.
Say at once that life is dreary, my dear
fellow! Gabriel Nash exclaimed.
Thats on the whole my most usual
impression.
Cest là que je vous attends!
Im precisely engaged in trying what can be done in taking it the other
way. Its 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, a Macaulay, a Ruskin, a
Renan? Ah, we must write our best; its the great thing we can do in
the world, on the right side. One has ones form, que diable,
and a mighty good thing that one has. Im not afraid of putting all
life into mine, without unduly squeezing it. Im not afraid of putting
in honour and courage and charity, without spoiling them: on the contrary,
Ill only do them good. People may not read you at sight, may not like
you, but theres a chance theyll come round; and the only way to
court the chance is to keep it up always to keep it up. Thats
what I do, my dear fellow, if you dont think Ive perseverance.
If some one likes it here and there, if you give a little impression of
solidity, thats your reward; besides, of course, the pleasure for
yourself.
Dont you think your style is a little
affected? Nick asked, laughing, as they proceeded.
Thats always the charge against a personal
manner; if you have any at all people think you have too much. Perhaps,
perhaps who can say? Of course one isnt perfect; but
thats the delightful thing about art, that there is always more to
learn and more to do; one can polish and polish and refine and refine. No
doubt Im rough still, but Im in the right direction: I make it
my business to take for granted an interest in the beautiful.
Ah, the beautiful there it stands, over
there! said Nick Dormer. I am not so sure about yours I
dont know what Ive got hold of. But Notre Dame is
solid; Notre Dame is wise; on Notre Dame the distracted mind can
rest. Come over 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, gossiping as profitably as I leave
the reader to estimate, crossed the wide, short bridge which made them face
towards 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 great cathedral-face. It greeted Nick Dormer
and Gabriel Nash with a kindness which the centuries had done nothing to
dim. The lamplight of the great 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 as 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
ones vapours anything thats done! said
Nick; while his companion exclaimed, blandly and affectionately:
The dear old thing!
The great point is to do something, instead of
standing muddling and questioning; and, by Jove, it makes me want
to!
Want to build a cathedral? Nash
inquired.
Yes, just that.
Its you who puzzle me, then, my
dear fellow. You cant 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 Notre Dame,
pausing, criticizing, 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 with
joy, with a certain 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 Nashs equal response, of his appreciation, exhibited
by his own signs, of the great effect. He felt it so freely and uttered his
impression with such vividness that Nick was reminded of the luminosity his
boyish admiration had found in him of old, the natural intelligence of
everything of that kind. Everything of that kind was, in
Nicks mind, the description of a wide and bright domain.
They crossed to the further 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 right bank Gabriel Nash said, Lets sit
down he was always ready to sit down. It was a friendly
establishment and an unfashionable quarter, far away from the Grand
Hôtel; 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, but 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 Nash 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 remark: I go about my
business, like any good citizen thats 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 a spectacle? I look at
it.
You are full of contradictions and
inconsistencies. You
described yourself to me half an hour ago as an apostle of beauty.
Where is the inconsistency? I do it in the broad
light of day, whatever I do: thats virtually what I meant. If I look
at the spectacle of the world I look in preference at what is charming in
it. Sometimes I have to go far to find it very likely; but
thats 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, with 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 is all you accomplish you
are not encouraging.
I accomplish my happiness it seems to me
thats something. I have feelings, I have sensations: let me tell you
thats not so common. Its rare to have them; and if you chance to
have them its rare not to be ashamed of them. I go after them
when I judge they wont hurt any one.
Youre 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 disposition. Im not ashamed of it. I
dont think its so horrible, my disposition. But weve
befogged and befouled so the whole question of liberty, of spontaneity, of
good-humour and inclination and enjoyment, that theres nothing that
makes people stare so as to see one natural.
You are always thinking too much of
people.
They say I think too little, Gabriel
smiled.
Well, Ive agreed to stand for Harsh,
said Nick, with a roundabout transition.
Its you then who are lucky to have
money.
I havent, Nick replied. My
expenses are to be paid.
Then you too must think of
people.
Nick made no answer to this, but after a moment he 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
them would be so right. Oh, having something
to show is such a poor business. Its a kind of confession of
failure.
Yes, youre more affected than anything
else, said Nick, impatiently.
No, my dear boy, Im more good-natured:
dont I prove it? Im rather disappointed to find that you are not
worthy of the 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 wont
refuse you my sympathy. After all, thats what I have to show!
But the degree of my sympathy must of course depend on the nature of the
manifestation that you wish to make.
You know it very well youve guessed
it, Nick rejoined, looking before him in a conscious, modest way
which, if he had been a few years younger, would have been called
sheepish.
Ah, youve broken the scent with telling me
you are going to return to the House of Commons, said Nash.
No wonder you dont make it out! My situation
is certainly absurd enough. What I really want to do is to be a painter.
Thats 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. Isnt 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. Im so
glad!
So glad I dont know how?
So glad of it all. Yes, that only makes it better.
Youre a delightful case, and I like delightful cases. We must see it
through. I rejoice that I met you.
Do you think I can do anything? Nick
inquired.
Paint good pictures? How can I tell till Ive
seen some of your work? Doesnt it come back to me that at Oxford you
used to sketch very prettily? But thats the last thing that
matters.
What does matter, then? Nick demanded,
turning his eye on his companion.
To be on the right side on the side of
beauty.
There will be precious little beauty if I produce
nothing but daubs.
Ah, you cling to the old false measure of success.
I must cure you of that. There will 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 declared.
Im 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. Im awfully
against it.
Ah, but youll have me on the other
side, smiled Nash.
Well, youll 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; its admirable! 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
perceived.
Dont say that, said Nick Dormer, with
sudden sternness.
Ah, you are, you are! his companion
rejoined, judging apparently from this accent.
I dont know what I am heaven help
me! Nick broke out, tossing his hat down on his little tin table with
vehemence. Im 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 anything
so inconsequent, so improbable, so preposterous? Its the vulgarest
practical joke. There has never been anything of the sort among us; we are
all Philistines to the core, with about as much æsthetic sense as that
hat. Its excellent soil I dont 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. Im a
wanton variation, an unaccountable monster. My dear father, rest his soul,
went through life without a suspicion that there is anything in it that
cant be boiled into blue-books; and he 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 its partly your fault that I
havent, 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 have taken every antidote in life; but
its no use Im stricken. 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
thats why you are going to stand.
Precisely its an antidote. And, at
present, youre another.
Another?
Thats 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 youre elected! he added.
Poor fellow either way. You dont know the
atmosphere in which I live, the horror, the scandal that my apostasy would
inspire, the injury and suffering that it would inflict. I believe it would
kill my mother. She thinks my father is watching me from the
skies.
Jolly to make him jump! Nash exclaimed.
He would jump indeed; he would come straight down
on top of me. And then the grotesqueness of it to begin, all
of a sudden, at my age.
Its perfect indeed; its a magnificent
case, Nash went on.
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. Orders respectfully solicited.
The nineteenth century is better than I
thought, said Nash. Its the portrait that preoccupies
you?
I wish you could see; you must come immediately to
my place in London.
You wretch, youre capable of having
talent! cried Nash.
No, Im too old, too old. Its too late
to go through the mill.
You make me young! Dont 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 observed.
Mr Carteret?
A dear old fellow who will wish to pay my
agents bill.
Serve him right, for such depraved
tastes.
You do me good, said Nick, getting up and
turning away.
Dont call me useless then.
Ah, but not in the way you mean. Its only if
I dont get in that I shall perhaps console myself with the
brush, Nick continued, as they retraced their steps.
In the name of all the muses, then, dont
stand. For you will get in.
Very likely. At any rate Ive
promised.
Youve promised Mrs Dallow?
Its her place; shell put me in,
Nick said.
Baleful woman! But Ill pull you
out!
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
up with any particular complacency of attention; for he shrank considerably
from bringing it 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 expectation, but in the course of a few hours that flame
had burned dim. Like many other men Sherringham was a mixture of impulse and
reflection; but he was peculiar in this, that thinking things over almost
always made him think less well of them. He found illusions necessary, so
that in order to keep an adequate number going he often earnestly forbade
himself that exercise. Mrs Rooth and her daughter were there and could
certainly be trusted to make themselves felt. He was conscious of their
anxiety, their calculations, as of a kind of oppression; he knew
that, whatever results might ensue, he should have to do something positive
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 they 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 girls
mother might succeed in making it so. It would not be a compensation for
trouble, but a trouble which in itself would require compensation. Would
that balm spring from the spectacle of the young ladys 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 his young
pupil 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 came after him; and he was
unable to see how, after all, he could serve them even then. He had proposed
impetuously a course of theatres; but that would be a considerable personal
effort, now that the summer was about to begin, with bad air, stale pieces,
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 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 wished to have
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 unfavourable judgement and
give the young English lady to oblige him a dozen lessons of
the sort that she knew 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 she
never wasted herself on subjects whom nature had not formed to do her
honour. He knew that his asking her to strain a point to please him would
give her a false idea (for that matter, she had it already) of his
relations, actual or prospective, with the girl; but he reflected that he
neednt care for that, as Miriam herself probably wouldnt care.
What he had mainly
in mind was to say to the old actress that she had been mistaken the
jeune Anglaise was not such a duffer. 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
the conviction I have mentioned she exclaimed: Oh, your jeune
Anglaise, I know a great deal more about her than you! She has been back
to see me twice; she doesnt go the longest way round. She charges me
like a grenadier, and she asks me to give her guess a little what!
private recitations, all to herself. If she doesnt succeed it
wont 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 for an hour. 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 shes an artist? She
wont open her mouth to me; what she wants is to make me say things to
her. She does make me I dont know how and she sits there
gaping at me with her big eyes. They look like open pockets!
I dare say shell profit by it, said
Sherringham.
I dare say 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 exclaimed: Didnt 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 began. Then, perceiving Sherringham, she added in the same
brisk, earnest tone, as if the matter were of the highest importance:
Oh, how dye do? Im very glad you are 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 entirely to Madame
Carré, as if he had not been there; making no excuses and using no
flattery; taking rather a tone of equal authority, as if she considered that
the celebrated artist had a sacred duty toward her. This was another
variation, Sherringham 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 that she had any and every being
that you liked, that would serve a purpose, 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 like, because there would be
nothing to take hold of. He felt for a moment that he had been very simple
not before to have achieved that analysis of the actress. The girls
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 case and confidence. The expression that came nearest to belonging
to her, as it were, was the one that came nearest to being a blank an
air of inanity when she forgot herself, watching something. Then her eye was
heavy and her mouth rather common; 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
Carrés said to Nick Dormer that she was the image of the Tragic
Muse.
Now, at any rate, he had the apprehension 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 who, at a
music-hall, is shot from the mouth of a cannon. He coloured a little at this
quickened view of the actress; he had always looked more poetically,
somehow, at that priestess of art. But what was she, the priestess, when one
came to think of it, but a female gymnast, a mountebank
at higher wages? She didnt literally hang by her heels from a trapeze,
holding 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 Miriam Rooths face seemed to him
to-day a finer instrument than old Madame Carrés. It was
doubtless that the girls face was fresh and strong, with a future in
it, while poor Madame Carrés was worn and weary, with only a
past.
The old woman said something, half in jest, half in real
resentment, about the brutality of youth, as 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
clever Frenchwoman, who had in her long life exhausted every adroitness, was
in a manner helpless, condemned, both protesting and consenting. Miriam 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 artifices of eye and gesture), was reduced to the
last line of defence that of declaring her coarse and clumsy, saying
she might knock her down, but that proved nothing. She spoke jestingly
enough not to offend Miriam, 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 didnt understand was the kind of
social product that had been 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 guessed that 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 power.
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, with her hands
behind her and supporting her, on the table in front of the mirror. She
waited an instant, turning her eyes from one of her companions to the other
as if she were taking possession of them (an eminently conscious,
intentional proceeding, which made Sherringham ask himself what had become
of her former terror and whether that and her tears had all been a comedy):
after which, abruptly straightening herself, she began to repeat a short
French poem, a composition modern and delicate, one of the things she had
induced Madame Carré to
say over to her. She had learned it, practised it, rehearsed it to her
mother, and now she had been childishly eager to show what she could do with
it. What she mainly did was to reproduce with a crude fidelity, but with
extraordinary memory, 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 Carrés
first criticism.
Miriam allowed her little time to develop this idea, for
she broke out, at the shortest intervals, with the five other specimens of
verse to which the old actress had handed her the key. They were all
delicate lyrics, of tender or pathetic intention, by contemporary poets
all things demanding perfect taste and art, a mastery of tone, of
insinuation, in the interpreter. Miriam, had gobbled them up, she gave them
forth in the same way as the first, with close, rude, audacious mimicry.
There was a moment when Sherringham was afraid Madame Carré would
think she was making fun of her manner, her celebrated simpers and grimaces,
so extravagant did the girls performance cause these refinements to
appear.
When she had finished, the old woman said: Should
you like now to hear how you do it? and, without waiting for
an answer, phrased and trilled the last of the pieces, from beginning to
end, exactly as Miriam had done, making this imitation of an imitation the
drollest thing conceivable. If she had been annoyed it was a perfect
revenge. Miriam had dropped on a sofa, exhausted, and she stared at first,
looking flushed and wild; then she gave way to merriment, laughing with a
high sense of comedy. 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 didnt 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; its the way they are made. They can never come nearer to
the delicate; shades dont exist for them, they dont 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 are struck with the
little the two ways have in common, so much the better. But you seem to me
to coarsen everything you touch.
Sherringham thought this judgement harsh to cruelty, and
perceived that Miss Rooth had the power to set the teeth of her instructress
on edge. She acted on her nerves; she was made of a thick, rough substance
which the old woman was not accustomed to manipulate. This exasperation,
however, was a kind of flattery; it was neither indifference nor simple
contempt; it acknowledged a mystifying reality in the girl and even a degree
of importance. Miriam 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 which were open to
interpretation, with which you had to fight every step, rendering,
arranging, doing it according to your idea. Some of the most effective
things, 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 patronizing while she gave it. It was
clear that her laughter was partly dedicated to the good faith with which
Miriam described herself as preponderantly interested in the subtler
problems of her art. Sherringham was charmed with the girls pluck
if it was pluck and not mere density the brightness with which
she submitted, for a purpose, to the old womans 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 in
a way that showed she didnt care at present how she exposed herself,
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 Sherringhams expectation, Madame
Carré warmed to the work of answering and explaining, became
interested, was content to keep her and to talk. Yet 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 Sherringham had ever spent, even
in the course of investigation which had often led him into the
cuisine, as the French called it, 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 him, with Miriam as a 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, a ferocious analysis had been carried, with an intelligence of the
business and a special vocabulary. What struck him above all was the way she
knew her reasons and 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;
she could explain it, defend it, amplify it, fight for it: and all this was
an intellectual joy to her, allowing her a chance to abound and insist and
be clever. There was a kind of cruelty, or at least of hardness in it all,
to Sherringhams English sense, that sense which can never really
reconcile itself to the question of execution and has extraneous sentiments
to placate with compromises and superficialities, frivolities that have
often a pleasant moral fragrance. In theory there was nothing that he valued
more than just such a logical passion as Madame Carrés; but in
fact, when he found himself in close quarters with it, it was apt to seem to
him an ado about nothing.
If the old woman was hard, it was not that many of her
present conclusions, as regards Miriam, 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 Sherringham 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
is; they discussed impartially the qualities of appearance,
the physical gifts of the actor or actress, finding them in some cases
reprehensibly inadequate. Sherringham could not rid himself of a prejudice
against these pronouncements; in the case of the actresses especially they
appeared to him brutal and indelicate unmanly as coming from a critic
sitting smoking in his chair. 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 liking the actors art one ought to have been
interested in every candid criticism of it, which, given the peculiar
conditions, would be legitimate in proportion as it should he minute. If the
criticism that recognized frankly these conditions seemed an inferior or an
offensive 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 which
Sherringham had never straightened out: he contented himself with saying
that there was no reason a theatrical critic shouldnt be a gentleman,
at the same time that he often remarked that it was an odious trade, which
no gentleman could possibly follow. The best of the fraternity, so
conspicuous in Paris, were those who didnt 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 is 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 haunted with Mrs Rooths nonsense, her
hypocrisy, her scruples something she felt a need to belabour, to
trample on. Miriam took it all as a bath, a baptism, with passive
exhilaration and gleeful shivers; staring, wondering, sometimes blushing and
failing to follow, but not shrinking nor wounded; laughing, when it was
necessary, at her own expense, and feeling evidently that this at last was
the air of the profession, an initiation which nothing could undo.
Sherringham said to her that he would see her home that he wanted to
talk to her and she must walk away with him. And its understood,
then, she may come back, he added to Madame Carré.
Its my affair, of course. Youll take
an interest in her for a month or two; she will sit at your feet.
Oh, Ill knock her about; she seems stout
enough! said the old actress.
When she had descended into the street with Sherringham
Miriam informed him that she was thirsty, dying to drink something: upon
which he asked her if she would have any objection to going with him to a
café.
Objection? I have spent my life in
cafés! she exclaimed. They are warm in winter and are
full of gaslight. 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
have lived in places we couldnt sit in, if you want to know
where there was only really room if we were in bed. Mammas money is
sent out from England, and sometimes it didnt come. Once it
didnt come for months for months and months. I dont know
how we lived. There wasnt any to come; there wasnt any to get
home. That isnt amusing when youre away, in a foreign town,
without any friends. Mamma used to borrow, but people wouldnt always
lend. You neednt be afraid she wont borrow from you. We
are rather better now. Something has been done in England; I dont
understand what. Its 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 bad. She takes them
to the cafés the little cheap, shabby cafés, too
and she reads there all the evening. Thats very well for her, but it
doesnt feed me. I dont like a diet of dirty old novels. I sit
there beside her, with nothing to do, not even a stocking to mend; she
doesnt think thats comme il faut. I dont know what
the people take me for. However, we have never been spoken to:
any one can see mammas a lady. As for me, I dare say I might be
anything. If youre 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 have never been very
clear about our cousins, and I dont think they were at all clear about
us. Some of them are dead; the others dont ask us any more. You should
hear mamma on the subject of our visits in England. Its very
convenient when your cousins are dead, because 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 will go anywhere you
like; you neednt be afraid; we have been in places! I have learned a
great deal that way; sitting beside mamma and watching people, their faces,
their types, their movements. Theres 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, Ive
observed scenes, between men and women very quiet, terribly quiet,
but tragic! Once I saw a woman do something that Im going to do some
day, when Im great if I can get the situation. Ill tell
you what it is some day; Ill 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 which Sherringham selected carefully
and he had caused her, at her request, to be accommodated with sirop
dorgeat. I know what it will come to: Madame Carré
will want to keep me. This was one of the announcements she presently
made.
To keep you?
For the French stage. She wont 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 test of patience. Sherringham 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
in 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 to the end; for
if he was really destined to take her career in hand he counted on some
pleasant equivalent such, for instance, as that she should at least
amuse him.
Its very singular; I know nothing like
it, he said your equal mastery of two
languages.
Say of half a dozen, Miriam smiled.
Oh, I dont believe in the others to the same
degree. I dont imagine that, with all deference to your undeniable
facility, you would be judged fit to address a German or an Italian audience
in their own tongue. But you might a French, perfectly, and they are the
most particular of all; for their idiom is supersensitive and they are
incapable of enduring the baragouinage of foreigners, to which we
listen with such complacency. In fact, your French is better than your
English its more conventional; there are little queernesses and
impurities in your English, as if you had lived abroad too much. Ah, you
must work that.
Ill work it with you. I like the way you
speak.
You must speak beautifully; you must do something
for the standard.
For the standard?
There isnt any, after all; it has gone to
the dogs.
Oh, Ill bring it back. I know what you
mean.
No one knows, no one cares; the sense is gone
it isnt in the public, Sherringham continued, ventilating
a grievance he was rarely able to forget, the vision of which now suddenly
made a mission full of sanctity for Miriam Rooth. Purity of speech, on
our stage, doesnt exist. Every one speaks as he likes, and audiences
never notice; its the last thing they think of. The place is given up
to abominable dialects and individual tricks, any vulgarity flourishes, and
on the 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 dont 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 is
a system, 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 are mostly lost in stupor; only a few, the very
intelligent ones, exclaim: Then do 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? Isnt their whole art the affectation par excellence?
The public wont 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
have 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, Ive had it; its very
personal! said Miriam, knowingly.
Youve seen the nudity of the stage, the poor
painted, tattered screen behind, and in the empty space the histrionic
figure, doing everything it knows how, in complete possession. The
personality isnt our English personality, and it may not always carry
us with it; but the direction is right, and it has the superiority that
its a human exhibition, not a mechanical one.
I can act just like an Italian, said Miriam,
eagerly.
I would rather you acted like an Englishwoman, if
an Englishwoman would only act.
Oh, Ill show you!
But youre not English, said
Sherringham, sociably, with his arms on the table.
I beg your pardon; you should hear mamma about our
race.
Youre a Jewess Im sure of
that, Sherringham went on.
She jumped at this, as he was destined to see, later,
that she would jump at anything that would make her more interesting or
striking; even at things which, grotesquely, contradicted or excluded each
other. Thats always possible, if ones clever. Im
very willing, because I want to be the English Rachel.
Then you must leave Madame Carré, as soon
as you have got from her what she can give.
Oh, you neednt fear; you shant
lose me, the girl replied, with gross, charming fatuity. My name
is Jewish, she went on, but it was that of my grandmother, my
fathers mother. She was a baroness, in Germany. That is she was the
daughter of a baron.
Sherringham accepted this statement with reservations,
but he replied: Put all that together, and it makes you very
sufficiently of Rachels tribe.
I dont care, if Im of her tribe
artistically. Im of the family of the artists; je me fiche of
any other! Im in the same style as that woman; I know it.
You speak as if you had seen her, said
Sherringham, 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 wont 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 isnt only a matter of plays! You
cant speak a part properly till you can speak everything else,
anything that comes up, especially in proportion as its difficult.
That gives you authority.
Oh, yes, Im going in for authority.
Theres 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 Im afraid, she chattered
on. But weve got America, and they havent. Americas
a great place.
You talk like a theatrical agent. Theyre
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. Its the death of
an actor to play to big populations that dont understand his language.
Its nothing then but the gros moyens; all his delicacy
perishes. However, theyll understand you.
Perhaps I shall be too affected, said
Miriam.
You wont be more so than Garrick or
Mrs Siddons or John Kemble or Edmund Kean. They understood Edmund
Kean. All reflection is affectation, and all acting is reflection.
I dont know; mine is instinct, Miriam
replied.
My dear young lady, you talk of yours;
but dont be offended if I tell you that yours doesnt exist. Some
day it will, if it comes off. Madame Carrés does, because she
has reflected. The talent, the desire, the energy are an instinct; but by
the time these things become a performance they are an instinct put in its
place.
Madame Carré is very philosophic. I shall
never be like her.
Of course you wont; youll be original.
But youll have your own ideas.
I dare say I shall have a good many of
yours, said Miriam, smiling across the table.
They sat a moment looking at each other.
Dont go in for coquetry; its a waste
of time.
Well, thats civil! the girl cried.
Oh, I dont mean for me; I mean for yourself.
I want you to be so concentrated. I am bound to give you good advice. You
dont strike me as flirtatious and that sort of thing, and thats
in your favour.
In my favour!
It does save time.
Perhaps it saves too much. Dont you think
the artist ought to have passions?
Sherringham hesitated a moment: he thought an
examination of this question premature. Flirtations are not
passions, he replied. No, you are 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
dont 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 is 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 its supposed to be.
Its too odious, the way he talks about
us! Miriam cried, assentingly.
About us?
Us poor actors.
Its the competition he dislikes, said
Sherringham, laughing.
However, he is very good-natured; he lent mamma
thirty pounds, the girl added, honestly. Sherringham, at this
information, was not able to repress a certain small twinge which his
companion perceived and of which she appeared to mistake the meaning.
Of course hell get it back, she went on, while Sherringham
looked at her in silence for a minute. Fortune had not supplied him
profusely with money, but his emotion was not caused by the apprehension
that he too would probably have 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,
and a sense that that 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 Gabriel
Nashs histrionics. After a moment Miriam mistook his thought still
more completely, and in doing so gave him a flash of foreknowledge 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, among others, that
by that time one would be in love with her. Well, then, he wont
if you dont believe it! she exclaimed, with a laugh. He
was saying to himself that the only possible form was that they should
borrow only from him. Youre a funny man: I make you blush,
Miriam persisted.
I must reply with the tu quoque, though I
have not that effect on you.
I dont understand, said the girl.
Youre an extraordinary young lady.
You mean Im horrid. Well, I dare say I am.
But Im better when you know me.
Sherringham made no direct rejoinder to this, but after
a moment he said: Your mother must repay that money. Ill give it
to her.
You had better give it to him! cried Miriam.
If once we have it She interrupted herself, and
with another and a softer tone, one of her professional transitions, she
remarked: I suppose you have never known any one thats
poor.
Im poor myself. That is Im 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 Miriam instantly carried out his thought and
more than his thought.
Favours from Mr Nash? Oh, he doesnt
count!
The way she dropped these words (they would have been
admirable on the stage) made him laugh and say immediately: What I
meant just now was that you are 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!
Then Miriam added that she must positively get home; her mother would be in
a state: she had really scarcely ever been out alone. He mightnt think
it, but so it was. Her mothers 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 Rooths
conservatism; but he observed at the same time that his companion made no
motion to rise. He made none, either; he only said
We are very frivolous, the way we chatter. What
you want to do, to get your foot in the stirrup, is supremely difficult.
There is everything to overcome. You have neither an engagement nor the
prospect of an engagement.
Oh, youll get me one! Miriams
manner expressed that this was so certain that it was not worth dilating
upon; so instead of dilating she inquired abruptly, a second time: Why
do you think Im so simple?
I dont then. Didnt I tell you just now
that you were extraordinary? Thats the term moreover that you applied
to yourself when you came to see me when you said a girl had to be,
to wish to go on the stage. It remains the right one, and your simplicity
doesnt mitigate it. Whats rare in you is that you have as
I suspect, at least no nature of your own. Miriam listened to
this as if she were preparing to argue with it or not, only as it should
strike her as being a pleasing picture; but as yet, naturally, she failed to
understand. You are always playing something; there are no intervals.
Its the absence of intervals, of a fond or background, that I
dont comprehend. Youre an embroidery without a canvas.
Yes, perhaps, the girl replied, with her
head on one side, as if she were looking at the pattern. But Im
very honest.
You cant be everything, a consummate actress
and a flower of the field. Youve got to choose.
She looked at him a moment. Im glad you
think Im so wonderful.
Your feigning may be honest, in the sense that
your only feeling is your feigned one, Sherringham went on.
Thats what I mean by the absence of a ground or of intervals.
Its a kind of thing thats a labyrinth!
I know what I am, said Miriam,
sententiously.
But her companion continued, following his own train:
Were you really so frightened, the first day you went to Madame
Carrés?
She stared a moment, and then with a flush, throwing
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 have plenty of that I am not ashamed to
own it.
You would be capable of pretending that you have.
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. Isnt that a
canvas?
Yes, an intellectual one, but not a
moral.
Oh yes, it is, too. And Im a good girl:
wont that do?
It remains to be seen, Sherringham laughed.
A creature who is all an artist I am 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. Theres something left for what shall I
call it? for character.
Miriam stared again, with her tragic light. And do
you think Ive got no 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, he answered: Delightful
being, youve got a hundred!
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 Peter 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 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 Sherringham as an
importunate repetition of a good story. But it was not long before he became
aware that the conditions could not be regarded as 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 recognize 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
considerable reserve in regard to it. He had no irresistible impulse to tell
people that 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 she was not soon to be seen there again. Sherringhams
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 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, 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 his companions that he was engaged in a private speculation of a
singular kind. It was perhaps his weakness that he carried the apprehension
of ridicule too far; but his excuse may be said to be that he held it
unpardonable for a man publicly enrolled in the service of his country to be
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 choreographic 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 sétait
vu, though it was not perhaps to be recommended. It was not a tendency
that was fostered at headquarters, where even the most rising young men were
not encouraged to believe they could never fall. Still, it might pass if it
were kept in its place; and there were ancient worthies yet in the
profession (not those, however, 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 youthful
artist, in conscientious process of formation, encumbered with a mother
still more conscientious than herself. She was a young English lady, very
earnest about artistic, about remunerative problems. He had accepted the
position 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 contingent
prospect, for the failure of which these would not, even in their abundance,
be a compensation. He kept an unembarrassed eye upon 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 volatility.
He felt not particularly volatile, 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 spectacle before the footlights had now lost much of
its annual brilliancy, the fashion in which Miriam followed it came near
being spectacle enough. Moreover, in most cases the attendance of the little
party was at the Théâtre Français; and it has been
sufficiently indicated that Sherringham, 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 that I
follow we see things too much in the hard light of reason, of
calculation, he once remarked to his young
protégée; but its 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 æsthetic
part of life are night-work, if I may say so without suggesting the
nefarious. At any rate you want your second horse your superstition
that stays at home when the sun is high to go your rounds with. The
Théâtre Français is my second horse.
Miriams appetite for this pleasure 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 very pretty exhibition of
enthusiasm, if enthusiasm be ever critical. Sherringham had his wonder about
it, as it was a part of the attraction exerted by this young lady that she
caused him to have his wonder about everything she did. Was it in fact an
exhibition, a line taken for effect, so that at the comedy her own comedy
was 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 Sherringhams 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
conversation. 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 any rate
an insatiable young woman from the country.
Mrs Rooth took a more placid 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 Sherringham. She
found no play too tedious, no entracte too long, no baignoire too hot, no tissue of incidents too complicated, no
situation too unnatural and no sentiments too sublime. She gave Sherringham
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 outsit everyone, everything else; looking
as if she had acquired the practice in repeated years of small frugality
combined with large leisure periods when she had nothing but time 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 (for it sometimes implied a vision of light refreshment) of
food. Sherringham perceived soon enough that she was complete in her way,
and if he had been addicted to studying the human mixture in its different
combinations he would have found in her an interesting compendium of some of
the infatuations that survive a hard discipline. He made indeed without
difficulty the reflection that her life might have taught her the reality of
things, at the same time that he could scarcely 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 Sherringham think her sometimes an amusing and
sometimes a tedious inventor. But she was not dangerous even if you believed
her; she was not even a warning if you didnt. It was harsh to call her
a hypocrite, because you never could have resolved her back into her
character: there was no reverse to her blazonry. She built in the air and
was not less amiable than she pretended: only
that was a pretence too. She moved altogether in a world of genteel fable
and fancy, and Sherringham had to live in it with her, for Miriams
sake, in sociable, vulgar assent, in spite of his feeling that it was rather
a low neighbourhood. He was at a loss how to take what she said she
talked sweetly and discursively of so many things until he simply
perceived that he could only take it always for untrue. When Miriam laughed
at her he was rather disagreeably affected: dear mammas 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 represented in the contemporary French drama.
She never failed to direct Miriams attention to them and to remind her
that there is nothing in life so precious as the ideal. Sherringham noted
the difference between the mother and the daughter and thought it singularly
marked the way that one took everything for the sense, or behaved as
if she did, caring above all for the subject and the romance, the triumph or
defeat of virtue and the moral comfort of it all, and that the other was
especially hungry for the manner and the art of it, the presentation and the
vividness. 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
success in this line was exactly what her clever child went in for. She made
even the true seem fictive, while Miriams 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 girls composition, the æsthetic element, the
sense of form. In their visits to the theatre there was nothing that
Mrs Rooth more insisted upon than the unprofitableness of deceit, as
shown by the most distinguished authors the folly and degradation,
the corrosive effect upon the spirit, of tortuous ways. Sherringham very
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, for, existent or not,
he cared equally little for her ramifications. The principle of this
indifference was at bottom a certain desire to disconnect Miriam; for it was
disagreeable not to be independent in dealing with her, and he could be
fully so only if she 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 Sherringham had to wait for
his own holiday, which he did, during the hot days, contentedly enough, in
spacious halls, with a 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 which made a noise like grasshoppers; the
Arc de Triomphe threw its cool, sharp shadow for a mile; the Palais de
lIndustrie glittered in the light of the long days; the cabmen, in
their red waistcoats, dozed in their boxes; and Sherringham permitted
himself a pot hat and rarely met a friend. Thus was Miriam still
more disconnected, and thus was it possible to deal with her still more
independently. The theatres on the boulevard closed, for the most part, but
the great temple of the Rue de Richelieu, with an æsthetic
responsibility, continued imperturbably to dispense examples of style.
Madame Carré was going to Vichy, but she 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 in the July mornings there was a
smell of violets 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 as she passed, with quick prevision, of her own
dawn of glory. The
greatest amusement perhaps was to recognize 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 always brought with her
from her passage through the town good-humour enough (with the penny bunch
of violets that she stuck in the front of her dress) for whatever awaited
her at Madame Carrés. She told Sherringham 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 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 them: he had been overdosed with knowledge that second day he
saw them together. He would send Madame Carré her money (she was
really most obliging), and in the meantime he was conscious that Miriam
could take care of herself. Sometimes he remarked to her that she
neednt always talk shop to him: there were times when he
was very 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 Im sick of it, all the
same. At other times he said to her: 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 thought you thought just these questions of
study, of the artistic education, as you have called it to me, so
fascinating, the girl persisted. Sometimes she was very lucid.
Well, after all Im not an actor
myself, Sherringham answered, laughing.
You might be one if you were serious said
Miriam. To this her friend replied that Mr Gabriel Nash ought to hear
that; which made her exclaim, 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
Sherringham repeated over that for a man like himself the interest of
the whole thing depended on its being considered in a large, liberal way,
with an intelligence that lifted it out of the question of the little
tricks of the trade, gave it beauty and elevation. Miriam let him know that
Madame Carré held that 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.
Thats very well; but if I must go into
details read me a little Shelley, said the young man, in the spirit of
a high
raffiné.
You are worse than Madame Carré; you
dont know what to invent: between you youll kill me! the
girl declared. I think theres a secret league between you to
spoil my voice, or at least to weaken my wind, before I get it. But
à la guerre comme à la guerre! How can I read Shelley,
however, when I dont understand him?
Thats just what I want to make you do.
Its a part of your general training. You may do without that, of
course without culture and taste and perception; but in that case
youll be nothing but a vulgar cabotine, and nothing will be of
any consequence. Sherringham had a theory that the great lyric poets
(he induced her to read and recite as well long passages of Wordsworth and
of Swinburne) would teach her many of the secrets of competent utterance,
the mysteries of rhythm, the communicableness of style, the latent music of
the language and the art of composing copious speeches and of
keeping her wind in hand. He held in perfect sincerity that there was an
indirect enlightenment which would be of the highest importance to her and
to which it was precisely, by good fortune, in his power to contribute. She
would do better in proportion as she had more knowledge even
knowledge that might appear to have but a remote connection with her
business. The actors 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 seemed
to him no contradiction to consider 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 larger thing if a better mind were projected
upon it without sacrificing the mind. So he lent Miriam books which
she never read (she was on almost irreconcilable terms with the printed
page), 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 that she never
read what he gave her, though she sometimes would 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 idea was often
fantastic, but it showed what an eye she had to her business. I could
look just like that, if I tried. Thats the dress I
mean to wear when I do Portia. Such were the observations that were
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 Sherringham, who had to reflect a little
to remember that she was no more egotistical than the histrionic conscience
demanded. He wondered if there were necessarily something vulgar in the
histrionic conscience something condemned to feel only the tricky
personal question. Wasnt it better to be perfectly stupid than to have
only one eye open and wear forever, 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 played the repertory, with
exponents determined the more sparse and provincial audience should thrill
and gape with the tradition, her appreciation was tremendously technical and
showed it was not for nothing she was now in and out of Madame
Carrés 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 that 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 hadnt a
responsibility. He had fine ideas, but she was to do the acting, that is the
application of them, and not he; and application was always of necessity a
sort of vulgarization, a smaller thing than theory. If some day she should
exhibit the great art that it was not purely fanciful to forecast for her,
the subject would doubtless be sufficiently lifted up and it wouldnt
matter that some of the onward steps should have been lame.
This was clear to him on several occasions when she
repeated or acted 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 fashion. In these hours she gave him fitfully
but forcibly 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 an intelligent understanding, as well as a sore
personal sense, of how bad she was. She had therefore begun on a new basis;
she had returned to the alphabet and the drill. It was a phase of
awkwardness, like the splashing of a young swimmer, but buoyancy would
certainly come out of it. For the present there was for the most part 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 they were too apt to be a gross parody of that ladys
intention. None the less she gave glimpses, and her glimpses made him feel
not only that she was not a fool (that was a small relief), but that
he was not.
He made her stick to her English and read Shakespeare
aloud to him. Mrs Rooth had recognized the importance of an apartment
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 crooked waxed floor, an
empire clock, an armoire à glace (highly convenient for
Miriams 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. Ill 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 had no
insuperable objection to being under a pecuniary obligation so long as it
was 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 Sherringham 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 articles. There
were romantic works that Sherringham 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 peruse 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 Sherringham 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 æsthetic as well as a great personal trust.
She rather annoyed Sherringham by the serenity of her
confidence (for a reason that 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 was there. He continued to object to the
girls English, with the foreign patches which might pass in prose but
were offensive in the recitation of verse, and he wanted to know why she
could not speak like her mother. He had to do Mrs Rooth the justice of
recognizing the charm of her voice and accent, which gave a certain 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 relegate
her to the class of the simple dreary. They were like the reverberation of
far-off drawing-rooms.
The connection between the development of Miriams
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 merely
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 place in Sherringhams programme as a part of the legitimate
indirect culture, an agency in the formation of taste. Intimations of the
grand style, for instance, would proceed in abundance from the symmetrical
palace and gardens of Louis XIV. Sherringham was very fond of Versailles,
and went 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 pleasant and idle; they had
an idea that they found suggestive associations there; and indeed there was
an old white château which contained nothing else. They found, at any
rate, luncheon and, in the landscape, a charming sense of summer and of
little brushed French pictures.
I have said that in these days Sherringham wondered a
good deal, and by the time his leave of absence was granted him this
practice had engendered a particular speculation. He was surprised that he
was not in love with Miriam Rooth, and he considered in moments of leisure
the causes of his exemption. He had perceived from the first that she was a
nature, and each time she met his eyes the more vividly it
appeared to him that her beauty was rare. You had to get the view of her
face, but when you did so it was a splendid mobile mask. And the possessor
of this high advantage had frankness and courage and variety and 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, she was accessible, she almost belonged to him. He
reflected ingeniously that he owed his escape to a peculiar cause 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 change his actual situation for that of a conjugal 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 the odd animal the artist who happened to have been born a
woman, he felt himself warned against a serious connection (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.
Sherringham parted with them on the understanding that
in London he would look as thoroughly as possible into the question of an
engagement for Miriam. 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 got something, then?
She has got most things. Shell go far. It is
the first time I ever was mistaken. But dont tell her so I
dont flatter her; shell 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 which 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 suddenly came 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.
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 Dallows ponies were capital trotters the general high
pitch of the occasion made it congruous that they should show their speed.
The occasion was the polling-day, the hour after the battle. The ponies had
worked, with all the rest, 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 in her low, smart trap. Very often she was accompanied by the
Liberal candidate, but even when she was not the equipage seemed scarcely
less to represent his pleasant sociable confidence. It
moved in a radiance of ribbons and handbills and hand-shakes and smiles; of
quickened intercourse and sudden intimacy; of sympathy which assumed without
presuming and gratitude which promised without soliciting. But, under
Julias 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 picturesque effect for not undulating, from the gates opening straight
into the town to the Palladian mansion, high, square, gray and clean, which
stood, among parterres 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 had not thought they would do much good, but she was expansive and
indulgent now and she had liberally 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 husbands 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 couldnt flatter the
cheesemonger, and Nick felt that 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 pink, on platforms and in recurrent carriages, out of
which she had tossed, blushing and making people remember her eyes, several
words that were telling for their very simplicity.
Mrs Dallow was really too glad for any definite
reflection, even for personal exultation, the vanity of recognizing her own
large share of the work. Nick was in and he was beside her, tired, silent,
vague, beflowered and beribboned, and he had been splendid from beginning to
end, delightfully
good-humoured and at the same time delightfully clever still cleverer
than she had supposed he could be. The sense that she had helped his
cleverness and that she had been repaid by it, or by his gratitude (it came
to the same thing), in a way she appreciated, was not triumphant and
jealous; for the break of the long tension soothed her, it was as pleasant
as an untied ligature. So nothing passed between them on their way to the
house; there was no sound in the park but the happy rustle of summer (it
seemed an applausive murmur) and the swift progress of the vehicle.
Lady Agnes already knew, for as soon as the result was
declared Nick had dispatched a man on horseback to her, carrying the figures
on a scrawled card. He 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, 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 said never a word after he put
himself in Julias hands to go home, perhaps it was partly because the
consciousness began to glimmer within him that that interest had on the
contrary now suddenly diminished. He wanted to see his mother because he
knew she wanted to see him, to fold him close in her arms. They had been
open there for that purpose for the last half-hour, and her expectancy, now
no longer an ache of suspense, was the reason of Julias round pace.
Yet this very expectancy somehow made Nick wince a little. Meeting his
mother was like being elected over again.
The others had not come back yet Lady Agnes was
alone in the large bright drawing-room. When Nick went in with
Mrs Dallow he saw her at the further end; she had evidently been
walking to and fro, the whole length of it, and her tall, upright black
figure seemed in possession of the fair vastness like 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
(scarcely about anything else); so that it appeared to represent him still,
what was best in his kindly, uniform nature a friendly, competent,
tiresome insistence upon purity and homogeneity. Nick Dormer 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,
thats what I call form: I dont know what you call
it that was the way he used to begin. The room was full of
flowers in rare vases, but it looked like a place of which the beauty would
have had a sweet odour 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 that 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, 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 (and 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. I 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 dont know; did I? Nick inquired.
I dont know! Mrs Dallow replied,
with her back turned, doing something to her hat before the glass.
Oh, I can fancy the confusion, the
bewilderment! said Lady Agnes, in a tone rich in political
reminiscence.
It was really immense fun! exclaimed
Mrs Dallow.
Dear Julia! Lady Agnes went on. Then she
added: It was you who made it sure.
There are a lot of people coming to dinner,
said Julia.
Perhaps youll have to speak again,
Lady Agnes smiled at her son.
Thank you; I like the way you talk about it!
cried Nick. Im like Iago: from this time forth I never
will speak word!
Dont say that, Nick, said his mother,
gravely.
Dont be afraid: hell jabber like a
magpie! And Mrs Dallow went out of the room.
Nick had flung himself upon a sofa with an air of
weariness, though not of completely vanished cheer; and Lady Agnes stood
before him fingering her rose and looking down at him. His eyes looked away
from hers: they seemed fixed on something she couldnt see. I
hope youve thanked Julia, Lady Agnes dropped.
Why, of course, mother.
She has done as much as if you hadnt been
sure.
I wasnt in the least sure and she has
done everything.
She has been too good but
weve done something. I hope you dont leave out your
father, Lady Agnes amplified, as Nicks glance appeared for a
moment to question her we.
Never, never! Nick uttered these words
perhaps a little mechanically, but the next minute he continued, as if he
had suddenly been 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 is still a living force. He felt a good deal of a hypocrite,
but one didnt win 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 declared.
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: Julias a tremendously effective
woman.
Of course she is! answered Lady Agnes,
knowingly.
Her charming appearance is half the battle,
said Nick, explaining a little coldly what he meant. But he felt that his
coldness was an inadequate protection to him when he heard his mother
observe, with something of the same sapience
A woman is always effective when she likes a
person.
It discomposed him to be described as a person liked,
and by a woman; and he asked abruptly: When are you going
away?
The first moment thats civil
to-morrow morning. Youll stay here, I hope.
Stay? What shall I stay for?
Why, you might stay to thank her.
I have everything to do.
I thought everything was done, said Lady
Agnes.
Well, thats 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 Nick looked at his watch.
When there are people coming to dinner to meet
you?
Theyll meet you thats
better.
Im sorry any one is coming, Lady Agnes
said, in a tone unencouraging to a deviation from the intensity 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 shes alone?
She wont be alone, with
Mrs Gresham.
Mrs Gresham doesnt count.
Thats precisely why I want you to stop. And
her cousin, almost her brother: what an idea that it wont do!
Havent you stayed here before, when there has been no one?
I have never stayed much, and there have always
been people. At any rate, now its different.
Its just because it is different. Besides,
it isnt 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,
looking out on the great greenness. She watched him a moment and she might
well have been wishing, while he remained gazing there, as it appeared, 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 Julias very own, to do
with exactly as she liked. No word of appreciation or envy, however, dropped
from the young mans 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 business? Arent you her member, and cant
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 hesitated a moment; she felt that 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
interrupted her with a laugh.
What a droll thing to represent, when
one thinks of it! And what does it represent, poor torpid little
borough, with its 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 replied, smiling and feeling that she was
tactful.
It will only be a bigger sofa! Im joking, of
course, Nick went on, and I ought to be ashamed of myself. They
have done me the honour to elect me, and I shall never say a word
thats not civil about them, poor dears. But even a new member may joke
with his mother.
I wish youd be serious with your
mother, said Lady Agnes, going nearer to him.
The difficulty is that Im two men; its
the strangest thing that ever was, Nick pursued, bending his bright
face upon her. Im 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 its the other fellow who sits in it.
Oh, Nick, dont spoil your victory by your
perversity! Lady Agnes cried, clasping her hands to him.
I went through it with great glee I
wont deny that: it excited me, it interested me, it amused me. When
once I was in it I liked it. But now that Im out of it
again
Out of it? His mother stared.
Isnt the whole point that youre in?
Ah, now Im only in the House of
Commons.
For an instant Lady Agnes 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, as if a comprehension of the young mans words
promptly superseded that impulse, she replied with force: You will 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 practise; after
which he said: The odd thing is, you know, that Harsh has no wants. At
least its not sharply, not eloquently conscious of them. We all talked
them over together, and I promised to carry them in my heart of hearts. But
upon my word I cant 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;
shes really their member, and this house in which we stand is
their legislative chamber. Therefore the lacunæ that I have
undertaken to fill up are the national wants. It will be rather a job to
rectify some of them, wont it? I dont represent the appetites of
Harsh Harsh is gorged. I represent the ideas of my party. Thats
what Julia says.
Oh, never mind what Julia says! Lady Agnes
broke out, impatiently. This impatience made it singular that the very next
words she uttered should be: My dearest son, I wish to heaven
youd marry her. It would be so fitting now! she added.
Why now? asked Nick, frowning.
She has shown you such sympathy, such
devotion.
Is it for that she has shown it?
Ah, you might feel I cant
tell you! said Lady Agnes, reproachfully.
Nick blushed at this, as if what he did feel was the
reproach. Must I marry her because you like her?
I? Why, we are 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 am 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. My darling Nick, if you care anything in
the world to make me happy, youll stay over here to-morrow and be nice
to her.
Be nice to her? Do you mean propose to
her?
With a single word, with the glance of an eye, the
movement of your little finger and Lady Agnes paused, looking
intensely, imploringly up into Nicks 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 returning her look, she added insistently, You
know shes 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?
Talk of that when Julia puts everything that she possesses at your
feet!
I cant talk of it, mother its
too terrible an idea. And I cant talk of her, nor of what I
think of her. You must leave that to me. I do her perfect justice.
You dont, or youd marry her to-morrow.
You would feel that the opportunity is exquisitely 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. Thats what I meant when I spoke just now of us all. It
wasnt of Grace and Biddy I was thinking fancy! it was of
him. Hes with you always; he takes with you, at your side, every step
that you take yourself. He would bless devoutly your marriage to Julia; he
would feel that it would be for you and for us all. I ask for no sacrifice,
and he would ask for none. We only ask that you dont 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 did not 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 there as
he would have held a child in a paroxysm, soothing her silently till it
should pass away. Her emotion had brought the tears to her eyes; she dried
them as she disengaged herself. The next moment, however, she resumed,
attacking him again:
For a public man she would be the ideal companion.
Shes made for public life; shes made to shine, to be concerned
in great things, to occupy a high position and to help him on. She would
help you in everything as she has helped you in this. Together there is
nothing you couldnt do. You can have the first house in England
yes, the 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? Thats the crime to throw away such
an instrument of power, such a blessed instrument of good.
It isnt everything to be rich, mother,
said Nick, looking at the floor in a certain patient way, with a provisional
docility and his hands in his pockets. And it isnt so fearful to
be poor.
Its vile its abject. Dont
I know?
Are you in such acute want? Nick asked,
smiling.
Ah, dont make me explain what you have only
to look at
to see! his mother returned, as if with a richness of allusion to dark
elements in her fate.
Besides, Nick went on, theres
other money in the world than Julias. I might come by some of
that.
Do you mean Mr Carterets? 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 have known Charles Carteret much longer than you, and I
understand him better. Theres 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
youre in earnest. You need to do something of that sort.
Havent I come in for Harsh? asked
Nick.
Oh, hes very canny. He likes to see people
rich. Then he believes in them then hes likely to
believe more. Hes kind to you because youre your fathers
son; but Im sure your being poor takes just so much off.
He can remedy that so easily, said Nick,
smiling still. Is being kept by Julia what you call making an effort
for myself?
Lady Agnes hesitated; then: You neednt
insult Julia! she replied.
Moreover, if Ive her money, I
shant want his, Nick hinted.
Again his mother waited an instant before answering;
after which she produced: And pray wouldnt you wish to be
independent?
Youre delightful, dear mother
youre very delightful! I particularly like your conception of
independence. Doesnt 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? Doesnt it occur to you that
I might work?
Work at politics? How does that make money,
honourably?
I dont mean at politics.
What do you mean, then? Lady Agnes demanded,
looking at him as if she challenged him to phrase it if he dared. Her eye
appeared to have a certain effect upon him, for he remained silent, and she
continued: Are you elected or not?
It seems a dream, said Nick.
If you are, act accordingly and dont mix up
things that are as wide asunder as the poles! She spoke with
sternness, and his silence might have been an admission that her sternness
was wholesome to him. Possibly she was touched by it; at any rate, after a
few moments, 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 Lady Agnes had
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 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: Dont you see
how things have turned out for us; dont you know how unhappy I am
dont you know what a bitterness? She stopped for a
moment, with a sob in her voice, and he recognized vividly this last
tribulation, the unhealed wound of her bereavement and the way she had
sunken from eminence to flatness. You know what Percival is and the
comfort I have from him. You know the property and what he is doing with it
and what comfort I get from that! Everythings dreary but what
you can do for us. Everythings odious, down to living in a hole with
ones girls who dont marry. Grace is impossible I
dont know whats the matter with her; no one will look at her,
and shes so conceited with it sometimes I feel as if I could
beat her! And Biddy will never marry, and we are three dismal women in a
filthy house. What are three dismal women, more or less, in
London?
So, with an unexpected rage of self-exposure, Lady Agnes
talked of her disappointments and troubles, tore away the veil from her
sadness and soreness. It almost frightened Nick to perceive how she hated
her life, though at another time it might have amused him to note how she
despised her gardenless house. Of course it was not a country-house, and
Lady Agnes could not 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 couldnt trace the difference, but his
mother saw it all as a shining picture. She made the vision shine before him
now, somehow, as she stood there like a poor woman crying for a kindness.
What was filial in him, all the piety that he owed, especially to the
revived spirit of his father, more than ever present on a day of such public
pledges, was capable from one moment to the other of trembling into
sympathetic response. He had the gift, so embarrassing when it is a question
of consistent action, of seeing in an imaginative, interesting light
anything that illustrated forcibly the life of another: such things effected
a union with something in his life, and the recognition of them was
ready to become a form of enthusiasm in which there was no consciousness of
sacrifice none scarcely 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 was in his option to transform the social
outlook of the three women who clung to him and who declared themselves
dismal. This was not the highest kind of inspiration, but it was moving, and
it associated itself with dim confusions of figures in the past
figures of authority and expectancy. Julias wide kingdom opened out
around him, making the future almost a dazzle of happy power. His mother and
sisters floated in the rosy element with beaming faces, in transfigured
safety.
The first house in England she had called it; but it might be
the first house in Europe, the first house in the world, by the fine air and
the high humanities that should fill it. Everything that was beautiful in
the place where he stood took on a more delicate charm; the house rose over
his head like a museum of exquisite rewards, and the image of poor George
Dallow hovered there obsequious, as if to confess that he had only been the
modest, tasteful forerunner, appointed to set it all in order and punctually
retire. Lady Agness tone penetrated further into Nicks spirit
than it had done yet, as she syllabled to him, supremely: Dont
desert us dont desert us.
Dont desert you?
Be great be great, said his mother.
Im old, Ive lived, Ive seen. Go in for a great
material position. That will simplify everything else.
I will do what I can for you anything,
everything I can. Trust me leave me alone, said Nick
Dormer.
And youll stay over youll spend
the day with her?
Ill 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 dont see how you can resist her, she added.
No more do I!
Lady Agnes looked round the great room with a soft
exhalation of gratitude and hope. If youre 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! Youll have everything the world can
give.
Thats exactly what was just passing in my
own mind. Its too much.
Dont be selfish!
Selfish? Nick repeated.
Dont be unselfish, then. Youll share
it with us.
And with Julia a little, I hope, said
Nick.
God bless you! cried his mother, looking up
at him. Her eyes were detained by the sudden perception of something in his
own that was not clear to her; but before she had time to ask for an
explanation of it Nick inquired, abruptly
Why do you talk so of poor Biddy? Why wont
she marry?
You had better ask Peter Sherringham, said
Lady Agnes.
What has he got to do with it?
How odd of you to ask, when its so plain how
she thinks of him that its a matter of common chaff!
Yes, weve made it so, and she takes it like
an angel. But Peter likes her.
Does he? Then its the more shame to him to
behave as he does. He had better leave his actresses alone. Thats the
love of art, too! mocked Lady Agnes.
Biddys so charming shell marry
some one else.
Never, if she loves him. But Julia will bring it
about Julia will help her, said Lady Agnes, more cheerfully.
Thats what youll do for us that
shell do everything!
Why then more than now? Nick asked.
Because we shall be yours.
You are mine already.
Yes, but she isnt. However,
shes as good! exulted Lady Agnes.
Shell 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 towards one of the windows
that stood open to the terrace. Mrs Dallow had become visible outside;
she passed slowly along the terrace, with her long shadow. Go to
her, Lady Agnes repeated shes waiting for
you.
Nick went out with the air of a man who was as ready to
pass that way as any other, and at the same moment his two sisters, freshly
restored from the excitements of the town, came into the room from another
quarter.
We go home to-morrow, but Nick will stay a day or
two, their mother said to them.
Dear old Nick! Grace ejaculated, looking at
Lady Agnes.
Hes going to speak, the latter went
on. But dont mention it.
Dont mention it? said Biddy, staring.
Hasnt he spoken enough, poor fellow?
I mean to Julia, Lady Agnes replied.
Dont you understand, you goose? Grace
exclaimed to her sister.
The next morning brought Nick Dormer 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 lady-like 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. Nick was amused at the way his mother had stolen off; as if
she feared that 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 heavy. 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 tired; she feared Julia was
completely done up. Mrs Dallow, 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 said, rather archly
smiling:
And of course you hate me for being
here! He made some protest, and she added: But Im almost a
part of the house, you know Im 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, isnt it? Julia lives
so in public. But its all for you. And after a moment she added:
Its 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. He was on the point of saying: The British? Wonderful!
when he perceived that the intention of his interlocutress was to praise
Mrs Dallows fine robustness. The surface so delicate, the
action so easy, yet the frame of steel.
Nick left Mrs Gresham to her correspondence and
went out of the house; wondering as he walked whether she wanted him to do
the same thing that 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, and her friends never sent for Mr Gresham. She came in every
case and had the 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 she 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.
If Lady Agnes, in a lowered tone, had discussed with her
the propriety of a union between the mistress of Harsh and the hope of the
Dormers our young man could take the circumstance for granted without
irritation and even with cursory indulgence: for he was not 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
which approved them as named and numbered acres. The place looked happy to
Nick, and he was struck with its having a charm to which he had perhaps not
hitherto done justice; something of the impression that he had received,
when he was younger, from showy views of fine country-seats, as
if they had been brighter and more established than life. 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 there 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 representing the Philistine in
ornament.
It was certainly a proof of youth and health on his part
that his spirits had risen as the tumult rose 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 with 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. He saw things in a new perspective and he
breathed an air that excited him unexpectedly. There was 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
was vague about success he liked the fray, and he had a general rule that
when one was in a muddle there was refreshment in
action. The embarrassment, that is the revival of scepticism, which might
produce an inconsistency shameful to exhibit and yet very difficult to
conceal, was safe enough to come later: indeed at the risk of making our
young man appear a purely whimsical personage I may hint that some such
sickly glow had even now begun to colour one quarter of his mental
horizon.
I am afraid moreover that I have no better excuse for
him than the one he had touched on in the 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 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 unrectified interests
become a spectacle to the vulgar. He had none of that wish to appear
complicated which is at the bottom of most forms of fatuity; he was
perfectly willing to pass as simple; he only aspired to be continuous. If
you were not really simple this presented difficulties; but he would have
assented to the proposition that you must be as final as you can and that it
contributes much to finality to consume the smoke of your inner fire. The
fire was the great thing and not the chimney. He had no view of life which
counted out the need of learning; it was teaching rather as to which he was
conscious of no particular mission. He liked life, liked it immensely, and
was willing to study the ways and means of it with a certain patience. He
cherished the usual wise monitions, such as that one was not to make a fool
of ones self and that one should not carry on ones technical
experiments in public. It was because as yet he liked life in general better
than it was clear to him that he liked any particular branch of it, that on
the occasion of a constituencys 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 resisted the idea of a match.
He rose to it as he had risen to matches at school, for
his boyishness could 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, 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 gallant readiness on platforms. There were two voices which told
him that all this was not really action at all, but only a pusillanimous
imitation of it: one of them made itself fitfully audible in the depths of
his own spirit and the other spoke, in the equivocal accents of a very
crabbed hand, from a letter of four pages by Gabriel Nash. However, Nick
acted as much as possible under the circumstances, and that was rectifying
it brought with it enjoyment and a working faith. He had not gone
counter to the axiom that in a case of doubt one was to hold off; for that
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 essentially
a problem in his life it would only grow tougher with keeping. But if doing
ones sum to-morrow instead of to-day does not make the sum easier it
at least makes to-day so.
Sometimes in the course of the following fortnight it
seemed to him that 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 frightened at his success. Then it appeared to him that 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 took care of that) 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
retreated before increase of sound, which had to be pleasant and eloquent,
and even superficially coherent, without its aid. Nick himself was surprised
at the airs he could play; and often when the last thing at night he shut
the door of his room he mentally exclaimed that he had had no idea he was
such a mountebank.
I must add that if this reflection did not 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 or busy or
excited by the agreeable combination of hits and hurrahs. That reason was
simply Mrs Dallow, who had suddenly become a still larger fact in his
consciousness than active politics. She was, indeed, active
politics;
that is, if the politics were his, how little soever, the activity was hers.
She had ways of showing she was a clever woman that were better than saying
clever things, which only prove at the most that one would be clever if one
could. The accomplished fact itself was the demonstration that
Mrs Dallow could; and when Nick came to his senses after the
proclamation of the victor and the cessation of the noise her figure was, of
all the queer phantasmagoria, the most substantial thing that survived. She
had been always there, passing, repassing, 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 charm, and converted it
into a social game that had a strain of the heroic. It was a garden-party
with something at stake, or to celebrate something in advance, with the
people let in. The concluded affair had bequeathed him not only a seat in
the House of Commons, but a perception of what women may do in high
embodiments, and an abyss of intimacy with one woman in particular.
She had wrapped him up in something, he didnt 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, holding her head more than ever in the manner
characteristic of her, brilliant, benignant, waving her whip, cleaving the
crowd, thanking people with her smile, carrying him beside her, carrying him
to his doom. He had not supposed that in so few days he had driven about
with her so much; 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, and the whole impression, that night, had kept him much
awake.
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 that way, across the park, and as the bearer of the parasol
was strolling slowly it was not five minutes before he had joined her. He
went to her soundlessly over the grass (he had been whistling at first, but
as he got nearer he stopped), and it was not till he was close to her that
she looked round. He had watched her moving as if she were turning things
over in her mind, brushing the smooth walks and the clean turf with her
dress, slowly making her parasol revolve on her shoulder and carrying in the
hand which hung beside her a book which he perceived to be a monthly
review.
I came out to get away, she remarked when he
had begun to walk with her.
Away from me?
Ah, thats impossible, said
Mrs Dallow. Then she added: The day is so nice.
Lovely weather, Nick dropped. You want
to get away from Mrs Gresham, I suppose.
Mrs Dallow was silent a moment. From
everything!
Well, I want to get away too.
It has been such a racket. Listen to the dear
birds.
Yes, our noise isnt 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.
Mrs Dallow made no answer to this; she only turned
her eyes on the ornamental water which stretched away at their right. In a
moment she exclaimed: How nasty the lake looks! and Nick
recognized in the tone of the words a manifestation of that odd shyness
a perverse stiffness at a moment when she probably only 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 the prettiness of some
of the signs by which her discomfort was revealed. He would not insist on
anything yet: so he observed that his cousins 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 Agness
deep satisfaction in his victory and the fact that she would be obliged to
do something for the autumn take a house or
something.
Ill lend her a house, said
Mrs Dallow.
Oh, Julia, Julia! Nick exclaimed.
But Mrs Dallow paid no attention to his
exclamation; she only held up her review and said: See what I have
brought with me to read Mr Hoppuss article.
Thats right; then I shant
have to. Youll tell me about it. He uttered this without
believing that 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
conscious that she was not in want of such mental occupation as periodical
literature could supply. They walked along and then he added: But
is that what we are in for reading Mr Hoppus? Is that
the sort of thing our constituents expect? Or even worse, pretending to have
read him when one hasnt? Oh, what a tangled web we weave!
People are talking about it. One has to know.
Its the article of the month.
Nick looked at his companion askance a moment. You
say things every now and then for which I could kill you. The article
of the month, for instance: I could kill you for that.
Well, kill me! Mrs Dallow
exclaimed.
Let me carry your book, Nick rejoined,
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, and they held it together, swinging it a
little. Before she surrendered it he inquired where she was going.
To the island, she answered.
Well, Ill go with you Ill kill
you there.
The things I say are the right things, said
Mrs Dallow.
Its just the right things that are wrong.
Its because
youre so political, Nick went on. Its 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.
No doubt no doubt. And how are you going to
get over to your island?
I dont know.
Isnt there a boat?
I dont know.
Nick had paused a moment, to look round for the boat,
but Mrs Dallow walked on without turning her head. Can you
row? her companion asked.
Dont you know I can do everything?
Yes, to be sure. Thats why I want to kill
you. Theres the boat.
Shall you drown me?
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 waters-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 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, a hundred years before, coming back from
Rome, had caused a small ornamental structure to be erected, on 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 declared by ciceroni to
have been dedicated to Vesta. It was circular, it was roofed with old tiles,
it was surrounded by white columns and it was considerably dilapidated.
George Dallow had taken an interest in it (it reminded him not in the least
of Rome, but of other things that he liked), and had amused himself with
restoring it.
Give me your hand; sit there, and Ill ferry
you, Nick Dormer said.
Mrs Dallow complied, placing herself opposite to
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 which required so much
attitude.
On the contrary, it would be just to change the
pose. Its what we have been doing for a week thats
attitude; and to be for half an hour where nobodys looking and one
hasnt to keep it up is just what I wanted to put in an idle,
irresponsible day for. I am not keeping it up now I suppose
youve noticed, Nick went on, as they floated and he scarcely
dipped the oars.
I dont understand you, said
Mrs Dallow, leaning back in the boat.
Nick 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 Ill
put them off if you like.
Must you always live in public,
Julia? Nick continued.
She looked at him a moment, and he could see that she
coloured slightly. Well go home Ill put them
off.
Ah no, dont go home; its too jolly
here. Let them come let them come, poor wretches!
How little you know me, when, ever so many times,
I have lived here for months without a creature.
Except Mrs Gresham, I suppose.
I have had to have the house going, I
admit.
You are perfect, you are admirable, and I
dont criticize you.
I dont understand you! she tossed
back.
That only adds to the generosity of what you have
done for me, Nick returned, beginning to pull faster. He bent over the
oars and sent the boat forward, keeping this up for ten minutes, during
which they both remained silent. His companion, in her place, motionless,
reclining (the seat in the stern was very comfortable), looked only at the
water, the sky, the trees. At last Nick headed for the little temple, saying
first however: Shant we visit the ruin?
If you like. I dont mind seeing how they
keep it.
They reached the white steps which led up to it. Nick
held the boat and Mrs Dallow got out. He fastened the boat and they
went up the steps together, passing through the open door.
They keep it very well, Nick said, looking
round. Its a capital place to give up everything.
It might do for you to explain what you
mean, said Julia, sitting down.
I mean to pretend for half an hour that I
dont represent the burgesses of Harsh. Its charming
its 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 was a very
elegant little tea-house.
Mrs Dallow sat on the edge of a sofa, rolling her
parasol and remarking: You ought to read Mr Hoppuss article
to me.
Why, is this your salon? asked
Nick, smiling.
Why are you always talking of that? Its an
invention of your own.
But isnt it the idea you care most
about?
Suddenly, nervously, Mrs Dallow put up her parasol
and sat under it, as if she were not quite sensible of what she was doing.
How much you know me! I dont care about anything that you
will ever guess.
Nick Dormer wandered about the room, looking at various
things it contained the odd volumes on the tables, the bits of quaint
china on the shelves. They keep it very well; youve got charming
things.
Theyre supposed to come over every day and
look after them.
They must come over in force.
Oh, no one knows.
Its spick and span. How well you have
everything done!
I think youve some reason to say so,
said Mrs Dallow. Her parasol was down and she was again rolling it
tight.
But youre 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 on his a minute; the then she broke out: Why do you hate
me so?
Was it because you like me personally? Nick
asked. You may think that an odd, or even an odious question; but
isnt it natural, my wanting to know?
Oh, if you dont know! Mrs Dallow
exclaimed.
Its a question of being sure.
Well, then, if youre not
sure
Was it done for me as a friend, as a
man?
Youre not a man; youre a child,
said his hostess, 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?
Youre the most delightful woman,
Julia, said Nick, sitting down beside her, and I cant
imagine what you mean by my hating you.
If you havent discovered that I like you,
you might as well.
Might as well discover it?
Mrs Dallow was grave; he had never seen her so pale
and never so beautiful. She had stopped rolling her parasol now: her hands
were folded in her lap and her eyes were bent on them. Nick sat looking at
them too, a trifle awkwardly. Might as well have hated me, said
Mrs Dallow.
We have got on so beautifully together, all these
days: why shouldnt we get on as well forever and ever?
Mrs Dallow made no answer, and suddenly Nick said to her: Ah,
Julia, I dont know what you have done to me, but youve done it.
Youve done it by strange ways, but it will serve. Yes, I hate
you, he added, in a different tone, with his face nearer to hers.
Dear Nick dear Nick she began.
But she stopped, for she suddenly felt that he was altogether nearer, nearer
than he had ever been to her before, that his arm was round her, that he was
in possession of her. She closed her eyes but she heard him ask: Why
shouldnt it be forever, forever? in a voice that had, for her
ear, such a vibration as no voice had ever had.
Youve done it youve done
it, Nick repeated.
What do you want of me? she demanded.
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
insistent advantage of her that he had quickly kissed her. She rose as
quickly, but he held her yet, and while he did so he said to her in the same
tender tone: If youll marry me, why shouldnt it be so
simple, so good? He drew her closer again, too close for her to
answer. But her struggle ceased and she rested upon him for a minute, she
buried her face on his breast.
Youre hard, and its cruel! she
then exclaimed, breaking away.
Hard cruel?
You do it with so little! And with this,
unexpectedly to Nick, Mrs Dallow burst straight into tears. Before he
could stop her she was at the door of the pavilion, as if she wished to quit
it immediately. There, however, he stopped her, bending over her while she
sobbed, unspeakably gentle with her.
So little? Its with everything with
everything I have.
I have 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 didnt know you
could, he went on, smiling down at her. I didnt no,
I didnt.
Its what I say that youve
always hated me.
Ill make it up to you.
She leaned on the doorway with her head against the
lintel. You dont even deny it.
Contradict you now? Ill admit it,
though its rubbish, on purpose to live it down.
It doesnt matter, she said, slowly;
for however much you might have liked me, you would never have done so
half as much as I have cared for you.
Oh, Im so poor! Nick murmured,
cheerfully.
She looked at him, smiling, and slowly shook her head.
Then she declared: You never can.
I like that! Havent I asked you to marry me?
When did you ever ask me?
Every day of my life! As I say, its hard
for a proud woman.
Yes, youre too proud even to answer
me.
We must think of it, we must talk of it.
Think of it? Ive thought of it ever so
much.
I mean together. There are things to be
said.
The principal thing is to give me your
word.
Mrs Dallow looked at him in silence; then she
exclaimed: I wish I didnt adore you! She went straight
down the steps.
You dont, if you leave me now. Why do you
go? Its so charming here, and we are so delightfully alone.
Detach the boat; well go on the water,
said Mrs Dallow.
Nick was at the top of the steps, looking down at her.
Ah, stay a little do stay! he pleaded.
Ill get in myself, Ill put off,
she answered.
At this Nick came down and he 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 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 having escaped from a
great mistake. The final result of his mothers 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 which a gentleman could regard only in one way. If she
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 over
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 much, and such a service, if
a man had accepted and deeply tasted it, was certainly a thing to put him on
his honour. Nick gladly recognized that there was nothing he could do in
preference that would not be spoiled for him by any deflection from that
point. His mother had made him uncomfortable by intimating to him that Julia
was in love with him (he didnt 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
Julias own to express that truth and with indifferent nature all
around. Besides, what discovery had he made this morning but that he also
was in love?
You must be a very great man, she said to
him, in the middle of the lake. I dont know what you mean about
my salon; but I am ambitious.
We must look at life in a large, bold way,
Nick replied, resting his oars.
Thats what I mean. If I didnt think
you could I wouldnt 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. Dont speak to me!
Ive seen, Ive heard and I know whats in you. I shall hold
you to it. You are everything that you pretend not to be.
Nick sat looking at the water while she talked.
Will it always be so amusing? he asked.
Will what always be?
Why, my career.
Shant I make it so?
It will be yours; it wont be mine,
said Nick.
Ah, dont say that: dont make me out
that sort of woman! If they should say its me, Id drown
myself.
If they should say whats you?
Why, youre getting on. If they should say I
push you, that I do things for you.
Well, wont you do them? Its just what
I count on.
Dont be dreadful, said
Mrs Dallow. It would be loathsome if I were said to be cleverer
than you. Thats not the sort of man I want to marry.
Oh, I shall make you work, my dear!
Ah, that! exclaimed Mrs Dallow, in a
tone that might come back to a man in after years.
You will do the great thing, you will make my life
delightful, Nick declared, as if he fully perceived the sweetness of
it. I dare say that will keep me in heart.
In heart? Why shouldnt you be in
heart? Julias eyes, lingering on him, searching him, seemed to
question him still more than her lips.
Oh, it will be all right! cried Nick.
Youll like success, as well as any one else.
Dont tell me youre not so ethereal!
Yes, I shall like success.
So shall I! And of course I am glad that
youll be able to do things, Mrs Dallow went on.
Im glad youll have things. Im glad Im not
poor.
Ah, dont speak of that, Nick murmured.
Only be nice to my mother: we shall make her supremely
happy.
Im glad I like your people,
Mrs Dallow dropped. Leave them to me!
Youre generous youre
noble, stammered Nick.
Your mother must live at Broadwood; she must have
it for life. Its not at all bad.
Ah, Julia, her companion replied,
its well I love you!
Why shouldnt you? laughed Julia; and
after this there was nothing said between them till the boat touched the
shore. When she had got out Mrs Dallow remarked 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 Dallows property. This lady said something about their going
as far as the stile; then the next instant she exclaimed: How stupid
of you youve forgotten Mr Hoppus!
We left him in the temple of Vesta. Darling, I had
other things to think of there.
Ill send for him, said
Mrs Dallow.
Lord, can you think of him now? Nick
asked.
Of course I can more than ever.
Shall we go back for him? Nick inquired,
pausing.
Mrs Dallow made no answer; she continued to walk,
saying they would go as far as the stile. Of course I know youre
fearfully vague, she presently resumed.
I wasnt vague at all. But you were in such a
hurry to get away.
It doesnt signify. I have another one at
home.
Another summer-house? suggested Nick.
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 is the one that comes every month.
Every month I see, said Nick, in a
manner justifying considerably Mrs Dallows 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? asked
Mrs Dallow.
Dear no, thank God! They remained there a
little; he continued to look at the animals and before long he added:
Delightful English pastoral scene. Why do they say it wont
paint?
Who says it wont?
I dont know some of them. It will in
France; but somehow it wont here.
What are you talking about? Mrs Dallow
demanded.
Nick appeared unable to satisfy her on this point; at
any rate instead of answering her directly he said: Is Broadwood very
charming?
Have you never been there? It shows how
youve treated me. We used to go there in August. George had ideas
about it, added Mrs Dallow. She had never affected not to speak
of her late husband, especially with Nick, whose kinsman in a manner he had
been and who had liked him better than some others did.
George had ideas about a great many
things.
Julia Dallow appeared to be conscious that it would be
rather odd on such an occasion to take this up. It was even odd in Nick to
have said it. Broadwood is just right, she rejoined at last.
Its neither too small nor too big, and it takes care of itself.
Theres nothing to be done: you cant spend a penny.
And dont you want to use it?
We can go and stay with them, said
Mrs Dallow.
Theyll think I bring them an angel.
And Nick covered her hand, which was resting on the stile, with his own
large one.
As they regard you yourself as an angel they will
take it as natural of you to associate with your kind.
Oh, my kind! murmured Nick, looking
at the cows.
Mrs Dallow turned away from him as if she were
starting homeward, and 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 cant
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?
Mrs Dallow stopped, looking at him. Is it
because you think you owe it and she paused, still with
the heightened colour in her cheek; then she went on that you
have spoken to me as you did there? She tossed her head towards the
lake.
I think I spoke to you because I couldnt
help it.
You are vague. And Mrs Dallow
walked on again.
You affect me differently from any other
woman.
Oh, other women! Why shouldnt you care about
the fine arts now? she added.
There will be no time. All my days and my years
will be none too much to do what you expect of me.
I dont expect you to give up anything. I
only expect you to do more.
To do more I must do less. I have no
talent.
No talent?
I mean for painting.
Mrs Dallow stopped again. Thats odious!
You have you must.
Nick burst out laughing. Youre altogether
delightful. But how little you know about it about the honourable
practice of any art!
What do you call practice? Youll have all
our things youll live in the midst of them.
Certainly I shall enjoy looking at them, being so
near them.
Dont say Ive taken you away
then.
Taken me away?
From the love of art. I like them myself now, poor
Georges treasures. I didnt, of old, so much, because it seemed
to me he made too much of them he was always talking.
Well, I wont talk, said Nick.
You may do as you like theyre
yours.
Give them to the nation, Nick went on.
I like that! When we have 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 wont take long.
You shall paint me, said Julia.
Never, never, never! Nick uttered these
words in a tone that made his companion stare; and he appeared 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:
Shant we really go and fetch Mr Hoppus?
She hesitated. You may go; I wont,
please.
Thats not what I want.
Oblige me by going. Ill wait here.
With which Mrs Dallow 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 that Mrs Dallow had quitted her station she 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,
stopping her there.
I dont know. Because Im so
happy.
May I tell mother?
You may tell her she shall have
Broadwood.
Nick 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 Carterets 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, for him, had ever been mingled with a vague oppression. He was a
little boy again, under Mr Carterets 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 fathers 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 small, empty streets. Nick would never have
thought of rattling up to Mr Carterets door. It had an old brass
plate with his 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, for the green
country was just below these, familiar and interpenetrating, in the shape of
small but thick-tufted gardens. There was something growing in all the
intervals, and the only disorder of the place was that there were sometimes
oats on the pavements. A crooked lane, very clean, with cobblestones, opened
opposite to Mr Carterets house and wandered towards the old
abbey: for the abbey was the secondary fact of Beauclere, after
Mr Carteret. Mr Carteret sometimes went away and the abbey never
did; yet somehow it was most of the essence of the place that it possessed
the proprietor of the squarest of the square red houses, with the finest of
the arched hall-windows, in three divisions, over the widest of the
last-century doorways. You saw the great abbey from the doorstep, beyond the
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 never been
finished, save as time finishes things, by perpetuating their
incompleteness. There is something right in old monuments that have been
wrong for centuries: some such moral as that was usually in Nicks mind
as an emanation of Beauclere, when he looked at the magnificent line of the
roof, riding the sky and unsurpassed for 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, like a prime minister receiving an ambassador), Nick saw anew
that he would be wonderfully like Mr Carteret if he had had an
expression. He did not
permit 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
visitors 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, before dinner, to take a turn about the place. He observed now,
every time he came, that Mr Carterets 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 effusiveness 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 ruralize their
dullness.
I expect it will be a latish eight, sir,
said Mr Chayter, superintending in the library the production of tea on
a large scale. Everything at Mr Carterets appeared to Nick to be
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
masters sense of pleasing effect, for the house was not otherwise
decorated. Nick thought it really hideous, but he was capable at the same
time of extracting a degree of amusement from anything that was strongly
characteristic, and Mr Carterets interior expressed a whole view
of life. Our young man was generous enough to find a hundred instructive
intimations in it even at the time 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 there was a great deal of Landseer, of oilcloth, of
woodwork painted and grained.
Finding that he should have time before the evening
meal, or before Mr Carteret would be able 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. At least it was the image 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 around 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 round 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 it should be touched: so
much of the past was buried there that it was like desecrating, like digging
up a grave. And the years seemed to be 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 that 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. Nicks nerves, on this spot, always knew what
it was to be soothed; but he shifted his position with a slight impatience
as the vision came over him of Lord Bottomleys treating a question of
æsthetics. 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 hours 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 somebodys 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 always
enjoyed an audience or at any rate commanded a silence, often profound.
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
ones 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 oclock. It might as well be 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 that was almost equally sure to
descend upon his spirit in a summer hour, in a stroll 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 appeared to be 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
cornfields 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 that he could not 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 this particular scene
of life, might it not 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 grand
kind 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, which 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 human than with its divine significance, 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 Carterets blindness on
certain sides. Presently he perceived it was nearly half-past seven, and as
he went back to his old friends he could not have told you whether he
was in a state of gladness or of gloom.
Mr Carteret will be in the drawing-room at a
quarter to eight, sir, Chayter said; and Nick, as he went to his
chamber, 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 really to have begun to dress. Chayters words meant
that Mr Carteret would expect to have a little comfortable conversation
with him before dinner. Nicks usual rapidity in dressing was however
quite adequate to the occasion, and 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
nearly eighty, but he 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
elections in innumerable places in particular years. To many of these facts
he attached great importance, in his simple, kindly, presupposing way;
returning five minutes later and correcting himself if he had said that some
one, in 1857, had had 6014 instead of 6004.
Nick always felt a great hypocrite as he listened to
him, in spite of the old mans 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 his company, found himself immersed in an atmosphere 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 anxious about
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 Carterets 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 appear by contrast rather
American. He was, at least nowadays, never severe or 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 been very
remarkable 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
with such clean hands as to leave no stain and had never provoked him to any
general reflection. He had never proceeded in any ironic way from the
particular to the general; certainly he had never made a reflection upon
anything so unparliamentary as Life. He would have questioned the taste of
such an excrescence, and if he had encountered it on the part of another
would have regarded it as a kind of French toy, with the uses of which he
was unacquainted. Life, for him, was a purely practical function, not a
question of phrasing. It must be added that he had, to Nicks
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 that he didnt
agree with or perhaps even understand; as if his modesty did not in
strictness forbid the suspicion that a thing he didnt understand would
have a probability against it. At such times there was something a little
deadly in the silence in which he simply waited, with a lapse in his face,
without helping his interlocutor out. Nick would have been very sorry to
attempt to communicate to him a matter which he probably would not
understand. This cut off of course a multitude of subjects.
The evening passed exactly as Nick had foreseen, even to
the rather early 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 lordships second daughter.
There were recurrent allusions to Nicks 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 that he had often used before
You may sit up to any hour you like. I only ask
that you dont read in bed.
Nicks little visit was to terminate immediately
after luncheon the following day: much as the old man enjoyed his being
there he would not 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
about it with him. Talk about it however was the next best thing, as on the
morrow after breakfast Mr Carteret showed Nick that 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 that the post had
brought. 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 oclock and wrote for him
till lunchtime. The young man had a holiday to-day, in honour of Nicks
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 Nicks pockets as
if he was 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 rather guilty; there was such an implication of neglected duty in the
way the old man said: You wont do them justice you
wont 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 as to 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 Nick was unable to regard Mr Carteret as an
observer. He doesnt observe me, he said to
himself; if he did he would see, he wouldnt think
And the end of this private cogitation was a vague impatience of all the
things his venerable host took for granted. He didnt see any of the
things that Nick saw. Some of these latter were the light touches of 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 that he had drawn
from 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 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 host 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
wouldnt this exactly mean much more like that? Of course Nick heard
some things that 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 locality (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 Nicks 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 saying 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 should not be
sorry to see you do it.
It ought to be rather convenient, Nick
replied, smiling. Ive got a piece of news for you which
Ive kept, as one keeps that sort of thing (for its very good),
till the last. He waited a little, to see if Mr Carteret would
guess, and at first he 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
have arranged to take a wife.
Mrs Dallow has been so good as to say that
she will marry me, Nick went on.
That is very suitable. I should think it would
answer.
Its very jolly, said Nick. It was well
that Mr Carteret was not what his guest called observant, or he might
have thought there was less gaiety 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 dont
exclude the charming lady. I remember her as a little girl. I must have seen
her at Windrush. Now I understand the zeal and amiability with which she
threw herself into your canvass.
It was her they elected, said Nick.
I dont know that I have ever been an
enthusiast for political women, but there is 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.
Mrs Dallow is a real English lady, and