LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNiM 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE 
 
 HENRY JAMES 
 1(1 
 
 H, o n to o 11 
 MAC MIL LAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 
 No. 109. The Right oj Translation ami Reproduction Resen-ed
 
 T73 
 
 RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND BUNGAY. 
 
 First Edition (3 VOLS., CROWN 8vo), 1890. 
 Second Edition (i VOL., CRJWN 8vo), 1891.
 
 THE TEAGIC MUSE. 
 
 THE people of France have made it no secret that those of 
 England, as a general thing, are, to their perception, an in- 
 expressive and speechless race, perpendicular and unsociable, 
 unaddicted to enriching any bareness of contact with verbal 
 or other embroidery. This view might have derived en- 
 couragement, 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 1' Industrie 
 the central court of the great glazed bazaar where, among 
 plants and parterres, gravelled walks and thin fountains, are 
 ranged the figures and groups, the monuments and busts, 
 which form, in the annual exhibition of the Salon, the 
 department of statuary. The spirit of observation is naturally 
 high at the Salon, quickened by a thousand artful or artless 
 appeals, but 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 siiccessful plastic fact ; and 
 even the most superficial observer would have perceived them 
 to be striking products of an insular neighbourhood, repre- 
 sentatives of that tweed-and -water proof class with which, on 
 the recurrent occasions when the English turn out for a 
 holiday Christmas and Easter, Whitsuntide and the autumn 
 Paris besprinkles itself at a night's notice. They had about 
 them the indefinable professional look of the British traveller 
 abroad ; that air of preparation for exposure, material and 
 moral, which is so oddly combined with the serene revelation 
 B
 
 2 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 v'la des abrutis ! " more than one of their fellow- 
 gazers might have been heard to exclaim ; and certain it is 
 that there was something depressed and discouraged in this 
 interesting group, who sat looking vaguely before them, not 
 noticing the life of the place, somewhat as if each had a private 
 anxiety. 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 entangle- 
 ments of the rest of her person. If you had seen her walk
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 3 
 
 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 couldn't have one's own way, one could 
 never tell what annoying aggression might take place, so that 
 it was well, from hour to hour, to save what one could. Lady 
 Agnes saved her head, her white triangular forehead, over 
 which her 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 English- 
 man 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 Avorld, 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 inter- 
 pretation 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
 
 4 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 might have appeared to have come, individually, to the Palais 
 de 1' Industrie much less to see the works of art than to think 
 over their domestic affairs the young man, rousing himself 
 from his reverie, addressed one of the girls. 
 
 " I say, Biddy, why should we sit moping here all day ? 
 Come and take a turn about with me." 
 
 His younger sister, while he got up, leaned forward a little, 
 looking round her, but she gave, for the moment, no further 
 sign of complying with his invitation. 
 
 " Where shall we find you, then, if Peter comes 1 " inquired 
 the other Miss Dormer, making no movement at all. 
 
 " I dare say Peter won't come. He'll 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 son's eyes, and 
 then observed : 
 
 " Everything seems very dreadful. I should think Biddy 
 had better sit still. Hasn't she seen enough horrors up 
 above " 
 
 "I 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 doesn't care a rap about art. It's a 
 fearful bore looking at fine things with Julia," Nick rejoined. 
 
 " Won't you go with him, Grace 1 " said Biddy, appealing to 
 her sister. 
 
 " I think she has awfully good taste ! " Grace exclaimed, not 
 answering this inquiry. 
 
 " Don't say nasty things about her ! " Lady Agnes broke 
 out, solemnly, to her son, after resting her eyes on him a 
 moment with an air of reluctant reprobation. 
 
 " I say nothing but what she'd say herself," the young man 
 replied. " About some things she has very good taste, but 
 about this kind of thing she has no taste at all." 
 
 "That's better, I think," said Lady Agnes, turning her eyes
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 5 
 
 again to the " kind of thing " that her son appeared to 
 designate. 
 
 " She's awfully clever awfully ! " Grace went on, with 
 decision. 
 
 " Awfully, awfully." her brother repeated, standing in front 
 of her and smiling down at her. 
 
 " You are nasty, Nick. You know you are," said the young 
 lady, but more in sorrow than in anger. 
 
 Biddy got up at this, as if the accusatory tone prompted her 
 to place herself generously at his side. " Mightn't you go and 
 order lunch, in that place, you know ? " she asked of her 
 mother. " Then we would come back when it was ready." 
 
 " My dear child, I can't order lunch," Lady Agnes replied, 
 with a cold impatience which seemed to intimate that she had 
 problems far more important than those of victualling to 
 contend with. 
 
 " I mean Peter, if he comes. I am sure he's up in everything 
 of that sort." 
 
 " Oh, hang Peter ! " Nick exclaimed. " Leave him out of 
 account, arid do order lunch, mother ; but not cold beef and 
 pickles." 
 
 " I must say about him you're not nice," Biddy ventured 
 to remark to her brother, hesitating, and even blushing, a 
 little. 
 
 " You make up for it, my dear," the young man answered, 
 giving her chin a very charming, rotund little chin a friendly 
 whisk with his forefinger. 
 
 " I can't imagine what you've got against him," her ladyship 
 murnmred, gravely. 
 
 " Dear mother, it's a disappointed fondness," Nick argued. 
 " They won't answer one's notes ; they won't let one know 
 where they are nor what to expect. ' Hell has no fury like a 
 woman scorned ; ' nor like a man either." 
 
 " Peter has such a tremendous lot to do it's a very busy 
 time at the Embassy; there are sure to be reasons," Biddy 
 explained, with her pretty eyes. 
 
 " Reasons enough, no doubt ! " said Lady Agnes, who 
 accompanied these words with an ambiguous sigh, however, 
 as if in Paris even the best reasons would naturally be bad 
 ones. 
 
 " Doesn't Julia write to you, doesn't she answer you the very 
 day ? " Grace inquired, looking at Nick as if she were the 
 courageous one. 
 
 He hesitated a moment, returning her glance with a certain
 
 6 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 severity. " What do you know about my correspondence 1 
 No doubt I ask too much," he went on ; "I am so attached 
 to them. Dear old Peter, dear old Julia ! " 
 ; " She's younger than you, my dear ! " cried the elder girl, 
 still resolute. 
 
 "Yes, nineteen days." 
 
 " I'm glad you know her birthday." 
 
 " She knows yours ; she always gives you something," Lady 
 Agnes resumed, to her son. 
 
 " Her taste is good tJien, isn't it, Nick ? " Grace Dormer 
 continued. 
 
 " She makes charming presents ; but, dear mother, it isn't 
 her taste. It's her husband's." 
 
 "Her husband's?" 
 
 " The beautiful objects of which she disposes so freely are 
 the things he collected, for years, laboriously, devotedly, poor 
 man ! " 
 
 " She disposes of them to you, but not to others," said Lady 
 Agnes. "But that's all right," she added, as if this might 
 have been taken for a complaint of the limitations of Julia's 
 bounty. " She has to select, among so many, and that's a 
 proof of taste," her ladyship went on. 
 
 "You can't say she doesn't choose lovely ones," Grace 
 remarked to her brother, in a tone of some triumph, 
 i " My dear, they are all lovely. George Dallow's judgment 
 was so sure, he was incapable of making a mistake," Nicholas 
 Dormer returned. 
 
 i " I don't see how you can talk of him ; he was dreadful," 
 said Lady Agnes. 
 
 i " 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." 
 
 "It's very nice his having left Julia so well off," Biddy 
 interposed, soothingly, as if she foresaw a tangle. 
 
 "He treated her en grand seigneur, absolutely," Nick 
 went on. 
 
 " He used to look greasy, all the same," Grace Dormer
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 7 
 
 pursued, with a kind of dull irreconcilability. " His name 
 ought to have been Tallow." 
 
 " You are not saying what Julia would like, if that's what 
 you are trying to say," her brother remarked. 
 
 " Don't be vulgar, Grace," said Lady Agnes. 
 
 " I know Peter Sherringham's birthday ! " Biddy broke out 
 innocently, as a pacific diversion. She had passed her hand 
 into her brother's 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. 
 
 " He's too much older than you, my dear," Grace rejoined, 
 discouragingly. 
 
 "That's why I've noticed it he's thirty-four. Do you call 
 that too old ] I don't care for slobbering infants ! " Biddy 
 cried. 
 
 "Don't be vulgar," Lady Agnes enjoined again. 
 
 " Come, Bid, we'll go and be vulgar together ; for that's 
 what we are, I'm afraid," her brother said to her. " We'll go 
 and look at all these low works of art." 
 
 " Do you really think it's necessary to the child's develop- 
 ment 1 ?" 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 we've been through this morning in this place, 
 and what you've paraded before our eyes the murders, the 
 tortures, all kinds of disease and indecency ! " 
 
 Nick looked at his mother as if this sudden protest surprised 
 him, but as if also there were lurking explanations of it which 
 he quickly guessed. Her resentment had the effect not so 
 much of animating her cold face as of making it colder, less 
 expressive, though visibly prouder. " Ah, dear mother, don't 
 do the British matron ! " he exclaimed, good-humouredly. 
 
 " British matron is soon said ! I don't 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.
 
 8 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " They are things you can look at," her ladyship went on. 
 " We certainly make the better show." 
 
 " The subject doesn't matter ; it's the treatment, the treat- 
 ment ! " 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 don't look at 
 things and if I don't study them] " the girl continued. 
 
 This inquiry passed unheeded, and Nicholas Dormer said to 
 his mother, more seriously, but with a certain kind explicit- 
 ness, as if he could make a particular allowance : " This place 
 is an immense stimulus to me; it refreshes me, excites me, it's 
 such an exhibition of artistic life. It's full of ideas, full of 
 refinements; it gives one such an impression of artistic 
 experience. They try everything, they feel everything. "While 
 you were looking at the murders, apparently, I observed an 
 immense deal of curious and interesting work. There are too 
 many of them, poor devils; so many who must make their 
 way, who must attract attention. Some of them can only 
 taper fort, stand on their heads, turn summersaults or commit 
 deeds of violence, to make people notice them. After that, 
 no doubt, a good many will be quieter. But I don't know ; 
 to-day I'm in an appreciative mood I feel indulgent even to 
 them : they give me an impression of intelligence, of eager 
 observation. All art is one remember that, Biddy, dear," 
 the young man continued, looking down at his sister with a 
 smile. " It's the same great, many-headed effort, and any 
 ground that's gained by an individual, any spark that's struck 
 in any province, is of use and of suggestion to all the others. 
 We are all in the same boat." 
 
 " ' We,' do you say, my dear 1 Are you really setting up 
 for an artist 1 " 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 "Don't 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.
 
 THE TKAGIC MUSE. 9 
 
 " Not me, if you please ! " Lady Agnes replied. " It's horrid, 
 messy work, your modelling." 
 
 " Ah, but look at the results ! " said the girl, eagerly, 
 glancing about at the monuments in the garden as if in 
 regard even to them she were, through that unity of art that her 
 brother had just proclaimed, in some degree an effective cause. 
 
 "There's a great deal being done here a real vitality," 
 Nicholas Dormer went on, to his mother, in the same reason- 
 able, informing way. " Some of these fellows go very far." 
 
 "They do, indeed ! " said Lady Agnes. 
 
 " I'm fond of young schools, like this movement in sculpture," 
 Nick remarked, with his slightly provoking serenity. 
 
 " They're old enough to know better ! " 
 
 " Mayn't I look, mamma ? It is necessary to my develop- 
 ment," 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 state- 
 ment 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 1 " 
 
 " 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 embarrass- 
 ment ; for ordinarily Nick was not embarrassed. " You used 
 to have so much," she went on ; " but sometimes I don't know 
 what has become of it it seems all, all gone ! " 
 
 " Ah, mother, mother ! " he exclaimed again, as if there 
 were so many things to say that it was impossible to choose. 
 But 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.
 
 II. 
 
 NICK DORMER walked away with Biddy, but he had not 
 gone far before he stopped in front of a clever bust, where his 
 mother, in the distance, saw him. playing in the air with his 
 hand, carrying out by this gesture, which presumably was 
 applausive, some critical remark he had made to his sister. 
 Lady Agnes raised her glass to her eyes by the long handle to 
 which rather a clanking chain was attached, perceiving that 
 the bust represented an ugly old man with a bald head ', at 
 which her ladyship indefinitely sighed, though it was not 
 apparent in what way such an object could be detrimental to 
 her daughter. Nick passed on, and quickly paused again ; 
 this time, his mother discerned, 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, oughtn't 
 I, Nick?" his sister inquired of him, after a moment. 
 
 "Ah, my poor child, what shall I say?" 
 
 "Don't 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?" 
 
 "AVhy, you know you've 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, that's not 
 trying; that's succeeding." 
 
 "Not altogether; it's only trying seriously."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 11 
 
 "Well, why shouldn't I be serious?" 
 
 " Mother wouldn't like it. She has inherited the queer old 
 superstition that art is pardonable only so long as it's bad so 
 long as it's done at odd hours, for a little distraction, like a 
 game of tennis or of whist. The only thing that can justify 
 it, the effort to carry it as far as one can (which you can't 
 do without time and singleness of purpose), she regards as 
 just the dangerous, the criminal element. It's the oddest 
 hind-par t-bef ore view, the drollest immorality." 
 
 " She doesn't 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 don't want to be a duffer," Biddy said. " But I thought 
 you encouraged me." 
 
 " So I did, my poor child. It was only to encourage 
 myself." 
 
 "With your own work your painting?" 
 
 " With my futile, my ill-starred endeavours. Union is 
 strength ; so that we might present a wider front, a larger 
 surface of resistance." 
 
 Biddy was silent a moment, while they continued their tour 
 of observation. She noticed how her brother passed over some 
 things quickly, his firs-t 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 don't so much care 
 whether or no I please mamma, if I please you." 
 
 " Oh, don't lean on me. I'm a wretched broken reed. I'm 
 no use really ! " Nick Dormer exclaimed. 
 
 "Do you mean you're 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."
 
 12 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " And you won't 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 can't help it." 
 
 "We shall see, we shall see," said Nicholas Dormer. "Let 
 us go look at that big group." 
 
 "We shall see if it's real?" Biddy went on, as she 
 accompanied him. 
 
 " No ; we shall see if I can't help it. What nonsense Paris 
 makes one talk ! " the young man added, as they stopped in 
 front of the composition. This was true, perhaps, but not in 
 a sense 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 exhilara- 
 tion, to ambition, even to a restlessness which was not pre- 
 vented 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 man's history, the 
 explanation might have seemed to beg the question, consisting 
 as it did of the simple formula that he had at last come to a 
 crisis. Why a crisis what was it, and why had he not come
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 13 
 
 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 pro- 
 ductions 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 insinuat- 
 ing eloquence which was at the same time, somehow, identical 
 with the general sharp contagion of Paris. There was youth 
 in the air, and a multitudinous newness, for ever reviving, and 
 the diffusion of a hundred talents, ingenuities, experiments. 
 The summer clouds made shadows on the roof of the great 
 building ; the white images, hard in their crudity, spotted the 
 place with provocations ; the rattle of plates at the restaurant 
 sounded sociable in the distance, and our young man con- 
 gratulated himself more than ever that he had not missed the 
 exhibition. He felt that it would help him to settle some- 
 thing. 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 under- 
 stand ; so pertinent, so relevant and congruous, was the other 
 party to this encounter. 
 
 The girl's attention followed her brother's, 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,
 
 14 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 nor yet that the English of this young man was not excellent. 
 It had, on the contrary, a conspicuous and aggressive per- 
 fection, 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 instru- 
 ment. Her view of the gentleman's 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, fac- 
 titious, 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, how- 
 ever, 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. Biddy's slightly agitated perception 
 travelled directly to their shoes : they suggested to her vaguely 
 that the wearers were dancers connected possibly with the 
 old-fashioned exhibition of the shawl-dance. By the time she 
 had taken in so much as this the mellifluous young man had 
 perceived and addressed himself to her brother. He came 
 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 don't know why," Nick 
 remarked, while the two, smiling, looked each other up and 
 down, like men reunited after a long interval.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 15 
 
 "Oh, it seems to me there's reason enough : our paths in 
 life are so different." Nick's friend had a great deal of 
 manner, as was evinced by his fashion of saluting her without 
 knowing her. 
 
 "Different, yes, but not so different as that. Don't we 
 both live in London, after all, and in the nineteenth century ? " 
 
 "Ah, my dear Dormer, excuse me: I don't live in the 
 nineteenth century. Jamais de la vie /" 
 
 " Nor in London either ? " 
 
 " Yes when I'm. not in Samarcand ! But surely we've 
 diverged since the old days. I adore what you burn ; you 
 burn what I adore." While the stranger spoke he looked 
 cheerfxilly, hospitably, at Biddy ; not because it was she, she 
 easily guessed, but because it was in his nature to desire a 
 second auditor a kind of sympathetic gallery. Her life, 
 somehow, was filled with shy people, and she immediately 
 knew that she had never encountered any one who seemed so 
 to know his part and recognize his cues. 
 
 "How do you know what I adore?" Nicholas Dormer 
 inquired. 
 
 " I know well enough what you used to." 
 
 " That's more than I do myself ; there were so many 
 things." 
 
 " Yes, there are many things many, many : that's what 
 makes life so amusing." 
 
 "Do you find it amusing?" 
 
 " My dear fellow, c'est d, se tordre ! Don't you think so ] 
 Ah, it was high time I should meet you I see. I have an 
 idea you need me." 
 
 " Upon my word, I think I do ! " Nick said, in a tone 
 which struck his sister and made her wonder still more 
 why, if the gentleman was so important as that, he didn't 
 introduce him. 
 
 "There are many gods, and this is one of their temples," 
 the mysterious personage went on. " It's a house of strange 
 idols isn't it ? and of some curious and unnatural sacrifices." 
 
 To Biddy, as much as to her brother, this remark appeared 
 to be offered ; but the girl's eyes turned back to the ladies, 
 who, for the moment, had lost their companion. She felt 
 irresponsive and feared she should pass with this familiar 
 cosmopolite for a stiff, scared English girl, which was not the 
 type she aimed at ; but there seemed an interdiction even of 
 ocular commerce so long as she had not a sign from Nick. 
 The elder of the strange women had turned her back and was
 
 16 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 looking at some bronze figure, losing her shawl again as she 
 did so ; but the younger stood where their escort had quitted 
 her, giving all her attention to his sudden sociability with 
 others. Her arms hung at her sides, her head was bent, her 
 face lowered, so that she had an odd appearance of raising her 
 eyes from under her brows ; and in this attitude she was 
 striking, though her air was unconciliatory, almost dangerous. 
 Did it express resentment at having been abandoned for 
 another girl ] Biddy, who began to be frightened there was 
 a moment when the forsaken one resembled a tigress about to 
 spring was tempted to cry out that she had no wish what- 
 ever to appropriate the gentleman. Then she made the dis- 
 covery that the young lady had a manner, almost as much as 
 her cicerone, and the rapid induction that it perhaps meant 
 no more than his. She only looked at Biddy from beneath 
 her eyebrows, which were wonderfully arched, but there was 
 a manner in the way she did it. Biddy had a momentary 
 sense of being a figure in a ballet, a dramatic ballet a sub- 
 ordinate, motionless figure, to be dashed at, to music, or 
 capered up to. It would be a very dramatic ballad indeed if 
 this young person were the heroine. She had magnificent hair, 
 the girl reflected ; and at the same moment she heard Nick 
 say to his interlocutor : " You're not in London one can't 
 meet you there 1 " 
 
 " I drift, I float," was the answer ; " my feelings direct me 
 if such a life as mine may be said to have a direction. 
 "Where there's anything to feel I try to be there ! " the young 
 man continued with his confiding laugh. 
 
 "I should like to get hold of you," Nick remarked. 
 
 " "Well, in that case there would be something to feel. 
 Those are the currents any sort of personal relation that 
 govern my career." 
 
 " I don't want to lose you this time," Nick continued, in 
 a manner that excited Biddy's surprise. A moment before, 
 when his friend had said that he tried to be where there was 
 anything to feel, she had wondered how he could endure him. 
 
 " Don't lose me, don't lose me ! " exclaimed the stranger, 
 with a countenance and a tone which affected the girl as the 
 highest expression of irresponsibility that she had ever seen. 
 " After all, why should you 1 Let us remain together, unless 
 I interfere " and he looked, smiling and interrogative, at 
 Biddy, who still remained blank, only observing again that 
 Nick forbore to make them acquainted. This was an anomaly, 
 since he prized the gentleman so ; but there could be no
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 17 
 
 anomaly of Nick's that would not impose itself upon his 
 younger sister. 
 
 " Certainly, I keep you," said Nick, " unless, on my side, I 
 deprive those ladies 
 
 " Charming women, but it's not an indissoluble union. 
 We meet, we communicate, we part ! They are going 
 I'm seeing them to the door. I shall come back." With 
 this Nick's friend rejoined his companions, who moved away 
 with him, the strange, fine eyes of the girl lingering on Nick, 
 as well as on Biddy, as they receded. 
 
 " Who is he who are they 1 " Biddy instantly asked. 
 
 " He's a gentleman," Nick replied, unsatisfactorily, and 
 even, as she thought, with a shade of hesitation. He spoke 
 as if she might have supposed he was not one ; and if he was 
 really one why didn't he introduce him ? But Biddy would 
 not for the world have put this question to her brother, who 
 now moved to the nearest bench and dropped upon it, as if 
 to wait for the other's return. No sooner, however, had his 
 sister seated herself than he said : " See here, my dear, do you 
 think you had better stay ? " 
 
 " Do you want me to go back to mother ? " the girl asked, 
 with a lengthening visage. 
 
 " Well, what do you think ? " and Nick smiled down at 
 her. 
 
 " Is your conversation to be about about private affairs ? " 
 
 " No, I can't say that. But I doubt whether mother 
 would think it the sort of thing that's ' necessary to your 
 development.' " 
 
 This assertion appeared to inspire Biddy with the eagerness 
 with which again she broke out : " But who are they who 
 are they?" 
 
 " I know nothing of the ladies. I never saw them before. 
 The man's a fellow I knew very well at Oxford. He was 
 thought immense fun there. We have diverged, as he says, 
 and I had almost lost sight of him, but not so much as he 
 thinks, because I've read him, and read him with interest. He 
 has written a very clever book." 
 
 " What kind of a book ? " 
 
 " A sort of a novel." 
 
 "What sort of a novel ? " 
 
 " Well, I don't know with a lot of good writing." Biddy 
 listened to this with so much interest that she thought it 
 illogical her brother should add : "I dare say Peter will have 
 come, if you return to mother." . 
 
 c
 
 18 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " I don't care if he has. Peter's nothing to me. But I'll go 
 if you wish it." 
 
 Nick looked down at her again, and then said : " It doesn't 
 signify. We'll all go." 
 
 " All ? " Biddy echoed. 
 
 " He won't hurt us. On the contrary, he'll do us good." 
 
 This was possible, the girl reflected in silence, but none the 
 less the idea struck her as courageous the idea of their taking 
 the odd young man back to breakfast with them and with the 
 others, especially if Peter should be there. If Peter was 
 nothing to her, it was singular she should have attached such 
 importance to this contingency. The odd young man reap- 
 peared, and now that she saw him without his queer female 
 appendages he seemed personally less unusual. He struck her, 
 moreover, as generally a good deal accounted for by the liter- 
 ary character, especially if it were responsible for a lot of good 
 writing. As he took his place on the bench Nick said to him, 
 indicating her, " My sister Bridget," and then mentioned his 
 name, " Mr. Gabriel Nash." 
 
 " You enjoy Paris you are happy here ? " Mr. Nash inquired, 
 leaning over his friend to speak to the girl. 
 
 Though his words belonged to the situation, it struck her 
 that his tone didn't, and this made her answer him more dryly 
 than she usually spoke. "Oh, yes, it's very nice." 
 
 " And French art interests you 1 You find things here that 
 please ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I like some of them." 
 
 Mr. Nash looked at her with kind eyes. ' ' I hoped you 
 would say you like the Academy better." 
 
 " She would if she didn't f.hink you expected it," said 
 Nicholas Dormer. 
 
 " Oh, Nick ! " Biddy protested. 
 
 "Miss Dormer is herself an English picture," Gabriel 
 Nash remarked, smiling like a man whose urbanity was a 
 solvent. 
 
 " That's a compliment, if you don't like them ! " Biddy 
 exclaimed. 
 
 " Ah, some of them, some of them ; there's a certain sort 
 of thing 1" Mr. Nash continued. " We must feel everything, 
 everything that we can. We are here for that." 
 
 "You do like English art, then? "Nick demanded, with a 
 slight accent of surprise. 
 
 Mr. Nash turned his smile upon him. " My dear Dormer, 
 do you remember the old complaint I used to make of you 1
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 19 
 
 You had formulas that were like walking in one's hat. One 
 may see something in a case, and one may not." 
 
 " Upon my word," said Nick, "I don't know any one who 
 was fonder of a generalization than you. You turned them 
 off as the man at the street-corner distributes hand-bills." 
 
 " They were my wild oats. I've sown them all." 
 
 " We shall see that ! " 
 
 " Oh, they're nothing now a tame, scanty, homely growth. 
 My only generalizations are my actions." 
 
 " We shall see them, then." 
 
 " Ah, excuse me. You can't see them with the naked eye. 
 Moreover, mine are principally negative. People's actions, I 
 know, are, for the most part, the things they do, but mine are 
 all the things I don't do. There are so many of those, so 
 many, but they don't produce any effect. And then all the 
 rest are shades extremely fine shades." 
 
 " Shades of behaviour 1 " Nick inquired, with an interest 
 which surprised his sister ; Mr. Nash's discourse striking her 
 mainly as the twaddle of the under-world. 
 
 " Shades of impression, of appreciation," said the young man, 
 with his explanatory smile.' " My only behaviour is my feelings." 
 
 " Well, don't you show your feelings f You used to ! " 
 
 " Wasn't it mainly those of disgust 1 " Nash asked. " Those 
 operate no longer. I have closed that window." 
 
 " Do you mean you like everything ? " 
 
 " Dear me, no ! But I look only at what I do like." 
 
 " Do you mean that you have lost the faculty of displeasure 1 " 
 
 " I haven't the least idea. I never try it. My dear fellow," 
 said Gabriel Nash, " we have only one life that we know any- 
 thing about : fancy taking it up with disagreeable impressions ! 
 When, then, shall we go in for the agreeable ? " 
 
 " What do you mean by the agreeable ? " Nick Dormer asked. 
 
 " Oh, the happy moments of our consciousness the multi- 
 plication of those moments. We must save as many as possible 
 from the dark gulf." 
 
 Nick had excited a certain astonishment on the part of his 
 sister, but it was now Biddy's turn to make him open his eyes 
 a little. She raised her sweet voice and inquired of Mr. Nash 
 
 " Don't you think there are any wrongs in the world any 
 abuses and sufferings ? " 
 
 "Oh, so many, so many ! That's why one must choose." 
 
 " Choose to stop them, to reform them isn't that the 
 choice?" Biddy asked. "That's Nick's," she added, blushing 
 and looking at this personage.
 
 20 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 u Ah, our divergence yes ! " sighed Gabriel Nash. " There 
 are all kinds of machinery for that very complicated and 
 ingenious. Your formulas, my dear Dormer, your formulas ! " 
 
 " Hang 'em, I haven't got any ! " Nick exclaimed. 
 
 " To me, personally, the simplest ways are those that appeal 
 most," Mr. Nash went on. " We pay too much attention to 
 the ugly ; we notice it, we magnify it. The great thing is to 
 leave it alone and encourage the beautiful." 
 
 " You must be very sure you get hold of the beautiful," 
 said Nick. 
 
 " Ah, precisely, and that's just the importance of the faculty 
 of appreciation. We must train our special sense. It is 
 capable of extraordinary extension. Life's none too long for 
 that." 
 
 " But what's the good of the extraordinary extension if there 
 is no affirmation of it, if it all goes to the negative, as you 
 say? Where are the fine consequences? " Dormer asked. 
 
 " In one's own spirit. One is one's self a fine consequence. 
 That's the most important one we have to do with. I am a 
 fine consequence," said Gabriel Nash. 
 
 Biddy rose from the bench at this, and stepped away a little, 
 as if to look at a piece of statuary. But she had not gone far 
 before, pausing and turning, she bent her eyes upon Mr. Nash 
 with a heightened colour, an air of hesitation and the question, 
 after a moment : " Are you an aesthete ? " 
 
 "Ah, there's one of the formulas ! That's walking in one's 
 hat ! I've no profession, my dear young lady. I've no etat 
 civil. These things are a part of the complicated, ingenious 
 machinery. As I say, I keep to the simplest way. I find 
 that gives one enough to do. Merely to be is such a metier ; 
 to live is such an art ; to feel is such a career ! " 
 
 Bridget Dormer turned her back and examined her statue, 
 and her brother said to his old friend : " And to write 1 " 
 
 " To write ] Oh, I'll never do it again 1 " 
 
 " You have done it almost well enough to be inconsistent. 
 That book of yours is anything but negative ; it's complicated 
 and ingenious." 
 
 " My dear fellow, I'm extremely ashamed of it," said 
 Gabriel Nash. 
 
 " Ah, call yourself a bloated Buddhist and have done with 
 it ! " his companion exclaimed. 
 
 " Have done with it? I haven't the least desire for that. 
 And why should one call one's self anything? One only 
 deprives other people of their dearest occupation. Let me add
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 21 
 
 that you don't begin to have an insight into the art of life till 
 it ceases to be of the smallest consequence to you what you 
 may be called. That's rudimentary." 
 
 " But if you go in for shades, you must also go in for names. 
 You must distinguish," Dormer objected. " The observer is 
 nothing without his categories, his types and varieties." 
 
 " Ah, trust him to distinguish ! " said Gabriel Nash, sweetly. 
 " That's for his own convenience ; he has, privately, a termin- 
 ology to meet it. That's one's style. But from the moment 
 it's for the convenience of others, the signs have to be grosser, 
 the shades begin to go. That's a deplorable hour ! Literature, 
 you see, is for the convenience of others. It requires the 
 most abject concessions. It plays such mischief with one's 
 style that really I have had to give it up." 
 
 " And politics ? " Nick Dormer asked. 
 
 " Well, what about them ? " was Mr. Nash's reply, in a 
 peculiar intonation, as he watched his friend's sister, who 
 was still examining her statue. Biddy was divided between 
 irritation and curiosity. She had interposed space, but she 
 had not gone beyond ear-shot. Nick's question made her 
 curiosity throb, especially in its second form, as a rejoinder to 
 their companion's. 
 
 " That, no doubt you'll say, is still far more for the conveni- 
 ence of others is still worse for one's style." 
 
 Biddy turned round in time to hear Mr. Nash exclaim : " It 
 has simply nothing in life to do with shades ! I can't say 
 worse for it than that." 
 
 Biddy stepped nearer at this, and, drawing still further on 
 her courage : " Won't mamma be waiting? Oughtn't we to go 
 to luncheon?" she asked. 
 
 Both the young men looked up at her, and Mr. Nash 
 remarked 
 
 "You ought to protest ! You ought to save him ! " 
 
 " To save him ? " said Biddy. 
 
 " He had a style ; upon my word he had ! But I've seen it 
 go. I've read his speeches." 
 
 " You were capable of that ? " Dormer demanded. 
 
 " For you, yes. But it was like listening to a nightingale 
 in a brass band." 
 
 " I think they were beautiful," Biddy declared. 
 
 Her brother got up at this tribute, and Mr. Nash, rising 
 too, said, with his bright colloquial air 
 
 " But, Miss Dormer, he had eyes. He was made to see 
 to see all over, to see everything. There are so few like that."
 
 22 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 "I think he still sees," Biddy rejoined, wondering a little 
 why Nick didn't defend himself. 
 
 " He sees his side, dear young lady. Poor man, fancy your 
 having a ' side ' you, you and spending your days and your 
 nights looking at it ! I'd as soon pass my life looking at an 
 advertisement on a hoarding." 
 
 "You don't see me- some day a great statesman?" said 
 Nick. 
 
 " My dear fellow, it's exactly what I've a terror of." 
 
 " Mercy ! don't you admire them 1 " Biddy cried. 
 
 " It's a trade like another, and a method of making one's 
 way which society certainly condones. But when one can be 
 something better ! " 
 
 " Dear me, what is better ? " Biddy asked. 
 
 The young man hesitated, and Nick, replying for him, 
 said 
 
 " Gabriel Nash is better ! You must come and lunch with 
 us. I must keep you I must ! " he added. 
 
 " We shall save him yet," Mr. Nash observed genially to 
 Biddy as they went ; while the girl wondered still more what 
 her mother would make of him. 
 
 III. 
 
 AFTER her companions left her Lady Agnes rested for five 
 minutes in silence with her elder daughter, at the end of which 
 time she observed, " I suppose one must have food, at any 
 rate," and, getting up, quitted the place where they had 
 been sitting. " And where are we to go 1 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 announce- 
 ment, " Non ; nous sommes beaucoup ! " He introduced them 
 to a table larger than most of the others, and under his pro- 
 tection they took their places at it and began, rather languidly
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 23 
 
 and vaguely, to consider the question of the repast. The waiter 
 had placed a carte in Lady Agnes's hands, and she studied it, 
 through her eye-glass, with a failure of interest, while he 
 enumerated, with professional fluency, the resources of the 
 establishment and Grace looked at the people at the other 
 tables. She was hungry and had already broken a morsel 
 from a long glazed roll. 
 
 " JSTot 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 docu- 
 ment. " What does it signify ? I dare say it's all nasty," 
 Grace continued ; and she added, inconsequently : " If Peter 
 comes he's sure to be particular." 
 
 " Let him be particular to come, first ! " her ladyship 
 exclaimed, turning a cold eye upon the waiter. 
 
 " Poulet chasseur, filets tnignons, sauce bearnaise," 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 sub- 
 missive, 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 feed- 
 ing 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 latter's orders to be executed, 
 till Lady Agnes reflected, audibly : " He makes me unhappy, 
 the way he talks about Julia." 
 
 " Sometimes I think he does it to torment one. One can't 
 mention her ! " Grace responded.
 
 24 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " It's 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 re- 
 quired," Lady Agnes continued to meditate. " Sometimes I 
 think he's thinking of her ; then at others I can't fancy what 
 he's thinking of." 
 
 "It would be awfully suitable," said Grace, biting her roll. 
 
 Her 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 sug- 
 gested that she knew more about that than she was ready to 
 state. 
 
 " It isn't as if she wasn't clever and well read," her daughter 
 went on. " If there were nothing else there would be a 
 reason in her being so interested in politics, in everything 
 that he is." 
 
 " Ah, what he is that's what I sometimes wonder ! " 
 
 Grace Dormer looked at her mother a moment. " Why, 
 mother, isn't he going to be like papa 1 " She waited for an 
 answer that didn't come ; after which she pursued : " I thought 
 you thought him so like him already." 
 
 " Well, I don't," said Lady Agnes, quietly. 
 
 "Who is, then 1 ? Certainly Percy isn't." 
 
 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, con- 
 scientiously, 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." 
 
 " Don't meddle 1 you're very clumsy," was her mother's not 
 particularly sympathetic rejoinder. " There are other women 
 who are beautiful, and there are others who are clever and 
 rich."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 25 
 
 " Yes, but not all in one ; that's what's so nice in Julia. 
 Her fortune would be thrown in ; he wouldn't appear to have 
 married her for it." 
 
 "If he does, he won't," said Lady Agnes, a trifle obscurely. 
 
 " Yes, that's what's so charming. And he could do any- 
 thing then, couldn't he ? " 
 
 " Well, your father had no fortune, to speak of." 
 
 " Yes, but didn't Uncle Percy help him 1 " 
 
 " His wife helped him," said Lady Agnes. 
 
 " Dear mamma ! " the girl exclaimed. " There's one thing," 
 she added : " that Mr. Carteret will always help Nick." 
 
 " What do you mean by ' always ' 1 " 
 
 "Why, whether he marries Julia or not." 
 
 "Things are not so easy," responded Lady Agnes. " It will 
 all depend on Nick's behaviour. He can stop it to-morrow." 
 1 Grace Dormer stared ; she evidently thought Mr. Carteret's 
 beneficence a part of the scheme of nature. " How could he 
 stop it 2" 
 
 > " By not being serious. It isn't so hard to prevent people 
 giving you money." 
 
 "Serious?" Grace repeated. "Does he want him to be a 
 prig, like Lord Egbert?" 
 
 " Yes, he does. And what he'll do for him he'll do for him 
 only if he marries Julia." 
 
 "Has he told you?" Grace inquired. And then, before her 
 mother could answer, she exclaimed : " I'm delighted at that ! " 
 
 " He hasn't told me, but that's the way things happen." 
 Lady Agnes was less optimistic than her daughter, and such 
 optimism as she cultivated was a thin tissue, with a sense of 
 things as they are showing through it. "If Nick becomes 
 rich, Charles Carteret will make him more so. If he doesn't, 
 he won't give him a shilling." 
 
 " Oh, mamma ! " Grace protested. 
 
 " It's all very well to say that in public life money isn't 
 necessary, as it used to be," her ladyship went on, broodingly. 
 "Those who say so don't know anything about it. It's 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 there's the fact isn't there 1 
 that poor papa had so little." 
 
 " Yes, and there's the fact that it killed him ! " 
 These words came out with a strange, quick little flare of 
 passion. They startled Grace Dormer, who jumped in her
 
 26 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 d'ye do, Cousin Agnes ? How d'ye 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 ambassador's, arriving, on his return 
 by the night- train, only early that morning. There had 
 accordingly been a delay in his receiving Nick Dormer's two 
 notes. If Nick had come to the Embassy in person (he might 
 have done him the honour to call), he would have learned 
 that the second secretary was absent. Lady Agnes was not 
 altogether successful in assigning a motive to her son's neglect 
 of this courteous form ; she 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, we'll 
 keep out of it ; a friendly note will do.' I don't know, 
 definitely, what he wanted to keep out of, except it's anything 
 like gaiety. The Embassy isn't gay, I know. But I'm sure 
 his note was friendly, wasn't it ? I dare say you'll see for 
 yourself ; he's different directly he gets abroad ; he doesn't 
 seem to care." Lady Agnes paused a moment, not carrying 
 out this particular elucidation ; then she resumed : " He said 
 you 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 Sherring- 
 ham 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 Elysees. She had come 
 up to Paris by an early train she had been staying at Ver- 
 sailles, of all places in the world. She had been a week in
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 27 
 
 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 Dallow's sister. She was staying there to teach her 
 daughters French (she had a dozen or two !) and Julia had 
 spent three days with her. She was to return to England 
 about the 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, they're very nice to her," Sherringham said. 
 
 " Well, I hope so ! " Grace Dormer qualified. " Why didn't 
 you make her come here? " 
 
 " I proposed it, but she wouldn't." Another eye-beam, at 
 this, passed between the two ladies, and Peter went on : " She 
 said you must come and see her, at the Hotel de Hollande." 
 
 " Of course we'll do that," Lady Agnes declared. " Nick 
 went to ask about her at the Westminster." 
 
 " She gave that up ; they wouldn't give her the rooms she 
 wanted, her usual set." 
 
 " She's delightfully particular ! " Grace murmured. Then 
 she added: "She does like pictures, doesn't she 1 ?" 
 
 Peter Sherringham stared. " Oh, I dare say. But that's 
 not what she has in her head this morning. She has some, 
 news from London ; she's immensely excited." 
 
 " What has she in her head ? " Lady Agnes asked. 
 
 " What's her news from London 1 " Grace demanded. 
 
 "She wants Nick to stand." 
 
 "Nick to stand I " 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 night's papers." 
 
 " Imagine, Nick never mentioned it ! " said Lady Agnes. 
 
 "Don't you know, mother? abroad he only reads foreign 
 papers." 
 
 "Oh, I know. I've no patience with him," her ladyship 
 continued. " Dear Julia ! " 
 
 " It's a nasty little place, and Pinks had a tight squeeze- 
 107, or something of that sort ; but if it returned a Liberal a 
 year ago, very likely it will do so again. Julia, at any rate, 
 se fait forte, as they say here, to put him in."
 
 28 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 < ; I'm 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 1 " 
 he inquired. 
 
 " Ah, I'm afraid he can't do much in expenses, poor dear 
 boy! And it's 'dreadful how little we can look to Percy." 
 
 " Well, I dare say you may look to Julia. I think that's 
 her idea." 
 
 " Delightful Julia ! " Lady Agnes ejaculated. "If poor Sir 
 Nicholas could have known ! Of course he must go straight 
 home," she added. 
 
 " He won't like that," said Grace. 
 
 " Then he'll have to go without liking it." 
 
 " It will rather spoil your little excursion, if you've only 
 just come," Peter suggested; "and the great Biddy's, if she's 
 enjoying Paris." 
 
 " We may stay, perhaps with Julia to protect us," said 
 Lady Agnes. 
 
 " Ah, she won't stay ; she'll go over for her man." 
 
 "Her man?" 
 
 " The fellow that stands, whoever he is ; especially if he's 
 Nick." These last words caused the eyes of Peter Sherring- 
 ham's companions to meet again, and he went on : " She'll go 
 straight down to Harsh." 
 
 " Wonderful Julia ! " Lady Agnes panted. " Of course Nick 
 must go straight there, too." 
 
 "Well, I suppose he must see first if they'll have him." 
 
 " If they'll have him 1 Why, how can he tell till he tries 1 " 
 
 " I mean the people at headquarters, the fellows who 
 arrange it." 
 
 Lady Agnes coloured a little. " My dear Peter, do you 
 suppose there will be the least doubt of their 'having' the son 
 of his father?" 
 
 " Of course it's a great name, Cousin Agnes a very great 
 name." 
 
 " One of the greatest, simply," said Lady Agnes, smiling. 
 
 " It's the best name in the world!" Grace Dormer subjoined. 
 
 " All the same it didn't prevent his losing his seat." 
 
 " By half a dozen votes : it was too odious ! " her ladyship 
 cried. 
 
 " I remember I remember. And in such a case as that 
 why didn't they immediately put him in somewhere else?"
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 29 
 
 " 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. They've had their hand on 
 him, keeping him all ready. I dare say they've telegraphed 
 to him." 
 
 " And he hasn't told you ? " 
 
 Lady Agnes hesitated. " He's so odd when he's abroad ! " 
 
 "At home, too, he lets things go," Grace interposed. " He 
 does so little takes no trouble." Her mother suffered this 
 statement to pass unchallenged, and she pursued, philosophic- 
 ally : "I suppose it's because he knows he's 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. 
 
 "That's the worst way," said Peter Sherringham. "Good 
 things?" 
 
 Neither of the ladies made a direct response to this, but 
 Lady Agnes said : " He has spoken repeatedly. They are 
 always calling on him." 
 
 " He speaks magnificently," Grace attested. 
 
 " That's another of the things I lose, living in far countries. 
 And he's doing the Salon now, with the great Biddy 1 " 
 
 " Just the things in this part. I can't think what keeps 
 them so long," Lady Agnes rejoined. "Did you ever see such 
 a dreadful place 1 " 
 
 Sherringham stared. " Aren't the things good? I had an 
 idea" 
 
 "Good?" cried Lady Agnes. "They're too odious, too 
 wicked." 
 
 "Ah," said Peter, laughing, "that's what people fall into, 
 if they live abroad. The French oughtn't to live abroad." 
 
 " Here they come," Grace announced, at this point ; " but 
 they've got a strange man with them." 
 
 " That's a bore, when we want to talk ! " Lady Agnes 
 sighed. 
 
 Peter got up, in the spirit of welcome, and stood a moment 
 watching the others approach. " There will be no difficulty in 
 talking, to judge by the gentleman," he 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
 
 30 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 thought them soft ; dark brown his hair, in which the same 
 critics sometimes regretted the absence of a little undulation. 
 It was perhaps to conceal this plainness that he wore it very 
 short. His teeth were white ; his moustache was pointed, and 
 so was the small beard that adorned the extremity of his chin. 
 His face expressed intelligence and was very much alive, 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 six- 
 teenth century. In fact, it would have been impossible to be 
 more modern than Peter Sherringham, and more of one's class 
 and one's 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. 
 
 IV. 
 
 PETER'S meeting with Nick was of the friendliest on both 
 sides, involving a great many "dear fellows " and " old boys," 
 and his salutation to the younger of the Miss Dormers con- 
 sisted 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 haven't yet, in the study of 
 how to live, abolished that clumsiness, have we ? " Mr. Nash 
 genially inquired. " It's a poverty in the supernumeraries 
 that we don't pass once for all, but come round and cross
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 31 
 
 again, like a procession at the theatre. It's 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 Grace's, 
 to whom, as her eyes rested on him, the young man addressed 
 these last words with a smile. " Alas, it's a very shabby idea, 
 isn't it 1 The world isn't got up regardless of expense ! " 
 
 Grace looked quickly away from him, and said to her 
 brother: "Nick, Mr. Pinks is dead." 
 
 "Mr. Pinks?" asked Gabriel Nash, appearing to wonder 
 where he should sit. 
 
 "The member for Harsh; and Julia wants you to stand," 
 the girl went on. 
 
 " Mr. Pinks, the member for Harsh ] What names to be 
 sure ! " Gabriel mused cheerfully, still unseated. 
 
 " Julia wants me 3 I'm much obliged to her ! " observed 
 Nicholas Dormer. " Nash, please sit by my mother, with 
 Peter on her other side." 
 
 "My dear, it isn't Julia," Lady Agnes remarked, earnestly, 
 to her son. " Every one wants you. Haven't you heard 
 from your people 1 Didn't you know the seat was vacant 2 " 
 
 Nick was looking round the table, to see what was on it. 
 " Upon my word I don't remember. What else have you 
 ordered, mother ? " 
 
 " There's some bceuf braise, 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 Sher- 
 ringham, to whom the preparation in question was presented. 
 
 " Into the eggs with asparagus-tips'? JDonnez m'en, s'il vous 
 plait. My dear fellow, how can I stand 1 how can I sit ? 
 Where's the money to come from ? " 
 
 " The money ? Why, from Jul " Grace began, but 
 immediately caught her mother's eye. 
 
 "Poor Julia, how you do work her!" Nick exclaimed. 
 " Nash, I recommend the asparagus-tips. Mother, he's 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 ; you'll find out." 
 
 " The money can be managed ; the expenses are very small 
 and the seat is certain," Lady Agnes declared, not, apparently, 
 heeding her son's injunction in respect to Nash.
 
 82 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " Rather if Julia goes down ! " her elder daughter ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 "Perhaps Julia won't go down ! " Nick answered, humor- 
 ously. 
 
 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 brother's allusion. In reality this was 
 an innocent trick : she was more curious than she could have 
 given a suitable reason for about the odd women from whom 
 her neighbour had 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 - 
 
 " Julia's 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 Peter's eyes appeared to answer, " No, no, 
 not I ; " upon which his cousin rejoined : " Of course I'll go 
 and see her. I'll go immediately. Please to thank her for 
 thinking of me." 
 
 " Thinking of you ? There are plenty to think of you 1 " 
 Lady Agnes said. " There are sure to be telegrams at home. 
 We must go back we must go back ! " 
 
 " We must go back to England ? " Nick Dormer asked ; 
 and as his mother made no answer he continued : " Do you 
 mean I must go to Harsh ? " 
 
 Her ladyship evaded this question, inquiring of Mr. Nash if 
 he would have a morsel of fish ; but her gain was small, for this 
 gentleman, struck again by the unhappy name of the bereaved 
 constituency, only broke out : " Ah, what a place to represent ! 
 How can you how can you ? " 
 
 "It's an excellent place," said Lady Agnes, coldly. "I 
 imagine you have never been there. It's a very good place 
 indeed. It belongs very largely to my cousin, Mrs. Dallow." 
 
 Gabriel partook of the fish, listening with interest. " But 
 I thought we had no more pocket-boroughs." 
 
 " It's pockets we rather lack, so many of us. There are 
 plenty of Harshes," Nick Dormer observed. 
 
 " I don't know what you mean," Lady Agnes said to 
 Gabriel, with considerable majesty. 
 
 Peter Sherringham also addressed him with an " Oh, it's all
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 33 
 
 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 it's not you that are paid ? " 
 
 " Into that place 1 " Lady Agnes repeated, blankly. 
 
 '" Into the House of Commons. That you don't get a high 
 salary 1 " 
 
 " My dear Nash, you're delightful : don't leave me don't 
 leave me ! " Nick cried ; while his mother looked at him with 
 an eye that demanded : " Who is this extraordinary person 1 " 
 
 "What then did you think pocket-boroughs were?" Peter 
 Sherringham asked. 
 
 Mr. Nnsh's facial radiance rested on him. " Why, boroughs 
 that filled your pocket. To do that sort of thing without a 
 bribe c'est tropfort ! " 
 
 "He lives at Samarcand," Nick Dormer explained to his 
 mother, who coloured perceptibly. " What do you advise me 1 
 I'll do whatever you say," he went on to his old acquaintance. 
 
 " My dear my dear ! " Lady Agnes pleaded. 
 
 "See Julia first, with all respect to Mr. Nash. She's- of 
 excellent counsel," said Peter Sherringham. 
 
 Gabriel Nash smiled across the table at Dormer. " The 
 lady first the lady first 1 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 bceuf braise. 
 
 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 1 " 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 
 
 D
 
 34 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 1 " Biddy asked, pleased that 
 she had guessed so nearly right. 
 
 " Not in the least I'm rather heading her off. I consider 
 it the lowest of the arts." 
 
 "Lower than polities'?" asked Peter Sherringham, who was 
 listening to this. 
 
 " Dear, no, I won't say that. I think the Theatre Fran^ais 
 a greater institution than the House of Commons." 
 
 " I agree with you there ! " laughed Sherringham ; " all the 
 more that I don't consider the dramatic art a low one. On 
 the contrary, it seems to me to include all the others." 
 
 " Yes that's a view. I think it's the view of my friends." 
 
 "Of your friends?" 
 
 " Two ladies old acquaintances whom I met in Paris a 
 week ago and whom I 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. " Don't you 1 " 
 
 Before Mr. Nash had had time to answer Biddy had interposed 
 with a sigh : " How I wish I could go but in Paris I can't ! " 
 
 " I'll take you, Biddy I vow I'll take you." 
 
 "But the plays, Peter," the girl objected. "Mamma says 
 they're worse than the pictures." 
 
 " Oh, we'll arrange that : they shall do one at the Francais 
 on purpose for a delightful little English girl." 
 
 " Can you make them ? " 
 
 " I can make them do anything I choose." 
 
 " Ah, then, it's the theatre that believes in you," said 
 Gabriel Nash. 
 
 " It would be ungrateful if it didn't ! " 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 para-
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 35 
 
 doxical young man. " Pray, should you think it better for a 
 gentleman to be an actor 1 " 
 
 " Better than being a politician 1 Ah, comedian for 
 comedian, isn't the actor more honest 1 " 
 
 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 couldn't 
 stand it." 
 
 Peter Sherringham judged the colloquy to have taken an 
 uncomfortable twist, though not wholly, as it seemed to him, 
 by the act of Nick's queer comrade. To draw it back to safer 
 ground he said to this personage : " May I ask if the ladies 
 you just spoke of are English Mrs. and Miss Pvooth : isn't 
 that the rather odd name? " 
 
 " The very same. Only the daughter, according to her 
 kind, desires to be known by some nom de guerre before she 
 has even been able to enlist." 
 
 " And what does she call herself ? " Bridget Dormer asked. 
 
 " Maud Vavasour, or Edith Temple, or Gladys Yane some 
 rubbish of that sort." 
 
 " What, then, is her own name 1 " 
 
 " 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 Eachel Felix," Sherringham said. 
 
 "The name's as good, but not the talent. The girl is 
 magnificently stupid." 
 
 ' And more than half a Jewess 1 Don't you believe it ! " 
 Sherringham exclaimed. 
 
 " Don't believe she's a Jewess 1 " Biddy asked, still more 
 interested in Miriam Rooth. 
 
 " No, no that she's stupid, really. If she is, she'll be the 
 first." 
 
 " Ah. you may judge for yourself," Nash rejoined, " if you'll 
 come to-morrow afternoon to Madame Carrd, Rue de Constan- 
 tinople, a I 'entresol." 
 
 " Madame Carre ? Why, I've already a note from her I 
 found it this morning on my return to Paris asking me to 
 look in at five o'clock and listen to a,jeune Anglaise." 
 
 " That's my arrangement I obtained the favoui'. The 
 ladies want an opinion, and dear old Carre has consented to 
 see them and to give one. Gladys will recite something and 
 the venerable artist will pass judgment." 
 
 Sherringham remembered that he had his note in his pocket.
 
 36 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 and he took it out and looked it over. ' ' She wishes to make 
 her a little audience she says she'll do better with that and 
 she asks me because I'm English. I shall make a point of 
 going." 
 
 " And bring Dormer if you can : the audience will be better. 
 Will you come, Dormer ] " Mr. Nash continued, appealing to 
 his friend, -" will you come with me to see an old French 
 actress and to hear an English amateur recite 1 " 
 
 Nick looked round from his talk with his mother and Grace. 
 " I'll go anywhere with you, so that, as I've told you, I 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 you'd take me, Peter," Biddy broke out, 
 wistfully, to her cousin. 
 
 " To spend an hour with an old French actress 1 Do you 
 want to go upon the stage 1 ? " the young man inquired. 
 
 " No, but I want to see something, to know something." 
 
 " Madame Carre is wonderful in her way, but she is hardly 
 company for a little English girl." 
 
 " I'm not little, I'm only too big ; and she goes, the person 
 you speak of." 
 
 " For a professional purpose, and with her good mother," 
 smiled Gabriel Nash. " I think Lady Agnes would hardly 
 venture 
 
 " Oh, I've seen her good mother 1 " said Biddy, as if she 
 had an impression of what the worth of that protection 
 might be. 
 
 "Yes, but you haven't heard her. It's then that you 
 measure her." 
 
 Biddy was wistful still. " Is it the famous Honorine Carre, 
 the great celebrity ? " 
 
 " Honorine in person : the incomparable, the perfect ! " said 
 Peter Sherringham. " The first artist of our time, taking her 
 altogether. She and I are old pals ; she has been so good as 
 to come and ' say ' things, as she does sometimes still dans le 
 monde as no one else does, in my rooms." 
 
 " Make her come, then ; we can go tJiere ! " 
 
 " One of these days ! " 
 
 " And the young lady Miriam, Edith, Gladys make her 
 come too." 
 
 Sherringham looked at Nash, and the latter exclaimed : 
 " Oh, you'll have no difficulty ; she'll jump at it ! "
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. S7 
 
 " Very good ; I'll give a little artistic tea, with Julia, too, 
 of course. And you must come, Mr. Nash." This gentleman 
 promised, with an inclination, and Peter continued : "But if, 
 as you say, you're not for helping the young lady, how came 
 you to arrange this interview with the great model 1 '' 
 
 " Precisely to stop her. The great model will find her 
 very bad. Her judgments, as you probably know, are 
 Rhadamanthine." 
 
 " Poor girl ! " said Biddy. " I think you're cruel." 
 
 " Never mind ; I'll look after them," said Sherringham. 
 
 " And how can Madame Carre judge, if the girl recites 
 English ? " 
 
 "She's so intelligent that she could judge if she recited 
 Chinese," Peter declared. 
 
 " That's true, but thejeune Anglaise recites also in French," 
 said Gabriel Nash. 
 
 " Then she isn't stupid/' 
 
 '' And in Italian, and in several more tongues, for aught I 
 know." 
 
 Sherringham was visibly interested. " Very good ; we'll put 
 her through them all." 
 
 " She must be most clever," Biddy went on, yearningly. 
 
 " She has spent her life on the Continent ; she has wandered 
 about with her mother ; she has picked up things." 
 
 " And is she a lady 1 " Biddy asked. 
 
 " Oh, tremendous ! The great ones of the earth on the 
 mother's side. On the father's, on the other hand, I imagine, 
 only a Jew stockbroker in the city." 
 
 " Then they're rich or ought to be," Sherringham 
 suggested. 
 
 " Ought to be ah, there's the bitterness! The stockbroker 
 had too short a go he was carried off in his flower. However, 
 he left his wife a certain property, which she appears to have 
 muddled away, not having the safeguard of being herself a 
 Hebrew. This is what she lived upon till to-day this and 
 another resource. Her husband, as she has often told me, 
 had the artistic temperament ; that's common, as you know, 
 among ces messieurs. He made the most of his little oppor- 
 tunities 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. 
 Booth was left with a certain number of , these articles in her 
 hands ; indeed they must have constituted the most palpable
 
 38 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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, 
 iii Florence, I was indebted for my acquaintance with her. In 
 those days I used to collect Heaven help me ! I used to 
 pick up rubbish which I could ill afford. It was a little 
 phase we have our little phases, haven't we ? " asked Gabriel 
 Nash, with childlike trust "and I have come out on the 
 other side. Mrs. Booth 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 don't know whether she carried 
 them about with her or whether she had little secret stores 
 in the principal cities of Europe. To-day, at any rate, they 
 seem all gone. On the other hand she has her daughter, who 
 has grown up and who 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 atten- 
 tion 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 curi- 
 osities : 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 N*ash, " and 
 Rudolf Roth, as I happen to know, was indeed the designation 
 of Maud Vavasour's 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 
 Maud's mamma. I seem to have heard it mentioned that 
 Rudolf Roth was very versatile and, like most of his species,
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 39 
 
 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 adJressed 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 1 " 
 
 "It's a domain of immeasurable extent and almost in- 
 conceivable splendour, but I fear it isn't 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 don't know that I understand your question ; there are 
 different ways of taking it. Do I think it's important ? Is 
 that what you mean 1 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 arid don't know what to do with their evening. 
 It's a commercial and social convenience which may be in- 
 finitely worked. But important artistically, intellectually? 
 How can it be so poor, so limited a form 1 ? " 
 
 " Dear me, it strikes me as so rich, so various ! Do you 
 think it's 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 Dormer's 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.
 
 40 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 "Oh, I used to be of your way of feeling," Nash said to 
 Sherringham. " I understand you perfectly. It's a phase 
 like another. I've been through it fai ete comme $a." 
 
 " And you went, then, very often to the Theatre Franjais, 
 and it was there I saw you. I place you now." 
 
 " I'm afraid I noticed none of the other spectators," Nash 
 explained. " I had no attention but for the great Carre 
 she was still on the stage. Judge of my infatuation, and how 
 I can allow for yours, when I tell you that I sought her 
 acquaintance, that I couldn't rest till I had told her that I 
 hung upon her lips." 
 
 " That's just what / told her," returned Sherringham. 
 
 '" She was very kind to me.' She said, ' Vans me rendez des 
 forces. 1 " 
 
 " That's 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 don't consider that 
 important such a rare dramatic intelligence?" 
 
 " I'm afraid you read the feuilletons. You catch their 
 phrases," Gabriel Nash blandly rejoined. "Dramatic intelli- 
 gence is never rare ; nothing is more common." 
 
 " Then why have we so many bad actors ] " 
 
 " Have we 1 I thought they were mostly good ; succeeding 
 more easily and more completely in that business than in 
 anything else. What could they do those people, generally 
 if they didn't do that ? 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 it's even easier to 
 our poor humanity to be ineffectively stupid and vulgar than 
 to bring down the house." 
 
 " It's not easy, by what I can see, to produce, completely, 
 any artistic effect," Sherringham declared ; " and those that 
 the actor produces are among the most moving that we know. 
 You'll not persuade me that to watch such an actress as 
 Madame Carre was not an education of the taste, an enlarge- 
 ment of one's knowledge." 
 
 " She did what she could, poor woman, but in what be- 
 littling, 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."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 41 
 
 "I know the complaint. It's all the fashion now. The 
 raffines despise the theatre," said Peter Sherringham, in the 
 manner of a man abreast with the culture of his age and not 
 to be captured by a surprise. " Gonnu, connu ! " 
 
 " It will be known better yet, won't it 1 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 o'clock. 
 Fancy putting the exquisite before such a tribunal as that ! 
 There's not even a question of it. The dramatist wouldn't if 
 he could, and in nine cases out of ten he couldn't if he would. 
 He has to make the basest concessions. One of his principal 
 canons is that he must enable his spectators to catch the 
 suburban trains, which stop at 11.30. What would you think 
 of any other artist the painter or the novelist whose 
 governing forces should bo the dinner and the suburban 
 trains 1 The old dramatists didn't defer to them (not so 
 much, at least), and that's why they are less and less actable. 
 If they are touched the large fellows it's only to be muti- 
 lated 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 1 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 extraoi-dinarily good, 
 and I don't go to plays. I read Balzac, for instance I en- 
 counter the magnificent portrait of Valerie Marneffe, in ' La 
 Cousine Bette.' " 
 
 " And you contrast it with the poverty of Emile Augier's 
 Seraphine in ' Les Lionues Pauvres ' ? I was awaiting you 
 there. That's the cheval de bataille of you fellows."
 
 42 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " 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 Carre in parts, in the modern re- 
 pertory, which she has made as vivid to me, caused to abide as 
 ineffaceably in my memory, as Valerie 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 abun- 
 dantly 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 im- 
 portant." 
 
 " 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 1 " 
 
 Biddy hesitated a moment, coloured a little, felt a certain 
 embarrassment in being publicly treated as an oracle. 
 
 " If she's not nice I don't advise it." 
 
 " And if she is nice? " 
 
 " You advise it still less ! " her brother exclaimed, laughing 
 and putting his arm round her. 
 
 Lady Agnes looked sombre she might have been saying to 
 herself : " Dear me, what chance has a girl of mine with a 
 man who's so agog about actresses ? " She was disconcerted 
 and distressed ; a multitude of incongruous things, all the 
 morning, had been forced upon her attention displeasing 
 pictures .and still more displeasing theories about them, vague 
 portents of perversity on the part of Nicholas, and a strange 
 eagerness on Peter's, learned apparently in Paris, to discuss, 
 with a person who had a tone she never had been exposed 
 to, topics irrelevant and uninteresting, the practical effect of
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 43 
 
 which was to make light of her presence. " Let us leave this 
 let us leave this ! " she almost moaned. The party moved 
 together toward the door of departure, and her ruffled spirit 
 was not soothed by hearing her son remark to his terrible 
 friend : " You know you don't 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, can't Nash also come to call on Julia 1 ? That's just 
 what I want that she should see him." 
 
 Peter Sherringham came humanely to her ladyship's assist- 
 ance. " 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 who'll have the best of it ! " Grace 
 Dormer exclaimed ; and Gabriel Nash stood there serenely, 
 impartially, in a graceful, detached way which seemed char- 
 acteristic 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 o'clock don't 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 Elysees Nick 
 Dormer, looking round, saw that his fiiend had disappeared. 
 Biddy had attached herself to Peter, 'and Grace apparently 
 had not encouraged Mr. Nash.
 
 V. 
 
 LADY AGNES' s idea had been that her son should go straight 
 from the Palais de 1'Industrie to the Hotel de Hollande, with 
 or without his mother and his sisters, as his humour should 
 seem to recommend. Much as she desired to see their 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 Hotel 
 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 con- 
 ference 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 1 ? so quickly did the good lady's imagination travel. 
 And now that idea appealed to him less than a ramble in 
 search of old books and prints, 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 man's want of precipitation. She would have 
 liked to represent him as tremendously occupied, in his room 
 at their own hotel, in getting off political letters to every one 
 it should concern, and particularly in drawing up his address 
 to the electors of Harsh. Fortunately she was a woman of 
 innumerable discretions, and a part of the worn look that sat 
 in her face came from her having schooled herself for years, in
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 45 
 
 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 atten- 
 tion 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 toward keeping the place warm for 
 him. She had been a little vexed that Peter had not ad- 
 ministered more of a push toward the Hotel de Hollande, clear 
 as it had become to her now that there was a foreignness in 
 Peter which was not to be counted on and which made him 
 speak of English affairs and even of English domestic politics 
 as local. 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 Con- 
 corde, 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 
 Peter's influence with her son as exerted a little more in 
 favour of localism. She had a sense that he would not 
 abbreviate the boy's ill-timed Jldnerie. 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 ladyship's 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 they're cheaper.''
 
 46 THE TEAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 
 coining 1 When people were in Paris for a few days they 
 didn't 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 Nick's standing ? Didn't she 
 recognize the importance of being there to see him about it ? 
 Lady Agnes wondered whether Julia's 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 
 tolJ her that its being important he should see her early 
 would make no difference with him told her that he wouldn't 
 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 dis- 
 liked having to tell Mrs. Dallow that Nick wouldn't see her 
 till the evening, but now she disliked still more her not being 
 there to hear it. She even resented a little her kinswoman's 
 not having reasoned that she and the girls would come in 
 any event, and not thought them worth staying in for. It 
 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, Julia's seeking a little to avoid them. 
 Was she growing to dislike them ? Did she think they kept 
 too sharp an eye on her, so that the idea of their standing in 
 a still closer relation 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 47 
 
 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 shouldn't 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 doesn't get on 
 with her husband s female belongings, and was even willing 
 to be sacrificed to it in her disciplined degree. But she 
 desired not to be sacrificed for nothing : if she was to be 
 objected to as a mother-in-law she wished to be the mother- 
 in-law first. 
 
 At the hotel in the Rue de Rivoli she had the disappoint- 
 ment 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 what- 
 ever 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 Julia's 
 card at the hotel (the sign of a hope of catching them just 
 as they came back from the Salon), she would have made a 
 second attempt to see her before the evening ; but now cer- 
 tainly 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 con- 
 tinued their frugal prowl, as Biddy rather irritatingly called 
 it. They went into five shops to buy a hat for Biddy, and her 
 ladyship's presuppositions of cheapness were wofully belied. 
 
 " Who in the world is your funny friend ] " Peter Sherring- 
 ham meanwhile asked of his kinsman. He lost no time as 
 they walked together.
 
 48 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " Ah, there's something else you lost by going to Cam- 
 bridge you lost Gabriel Nash ! " 
 
 "He sounds like an Elizabethan dramatist," Sherringham 
 said. " But I haven't lost him, since it appears now that I 
 shall not be able to have you without him." 
 
 " Oh, as for that, wait a little. I'm going to try him again, 
 but I don't know how he wears. What I mean is that you 
 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 1 " 
 
 " 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 nights ; one saw him rise and rise and turn summersaults 
 in the blue, and wondered how far he could go. He's very 
 intelligent, and I should think it might be interesting to find 
 out what it is that prevents the whole man from being as good 
 as his parts. I mean in case he isn't so good." 
 
 '' I see you more than suspect that. May it not simply be 
 that he's an ass ? " 
 
 " That would be the whole I shall see in time but it 
 certainly isn't one of the parts. It may be the effect, but it 
 isn't the cause, and it's for the cause that I claim an interest. 
 I imagine you think he's 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 Sherring- 
 ham. " The only bad one would be one that shouldn't preserve 
 our difference. You needn't tell me you agree with him, for 
 frankly I don't care." 
 
 "Then your passion still burns 1 " Nick Dormer asked. 
 
 " My passion?" 
 
 " I don't mean for any individual exponent of the contest- 
 able art : mark the guilty conscience, mark the rising blush, 
 mark the confusion of mind ! I mean the old sign one knew 
 you best by : your permanent stall at the Francais, your 
 inveterate attendance at premieres^ the way you ' follow ' the 
 young talents and the old." 
 
 " Yes, it's still my little hobby : my little folly, if you like. 
 I don't see that I get tired of it. What will you have 1 ? 
 Strong predilections are rather a blessing j they are simplify- 
 ing. I am fond of representation the representation of life : 
 I like it better, I think, than the real thing. You like it, too,
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 49 
 
 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. It's an amusement 
 like another : I don't pretend to call it by any exalted name ; 
 but in this vale of friction it will serve. One can lose one's 
 self in it, and it has 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. 
 
 " Don't 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? That's not my ideal of choice recreation, but I 
 would undertake to do it sooner. You're a young statesman 
 (who happens to be en disponibilite for the moment), but you 
 spend not a little of your time in besmearing canvas with 
 bright-coloured pigments. The idea of representation fascin- 
 ates you, but in your case it's 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 don't aspire to leave works of my own. You're 
 a painter, possibly a great one ; but I'm not an actor." Nick 
 Dormer declared 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 
 
 E
 
 50 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 painter, your portrait of the complicated Nash is lamentably 
 dim." 
 
 " He's not at all complicated ; he's only too simple to give 
 an account of. Most people have a lot of attributes and 
 appendages that dress them up and superscribe them, and what 
 I like him for is that he hasn't any at all. It makes him so 
 cool." 
 
 " By Jove, you match him there ! It's an attribute to 
 be tolerated. How does he manage it 1 " 
 
 " I haven't the least idea I don't know that he is tolerated. 
 I don't think any one has ever detected the process. His 
 means, his profession, his belongings have never anything to 
 do with the question. He doesn't shade off into other people ; 
 he's as neat as an outline cut out of paper with scissors. I 
 like him, therefore, because in intercourse with him you know 
 what you've got hold of. With most men you don't : to pick 
 the flower you must break off the whole dusty, thorny, worldly 
 branch ; you find you are taking up in your grasp all sorts of 
 other people and things, dangling accidents and conditions. 
 Poor Nash has none of those ramifications ; he's 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 Wind- 
 rush, 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, con-
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 51 
 
 sidered 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 ladyship's 
 behalf was not an incitement to grandeur. 
 
 Nick had a room under his mother's roof, which he mainly 
 used to dress for dinner when 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 indis- 
 pensable. 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 bean satisfied ; and in fact the only ques- 
 tion of portraiture had been when the wives and daughters 
 of several of them expressed a wish for the picture of their 
 handsome young member. Nick had not offered to paint it 
 himself, and the studio was taken for granted rather than 
 much looked into by the ladies in Calcutta Gardens. Too 
 express a disposition to regard whims of this sort as 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 Nick's 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 expan-
 
 52 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 sion \vas 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. 
 Carteret's behaviour could have no name at all unless one 
 were prepared to call it encouraging. He had never promised 
 anything, but he was one of the delightful persons with whom 
 the redemption precedes or dispenses with the vow. He had 
 been an early and lifelong friend of the late right honourable 
 gentleman, a political follower, a devoted admirer, a stanch 
 supporter in difficult hours. He had never married, espousing 
 nothing more reproductive than Sir Nicholas's views (he used 
 to write letters to the Times in favour of them), and had, so 
 far as was known, neither chick nor child ; nothing but an 
 amiable little family of eccentricities, the flower of which was 
 his odd taste for living in a small, steep, clean country town, 
 all green gardens and red walls, with a girdle of hedge-rows, 
 clustering about an immense brown old abbey. When Lady 
 Agnes's imagination rested upon the future of her second son 
 she liked to remember that Mr. Carteret had nothing to 
 " keep-up : " the inference seemed so direct that he would keep 
 up Nick. 
 
 The most important event in the life of this young man had 
 been incomparably his victory, under his father's eyes, more 
 than two years before, in the sharp contest for Crockhurst a 
 victory which his consecrated name, his extreme youth, his 
 ardour in the fray, the general personal sympathy of the party 
 and the attention excited by the fresh cleverness of his 
 speeches, tinted with young idealism and yet sticking suffi- 
 ciently 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, 
 Avho 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 boy's 
 mother religiously preserved, cut out and tied together with a 
 ribbon, in the innermost drawer of a favourite cabinet. But 
 it had been a barren, or almost a barren triumph, for in the 
 order of importance in Nick's history another incident had 
 run it, as the phrase is, very close : nothing less than the 
 quick dissolution of the Parliament in which he was so mani- 
 festly 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 53 
 
 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 son's 
 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 boy's 
 nature and manner from that moment the most unmistakable 
 traces. If his tendency to reverie increased, it was because 
 he had so much to think over in what his pale father had said 
 to him in the hushed, dim chamber, laying 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-ordin- 
 ating power in relation to detail," which was one of the great 
 characteristics of Sir Nicholas's high distinction (the most 
 analytic of the weekly papers was always talking about it), 
 had enabled him to rescue the prospect from any shade of 
 vagueness or of ambiguity. 
 
 Five years before Nick Dormer went up to be questioned 
 by the electors of Crockhurst, Peter Sherringham 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 acqtiaintance, 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 Theatre Frangais as a sedative to his ambition. Nick's 
 inferiority in age to his cousin sat on him more lightly than 
 when they had been in their teens ; and indeed no one can 
 very well be much older than a young man who has figured 
 for a year, however imperceptibly, in the House of Commons. 
 Separation and diversity had made them strange enough to
 
 54 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 each other to give a tasto 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 com- 
 passionate 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 Dormer's express enjoyment of Paris, the shop- 
 windows on the quays, the old books on the parapet, the gaiety 
 of the river, the grandeur of the Louvre, 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.
 
 VI. 
 
 WHEN Nick arrived with the three members of his family, 
 Peter Sherringham was seated, in the restaurant at which the 
 tryst had been taken, at a small but immaculate table ; but 
 Mrs. Dallovv was not yet on the scene, and they had time for 
 a sociable settlement time to take their places and xmfolcl 
 their napkins, crunch their rolls, breathe the savoury air and 
 watch the door, before the usual raising of heads and sus- 
 peiisicm of forks, the sort of stir that accompanied most of 
 this lady's movements, announced her entrance. The dame de, 
 comptoir ducked and re-ducked, the people looked round, Peter 
 and Nick got up, there was a shuffling of chairs Julia was 
 there. Peter had related how he had stopped at her hotel to 
 bring her with him and had found her, according to her 
 custom, by no means ready ; on which, fearing that his guests 
 would come first to the rendezvous and find no proper welcome, 
 he had come off without her, leaving her to follow. He had 
 not brought a friend, as he intended, having divined that Julia 
 would prefer a pure family party, if she wanted to talk about 
 her candidate. Now she stood there, looking down at the 
 table and her expectant kinsfolk, drawing off her gloves, letting 
 her brother draw off her jacket, lifting her hands for some 
 rearrangement of her bonnet. She looked at Nick last, smiling, 
 but only for a moment. She said to Peter, " Are we going to 
 dine here 1 Oh dear, why didn't you have a private room ? " 
 
 Nick had not seen her at all for several weeks, and had seen 
 her but little for a year, but her off-hand, cursory manner had 
 not altered in the interval. She spoke remarkably fast, as if 
 speech were not in itself a pleasure to have it over as soon 
 as possible ; and her brusquerie was of the kind that friendly 
 critics account for by pleading shyness. Shyness had never 
 appeared to him an ultimate quality or a real explanation of 
 anything ; it only explained an effect by another effect, giving 
 a bad fault another name. What he suspected in Julia was 
 that her mind was less graceful than her person ; an ugly, a 
 really damnatory idea, which as yet he had only half accepted. 
 It was a case in which she was entitled to the benefit of every 
 doubt and ought not to be judged without a complete trial. 
 Dormer, meanwhile, was afraid of the trial (this was partly
 
 56 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 why, of late, he had been to see her so little), because he was 
 afraid of the sentence, afraid of anything, happening which 
 should lessen the pleasure it was actually in the power of her 
 beauty to give. There were people who thought her rude, and 
 he hated rude women. If he should fasten on that view, or 
 rather if that view should fasten on him, what could still 
 please and what he admired in her would lose too much of its 
 sweetness. If it be thought odd that he had not yet been 
 able to read the character of a woman he had known since 
 childhood, the answer is that that character had grown faster 
 than Nick Dormer's observation. The growth was constant, 
 whereas the observation was but occasional, though it had 
 begun early. If he had attempted to phrase the matter to 
 himself, as he probably had not, he might have said that the 
 effect she produced upon him was too much a compulsion ; not 
 the coercion of design, of importunity, nor the vulgar pressure 
 of family expectation, a suspected desire that he should like 
 her enough to marry her, but something that was a mixture 
 of diverse things, of the sense that she was imperious and 
 generous but probably more the former than the latter and 
 of a certain prevision of doom, the influence of the idea that he 
 should come to it, that he was predestined. 
 
 This had made him shrink from knowing the worst about 
 her ; the desire, not to get used to it in time, but what was 
 more characteristic of him, to interpose a temporary illusion. 
 Illusions and realities and hopes and fears, however, fell into 
 confusion whenever he met her after a separation. The 
 separation, so far as seeing her alone or as continuous talk 
 was concerned, had now been tolerably long ; had lasted really 
 ever since his failure to regain nib seat. An impression had 
 come to him that she judged that failure rather harshly, had 
 thought he ought to have done better. This was a part of 
 her imperious strain, and a part to which it was not easy to 
 accommodate one's self on a present basis. If he were to 
 marry her he should come to an understanding with her : he 
 should give her his own measure as well as take hers. But 
 the understanding, in the actual case, might suggest too much 
 that he was to marry her. You could quarrel with your wife, 
 because there were compensations for her ; but you might 
 not be prepared to offer these compensations as prepayment 
 for the luxury of quarrelling. 
 
 It was not that such a luxury would not be considerable, 
 Nick Dormer thought, as Julia Dallow's fine head poised itself 
 before him again ; a high spirit was a better thing than a poor
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 57 
 
 one to be mismated with, any day in the year. She had much 
 the same colouring as her brother, but as nothing else in her 
 face was the same the resemblance was not striking. Her hair 
 was of so dark a brown that it was commonly regarded as 
 black, and so abundant that a plain arrangement was required 
 to keep it in discreet relation to the rest of her person. Her 
 eyes were of a gray tint that was sometimes pronounced too 
 light ; and they were not sunken in her face, but placed well 
 on the surface. Her nose was perfect, but her mouth was too 
 small ; and Nick Dormer, and doubtless other persons as well, 
 had sometimes wondered how, with such a mouth, her face 
 could have expressed decision. Her figure helped it, for she 
 looked tall (being extremely slender), though she was not ; and 
 her head took turns and positions which, though they were a 
 matter of but half an inch out of the common, this way or that, 
 somehow contributed to the air of resolution and temper. If 
 it had not been for her extreme delicacy of line and surface 
 she might have been called bold ; but as it was she looked 
 refined and quiet refined by tradition and quiet for a pur- 
 pose. And altogether she was beautiful, with the pure style 
 of her capable head, her hair like darkness, her eyes like early 
 twilight, her mouth like a rare pink flower. 
 
 Peter said that he had not taken a private room because he 
 knew Biddy's tastes ; she liked to see the world (she had told 
 him so), the curious people, the coming and going of Paris. 
 "Oh, anything for Biddy ! " Julia replied, smiling at the girl 
 and taking her place. Lady Agnes and her elder daughter 
 exchanged one of their looks, and Nick exclaimed jocosely that 
 he didn't see why the whole party should be sacrificed to a 
 presumptuous child. The presumptuous child blushingly pro- 
 tested she had never expressed any such wish to Peter, upon 
 which Nick, with broader humour, revealed that Peter had 
 served them so out of stinginess : he had pitchforked them 
 together in the public room because he wouldn't go to the 
 expense of a cabinet. He had brought no guest, no foreigner 
 of distinction nor diplomatic swell, to honour them, and now 
 they would see what a paltry dinner he would give them. 
 Peter stabbed him indignantly with a long roll, and Lady 
 Agnes, who seemed to be waiting for some manifestation on 
 Mrs. Dallow's part which didn't come, concluded, with a certain 
 coldness, that they quite sufficed to themselves for privacy as 
 well as for society. Nick called attention to this fine phrase 
 of his mother's, said it was awfully neat, while Grace and 
 Biddy looked harmoniously at Julia's clothes. Nick felt
 
 58 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 nervous, and joked a good deal to carry it off a levity that 
 didn't prevent Julia's saying to him, after a moment : " You 
 might have come to see ine to-day, you know. Didn't you get 
 my message from Peter 1 " 
 
 " Scold him, Julia scold him well. I begged him to go," 
 said Lady Agnes ; and to this Grace added her voice with an 
 " Oh, Julia, do give it to him ! " These words, however, had 
 not the effect they suggested, for Mrs. Dallow only murmured, 
 with an ejaculation, in her quick, curt way, that that would 
 be making far too much of him. It was one of the things in 
 her which Nick Dormer mentally pronounced ungraceful that 
 a perversity of pride or shyness always made her disappoint 
 you a little if she saw you expected a thing. She was certain 
 to snub effusiveness. This vice, however, was the last thing 
 of which Lady Agnes would have consented to being accused ; 
 and Nick, while he replied to Julia that he was certain he 
 shouldn't have found her, was not unable to perceive the 
 operation on his mother of that shade of manner. " He ought 
 to have gone ; he owed you that," she went on ; " but it's very 
 true he would have had the same luck as we. I went with the 
 girls directly after luncheon. I suppose you got our card." 
 
 " He might have come after I came in," said Mrs. Dallow. 
 
 " Dear Julia, I'm going to see you to-night. I've been 
 waiting for that," Nick rejoined. 
 
 " Of course we had no idea when "you would come in," said 
 Lady Agnes. 
 
 " I'm so sorry. You must come to-morrow. I hate calls at 
 night," Julia remarked. 
 
 " Well, then, will you roam with me ? Will you wander 
 through Paris on my arm?" Nick asked, smiling. "Will you 
 take a drive with me ? " 
 
 " Oh, that would be perfection ! " cried Grace. 
 
 " I thought we were all going somewhere to the Hippo- 
 drome, Peter," said Biddy. 
 
 " Oh, not all ; just you and me ! " laughed Peter. 
 
 " I am going home to my bed. I've earned my rest," Lady 
 Agnes sighed. 
 
 " Can't Peter take us ? " asked Grace. " Nick can take you 
 home, mamma, if Julia won't receive him, and I can look 
 perfectly after Peter and Biddy." 
 
 "Take them to something amusing; please take them/' 
 Mrs. Dallow said to her brother. Her voice was kind, but had 
 the expectation of assent in it, and Nick observed both the 
 indulgence and the pressure. " You're tired, poor dear," she
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 59 
 
 continued to Lady Agnes. " Fancy your being dragged about 
 so ! What did you come over for 1 ? " 
 
 " My mother came because I brought her," Nick said. " It's 
 I who have dragged her about. I brought her for a little 
 change. I thought it would do her good. I wanted to see the 
 Salon." 
 
 ' : It isn't a bad time. I have a carriage, and you must use 
 it ; you must use nothing else. It will take you everywhere. 
 I will drive you about to-morrow." Julia dropped these 
 words in the same perfunctory, casual way as any others ; but 
 Nick had already noted, and he noted now afresh, with plea- 
 sure, that her abruptness was perfectly capable of conveying a 
 benevolence. It was quite sufficiently manifest to him that 
 for the rest of the time she might be near his mother she 
 would do her numberless good turns. She would give things 
 to the girls he had a private adumbration of that ; expensive 
 Parisian, perhaps not perfectly useful things. 
 
 Lady Agnes was a woman who measured reciprocities and 
 distances ; but she was both too subtle and too just not to 
 recognize the smallest manifestation that might count, either 
 technically or essentially, as a service. " Dear Julia ! " she 
 exclaimed, responsively ; and her tone made this brevity of 
 acknowledgment sufficient. What Julia had said was all she 
 wanted. " It's so interesting about Harsh/' she added. " We're 
 immensely excited." 
 
 " Yes, Nick looks it. Merci, pas de vin. It's just the 
 thing for you, you know.' 1 
 
 " To be sure he knows it. He's immensely grateful. It's 
 really very land of you." 
 
 " You do me a very great honour, Julia," said Nick. 
 
 "Don't be tiresome ! " exclaimed Mrs. Dallow. 
 
 " We'll talk about it later. Of course there are lots of 
 points," Nick pursued. "At present let us be purely con- 
 vivial. Somehow Harsh is such a false note here. A tout a 
 Theatre/" 
 
 " My dear fellow, you've caught exactly the tone of Mr. 
 Gabriel Nash," Peter Sherringham observed. 
 
 " Who is Mr. Gabriel Nash ? " Mrs. Dallow asked. 
 
 " Nick, is he a gentleman ? Biddy says.so," Grace Dormer 
 interposed before this inquiry was answered. 
 
 " It is to be supposed that any one Nick brings to lunch 
 with us " Lady Agnes murmured. 
 
 "Ah, Grace, with your tremendous standard ! " her brother 
 said ; while Peter Sherringham replied to Julia that Mr.
 
 60 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 Nash was Nick's new Mentor or oracle ; whom moreover 
 she should see if she would come and have tea with him. 
 
 " I haven't the least desire to see him," Julia declared, 
 "any more than I have to talk about Harsh and bore poor 
 Peter." 
 
 " Oh, certainly, dear, you would bore me," said Sherringham. 
 
 " One thing at a time, then. Let us by all means be con- 
 vivial. Only you must show me how," Mrs. Dallow went on 
 to Nick. "What does he mean, Cousin Agnes'? Does he 
 want us to drain the wine-cup, to flash with repartee ? " 
 
 "You'll do very well," said Nick. "You are charming, 
 this evening." 
 
 " Do go to Peter's, Julia, if you want something exciting. 
 You'll see a marvellous girl," Biddy broke in, with her smile 
 on Peter. 
 
 " Marvellous for what 1 " 
 
 " For thinking she can act, when she can't," said the 
 roguish Biddy. 
 
 " Dear me, what people you all know ! I hate Peter's 
 theatrical people." 
 
 " And aren't you going home, Julia ? " Lady Agnes inquired. 
 
 " Home to the hotel ]" 
 
 " Dear, no, to Harsh, to see about everything." 
 
 " I'm in the midst of telegrams. I don't know yet." 
 
 " I suppose there's no doubt they'll have him," Lady Agnes 
 decided to pursue. 
 
 " Who will have whom 1 " 
 
 " Why, the local people and the party ; those who invite 
 a gentleman to stand. I'm speaking of my son." 
 
 "They'll have the person I want them to have, I dare say. 
 There are so many people in it, in one way or another, it's 
 dreadful. I like the way you sit there," Mrs. Dallow added 
 to Nick Dormer. 
 
 "So do I," he smiled back at her; and he thought she was 
 charming now, because she was gay and easy and willing 
 really, though she might plead incompetence, to understand 
 how jocose a dinner in a pot-house in a foreign town might be. 
 She was in good-humour, or she was going to be, and not 
 grand, nor stiff, nor indifferent, nor haughty, nor any of the 
 things that people who disliked her usually found her and 
 sometimes even a little made him believe her. The spirit of 
 mirth, in some cold natures, manifests itself not altogether 
 happily ; their effort of recreation resembles too much the 
 bath of the hippopotamus. But when Mrs. Dallow put her
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 61 
 
 elbows on the table one felt she could be trusted to get them 
 safely off again. 
 
 For a family in mourning the dinner was lively ; the more 
 so that before it was half over Julia had arranged that her 
 brother, eschewing the inferior spectacle, should take the 
 girls to the Theatre Fran^ais. It was her idea, and Nick 
 had a chance to observe how an idea was apt not to be suc- 
 cessfully controverted when it was Julia's. Even the pro- 
 gramme appeared to have been pre-arranged to suit it, just 
 the thing for the cheek of the young person " II ne Faut 
 Jurer de Rien " and " Mademoiselle de la Seigliere." Peter 
 was all willingness, but it was Julia who settled it, even to 
 sending for the newspaper (her brother, by a rare accident, 
 was unconscious of the evening's bill), and to reassuring 
 Biddy, who was happy but anxious, on the article of their not 
 getting places, their being too late. Peter could always get 
 places : a word from him and the best box was at his dis- 
 posal. She made him write the word on a card, and saw that 
 a messenger was despatched with it to the Rue de Richelieu ; 
 and all this was done without loudness or insistence, paren- 
 thetically and authoritatively. The box was bespoken ; the 
 carriage, as soon as they had had their coffee, was found to be 
 there ; Peter drove off in it with the girls, with the under- 
 standing that he was to send it back ; Nick sat waiting for it, 
 over the finished repast, with the two ladies, and then his 
 mother was relegated to it and conveyed to her apartments : 
 and all the while it was Julia who governed the succession of 
 events. " Do be nice to her," Lady Agnes murmured to him, 
 as he placed her in the vehicle at the door of the restaurant ; 
 and he guessed that it gave her a comfort to have left him 
 sitting there with Mrs. Dallow. 
 
 Nick had every disposition to be nice to her ; if things 
 went as she liked them it was an acknowledgment of a 
 certain force that was in her the force of assuming that they 
 would. Julia had her differences some of them were much 
 for the better ; and when she was in a mood like this even- 
 ing's, liberally dominant, he was ready to encourage her 
 assumptions. While they waited for the return of the 
 carriage, which had rolled away with his mother, she sat 
 opposite to him, with her elbows on the table, playing first 
 with one and then with another of the objects that en- 
 cumbered it : after five minutes of which she exclaimed, 
 "Oh, I say, we'll go!" and got up abruptly, asking for her 
 jacket. He said something about the carriage's having had
 
 62 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 orders to come back for them, and she replied : " Well, it can 
 go away again ! " She added : " I don't want a carriage ; I 
 want to walk ;" and in a moment she was but of the place, 
 with the people at the tables turning round again and the 
 caissiere swaying in her high seat. On the pavement of the 
 boulevard she looked up and down : there were people at 
 little tables, at the door ; there were people all over the broad 
 expanse of the asphalt; there was a profusion of light and a 
 pervasion of sound ; and everywhere, though the establishment 
 at which they had been dining was not in the thick of the 
 fray, the tokens of a great traffic of pleasure, that night- 
 aspect of Paris which represents it as a huge market for 
 sensations. Beyond the Boulevard des Capucines it flared 
 through the warm evening like a vast bazaar ; and opposite 
 the Cafe Durand the Madeleine rose theatrical, a high, clever 
 decor, before the footlights of the Rue Royale. " Where 
 shall we go, what shall we do?" Mrs. Dallow asked, looking 
 at her companion and somewhat to his surprise, as he had 
 supposed she only wanted to go home. 
 
 " Anywhere you like. It's so warm we might drive, instead 
 of going indoors. We might go to the Bois. That would be 
 agreeable." 
 
 " Yes, but it wouldn't be walking. However, that doesn't 
 matter. It's mild enough for anything for sitting out, like 
 all these people. And I've never walked in Paris at night : 
 it would amuse me." 
 
 Nick hesitated. " So it might, but it isn't particularly 
 recommended to ladies." 
 
 "I don't care, if it happens to suit me." 
 
 " Very well, then, we'll walk to the Bastille, if you like." 
 
 Julia hesitated, on her side, still looking round her. 
 
 "It's too far; I'm tired; we'll sit here." And she dropped 
 beside an empty table, on the " terrace " of M. Durand. 
 "This will do; it's amusing enough, and we can look at the 
 Madeleine ; that's respectable. If we must have something 
 we'll have a tnadere ; is that respectable ? Not particularly ] 
 So much the better. What are those people having 1 Bocks ? 
 Couldn't we have bocks ? Are they very low ? Then I shall 
 have one. I've been so wonderfully good I've been staying 
 at Versailles : je me dois Men cela." 
 
 She insisted, but pronounced the thin liquid in the tall 
 glass very disgusting when it was brought. Nick was amazed, 
 reflecting that it was not for such a discussion as this that his 
 mother had left him with such complacency ; and indeed he
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 63 
 
 too had, as she would have had, his share of perplexity, ob- 
 serving that nearly half an hour passed without his cousin's 
 paying anything about Harsh. 
 
 Mrs. Dallow leaned back against the lighted glass of the 
 cafe, comfortable and beguiled, watching the passers, the 
 opposite shops, the movement of the square in front of them. 
 She talked about London, about the news written to her in 
 her absence, about Cannes and the people she had seen there, 
 about her poor sister-in-law and her numerous progeny and 
 two or three droll things that had happened at Versailles. 
 She discoursed considerably about herself, mentioning certain 
 things she meant to do on her return to town, her plans for 
 the rest of the season. Her carriage came and stood there, 
 and Nick asked if he should send it away ; to which she said: 
 '' No, let it stand a bit." She let it stand a long time, and 
 then she told him to dismiss it : they would walk home. She 
 took his arm and they went along the boulevard, on the right 
 hand side, to the Rue de la Paix, saying little to each other 
 during the transit ; and then they passed into the hotel and 
 up to her rooms. All she had said on the way was that she 
 was very tired of Paris. There was a shaded lamp in her 
 salon, but the windows were open and the light of the street, 
 with its undisturbing murmur, as if everything ran on india- 
 rubber, came up through the interstices of the balcony and 
 made a vague glow and a flitting of shadows on the ceiling. 
 Her maid appeared, busying herself a moment ; and when she 
 had gone out Julia said suddenly to her companion : " Should 
 you mind telling me what's the matter with you? " 
 
 "The matter with me?" 
 
 " Don't you want to stand? " 
 
 " I'll do anything to oblige you." 
 
 " Why should you oblige me 1 " 
 
 '' Why, isn't that the way people treat you ? " asked Nick. 
 
 "They treat me best when they are a little serious." 
 
 "My dear Julia, it seems to me I'm serious enough. 
 Surely it isn't an occasion to be so very solemn, the idea of 
 going down into a stodgy little country town and talking a 
 lot of rot." 
 
 " Why do you call it ' rot ' ? " 
 
 " Because I can think of no other name that, on the whole, 
 describes it so well. You know the sort of thing. Come ! 
 you've listened to enough of it, first and last. One blushes for 
 it when one sees it in print, in the local papers. The local papers 
 ah, the thought of them makes me want to stay in Paris."
 
 64 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 "If you don't speak well it's your own fault: you know 
 how to, perfectly. And you usually do." 
 
 " I always do, and that's what I'm ashamed of. I've got 
 the cursed humbugging trick of it. I speak beautifully. I 
 can turn it on, a fine flood of it, at the shortest notice. The 
 better it is the worse it is, the kind is so inferior. It has 
 nothing to do with the truth or the search for it ; nothing to 
 do with intelligence, or candour, or honour. It's an appeal 
 to everything that for one's self one despises," the young man 
 went on "to stupidity, to ignorance, to density, to the love 
 of names and phrases, the love of hollow, idiotic words, of 
 shutting the eyes tight and making a noise. Do men who 
 respect each other or themselves talk to each other that way ? 
 They know they would deserve kicking if they were to attempt 
 it. A man would blush to say to himself in the darkness of the 
 night the things he stands up on a platform in the garish light of 
 day to stuff into the ears of a multitude whose intelligence he 
 pretends that he esteems." Nick Dormer stood at one of the 
 windows, with his hands in his pockets. He had been looking 
 out, but as his words followed each other faster he turned 
 toward Mrs. Dallow, who had dropped upon a sofa with her 
 face to the window. She had given her jacket and gloves to 
 her maid, but had kept on her bonnet ; and she leaned forward 
 a little as she sat, with her hands clasped together in her lap 
 and her eyes upon her companion. The lamp, in a corner, 
 was so thickly veiled that the room was in tempered obscurity, 
 lighted almost equally from the street, from the brilliant shop- 
 fronts opposite. " Therefore, why be sapient and solemn about 
 it, like an editorial in a newspaper?" Nick added, with a 
 smile. 
 
 She continued to look at him for a moment after he had 
 spoken; then she said: "If you don't want to stand, you 
 have only to say so. You needn't give your reasons." 
 
 " It's too kind of you to let me off that ! And then I'm a 
 tremendous fellow for reasons ; that's my strong point, don't 
 you know? I've a lot more besides those I've mentioned, 
 done up and ready for delivery. The odd thing is that they 
 don't always govern my behaviour. I rather think I do want 
 to stand." 
 
 " Then what you said just now was a speech," Mrs. Dallow 
 rejoined. 
 
 "A speech?" 
 
 "The 'rot,' the humbug of the hustings." 
 
 " No, those great truths remain, and a good many others.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 65 
 
 But an inner voice tells me I'm in for it. And it will be 
 much more graceful to embrace this opportunity, accepting 
 your co-operation, than to wait for some other and forfeit that 
 advantage." 
 
 " I shall be very glad to help you anywhere," said Mrs. 
 Dallow. 
 
 " Thanks, awfully," murmured the young man, still standing 
 there with his hands in his pockets. " You would do it best 
 in your own place, and I have no right to deny myself such 
 a help." 
 
 Julia smiled at him for an instant. " I don't do it badly." 
 
 " Ah, you're so political ! " 
 
 " Of course I am ; it's the only decent thing to be. But I 
 can only help you if you'll help yourself. I can do a good deal, 
 but I can't do everything. If you'll work I'll work with you ; 
 but if you are going into it with your hands in your pockets 
 I'll have nothing to do with you." Nick instantly changed 
 the position of these members, and sank into a seat with his 
 elbows on his knees. " You're very clever, but you must 
 really take a little trouble. Things don't drop into people's 
 mouths." 
 
 " I'll try -I'll try. I have a great incentive," Nick said. 
 
 " Of course you have." 
 
 " My mother, my poor mother." Mrs. Dallow made a 
 slight exclamation, and he went on : "And of course, always, 
 my father, dear man. My mother's even more political than 
 you." 
 
 " I dare say she is, and quite right ! " said Mrs. Dallow. 
 
 "And she can't tell me a bit more than you can what she 
 thinks, what she believes, what she desires." 
 
 " Excuse me, I can tell you perfectly. There's one thing 
 I always desire to keep out a Tory." 
 
 " I see ; that's a great philosophy." 
 
 " It will do very well. And I desire the good of the country. 
 I'm not ashamed of that." 
 
 " And can you give me an idea of what it is the good of 
 the country? " 
 
 " I know perfectly what it isn't. It isn't what the Tories 
 want to do." 
 
 " What do they want to do ] " 
 
 "Oh, it would take me long to tell you. All sorts of 
 trash." 
 
 " It would take you long, and it would take them longer ! 
 All they want to do is to prevent us from doing. On our side,
 
 66 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 we want to prevent them from preventing us. That's about 
 as clearly as we all see it. So, on one side and the other, it's 
 a beautiful, lucid, inspiring programme." 
 
 " I don't believe in you," Mrs. Dallow replied to this, leaning 
 back on 'her sofa. 
 
 " I hope not, Julia, indeed ! " He paused a moment, still 
 with his face toward her and his elbows on his knees ; then he 
 pursued : " You are a very accomplished woman and a very 
 zealous one ; but you haven't an idea, you know to call an 
 idea. What you mainly want is to be at the head of a 
 political salon ; to start one, to keep it up, to make it a 
 success." 
 
 " Much you know me ! " Julia exclaimed ; but he could see 
 through the dimness that she had coloured a little. 
 
 " You'll have it, in time, but I won't come to it," Nick 
 went on. 
 
 "You can't come less than you do." 
 
 " When I say you'll have it, I mean you've already got it. 
 That's why I don't come." 
 
 " I don't think you know what you mean," said Mrs. 
 Dallow. "I have an idea that's as good as any of yours, any 
 of those you have treated me to this evening, it seems to me 
 the simple idea that one ought to do something or other for 
 one's country." 
 
 " ' Something or other ' certainly covers all the ground. 
 There is one thing one can always do for one's country, which 
 is not to be afraid." 
 
 "Afraid of what]" 
 
 Nick Dormer hesitated a moment, laughing ; then he said : 
 " I'll tell you another time. It's very well to talk so glibly 
 of standing," he added ; " but it isn't absolutely foreign to the 
 question that I haven't got the cash." 
 
 " What did you do before ? " asked Mrs. Dallow. 
 
 "The first time, my father paid." 
 
 " And the other time ? " 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Carteret." 
 
 "Your expenses won't be at all large; on the contrary," 
 said Julia. 
 
 " They sha'n't be ; I shall look out sharp for that. I shall 
 have the great Hutchby." 
 
 " Of course ; but, you know, I want you to do it well." She 
 paused an instant, and then : " Of course you can send the bill 
 to me." 
 
 " Thanks, awfully ; you're tremendously kind. I shouldn't
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 67 
 
 think of that." Nick Dormer got up as he said these words, 
 and walked to the window again, his companion's eyes resting 
 upon him as he stood for a moment with his back to her. "I 
 shall manage it somehow," he went on. 
 
 " Mr. Carteret will be delighted," said Julia. 
 
 " I dare say, but I hate taking people's money." 
 
 " That's nonsense, when it's for the country. Isn't it for 
 them ? " 
 
 " When they get it back ! " Nick replied, turning round 
 and looking for his hat. " It's startlingly late ; you must be 
 tired." Mrs. Dallow made no response to this, and he pursued 
 his quest, successful only when he reached a duskier corner of 
 the room, to which the hat had been relegated by his cousin's 
 maid. " Mr. Carteret will expect so much, if he pays. And 
 so would you." 
 
 " Yes, I'm bound to say I should ! " And Mrs. Dallow 
 emphasized this assertion by the way she rose erect. " If 
 you're only going in to lose, you had better stay out." 
 
 " How can I lose, with you 1 " the young man asked, 
 smiling. She uttered a word, impatiently but indistinguish- 
 ably, and he continued : " And even if I do, it will have been 
 immense fun." 
 
 " It is immense fun," said Julia. " But the best fun is to 
 win. If you don't 
 
 " If I don't 1 " he repeated, as she hesitated. 
 
 " I'll never speak to you again." 
 
 " How much you expect, even when you don't pay ! " 
 
 Mrs. Dallow's rejoinder was a justification of this remark, 
 embodying as it did the fact that if they should receive on the 
 morrow certain information on which she believed herself 
 entitled to count, information tending to show that the Tories 
 meant to fight the seat hard, not to lose it again, she should 
 look to him to be in the field as early as herself. Sunday was 
 a lost day ; she should leave Paris on Monday. 
 
 " Oh, they'll fight it hard ; they'll put up Kingsbury," said 
 Nick, smoothing his hat. "They'll all come down all that 
 can get away. And Kingsbury has a very handsome wife." 
 
 " She is not so handsome as your cousin," Mrs. Dallow 
 hazarded. 
 
 "Oh dear, no a cousin sooner than a wife, any day!" 
 Nick laughed as soon as he had said this, as if the speech had 
 an awkward side ; but the reparation, perhaps, scarcely mended 
 it, the exaggerated mock-meekness with which he added : 
 " I'll do any blessed thing you tell me."
 
 68 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " Come here to-morrow, then, as early as ten." She turned 
 round, moving to the door with him ; but before they reached 
 it she demanded, abruptly : " Pray, isn't a gentleman to do 
 anything, to be anything 1 " 
 
 "To be anything?" 
 
 " If he doesn't aspire to serve the State." 
 
 " To make his political fortune, do you mean ? Oh, bless 
 me, yes, there are other things." 
 
 " What other things, that can compare with that? " 
 
 " Well, I, for instance, I'm very fond of the arts." 
 
 "Of the arts?" 
 
 "Did you never hear of them? I'm awfully fond of 
 painting." 
 
 At this Mrs. Dallow stopped shorb, and her fine gray eyes 
 had for a moment the air of being set further forward in her 
 head. " Don't be odious ! Good-night," she said, turning 
 away and leaving him to go. 
 
 VII. 
 
 PETER SHEREINGHAM, the next day, reminded Nick that he 
 had promised to be present with him at Madame Carre's 
 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 comedie 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 Carre during half a 
 century of renown. The profusion of this testimony was 
 hardly more striking than the confession of something missed, 
 something hushed, which seemed to rise from it all and make it 
 melancholy, like a reference to clappings which, in the nature
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. G9 
 
 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 actor's 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 comedienne, the light of the French stage in 
 the early years of the century, of whose example and instruction 
 Madame Carre had had the inestimable benefit. She had often 
 described to him her rare predecessor, straight from whose 
 hands she had received her most celebrated parts, and of whom 
 her own manner was often a religious imitation ; but her 
 descriptions troubled him more than they consoled, only con- 
 firming his theory, to which so much of his observation had 
 already ministered, that the actor's 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 Yavasour. It was plain at the present hour, 
 that Miss Vavasour would have run away had she not felt
 
 70 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 for- 
 bear 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 
 Miriam's, soothingly. She had pretty, silly, near-sighted eyes, 
 a long, thin nose and an upper lip which projected over the 
 under as an ornamental cornice rests on its support. " So 
 much depends really everything ! " she said in answer to 
 some sociable observation of Sherringham's. " It's either 
 this," and she rolled her eyes expressively about the room, " or 
 it's I don't know too much what ! " 
 
 " Perhaps we're too many," Peter hazarded, to her daughter. 
 " But really, you'll find, after you fairly begin, that you'll do 
 better with four or five." 
 
 Before she answered she turned her head and lifted her fine 
 eyes. The next instant he saw they were full of tears. The 
 word she spoke, however, though uttered in a deep, serious 
 tone, had not the note of sensibility : " Oh, I don't care for 
 you ! " He laughed at this, declared it was very well said 
 and that if she could give Madame Carre such a specimen as 
 that ! The actress came in before he had finished his phrase, 
 and he observed the way the girl 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 71 
 
 Carre 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 
 prompter's 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 accom- 
 plished 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 Celimene ! " Celimene, who wore a big red 
 flower on the summit of her dense wig, had a very grand air, 
 a toss of the head and sundry little majesties of manner ; in 
 addition to which she was strange, almost grotesque, and to 
 some people would have been even terrifying, capable of re- 
 appearing, 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 com- 
 municate a few of the rudiments. " Mais celles-la, c'est une 
 plaisanterie," she went on, to Mrs. Rooth ; "whereas you and 
 your daughter, chere madame I 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 Carre gave one of her histrionic stares, throwing 
 back her head. " That's three too many. The thing is to do 
 something with one of them." 
 
 " We're very much in earnest," continued Mrs. Rooth, who 
 spoke excellent French. 
 
 " I'm glad to hear it il riy a que fa. La tete cst bien the
 
 72 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 head is very good," she said, looking at the girl. " But let us 
 see, my dear child, what you've got in it ! " The young lady 
 was still powerless to speak ; she opened her lips, but nothing 
 came. With the failure of this effort she turned her deep, 
 sombre eyes upon the three men. " Un beau regard it carries 
 well," Madame Carre hinted. But even as she spoke Miss 
 Rooth's fine gaze was suffused again, and the next moment she 
 had begun to weep. Nick Dormer sprung up ; he felt em- 
 barrassed and intrusive there was such an indelicacy in sitting 
 there to watch a poor girl's struggle with timidity. There was 
 a momentary confusion ; Mrs. Rooth's 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 Carre 
 motioned Mrs. Booth 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 Carre, 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 you've got something else too. Voyons do you know 
 anything 1 " 
 
 " I know some pieces." 
 
 " Some pieces of the repertoire ? " 
 
 Miriam Rooth stared as if she didn't understand. " I know 
 some poetry." 
 
 " English, French, Italian, German," said her mother. 
 
 Madame Carre gave Mrs. Rooth a look which expressed 
 irritation at the recurrence of this announcement. " Does she 
 wish to act in all those tongues ] The phrase-book isn't the 
 comedy." 
 
 " It is only to show you how she has been educated." 
 
 " Ah, chere 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."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 73 
 
 " And English just as well," said Miss Rooth. 
 
 " You oughtn't to be an actress ; you ought to be a 
 governess." 
 
 " Oh, don't tell us that : it's to escape from that ! " pleaded 
 Mrs. Rooth. 
 
 "I'm very sure your daughter will escape from that," Peter 
 Sherringharn 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 Celimene ; I have heard her do Celimene," 
 Gabriel Nash said to Madame Carre\ 
 
 " 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," Sherring- 
 ham gallantly interposed. 
 
 " Could you speak to any one in London could you introduce 
 her 1 " her mother eagerly asked. 
 
 " Dear madam, I must hear her first, and hear what Madame 
 Carre says." 
 
 " She has a voice of rare beauty, and I understand voices," 
 said Mrs. Rooth. 
 
 " Ah, then, if she has intelligence she has every gift." 
 
 " She has a most poetic mind," the old lady went on. 
 
 " I should like to paint her portrait ; she's made for that," 
 Nick Dormer ventured to observe to Mrs. Rooth ; partly 
 because he was struck with the girl's 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 1 " murmured Mrs. Rooth, looking 
 gratified and mystified. 
 
 Nick explained that she had no honour at all, and mean- 
 while Madame Carr6 had been questioning the girl. " Chere 
 madame, I can do nothing with your daughter : she knows too
 
 74 THE TRAGIC MtfSE!. 
 
 much ! '' she broke out. " It's a pity, because I like to catch 
 them wild." 
 
 " Oh, she's wild enough, if that's all ! And that's the very 
 point, the question of where to try," Mrs. Rooth went on. 
 " Into what do I launch her upon what dangerous, stormy 
 sea? I've thought of it so anxiously." 
 
 " Try here try the French public : they're so much the 
 most serious," said Gabriel Nash. 
 
 " Ah, no, try the English : there's such a rare opening ! " 
 Sherringham exclaimed, in quick opposition. 
 
 " Ah, it isn't the public, dear gentlemen. It's the private 
 side, the other people it's the life it's the moral atmosphere." 
 
 " Je ne connais quune scene la notre," Madame Carre 
 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 made- 
 moiselle is the person to do it," Sherringham suggested, 
 contentiously. 
 
 "Ah, but, en attendant, what can it do for her 1 ? " Madame 
 Carre asked. 
 
 "Well, anything that I can help it to do," said Peter Sherring- 
 ham, who was more and more struck with the girl's rich type. 
 Miriam Rooth sat in silence, while this discussion went on, 
 looking from one speaker to the other with a suspended, literal 
 air. 
 
 " Ah, if your part is marked out, I congratulate you, made- 
 moiselle ! " 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 mother's nature, adding another stir to 
 agitated waters. 
 
 " I feel the responsibility of what she shall find in the life, 
 the standards, of the theatre," Mrs. Rooth explained. " Where 
 is the purest tone where are the highest standards? that's 
 what I ask," the good lady continue.!, with a persistent candour 
 which elicited a peal of unceremonious but sociable laughter 
 from Gabriel Nash. 
 
 ''The purest tone quest-ce-que-c'est que fa ? " Madame Carre 
 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 75 
 
 conduct, in which she should take part wouldn't be absolutely 
 dreadful. Now, chore madarne, how about all that 1 how about 
 the conduct in the French theatre the things she should see, 
 the things she should hear ? " 
 
 " I don't 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 
 don't think I should like to see her undertake." 
 
 " There are many, no doubt, which she would do well to 
 leave alone ! " laughed the Frenchwoman. 
 
 " I shouldn't like to see her represent a very bad woman a 
 really bad one," Mrs. Rooth serenely pursued. 
 
 "Ah, in England, then, and in your theatre, every one is 
 good 1 Your plays must be even more ingenious than I 
 supposed." 
 
 " We haven't any plays," said Gabriel Nash. 
 
 " People will write them for Miss Rooth it will be a new 
 era," 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 1 " the old lady asked, engagingly. 
 
 " Oh, I know what you do with our pieces to show your 
 superior virtue ! " Madame Carre broke in, before he had time 
 to reply that he wrote nothing but diplomatic memoranda. 
 " Bad women ? Je rial joue que fa, madame. ' Really ' bad 1 
 I tried to make them real ! " 
 
 " I can say ' L' Aventuriere,' " Miriam interrupted, in a cold 
 voice which seemed to hint at a want of participation in the 
 maternal solicitudes. 
 
 " Confer on us the pleasure of hearing you, then. Madame 
 Carre will give you the replique," said Peter Sherringham. 
 
 " Certainly, my child ; I can say it without the book," 
 Madame Carre responded. "Put yourself there move that 
 chair a little away." She patted her young visitor, encourag- 
 ing 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,
 
 76 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 Madame Carre turned to the elder lady with an air which 
 showed that a rejoinder to this visitor's remarks of a moment 
 before had been gathering force in her breast. 
 
 " You mix things up, chere madame, and I have it on my 
 heart to tell you so. I believe it's rather the case with you 
 other English, and I 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. That's hard enough 
 to merit Paradise. Everything else is base humbug ! Voila, 
 chere madame, the answer I have for your scruples ! " 
 
 "It's admirable admirable; and I am glad my friend 
 Dormer here has had the great advantage of hearing you 
 utter it ! " 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 girl's 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 arid 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 of the Rue de Constantinople. 
 
 Mrs. Rooth had listened to Madame Carre with startled, 
 respectful attention, but Nick, considering her, was very sure 
 that she had not understood her hostess's 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 77 
 
 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 don't 
 know what's in her," he said to himself; "nothing, it would 
 seem, from her persistent vacancy. But such a face as that, 
 such a head, is a fortune ! " Madame Carre made her com- 
 mence, giving her the first line of the speech of Clorinde : 
 " Vous ne me fuyex pas, mon enfant, aujourd'hui." 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, arid 
 during this moment she was an incarnation the vividness of 
 \vhich drew from Sherringham a stifled cry. " Elle est bien 
 belle ah, ?a ! " murmured the old actress ; and in the pause 
 which still preceded the issue of sound from the girl's lips 
 Peter turned to his kinsman and said in a low tone : 
 
 "You must paint her just like that." 
 
 "Like that 1" 
 
 "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 Celie, in the third act of 
 the play, with a rude monotony, and then, gaining confidence, 
 with an effort at modulation which was not altogether success- 
 ful and which evidently she felt not to be so. Madame Carre 
 sent back the ball without raising her hand, repeating the 
 speeches of Celie, which her memory possessed from their 
 having so often been addressed to her, and uttering the verses 
 with soft, communicative art. So they went on through the 
 scene, and when it was over it had not precisely been a 
 triumph for Miriam Rooth. Sherringham forbore to look at 
 Gabriel Nash, and Madame Carre said : " I think you have a 
 voice, ma fille, somewhere or other. "We must try and put our 
 hand ori it." Then she asked her what instruction she had 
 had, and the girl, lifting her eyebrows, looked at her mother, 
 while her mother prompted her. 
 
 " Mrs. Delamere, in London ; she was once an ornament of 
 the English stage. She gives lessons just to a very few ; it's 
 a great favour. Such a very nice person ! But above all, 
 Signor Ruggieri I think he taught us most." Mrs. Rooth 
 explained that this gentleman was an Italian tragedian, in 
 Rome, who instructed Miriam in the proper manner of
 
 78 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 pronouncing his language, and also in the art of declaiming 
 and gesticulating. 
 
 " Gesticulating, I'll 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 Carre 
 went on ; '' that's very amusing, but the way to study is to 
 stay at home, to shut yourself up and hammer at your scales." 
 Mrs. Rooth complained that they had no home to stay at ; 
 in rejoinder to which the old actress exclaimed : " Oh, you 
 English, you are d'une legerete afaire rougir. If you haven't 
 a home you must make one. In our profession it's the first 
 requisite." 
 
 " But where ? That's what I ask ! " said Mrs. Booth. 
 
 "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 that's over." 
 
 "Study here, and go to London to appear," said Peter 
 Sherringham, feeling frivolous even as he spoke. 
 
 " To appear in French 1 " 
 
 " No, in the language of Shakespeare." 
 
 " But we can't study that here." 
 
 " Monsieur Sherringham means that he will give you 
 lessons," Madame Carre explained. "Let me not fail to say 
 it he's an excellent critic." 
 
 " How do you know that you who are perfect ? " asked 
 Sherringham : an inquiry to which the answer was forestalled 
 by the girl's rousing herself to make it public that she could 
 recite the "Nights" of Alfred de Musset. 
 
 "Diable!" said the actress, "that's more than I can! 
 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 Musset's 
 poet with his muse rolled it loudly and proudly, tossed it 
 and tumbled it about the room. Madame Carre watched her 
 at first, but after a few moments she shut her eyes, though 
 the best part of the business was to look. Sherringham had
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 79 
 
 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 em- 
 boldened. 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 Carre\ 
 whom she had heard declaim them, she produced as if she had 
 but a dim idea of their meaning. "When she had finished 
 Madame Carre passed no judgment ; 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. 
 1 think he's 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 Carre 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 can't call me either ill-mannered or ill-natured. I'm the 
 showman of the occasion, moreover, and I avert myself, leaving 
 you to judge. If there's a thing in life I hate, it's this idiotic 
 new fashion of the drawing-room recitation, and the insuffer- 
 able creatures who practise it, who prevent conversation and 
 whom, as they are beneath it, you can't 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
 
 80 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 
 Carre 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 judgment 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 acquaint- 
 ance, 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 em- 
 bodying one or two primary aids, a voice and an eye, but 
 essentially formed by work, unremitting and ferocious work. 
 "I don't care a straw for your handsome girls," she said; 
 (i but bring me the one who is ready to drudge the tenth part 
 of the way Rachel drudged, and I'll forgive her her beauty.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 81 
 
 Of course, notez Irien, Rachel wasn't a bete : that's a gift, if 
 you like ! " 
 
 Mrs. Rooth, who was evidently very proud of the figure her 
 daughter had made, appealed to Madame Carre, rashly and 
 serenely, for a verdict ; but fortunately this lady's voluble 
 bonne came rattling in at the fame 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. She's loud and coarse." 
 
 " She's very much afraid ; you must allow for that." 
 
 " Afraid of me, immensely, but not a bit afraid of her 
 authors nor of you ! " added Madame Carre, smiling. 
 
 " Aren't you prejudiced by what Mr. Nash has told you? " 
 
 " "Why prejudiced ? He only told me she was very hand- 
 some." 
 
 " And don't you think she is? " 
 
 "Admirable. But I'm not a photographer nor a dress- 
 maker. I can't 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 didn't perceive in what 
 she did a single nuance, a single inflection or intention. But 
 not one, mon cher. I don't think she's intelligent." 
 
 " But don't they often seem stupid at first 1" 
 
 " Say always ! " 
 
 " Then don't some succeed even when they are hand- 
 some?" 
 
 " When they are handsome they always succeed in one way 
 or another." 
 
 "You don't understand us English," said Peter Sher- 
 ringham. 
 
 Madame Carre drank her tea ; then she replied : " Marry 
 her, my son, and give her diamonds. Make her an ambassa- 
 dress ; she will look very well." 
 
 "She interests you so little that you don't care to 'do 
 anything for her ? " 
 
 " To do anything ? " 
 
 "To give her a few lessons." 
 
 The old actress looked at him a moment : after which, 
 rising from her place near the table on which the tea had 
 
 G
 
 82 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 been served, she said to Miriam Rooth : " My dear child, I 
 give my voice for the scene anglaise. You did the English 
 things best." 
 
 " Did I do them well 1 " asked the girl. 
 
 " You have a great deal to learn ; but you have force. The 
 principal things sont encore a degager, but they will come. 
 You must work." 
 
 " I think she has ideas," said Mrs. E-ooth. 
 
 " She gets them from you," Madame Carre replied. 
 
 " I must say, if it's to be our theatre I'm relieved. I think 
 it's 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. 
 
 " That's fortunate, as in English you haven't any one else 
 to play." 
 
 " But he's so great and he's so pure ! " said Mrs. Rooth. 
 
 " That also seems very fortunate for you," Madame Carre" 
 phrased. 
 
 " You think me actually pretty bad, don't JOIT ? " the girl 
 demanded, with her serious face. 
 
 " Mon Dieu, que vous dirai-je ? Of course you're rough ; 
 but so was I, at your age. And if you find your voice it may 
 carry you far. Besides, what does it matter what I think ? 
 How can I judge for your English public I" 
 
 " How shall I find my voice ? " asked Miriam Rooth. 
 
 " By trying. II n'y a que a. Work like a horse, night 
 and day. Besides, M. Sherringham, as he says, will help you. " 
 
 Sherringham, hearing his name, turne-1 round, and the girl 
 appealed to him. "Will you help me, really 1 " 
 
 "To find her voice," Madame Carre interposed. 
 
 " The voice, when it's worth anything, comes from the 
 heart ; so I suppose that's where to look for it," Gabriel Nash 
 suggested. 
 
 " Much you know ; you haven't got any ! " Miriam retorted,
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 83 
 
 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 confer- 
 ence he had just had with the young lady's 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 1 " to which it appeared to Sherringham that uncom- 
 fortable 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 Avith the ex- 
 aggerated "points" of her person and the poverty of her 
 instinct of expression, constituted a kind of challenge pre- 
 sented 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 person's 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 Carre, and I'm sure we're immensely indebted 
 to him," Mrs. Rooth said to her daughter, with an air affec- 
 tionately corrective. 
 
 " But what good does that do us 1 " the girl asked, smiling 
 at the actress and gently laying her finger-tips upon her hand. 
 -" Madame Carre listens to me with adorable patience and 
 then sends me about my business 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 you've got it." 
 
 " Come and practise it to me, if your mother will be so kind 
 as to bring you," said Peter Sherringham.
 
 84 
 
 "Do you give lessons do you understand '? " Miriam asked. 
 
 " I'm an old playgoer, and I have unbounded belief in my 
 own judgment." 
 
 " ' 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 you'll say 
 there are less honourable faults. We'll come to see you with 
 pleasure. Oh, I've been at the Embassy, when I was her age. 
 Therefore why shouldn't she go to-day? That was in Lord 
 Davenant's time." 
 
 " A few people are coming to tea with me to-morrow. 
 Perhaps you will come then, at five o'clock." 
 
 " It will remind me of the dear old times," said Mrs. 
 Rooth. 
 
 '' Thank you ; I'll try and do better to-morrow," Miriam 
 remarked, very sweetly. 
 
 " You do better every minute ! " Sherringham exclaimed, 
 looking at Madame Carre in emphasis of this declaration. 
 
 '' She is finding her voice," the actress responded. 
 
 " She is finding a friend ! " cried Mrs. Booth. 
 
 "And don't forget, when you come to London, my hope 
 that you'll come and see me," Nick Dormer said to the girl. 
 " To try and paint you that would do me good ! " 
 
 " She is finding even two," said Madame Carre. 
 
 *' It's to make up for one I've lost ! " And Miriam looked 
 with very good stage-scorn at Gabriel Nash. " It's he that 
 thinks I'm bad." 
 
 " You say that to make me drive you home ; you know it 
 will," Nash returned. 
 
 " We'll all take you home ; why not 1 " Sherringham 
 asked. 
 
 Madame Carre looked at the handsome girl, handsomer than 
 ever at this moment, and at the three young men who had 
 taken their hats and stood ready to accompany her. A 
 deeper expression came for an instant into her hard, bright 
 eyes, while she sighed : " Ah, la jeunesse I you'd always have 
 that, my child, if you were the greatest goose on earth ! "
 
 VIII. 
 
 AT Peter Sherringham's, 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 
 Carre's could have contributed to render the invitation 
 prompt. His curiosity had been more appeased than stimu- 
 lated, 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 responsi- 
 bility weighed upon him during the twenty-four hours that 
 followed the ultimate dispersal of the little party at the door 
 of the Hotel do la Garonne. 
 
 On quitting Madame Carre's the two ladies had gracefully 
 declined Mr. Nash's 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 their mother's, 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 cheap- 
 ness, 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 didn't honour with her confi- 
 dence. She was fragmentary and abrupt, as well as not in 
 the least shy, subdued to dread of Madame Carre as she had
 
 86 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 Hotel de la Garonne was in a small, unrenovated street, 
 in which the cobble-stones of old Paris still flourished, lying 
 between the Avenue de 1' Opera and the Place de la Bourse. 
 Sherringham had occasionally passed through this dim by-way, 
 but he had never noticed the tall, stale maison meublee, whose 
 aspect, that of a third-rate provincial inn, was an illustration 
 of Mrs. Rooth's shrunken standard. 
 
 " We would ask you to come up, but it's quite at the top 
 and we haven't a sitting-room," the poor lady bravely explained. 
 " We had to receive Mr. Nash at a cafe." 
 
 Nick Dormer declared that he liked cafes, and Miriam, 
 looking at his cousin, dropped with a flash of passion the 
 demand: " Do you wonder that I should want to do something, 
 so that we can stop living like pigs 1 " 
 
 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 couldn't pass 
 for having come to "meet" them even her mother's insinu- 
 ating gentility failed to put the occasion on that footing and 
 that she must therefoi-e 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 TRAGIC MUSE. 87 
 
 the Dormers; mainly the wives, with their husbands, of 
 Sherringham's 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 didn't 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 him- 
 self suspecting that Gabriel Nash had intimated to the old 
 woman that interference was necessary. For himself he was 
 chiefly glad that Madame Carre was not there. It was present 
 to him that she would have deemed the exhibition, with its 
 badness, its assui'ance, 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 eager- 
 ness 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 mondc, 
 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 counte- 
 nance 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
 
 88 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 very clever and successful ; which showed, to Sherringham's 
 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 he's your brother. 
 I have made his acquaintance since. He wants to paint my 
 portrait. Do you think he'll do it well?" He was afraid 
 Miriam was something of a brut.?, 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 brother's an artist, I don't understand how he's in 
 Parliament." 
 
 " Oh, he isn't in Parliament now ; we only hope he will be." 
 
 " Oh, I see." 
 
 "And he isn't an artist, either," Biddy felt herself con- 
 scientiously bound to subjoin. 
 
 " Then he isn't anything," said Miss Rooth. 
 
 " Well he's immensely clever." 
 
 "Oh, I see," Miss Rooth again replied. "Mr. ISTash has 
 puffed him up so." 
 
 "I don't know Mr. Nash," said Biddy, guilty of a little 
 dryness,. and also of a little misrepresentation, and feeling 
 rather snubbed. 
 
 " Well, you needn't wish to." 
 
 Biddy stood with her a moment longer, still looking at her 
 and not knowing what to say next, but not finding her any 
 less handsome because she had such odd mariners. Biddy 
 had an ingenious little mind, which always tried as much as
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 89 
 
 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 Peter's 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 io listen to them as this 
 striking performer listened. She received their advances very 
 differently from the way she had received Biddy's. Sherring- 
 ham 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. Booth, toward whom Lady Agnes's 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 
 didn't even look at her to invite her also to confess that, in 
 vulgar parlance, they had been sold. He himself spoke to 
 his sister, who was leaning back, in rather a detached way, 
 in the corner of a sofa, saying something which led her to 
 remark in reply : " Ah, I dare say it's extremely fine, but I 
 don't care for tragedy when it treads on one's toes. She's like 
 a cow who has kicked over the milking-pail. She ought to be 
 tied up ! " 
 
 " My poor Julia, it isn't extremely fine ; it isn't fine at all," 
 Sherringham rejoined, with some irritation. 
 
 " Excuse me. I thought that was why you invited us." 
 
 " I thought she was different," Sherringham said. 
 
 "Ah, if you don't 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. She's interesting." 
 His sister gave him a momentary mystified glance, and he 
 added, "And she's awful!" He felt stupidly annoyed, and 
 he was ashamed of his annoyance, for he could have assigned 
 no reason for it. It didn't make it less, for the moment, to
 
 90 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 Nash's very 
 presence. He remembered that it had been a part of their 
 bargain, as it were, that he should present that gentleman 
 to his sister. He was not sorry to be relieved of the office 
 by Nick, and he even, tacitly and ironically, wished his 
 cousin's friend joy of a colloquy with Mrs. Dallow. Sherring- 
 ham's 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 encourag- 
 ing with him : he was so timid and so easily disconcerted. 
 
 Gabriel Nash dropped into a chair by the arm of Julia's 
 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 : " It's very awkward when people are told one is 
 clever." 
 
 " It's awkward if one isn't," said Mr. Nash, smiling. 
 
 "Yes, but so few people are -enough to be talked about." 
 
 " Isn't that just the reason why such a matter, such an 
 exception, ought to be mentioned to them 1 " asked Gabriel 
 Nash. " They mightn't find it out for themselves. Of course, 
 however, as you say, there ought to be a certainty ; then they 
 are surer to know it. Dormer's a dear fellow, but he's rash 
 and superficial." 
 
 Mrs. Dallow, at this, turned her glance a second time upon 
 her interlocutor ; but during the rest of the conversation she
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 91 
 
 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 communi- 
 cations and contacts for it, Julia Dallow's 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 un wrought contempt ready 
 for them. It was a singular circumstance that she was scepti- 
 cal 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. 
 Dallovv had been moved to exclaim that Peter and Nick knew 
 the most extraordinary people. As regards Peter the attitud- 
 inizing 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
 
 92 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 Miss Dallow's kind brother had mainly intended in 
 arranging the little party. (Mrs. Dallow hated to hear him 
 call her brother " kind " ; the term seemed offensively patron- 
 izing.) But he himself, he related, was now constantly 
 employed in the same beneficence, Iistening7 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 indi- 
 vidual ; 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. Hadn't 
 she noticed what an immense part of the public attention he 
 held, in London at least 1 For in Paris society was not so 
 pervaded with him, and the women of the profession, in 
 particular, were not in every drawing-room. 
 
 " I don't know what you mean," Mrs. Dallow said. " I 
 know nothing of any such people." 
 
 "Aren't they under your feet wherever you turn their 
 performances, their portraits, their speeches, their autobio- 
 graphies, 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 they're 
 everywhere " and Mrs. Dallow paused a moment " I don't 
 go everywhere." 
 
 "I don't go anywhere, but they mount on my back, at 
 home, like the Old Man of the Sea. Just observe a little 
 when you return to London," Nash continued, with friendly 
 instructiveness. Mrs. Dallow got up at this she didn't like 
 receiving directions; but no other corner of the room appeared 
 to offer her any particular reason for crossing to it : she never 
 did such a thing without a great inducement. So she remained 
 standing there, as if she were quitting the place in a moment, 
 which indeed she now determined to do ; and her interlocutor, 
 rising also, lingered beside her, unencouraged but unperturbed. 
 He went on to remark that Mr. Sherringham was quite right
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 93 
 
 to offer Miss Rooth an afternoon's sport ; she deserved it as 
 a fine, brave, amiable girl. She was highly educated, knew a 
 dozen languages, was of illustrious lineage and was immensely 
 particular. 
 
 " Immensely particular ? " Mrs. Dallow repeated. 
 
 " Perhaps I should say that her mother is, on her behalf. 
 Particular about the sort of people they meet the tone, the 
 standard. I'm bound to say they're like you : they don't go 
 everywhere. That spirit 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 : " She's 
 dreadfully vulgar." 
 
 " Ah, don't 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 shouldn't I say to him that she's vulgar? " 
 
 " Because he admires her so much ; he wants to paint her." 
 
 " To paint her 1 " 
 
 "To paint her portrait." 
 
 " Oh, I see. I dare say she'd do for that." 
 
 Gabriel Nash laughed gaily. "If that's your opinion of 
 her you are not very complimentary to the art he aspires to 
 practise." 
 
 " He aspires to practise? " Mrs. Dallow repeated. 
 
 " Haven't you talked with him about it ? Ah, you must 
 keep him up to it ! " 
 
 Julia Dallow was conscious, for a moment, of looking uncom- 
 fortable ; 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 impres- 
 sion that she probably misunderstood his speech, thinking he 
 meant that he drew from the living model, or some such
 
 94 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 minute's 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." 
 
 " "We'll take a walk I should like that," Nash replied. " I 
 shall smoke a cigar at the cafe on the corner of the Place de 
 1'Opera ; you'll 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 
 Miriam's mother, who clung to her with a quickly-rooted 
 fidelity, showing no symptom of desistance. Gabriel compro- 
 mised 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, she's very charming," said Grace. 
 
 " She's 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. 
 
 "You've got them for life." 
 
 "Why for life, when I now lucidly ami courageously 
 recognize that she isn't good ] " 
 
 "Ah, but she'll become so," said Gabriel Nash. 
 
 " Do you think that ? " Sherringham inquired, with a candour 
 which made his visitor laugh.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 95 
 
 " You will that's 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 didn't know how but she does ! " There 
 was no suggestion of disappointment in this. 
 
 Sherringham held her hand a moment. " Ah, it's you who 
 know how, dear Biddy ! " he answered ; and he was conscious 
 that if the occasion had been more private he would lawfully 
 have kissed her. 
 
 Presently three others of his guests departed, and Mr. Nash's 
 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 col- 
 league 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 don't 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
 
 96 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 plenti- 
 fully tired of it), she broke out, abruptly : " Confess that you 
 think me intolerably bad ! " 
 
 " Intolerably no." 
 
 " Only tolerably ! I think that's 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 don't know that I counted very 
 carefully." 
 
 She raised her cup to her lips, looking at him over the rim 
 of it a proceeding 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 don't 
 want compliments I want the truth. An actress has to talk 
 about herself ; what else can she talk about, poor vain thing 1 " 
 
 " She can talk sometimes about other actresses." 
 
 "That comes to the same thing. You won't be serious. 
 I'm awfully serious." There was something that caught his 
 attention in the 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 
 doesn't come the first day," she pursued. " I can't see every- 
 thing at once ; but I can see a little more step by step as I 
 go : can't I ? " 
 
 " That's the way that's the way," 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 don't think me clever enough for that." 
 
 ' Why do you say so, when I've asked you to come here on 
 purpose 1 " 
 
 " You've asked me to come, but I've had no success." 
 
 " On the contrary ; every one thought you wonderful." 
 
 " Oh, they don't know 1 " said Miriam Rooth. " You've not 
 said a word to me. I don't mind your not having praised me ; 
 that would be too banal. But if I'm bad and I know I'm 
 dreadful I wish you would talk to me about it." 
 
 " It's delightful to talk to you," Sherringham said. 
 
 "No, it isn't, but it's kind," she answered, looking away 
 from him. 
 
 Her voice had a quality, as she uttered these words, which
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 97 
 
 made him exclaim, " Every now and then you say some- 
 thing ! " 
 
 She turned her eyes back to him, smiling. " I don't want 
 it to come by accident." Then she added : "If there's any 
 good to be got from trying, from showing one's self, how can 
 it come unless one hears the simple truth, the truth that turns 
 one inside out? It's all for that to know what one is, if 
 one's a stick ! " 
 
 " You 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 ! " 
 
 " You'll do what you want, evidently." 
 
 " I will succeed I will be great. Of course I know too 
 little, I've seen too little. But I've always liked it ; I've never 
 liked anything else, I used to learn things, and 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 inter- 
 course, which appeared to plead that she was capable at least 
 of embracing that side of the profession she desired to adopfc. % 
 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 
 couldn't, without selling the clothes off her back. It was vile 
 and disgusting to be poor ; and if ever she were to know the 
 bliss of having a few francs in her pocket she would make up 
 for it that she could promise ! She had never been acquainted 
 with any one who could tell her anything if it was good or 
 bad, or right or wrong except Mrs. Delamere and poor 
 Ruggieri. She supposed they had told her a great deal, but 
 perhaps they hadn't, and she was perfectly willing to give it 
 up if it was bad. Evidently Madame Carre thought so ; she 
 thought it was horrid. Wasn't it perfectly divine, the way
 
 98 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 the old woman had said those verses, those speeches of Celie ? 
 If she would only let her come and listen to her once in a 
 while, like that, it was all she would ask. She had got lots of 
 ideas, just from that ; she had practised them over, over and 
 over again, the moment she got home. He might ask her 
 mother he might ask the people next door. If Madame 
 Carre didn't think she could work she might have heard 
 something that would show her. But she didn't think her 
 even good enough to criticize ; for that wasn't criticism, tell- 
 ing her her head was good. Of course her head was good ; 
 she didn't 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. Didn't she know, Miriam herself, that that 
 was the only thing to think of 1 But any one would be kind 
 to her mother who knew what a dear she was. " She doesn't 
 know when it's right or wrong, but she's a perfect saint," said 
 the girl, obscuring considerably her vindication. " She doesn't 
 mind when I say things over by the hour, dinning them into 
 her ears while she sits there and reads. She's a tremendous 
 reader ; she's awfully up in literature. She taught me every- 
 thing herself I mean all that sort of thing. Of course I'm not 
 so fond of reading ; I go in for the book of life." Sherringham 
 wondered 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 
 she's 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 Carre's, nor the elated " phenomenon " 
 who had just been declaiming, nor the rather affected and 
 contradictious young person with whom he had walked home 
 from the Rue de Constantinople. Was this succession of 
 phases a sign that she really possessed the celebrated artistic 
 temperament, the nature that made people provoking and
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. PP 
 
 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. Nash's 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 Sher- 
 ringham 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 mother's 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. " It's a great muddle, I know, but she can't bear 
 anything coarse and quite right, too. I shouldn't, either, if 
 I didn't have to. But I don't care where I go if I can act, or 
 who they are if they'll help me. I want to act that's what 
 I want to do ; I don't want to meddle in people's affairs. I 
 can look out for myself I'm all right ! " the girl exclaimed, 
 roundly, frankly, with a ring of honesty which made her 
 crude and pure. "As for doing the bad ones, I'm not afraid 
 of that." 
 
 " The bad ones 1 " 
 
 "The bad women, in the plays like Madame Carre. I'll 
 do anything." 
 
 " I think you'll do best what you are," remarked Sherrin^'- 
 ham, laughing. " You're a strange girl." 
 
 " Je crois bien ! Doesn't one have to be, to want to go and 
 exhibit one's self to a loathsome crowd, on a platform, with 
 trumpets and a big drum, for money to parade one's body 
 and one's soul 1 " 
 
 Sherringham looked at her a moment : her face changed
 
 100 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 constantly ; now there was a little flush and a noble delicacy 
 in it. 
 
 "Give it up ; you're too good for it," he said, abruptly. 
 " Never, never never till I'm pelted ! " 
 " Then stay on here a bit ; I'll take you to the theatres." 
 " Oh, you dear ! " Miriam delightedly exclaimed. Mr. and 
 Mrs. Lovick, accompanied by Mrs. Rooth, now crossed the 
 room to them, and the girl went on, in the same tone : 
 " Mamma, dear, he's the best friend we've ever had ; he's a 
 great deal nicer than I thought." 
 
 " So are you, mademoiselle," said Peter Sherringham. 
 " Oh, I trust Mr. Sherringham I trust him infinitely," 
 Mrs. Rooth returned, covering him with her mild, respectable, 
 wheedling eyes. " The kindness of every one has been beyond 
 everything. Mr. and Mrs. Lovick can't say enough. They 
 make the most obliging offers ; they want you to know their 
 brother." 
 
 " Oh, I say, he's no brother of mine," Mr. Lovick protested, 
 good-naturedly. 
 
 " They think he'll be so suggestive, he'll put us up to the 
 right things," Mrs. Rooth went on. 
 
 " It's just a little brother of mine such a dear, 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 didn't precisely 
 dazzle his examiners," Mr. Lovick remarked. 
 
 " Edmund's very nasty about him. There are lots of 
 gentlemen on the stage ; he's not the first." 
 
 " It's such a comfort to hear that," said Mrs. Rooth. 
 " I'm much obliged to you. Has he got a theatre ? " Miriam 
 asked. 
 
 " My dear young lady, he hasn't even got an engage- 
 ment," replied the young man's unsympathizing brother- 
 in-law. 
 
 " He hasn't been at it very long, but I'm sure he'll get on. 
 He's immensely in earnest, and he's 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.'"'
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 101 
 
 " I don't care for his looks, but I should like his tips," 
 said Miriam, smiling. .' , 1 
 
 " 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, I'm sure you're fond of him," Mrs. Rooth re- 
 monstrated, as the party passed together into the ante- 
 chamber. 
 
 " No, really, I like some of the others four or five of them ; 
 but I don't like Arty." 
 
 '" We'll make it up to him, then ; we'll like him," Miriam 
 declared, gaily ; and her voice rang in the staircase (Sherring- 
 ham went a little way with them), with a charm which her 
 host had not perceived in her sportive note the day before. 
 
 IX. 
 
 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 cafe 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 pro- 
 cession of the crowd, the jostle of fellow-customers, the per- 
 petual brush of waiters. " Come away. I want to talk to 
 you, and I can't talk here," he said to his companion. " I 
 don't care where we go. It will be pleasant to walk ; we'll 
 stroll away to the quartiers serieux. 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 Pnix 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
 
 102 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 Peter's 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 didn't 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 wouldn't 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 reflect- 
 ing 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 don't 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 man's opinion over another's 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 you'll 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 103 
 
 which, as I recall it, is distinctly so much to the good in my 
 day. She's 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 didn't 
 satisfy her, and she didn't understand me. I don't think they 
 usually understand." 
 
 " She's no worse than I, then." 
 
 " Ah, she didn't try." 
 
 "No, she doesn't try. But she probably thought you con- 
 ceited, 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 it's a result of my little system." 
 
 "Your little system?" 
 
 'Oh, it's 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 1" 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. I'm not a savage ah, far from it but I really 
 think I'm perfectly independent." 
 
 "Oh, that's always provoking ! " laughed Nick. 
 
 " So it would appear, to the great majority of one's fellow- 
 mortals ; and I well remember the pang with which I origin- 
 ally 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. It's 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 thiug that will sink another. If you won't 
 get in, people generally hate you." 
 
 "Your metnphor is very laiue," said Nick; "it's the over- 
 crowd d boat that got-s to the bottom." 
 
 " Oh, I'll give it another leg or two ! Boats can be big, in 
 the infinite of space, and a doctrine is a raft that floats the
 
 104 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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, you're 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. I've grown a tail, if you will ; I'm the merman 
 wandering free. It's 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 I'm so sorry," Nash replied, benignly. 
 " But I'm very sincere. And I have tried to straighten out 
 things a bit for myself." 
 
 "Then why do you give people such a handle ? " 
 
 "Such a handle?" 
 
 " For thinking you're an for thinking you're not wise." 
 
 "I dare say it's my manner; they're so unused to 
 candour." 
 
 "Why don't you try another?" Nick inquired. 
 
 " One has the manner that one can ; and mine, moreover, 
 is a part of my little system." 
 
 "Ah, if you've got a little system you're no better than 
 any one else," said Nick, going on. 
 
 " I don't 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. It's 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 1 But the tradition of dreariness, of stodginess, 
 of dull, dense, literal prose, has so sealed people's 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 105 
 
 good," Gabriel Nash continued, taking his companion's arm. 
 " My persistence is systematic : don't you see what I mean ? 
 I won't be dreary no, no, no; and I won't recognize the 
 necessity, or even, if there is any way out of it, the accident 
 of dreariness in the life that surrounds me. That's enough 
 to make people stare : they're so stupid ! " 
 
 " They think you're impertinent," Dormer remarked. 
 
 At this his companion stopped him short, with an ejacula- 
 tion of pain, and, turning his eyes, Nick saw under the lamps 
 of the quay that he had brought a vivid blush into Nash's 
 face. "I don't strike you that way?" Gabriel asked, 
 reproachfully. 
 
 " Oh, me ! Wasn't it just admitted that I don't in the 
 least make you out? " 
 
 "That's the last thing!" Nash murmured, as if he were 
 thinking the idea over, with an air of genuine distress. 
 "But with a little patience we'll clear it up together, if you 
 care enough about it," he added, more cheerfully. He let his 
 friend go on again and he continued : " Heaven help us all ! 
 what do people mean by impertinence 1 There are many, I 
 think, who don't 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 didn't 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 one's self. That's really not 
 my case, for 1 find my capacity for pleasure deplorably below 
 the mark I've set. That's 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. That's what I mean 
 by being the same to every one, by having only one manner. 
 If one is conscious and ingenious to that end, what's the 
 harm, when one's motives are so pure? By never, never 
 making the concession, one may end by becoming a per- 
 ceptible force for good,"
 
 106 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 "What concession are you talking about I " asked Nick 
 Dormer. 
 
 " Why, that we are only here for dreariness. It's im- 
 possible to grant it sometimes, if you wish to withhold it ever." 
 
 " And what do you mean by dreariness ? That's modern 
 slang, and it's 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. 
 
 " That's on the whole my most usual impression." 
 
 " C'est Id que je vous attends ! I'm precisely engaged in 
 trying what can be done in taking it the other way. It's my 
 little personal experiment. Life consists of the personal 
 experiments of each of us, and the point of an experiment is 
 that it shall succeed. What we contribute is our treatment 
 of the material, our rendering of the text, our style. A sense 
 of the qualities of a style is so rare that many persons should 
 doubtless be forgiven for not being able to read, or at all 
 events to enjoy us ; but is that a reason for giving it up for 
 not being, in this other sphere, if one possibly can, a Macaulay, 
 a Ruskin, a Kenan ? Ah, we must write our best ; it's the 
 great thing we can do in the world, on the right side. One 
 has one's form, que diable, and a mighty good thing that one 
 has. I'm not afraid of putting alL life into mine, without 
 unduly squeezing it. I'm not afraid of putting in honour and 
 courage and charity, without spoiling them : on the contrary, 
 I'll only do them good. People may not read you at sight, 
 may not like you, but there's a chance they'll come round ; 
 and the only way to court the chance is to keep it up 
 always to keep it up. That's what I do, my dear fellow, if 
 you don't think I've perseverance. If some one likes it here 
 and there, if you give a little impression of solidity, that's 
 your reward ; besides, of course, the pleasure for yourself." 
 
 " Don't you think your style is a little affected ? " Nick 
 asked, laughing, as they proceeded. 
 
 " That's 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 isn't perfect ; 
 but that's 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 I'm rough still, but I'm in the 
 right direction : I make it my business to take for granted an 
 interest in the beautiful,"
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 107 
 
 "Ah, the beautiful there it stands, over there!" said 
 Nick Dormer. " I am not so sure about yours I don't know 
 what I've 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 toward the monuments of old Paris the Palais do 
 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 one's 
 vapours anything that's done ! " said Nick ; while his com- 
 panion 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." 
 
 " It's you who puzzle me, then, my dear fellow. You can't 
 build them out of words." 
 
 "What is ib 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 arid 
 timbers and painted glass." They v:alked round Notre Dame,
 
 108 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 N ash's equal response, of his appreciation, exhibited by his 
 own signs, of the great effect. Jle 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. " Every- 
 thing of that kind " was, in Nick's 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 every- 
 thing, the extravagance of gaslight, the perpetual click on the 
 neat bridges. In front of a quiet little cafe on the right bank 
 Gabriel Nash said, " Let's sit down " he was always ready 
 to sit down. It was a friendly establishment and an un- 
 fashionable quarter, far away from the Grand H6tel ; 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. Pre- 
 sently Nash found occasion to remark: " I go about my business, 
 like any good citizen that's all." 
 " And what is your business 1 " 
 ' 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 109 
 
 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 : that's 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 that's just what I do. I go far as far as my 
 means permit me. Last year I heard of such a delightful 
 little spot : a place where a wild fig-tree grows in the south 
 wall, the outer side, of an old Spanish city. 1 was told it was 
 a dellciously brown corner, with the sun making it warm in 
 winter ! As soon as I could I went there." 
 
 " And what did you do 1 " 
 
 " 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 that's some- 
 thing. I have feelings, I have sensations : let me tell you 
 that's not so common. It's rare to have them ; and if you 
 chance to have them it's rare not to be ashamed of them. I 
 go after them when I judge they won't hurt any one." 
 
 " You're lucky to have money for your travelling-expenses," 
 said Nick. 
 
 " No doubt, no doubt ; but I do it very cheap. I take my 
 stand on my nature, on my disposition. I'm not ashamed of 
 it, I don't think it's so horrible, my disposition. But we've 
 befogged and befouled so the whole question of liberty, of 
 spontaneity, of good-humour and inclination and enjoyment, 
 that there's nothing that makes people stare so as to see one 
 natural." 
 
 "You are always thinking too much of 'people.' " 
 
 "They say I think too little," Gabriel smiled. 
 
 "Well, I've agreed to stand for Harsh," said Nick, with a 
 roundabout transition. 
 
 "It's you then who are lucky to have money." 
 
 '' I haven't," Nick 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 sesthetic 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
 
 110 THE TRAGIC MUSK. 
 
 to show is such a poor business. It's a kind of confession of 
 failure." 
 
 ' Yes, you're more affected than anything else," said Nick, 
 impatiently. 
 
 " No, my dear boy, I'm more good-natured : don't I prove 
 it ? I'm rather disappointed to find 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 may legitimately appear important to have something to 
 show. If you must confine yourself to that plane I won't re- 
 fuse you my sympathy. After all, that's what / 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 you've 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, you've broken the scent with telling me you are going 
 to return to the House of Commons," said Nash. 
 
 " No wonder you don't make it out ! My situation is cer- 
 tainly absurd enough. What I really want to do is to be a 
 painter. That's the abject, crude, ridiculous fact. In this 
 out-of-the-way corner, at the dead of night, in lowered tones, 
 I venture to disclose it to you. Isn't that the aesthetic 
 life?" 
 
 " Do you know how to paint ] " asked Nash. 
 
 " Not in the least. No element of burlesque is therefore 
 wanting to my position." 
 
 " That makes no difference. I'm so glad ! " 
 
 " So glad I don't know how ? " 
 
 " So glad of it all. Yes, that only makes it better. You're 
 a delightful case, and I like delightful cases. We must see it 
 through. I rejoice that I met you." 
 
 " Do you think I can do anything ? " Nick inquired. 
 
 " Paint good pictures 1 How can I tell till I've seen some 
 of your work 1 Doesn't it come back to me that at Oxford 
 you used to sketch very prettily ? But that's the last thing 
 that matters." 
 
 "What does matter, then?" Nick demanded, turning his 
 eyes 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. Ill 
 
 disinterested and independent ; of having taken the world in 
 the free, brave, personal way." 
 
 " I shall nevertheless paint decently if I can," Nick declared. 
 
 " I'm almost sorry ! It will make your case less clear, your 
 example less grand." 
 
 " My example will be grand enough, with the fight I shall 
 have to make." 
 
 " The fight with whom ? " 
 
 " With myself, first of all. I'm awfully against it." 
 
 " Ah, but you'll have me on the other side," smiled Nash. 
 
 " Well, you'll have more than a handful to meet every- 
 thing, every one that belongs to me, that touches me, near or 
 far : my family, my blood, my heredity, my traditions, my 
 promises, my circumstances, my prejudices ; my little past, 
 such as it is ; my great future, such as it has been supposed 
 it may be." 
 
 " I see, I see ; it's 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." 
 
 " Don't say that," said Nick Dormer, with sudden sternness. 
 
 " Ah, you are, you are ! " his companion rejoined, judging 
 apparently from this accent. 
 
 " I don't know what I am heaven help me ! " Nick broke 
 out, tossing his hat down on his little tin table with vehemence. 
 " I'm a freak of nature and a sport of the mocking gods ! Why 
 should they go out of their way to worry me 1 Why should 
 they do anything so inconsequent, so improbable, so prepos- 
 terous? It's 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 aesthetic sense as that hat. It's 
 excellent soil I don't complain of it but not a soil to grow 
 that flower. From where the devil, then, has the seed been 
 dropped ? I look back from generation to generation ; I scour 
 our annals without finding the least little sketching grand- 
 mother, any sign of a building, or versifying, or collecting, or 
 even tulip-raising ancestor. They were all as blind as bats 
 and none the less happy for that. I'm a wanton variation, an 
 unaccountable monster. My dear father, rest his soul, went 
 through life without a suspicion that there is anything in it 
 that can't be boiled into blue-books ; and he became, in that 
 conviction, a very distinguished person. He brought me up
 
 112 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 in the same simplicity and in the hope of the same eminence. 
 It would have been better if I had remained so. I think it's 
 partly your fault that I haven't," Nick went on. "At Oxford 
 you were very bad company for me, my evil genius ; you 
 opened my eyes, you communicated the poison. Since then, 
 little by little, it has been working within me ; vaguely, 
 covertly, insensibly at first, but during the last year or two 
 with violence, pertinacity, cruelty. I have taken every anti- 
 dote in life ; but it's no use I'm 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 that's why 
 you are going to stand." 
 
 " Precisely it's an antidote. And, at present, you're 
 another." 
 
 "Another?" 
 
 " That's why I jumped at you. A bigger dose of you may 
 disagree with me to that extent that I shall either die or get 
 better." 
 
 " I shall control the dilution," said Nash. " Poor fellow 
 if you're elected ! " he added. 
 
 " Poor fellow either way. You don't know the atmosphere 
 in which I live, the horror, the scandal 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." 
 
 " It's perfect indeed ; it's 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. " It's the portrait that preoccupies you ? " 
 
 " I wish you could see ; you must come immediately to my 
 place in London." 
 
 " You wretch, you're capable of having talent ! " cried Nash. 
 
 "No, I'm too old, too old. It's too late to go through the 
 mill."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 113 
 
 " You make me young ! Don't miss your election, at your 
 peril. Think of the edification." 
 
 " The edification ] " 
 
 "Of your throwing it all up the next moment." 
 
 " That would be pleasant for Mr. Carteret," Nick observed. 
 
 "Mr. Carteret?" 
 
 " A dear old fellow who will wish to pay my agent's bill." 
 
 " Serve him right, for such depraved tastes." 
 
 " You do me good," said Nick, getting up and turning 
 away. 
 
 " Don't call me useless then." 
 
 " Ah, but not in the way you mean. It's only if I don't 
 get in that I shall perhaps console myself with the brush," 
 Nick continued, as they retraced their steps. 
 
 " In the name of all the muses, then, don't stand. For you 
 will get in." 
 
 -" Very likely. At any rate I've promised." 
 
 " You've promised Mrs. Dallow? " 
 
 " It's her place ; she'll put me in," Nick said. 
 
 " Baleful woman ! But I'll pull you out ! " 
 
 X. 
 
 FOE several days Peter Sherringham. had business in hand 
 which left him neither time nor freedom of mind to occupy 
 himself actively with the ladies of the Hotel de la Garonne. 
 There were moments when they brushed across his memory, 
 but their passage was rapid and not lighted up with any par- 
 ticular 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 qxiickened 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 reflec- 
 tion ; but he was peculiar in this, that thinking things over 
 almost always made him think less well of them. Ee 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
 
 114 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 that, whatever results might ensue, he should have to do some- 
 thing 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. 
 Bemedies hovered before him, but they figured also at the 
 same time as complications ; ranging vaguely from the ex- 
 penditure of money to the discovery that he was in love. This 
 latter accident would be particularly tedious ; he had a full 
 perception of the arts by which the girl's mother might succeed 
 in making it so. It 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 lady's 
 genius ? The genius would have to be very great to justify a 
 rising young diplomatist in making a fool of himself. 
 
 With the excuse of pressing work he put off 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 impetu- 
 ously 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 Hotel de la 
 Garonne. 
 
 As a consequence of this speculation he went back to 
 Madame Carre, to ask her to reconsider her unfavourable 
 judgment 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 Carre 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 pointy 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 needn't care for that, as 
 Miriam herself probably wouldn't care. What he had mainly
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 115 
 
 in inind was to say to the old actress that she had been mis- 
 taken thejeune 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 doesn't 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 doesn't succeed it won't be for want of 
 knowing how to thump at doors. The other day, when I 
 came in, she was waiting for me ; she had been there 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 she's an artist ? She won't open her 
 mouth to me ; what she wants is to make me say things to 
 her. She does make me I don't know how and she sits 
 there gaping at me with her big eyes. They look like open 
 pock-ets ! " 
 
 " I dare say she'll 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 Carre paused a 
 moment, listened, and then exclaimed : " Didn't I tell you ? " 
 
 Sherringham heard a parley of voices in the little ante- 
 chamber, 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 d'ye do ? I'm 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 Carr6, 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
 
 116 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 question of her having the histrionic nature, she simply had it 
 in such perfection that she was always acting ; that her exist- 
 ence 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 poten- 
 tially 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 
 girl's very face made it vivid to him now the discovery that 
 she positively had no countenance of her own, but only the 
 countenance of the occasion, a sequence, a variety (capable 
 possibly of becoming immense), of representative movements. 
 She was always trying them, practising them for her amuse- 
 ment or profit, jumping from one to the other and extending 
 her range ; and this would doubtless be her occupation more 
 and more as she acquired ease and confidence. The expression 
 that came nearest 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 bete even when Sherringham, on their 
 first meeting at Madame Carre's, said to Nick Dormer that 
 she was the image of the Tragic Muse. 
 
 Now, at any rate, he 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 117 
 
 at higher wages 1 She didn't 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 cir- 
 cumstance that Miriam Booth's face seemed to him to-day a 
 finer instrument than old Madame Carre's. It was doubtless 
 that the girl's was fresh and strong, with a future in it, while 
 poor Madame Carre's 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. Sherring- 
 ham saw with surprise and amusement that the clever French- 
 woman, 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 her- 
 self, and Madame Carre, 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 under- 
 stand. What she didn't 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 Carre 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 posses- 
 sion 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 Carre" to
 
 118 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 Carry's first 
 criticism. 
 
 Miriam allowed her little time to develop this idea, for she 
 broke out, at the shortest intervals, with the five other speci- 
 mens 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, and 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 
 Carr6 would think she was making fun of her manner, her 
 celebrated simpers and grimaces, so extravagant did the girl's 
 performance cause these refinements to appear. 
 
 When she had finished, the old woman said : " Should you 
 like now to hear how you do it 1 " and, without waiting for an 
 answer, phrased and trilled the last of the pieces, from begin- 
 ning 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 
 didn't do themselves they were things in which the gros 
 rnoyens were of no avail. "Ah, my poor child, your means 
 are all gros moyens ; you appear to have no others," Madame 
 Carre replied. " You do what you can, but there are people 
 like that ; it's the way they are made. They can never come 
 nearer to the delicate ; shades don't exist for them, they don't 
 see certain differences. It was to show you a difference that 
 I repeated that thing as you repeat it, as you represent my 
 doing it. If you 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 judgment harsh to cruelty, and
 
 THE TRAGIC- MUSE. 119 
 
 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 con- 
 tempt ; 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 diffi- 
 cult 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 Avas 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 Carre 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 girl's pluck if it was 
 pluck and not mere density the brightness with which she 
 submitted, for a purpose, to the old woman's rough usage. 
 He wanted to take her away, to give her a friendly caution, to 
 advise her not to become a bore, not to expose herself. But 
 she held up her beautiful head in a way that showed she didn't 
 care at present how she exposed herself, and that (it was half 
 coarseness Madame Carre was so far right and half forti- 
 tude) 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 in- 
 discreet ; but all with the effect that, contrary to Sherringham's 
 expectation, Madame Carre 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
 
 120 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 intensity of a discussion of esoteric things, of personal mys- 
 teries, of methods and secrets. It was the oddest hour Sher- 
 ringham 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 Carr6 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 un Iressed this young 
 lady, as it were, from head to foot, turned her inside out, 
 weighed and measured and sounded her : it was all, for Sher- 
 ringham, 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 Sherringham's 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 Carre's; 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 121 
 
 of the arts : they went into details ; they put the dots on the 
 i's ; they discussed impartially the qualities of appearance, 
 the physical gifts of the 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 
 actor's 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 be' 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 1 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 Sherring- 
 ham had never straightened out : he contented himself with 
 saying that there was no reason a theatrical critic shouldn't 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 didn't follow it those who, while pretending 
 to write about the stage, wrote about everything else. 
 
 It was as if Madame Carre, in pursuance of her inflamed 
 sense that the art was everything and the individual nothing, 
 save as he happened to serve it, had said : " Well, if she will 
 have it she shall ; she shall know what she 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. Booth's 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, some- 
 times 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 it's understood, then, she may come back," he added 
 to Madame Carre. " It's my affair, of course. You'll take
 
 122 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 an interest in her for a month or two; she will sit at your 
 feet." 
 
 " Oh, I'll knock her about ; she seems stout enough ! " said 
 the old actress. 
 
 XI. 
 
 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 cafe. 
 
 " Objection 1 I have spent my life in caf^s ! " she exclaimed. 
 " They are warm in winter and they 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 couldn't sit in, if you want to 
 know where there was only really room if we were in bed. 
 Mamma's money is sent out from England, and sometimes it 
 didn't come. Once it didn't come for months for months 
 and months. I don't know how we lived. There wasn't any 
 to come ; there wasn't any to get home. That isn't amusing 
 when you're away, in a foreign town, without any friends. 
 Mamma used to borrow, but people wouldn't always lend. You 
 needn't be afraid she won't borrow from you. We are rather 
 better now. Something has been done in England ; I don't 
 understand what. It's only fivepence a year, but it has been 
 settled ; it comes regularly ; it used to come only when we had 
 written and begged and waited. But it made no difference ; 
 mamma was always up to her ears in books. They served her 
 for food and drink. When she had nothing to eat she began 
 a novel in ten volumes the old-fashioned ones ; they lasted 
 longest. She knows every cabinet de lecture in every town ; 
 the little cheap, shabby ones, I mean, in the back streets, 
 where they have odd volumes and only ask a sou, and the 
 books are so old that they smell bad. She takes them to the 
 caf^s the little cheap, shabby cafes, too and she reads there 
 all the evening. That's very well for her, but it doesn't feed 
 me. I don't like a diet of dirty old novels. I sit there beside 
 her, with nothing to do, not even a stocking to mend ; she 
 doesn't think that's comme il faut. I don't know what the 
 people take me for. However, we have never been spoken to :
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 123 
 
 any one can see mamma's a lady. As for me, I dare say I 
 might be anything. If you're going to be an actress you must 
 get used to being looked at. There were people in England, 
 who vised 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 don't think they were at all clear 
 about us. Some of them are dead ; the others don't ask us 
 any more. You should hear mamma on. the subject of our 
 visits in England. It's very convenient when your cousins 
 are dead, 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 
 needn't 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. There's a 
 great deal goes on in cafes : people come to them to talk 
 things over, their private affairs, their complications ; they 
 have important meetings. Oh, I've observed scenes, between 
 men and women very quiet, terribly quiet, but tragic ! Once 
 I saw a woman do something that I'm going to do some day, 
 when I'm great if I can get the situation. I'll tell you what 
 it is some day ; I'll do it for you. Oh, it is the book of life ! " 
 
 So Miriam discoursed, familiarly, disconnectedly, as the pair 
 went their way down the Rue de Constantinople ; and she 
 continued to abound in anecdote and remark after they were 
 seated face to face at a little marble table in an establishment 
 which Sherringham selected carefully and he had caused her, at 
 her request, to be accommodated with sirop <T orgeat. " I know 
 what it will come to : Madame Carre will want to keep me." 
 This was one of the announcements she presently made. 
 
 "To keep you]" 
 
 "For the French stage. She won't want to let you have 
 me." She said things of that kind, astounding in self- 
 complacency, the assumption of quick success. She was in 
 earnest, evidently prepared to work, but her imagination flew 
 over preliminaries and probations, took no account of the steps 
 in the process, especially the first tiresome ones, the test of 
 patience. Sherringham had done nothing for her as yet, given 
 110 substantial pledge of interest ; yet she was already talk- 
 ing as if his protection were assured and jealous. Certainly,
 
 124 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 however, she seemed to belong to him very much indeed, as she 
 sat facing him in the Paris cafe, in her youth, her beauty and 
 her talkative confidence. This degree of possession was highly 
 agreeable to him, and he asked nothing more than to make it 
 last and go further. The impulse to draw her out was irre- 
 sistible, 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. 
 
 "It's very singular; I know nothing like it," he said 
 "your equal mastery of two languages." 
 
 " Say of half a dozen," Miriam smiled. 
 
 " Oh, I don't believe in the others to the same degree. I 
 don't imagine that, with all deference to your undeniable 
 facility, you 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 endur- 
 ing the baragouinage of foreigners, to which vre listen with 
 such complacency. In fact, your French is better than your 
 English it's more conventional ; there are little queernesses 
 and impurities in your English, as if you had lived abroad too 
 much. Ah, you must work that." 
 
 " I'll work it with you. I like the way you speak." 
 
 " You must speak beautifully ; you must do something for 
 the standard." 
 
 "For the standard?" 
 
 " There isn't any, after all ; it has gone to the dogs.'' 
 
 " Oh, I'll bring it back. I know what you mean." 
 
 " No one knows, no one cares ; the sense is gone it isn't in 
 the public," 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, doesn't exist. Every one speaks as 
 he likes, and audiences never notice ; it's the last thing they 
 think of. The place is given up to abominable dialects and 
 individual tricks, any vulgarity flourishes, and on 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 don't know what one means." 
 
 " Do you mean the grand manner, certain pompous pro- 
 nunciations, 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 125 
 
 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 "? 
 Isn't their whole art the affectation par excellence ? The 
 public won't stand that to-day, so one hears it said. If that 
 be true, it simply means that the theatre, as I care for it, that 
 is as a personal art, is at an end." 
 
 "Never, never, never ! " the girl cried, in a voice that made 
 a dozen people look round. 
 
 " I sometimes think it that the personal art is at an end 
 and that henceforth we shall have only the arts capable, no 
 doubt, of immense development in their way (indeed they 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, I've had it; it's very personal!" said Miriam, 
 knowingly. 
 
 " You've seen the nudity of the stage, the poor painted, 
 tattered screen behind, and in the empty space the histrionic 
 figure, doing everything it knows how, in complete possession. 
 The personality isn't our English personality, and it may not 
 always carry us with it ; but the direction is right, and it has 
 the superiority that it's 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. I'll show you ! " 
 
 "But you're not English," said Sherringham, sociably, with 
 his arms on the table. 
 
 " I beg your pardon ; you should hear mamma about our 
 ' race.' " 
 
 " You're a Jewess I'm sure of that," 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. "That's always possible, if one's 
 clever. I'm very willing, because I want to be the English 
 Rachel."
 
 126 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 "Then you must leave Madame Carre, as soon as you have 
 got from her what she can give." 
 
 "Oh, you needn't fear; you sha'n't lose me," the girl 
 replied, with gross, charming fatuity. " My name is Jewish," 
 she went on, " but it was that of my grandmother, my father's 
 mother. She was a baroness, in Germany. That is she was 
 the daughter of a baron." 
 
 Sherringham accepted this statement with reservations, but 
 he replied : " Put all that together, and it makes you very 
 sufficiently of Rachel's tribe." 
 
 "I don't care, if I'm of her tribe artistically. I'm of the 
 family of the artists ; je me fiche of any other ! I'm in the 
 same style as that woman ; I know it." 
 
 " You speak as if you had seen her," 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 won't prevent me from speaking divine 
 English." 
 
 "You must learn lots of verse; you must repeat it to me," 
 Sherringham went on. " You must break yourself in till you 
 can say anything. You must learn passages of Milton, 
 passages of Wordsworth." 
 
 "Did they write plays?" 
 
 " Oh, it isn't only a matter of plays ! You can't speak a 
 part properly till you can speak everything else, anything 
 that comes up, especially in proportion as it's difficult. That 
 gives you authority." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I'm going in for authority. There's more chance 
 in English," the girl added, in the next breath. " There are 
 not so many others the terrible competition. There are so 
 many here not that I'm afraid," she chattered on. " But 
 we've got America, and they haven't. America's a great 
 place." 
 
 "You talk like a theatrical agent. They're lucky not to 
 have it as we have it. Some of them do go, and it ruins 
 them." 
 
 " Why, it fills their pockets ! " Miriam cried. 
 
 " Yes, but see what they pay. It's the death of an actor 
 to play to big populations that don't understand his language. 
 It's nothing then but the gros moyens ; all his delicacy 
 perishes. However, they'll understand you." 
 
 "Perhaps I shall be too affected," said Miriam. 
 
 " You won't be more so than Garrick or Mrs. Siddons or 
 John Kemble or Edmund Kean. They understood Edmund
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 127 
 
 Kean. All reflection is affectation, and all acting is 
 reflection." 
 
 " I don't know ; mine is instinct," Miriam replied. 
 
 " My dear young lady, you talk of ' yours ' ; but don't be 
 offended if I tell you that yours doesn't exist. Some day it 
 will, if it comes off. Madame Carre's does, because she has 
 reflected. The talent, the desire, the energy are an instinct ; 
 but by the time these things become a performance they are 
 an instinct put in its place." 
 
 "Madame Carre is very philosophic. I shall never be 
 like her." 
 
 " Of course you won't ; you'll be original. But you'll have 
 your own ideas." 
 
 " I dare say I shall have a good many of yours," said 
 Miriam, smiling across the table. 
 
 They sat a moment looking at each other. 
 
 " Don't go in for coquetry ; it's a waste of time." 
 
 " Well, that's civil ! " the girl cried. 
 
 " Oh, I don't mean for me ; I mean for yourself. I want 
 you to be so concentrated. I am bound to give you good 
 advice. You don't strike me as flirtatious and that sort of 
 thing, and that's in your favour." 
 
 "In my favour ! " 
 
 " It does save time." 
 
 " Perhaps it saves too much. Don't you think the artist 
 ought to have passions ? " 
 
 Sherringham hesitated a moment : he thought an examin- 
 ation 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 don't 
 betray me to your friend Mr Nash." 
 
 " Betray you 1 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 it's supposed to be."
 
 128 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 "It's too odious, the way he talks about usf" Miriam 
 cried, assentingly. 
 
 " About ' us ' 1 " 
 
 " Us poor actors." 
 
 "It's 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 he'll 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 
 Nash's 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. " AVell, then, he 
 won't if you don't 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. " You're 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 don't understand," said the girl. 
 
 "You're an extraordinary young lady." 
 
 " You mean I'm horrid. Well, I dare say I am. But I'm 
 better when you know me." 
 
 Sherringham made no direct rejoinder to this, but after a 
 moment he said : " Your mother must repay that money. I'll 
 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 that's poor." 
 
 " I'm poor myself. That is I'm very far from rich. But
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 129 
 
 why receive favours I " And here he, in turn, checked him- 
 self, 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 I Oh, he doesn't 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 mightn't think it, but so it was. Her mother's ideas, those 
 awfully proper ones, were not all talk. She did keep her ! 
 Sherringham accepted this he had an adequate, and indeed 
 an analytic vision of Mrs. Booth's conservatism ; but he 
 observed at the same time that his companion made no motion 
 to rise. He made none, either ; he only said 
 
 " We are very frivolous, the way we chatter. What you 
 want to do, to get your foot in the stirrup, is supremely diffi- 
 cult. There is everything to overcome. You have neither an 
 engagement nor the prospect of an engagement." 
 
 " Oh, you'll get me one ! " Miriam's 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 I'm so simple 1 " 
 
 " I don't then. Didn't I tell you just now that you were 
 extraordinary 1 ? That's 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 doesn't mitigate it. What's rare in 
 you is that you have as I suspect, at least no nature of 
 your own." Miriam listened to this as if 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 under- 
 stand. " You are always playing something ; there are no 
 intervals. It's the absence of intervals, of a fond or back- 
 ground, that I don't comprehend. You're 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 I'm very honest."
 
 130 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " You can't be everything, a consummate actress and a 
 flower of the field. You've got to choose." 
 
 She looked at him a moment. " I'm glad you think I'm so 
 wonderful." 
 
 "Your feigning may be honest, in the sense that your only 
 feeling is your feigned one," Sherringham went on. " That's 
 what I mean by the absence of a ground or of intervals. It's 
 a kind of thing that's a labyrinth ! " 
 
 " I know what I am," said Miriam, sententiously. 
 
 But her companion continued, following his own train : 
 " Were you really so frightened, the first day you went to 
 Madame Carre's?" 
 
 * She stared 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 1 " 
 
 " Why, an artist. Isn't that a canvas ? " 
 
 " Yes, an intellectual one, but not a moral." 
 
 " Oh yes, it is, too. And I'm a good girl : won't 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 not personal, like yours. I mean not 
 so much so. There's something left for what shall I call it? 
 for character." 
 
 Miriam stared again, with her tragic light. "And do you 
 think I've 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, you've 
 got a hundred ! "
 
 XII. 
 
 THE summer arrived and the dense air of the Paris theatres 
 became in fact a still more complicated mixture ; yet the 
 occasions were not few on which 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 even- 
 ing 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 con- 
 sciousness 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, compre- 
 hensive 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 entangle- 
 ment. 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 impera- 
 tive, 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 boen seen by several of his associates at his rooms, but 
 she was not soon to be seen there again. Sherringham's 
 reserve might by the ill-natured have been termed dissimula- 
 tion, 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
 
 132 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 con- 
 science 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 em-oiled 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 
 choregraphic stage : high diplomatists had indeed not rarely 
 and not invisibly cultivated this privilege without its proving 
 the sepulchre of their reputation. That a gentleman who was 
 not a fool should consent a little to become one for the sake of 
 a celebrated actress or singer cela setait, 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 pro- 
 cess of formation, encumbered with a mother still more con- 
 scientious 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 contin- 
 gent prospect, for the failure of which these would not, even 
 in their abundance, be a compensation. He kept an unem- 
 barrassed 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 TRAGIC MUSE. 133 
 
 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 Theatre Francais ; 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 protegee ; " but it's good for the mind 
 to keep up a superstition or two : it leaves a margin, like 
 having a second horse to your brougham for night-work. The 
 arts, the amusements, the aesthetic 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 
 Theatre Francais is my second horse." 
 
 Miriam's 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 
 Sherringham' s share of it. His general sense that she was per- 
 sonating 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
 
 134 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 Sherring- 
 ham. She found no play too tedious, no entr'acte too long, no 
 baignoire too hot, no tissue of incidents too complicated, no 
 situation too unnatural and no sentiments too sublime. She 
 gave Sherringham the measure of her power to sit and sit an 
 accomplishment to which she owed, in the struggle for exist- 
 ence, such superiority as she might be said to have achieved. 
 She could outsit every one, 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 com- 
 pendium 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 Hotel de la Garonne was unconscious of the shabby 
 or the ugly side of the world. She never despaired : otherwise 
 what would have been the use of being a Neville-Nugent 1 
 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 didn't. 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 sho pretended : only
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 135 
 
 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 Miriam's 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 
 mamma's fine stories " was a sufficiently cynical reference to 
 the immemorial infirmity of a parent. But when the girl 
 backed her up, as he phrased it to himself, he liked that even 
 less. 
 
 Mrs. Rooth was very fond of a moral and had never lost 
 her taste for edification. She delighted in a beautiful character 
 and was gratified to find so many represented in the con- 
 temporary French drama. She never failed to direct Miriam's 
 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 Miriam's effort was to make the fictive true. 
 Sherringham thought it an odd, unpromising stock (that of the 
 Neville-Nugent s) for a dramatic talent to have sprung from, 
 till he reflected that the evolution was after all natural : the 
 figurative impulse in the mother had become conscious, and 
 therefore higher, through finding an aim, which was beauty, in 
 the daughter. Likely enough the Hebraic Mr. Rooth, with 
 his love of old pots and Christian altar-cloths, had supplied, in 
 the girl's composition, the aesthetic 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
 
 136 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 dis- 
 agreeable 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 
 Elysces 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 1' Industrie glittered in the light of the long days ; the cab- 
 men, in their red waistcoats, dozed in their boxes ; and Sher- 
 ringham 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 aesthetic re- 
 sponsibility, continued imperturbably to dispense examples of 
 style. Madame Carre was going to Yichy, 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 louquetieres, 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 137 
 
 greatest amusement perhaps was to recognize the pretty senti- 
 ment 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 Carre's. She told Sher- 
 ringham 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 over- 
 dosed with knowledge that second day he saw them together. 
 He would send Madame Carre 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 needn't 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 I'm 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 pre- 
 paration 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 fascinat- 
 ing," the girl persisted. Sometimes she was very lucid. 
 
 "Well, after all I'm 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
 
 138 THE TRAGIC MUSK 
 
 tricks of the trade, gave it beauty and elevation. Miriam let 
 him know that Madame Carre 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 appro- 
 fondir the reason why in a given situation you should scratch 
 your nose with your left hand rather than with your right, 
 you were not worthy to tread any stage that respected itself. 
 
 " That's very well ; but if I must go into details read me a 
 little Shelley," said the young man, in the spirit of a high 
 rajjvnfe. 
 
 " You are worse than Madame Carre ; you don't know 
 what to invent : between you you'll kill me ! " the girl declared. 
 " I think there's a secret league between you to spoil my voice, 
 or at least to weaken my wind, before I get it. But a la 
 guerre comme a la guerre ! How can I read Shelley, however, 
 when I don't understand him 1 " 
 
 " That's just what I want to make you do. It's a part of 
 your general training. You may do without that, of course 
 without culture and taste and perception ; but in that case 
 you'll be nothing but a vulgar cabotine, and nothing will be 
 of any consequence." 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 sin- 
 cerity 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 con- 
 nection with her business. The actor's talent was essentially 
 a gift, a thing by itself, implanted, instinctive, accidental, 
 equally unconnected with intellect and with virtue Sherring- 
 ham. 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 sacri- 
 ficing 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 139 
 
 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." "That's 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. 
 Wasn't 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 1 At the theatre, on the 
 numerous July evenings when the Comedie Franchise 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 Carre's 
 innermost counsels. But there were moments when even her 
 very acuteness seemed to him to drag the matter down, to see 
 it in a small and superficial sense. What he flattered himself 
 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 
 hadn't 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 
 wouldn't matter that some of the onward steps should have 
 been lame.
 
 140 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 Carr6 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 Carre said ; and when she did them accord- 
 ing to that of her instructress they were too apt to be a gross 
 parody of that lady's intention. None the less she gave 
 glimpses, and her glimpses made him feel not only that she 
 was not a fool (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 apart- 
 ment 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 a glace (highly convenient for Miriam's posturings), 
 and several cupboard doors, covered over, allowing for treacher- 
 ous . 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. I'll 
 settle it with the landlady." Mrs. Booth 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 141 
 
 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. 
 Eugene 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 Sher- 
 ringham 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 aesthetic as well as a great personal trust. 
 
 She lather 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 girl's 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 Miriam's genius 
 and the necessity of an occasional excursion to the country 
 the charming country that lies in so many directions beyond 
 the Parisian banlieue would not have been immediately 
 apparent to a 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 Sherringham's 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. Sherriugham was very fond of 
 Versailles, and went there more than once with the ladies of
 
 142 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 the Hotel de la Garonne. They chose quiet hours, when the 
 fountains were dry ; and Mrs. Rooth took an armful of novels 
 and sat on a bench in the park, flanked by clipped hedges and 
 old statues, while her young companions strolled away, walked 
 to the Trianon, explored the long, straight vistas of the woods. 
 Rambouillet was vague and pleasant and idle ; they had an 
 idea that they found suggestive associations there; and indeed 
 there was an old white chateau 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. Sher- 
 ringham, 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 bene- 
 ficence, 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 143 
 
 Carre had enjoined, practise their scales : there were apparently 
 no autumn visits to English country-houses in prospect for 
 Mrs. Pvooth. 
 
 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 Carre, who said to 
 him : " Vous devriez bien nous la laisser." 
 
 " She has got something, then 1 " 
 
 " She has got most things. She'll go far. It is the first 
 time I ever was mistaken. But don't tell her so I don't 
 flatter her ; she'll be too puffed up." 
 
 " Is she very conceited 1 ? " Sherringham asked. 
 
 " Mauvais sujet ! " said Madame Carre. 
 
 It was on the journey to London that he indulged in some 
 of those questionings of his state 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 compart- 
 ment by himself) it suddenly came over him that they were 
 futile. Now that he had left the girl, a subversive, unpre- 
 meditated 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. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 THE drive from Harsh to the Place, as it was called there- 
 abouts, could be achieved by swift horses in less than ten 
 minutes ; and if Mrs. Dallow's ponies were capital trotters the 
 general high pitch of the occasion made it 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 com- 
 placent 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
 
 144 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 Julia's guidance 
 the ponies pattered now, with no indication of a loss of fresh- 
 ness, 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 Wheat- 
 sheaf, 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 with- 
 out art, and Lady Agnes, who during her husband's lifetime 
 had seen their affairs follow the satisfactory principle of a 
 tendency to defer to supreme merit, had never really learned 
 the lesson that voting goes by favour. However, she could 
 pray God if she couldn't 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 145 
 
 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 despatched 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 Julia's 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 Julia's 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 speci- 
 mens 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
 
 146 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 and with a congenital thickness in his speech, lounging there 
 in loose clothes with his eternal cigarette. " Now, my dear 
 fellow, that's what I call form : I don't know what you call 
 it " that was the way he used to begin. 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 some- 
 thing 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 don't know ; did 1 1 " Nick inquired. 
 
 "I don't 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 you'll have to speak again," Lady Agnes smiled 
 at her son. 
 
 "Thank you; I like the way you talk about it!" cried 
 Nick. " I'm like lago : ' from this time forth I never will 
 speak word ! ' " 
 
 " Don't say that, Nick," said his mother, gravely. 
 
 " Don't be afraid : he'll jabber like a magpie ! " And Mrs. 
 Dallow went out of the room.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 147 
 
 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 some- 
 thing she couldn't see. " I hope you've thanked Julia," Lady 
 Agnes dropped. 
 
 "Why, of course, mother." 
 
 " She has done as much as if you hadn't been sure." 
 
 " I wasn't in the least sure and she has done everything." 
 
 " She has been too good but we've done something. I 
 hope you don't leave out your father," Lady Agnes amplified, 
 as Kick's glance appeared for a moment to question her " we." 
 
 " Never, never ! " Nick uttered these words perhaps a 
 little mechanically, but the next minute he 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 Avorked for me. Gone as he is, he is still a living force." 
 He felt a good deal of a hypocrite, but one didn't 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 con- 
 cession, but, with a certain impulse to divert his mother from 
 following up her advantage, he broke out : " Julia's a 
 tremendously effective woman." 
 
 "Of course she is ! " 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 that's civil to-morrow morning. Fou'll 
 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, that's why," her son replied, not very lucidly. "I
 
 148 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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? " 
 
 " They'll meet you that's better." 
 
 " I'm 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 Avill that do, when she's alone? " 
 
 " She won't be alone, with Mrs. Gresham." 
 
 " Mrs. Gresham doesn't count." 
 
 " That's precisely why I want you to stop. And her cousin, 
 almost her brother : what an idea that it won't do ! Haven't 
 you stayed here before, when there has been no one ? " 
 
 " I have never stayed much, and there have always been 
 people. At any rate, now it's different." 
 
 " It's just because it is different. Besides, it isn't different, 
 and it never was," said Lady Agnes, more incoherent, in her 
 earnestness, than it often happened to her to be. " She always 
 liked you, and she likes you now more than ever, if you call 
 that different ! " Nick got up at this and, without meeting 
 her eyes, walked to one of the windows, where he stood with 
 his back turned, 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 Julia's very own, to do with exactly 
 as she liked. No word of appreciation or envy, however, 
 dropped from the young man's lips, and his mother presently 
 went on : " What could be more natural than that after your 
 triumphant contest you and she should have lots to settle and 
 to talk about no end of practical questions, no end of busi- 
 ness 1 Aren't you her member, and can't her member pass a 
 day with her, and she a great proprietor ? " 
 
 Nick turned round at this, with an odd expression. " Her 
 member am I hers 1 " 
 
 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.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 149 
 
 " 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 1 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 ! I'm 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 that's not civil about them, poor dears. But even a new 
 member may joke with his mother." 
 
 " I wish you'd be serious with your mother," said Lady 
 Agnes, going nearer to him. 
 
 " The difficulty is that I'm two men ; it's the strangest thing 
 that ever was," Nick pursued, bending his bright face upon 
 her. " I'm two quite distinct human beings, who have scarcely 
 a point in common ; not even the memory, on the part of one, 
 of the achievements or the adventures of the other. One man 
 wins the seat but it's the other fellow who sits in it." 
 
 "Oh, Nick, don't spoil your victory by your perversity!" 
 Lady Agnes cried, clasping her hands to him. 
 
 " I went through it with great glee I won't deny that : it 
 excited me, it interested me, it amused me. When once I was 
 in it I liked it. But now that I'm out of it again " 
 
 " Out of it 1 " His mother stared. " Isn't the whole point 
 that you're in 1 ? " 
 
 " Ah, now I'm 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 man's 
 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 it's 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 can't remember one of them. Julia says
 
 150 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 the wants of Harsh are simply the national wants rather a 
 pretty phrase for Julia. She means she does everything for 
 the place ; she's really their member, and this house in which 
 we stand is their legislative chamber. Therefore the lacunce 
 that I have undertaken to fill up are the national wants. It 
 will be rather a job to rectify some of them, won't it? I 
 don't represent the appetites of Harsh Harsh is gorged. I 
 represent the ideas of my party. That's what Julia says." 
 
 " Oh, never mind what Julia says ! " Lady Agnes broke 
 out, impatiently. This impatience made it singular that the 
 very next words she uttered should be : " My dearest son, I 
 wish to heaven you'd marry her. It would be so fitting now ! " 
 she added. 
 
 "Why now?" asked Nick, frowning. 
 
 " She has shown you such sympathy, such devotion." 
 
 " Is it for that she has shown it 1 " 
 
 " Ah, you might feel I can't 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 1 " 
 
 " 1 1 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 1 " 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, you'll stay over here to- 
 morrow and be nice to her." 
 
 " Be nice to her ] Do you mean propose to her 1 " 
 
 " With a single word, with the glance of an eye, the move- 
 ment of your little finger" and Lady Agnes paused, looking 
 intensely, imploringly up into Nick's 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 insist- 
 ently, " You know she's a fine creature you know she is ! " 
 
 " Dearest mother, what I seem to know better than any- 
 thing 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 !"
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 151 
 
 " I can't talk of it, mother it's too terrible an idea. And 
 I can't talk of her, nor of what I think of her. You must 
 leave that to me. I do her perfect justice." 
 
 " You don't, or you'd marry her to-morrow. 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. That's what I meant when I spoke 
 just now of us all. It wasn't of Grace and Biddy I was 
 thinking fancy ! it was of him. He's with you always ; he 
 takes with you, at your side, every step that you take your- 
 self. He would bless devoutly your marriage to Julia ; he 
 would feel what 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 don't commit the crime " 
 
 Nick Dormer stopped her with another kiss ; he murmured : 
 " Mother, mother, mother ! " as he bent over her. 
 
 He wished her not to go on, to let him off ; but the deep 
 deprecation in his voice 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. 
 She's made for public life ; she's made to shine, to be con- 
 cerned 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 couldn't do. You 
 can have the first house in England yes, the first ! What 
 freedom is there in being poor 1 How can you do anything 
 without money, and what money can you make for yourself 
 what money will ever come to you ] That's the crime to 
 throw away such an instrument of power, such a blessed 
 instrument of good." 
 
 " It isn't everything to be rich, mother," said Nick, looking 
 at the floor in a certain patient way, with a provisional docility 
 and his hands in his pockets. " And it isn't so fearful to be 
 poor." 
 
 " It's vile it's abject. Don't I know ? " 
 
 " Are you in such acute want? " Nick asked, smiling. 
 
 "Ah, don't make me explain what you have only to look at
 
 152 THE TRAGIC' MUSE. 
 
 to see ! " his mother returned, as if with a richness of allusion 
 to dark elements in her fate. 
 
 "Besides," Nick went on, "there's other money in the 
 world than Julia's. I might come by some of that." 
 
 " Do you mean Mr. Carteret's 1" 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. 
 There's nothing you could do that would do you more good 
 with him than to marry Julia. I know the way he looks at 
 things and I know exactly how that would strike him. It 
 would please him, it would charm him ; it would be the thing 
 that would most prove to him that you're in earnest. You 
 need to do something of that sort." 
 
 " Haven't I come in for Harsh? " asked Kick. 
 
 "Oh, he's very canny. He likes to see people rich. Then 
 he believes in them then he's likely to believe more. He's 
 kind to you because you're your father's son ; but I'm sure 
 your being poor takes just so much off." 
 
 " He can remedy that so easily," said Nick, smiling still. 
 " Is being kept by Julia what you call making an effort for 
 myself?" 
 
 Lady Agnes hesitated ; then : ' You needn't insult Julia ! " 
 she replied. 
 
 " Moreover, if I've her money, I sha'u't want his," Nick 
 hinted. 
 
 Again his mother waited an instant before answering ; after 
 which she produced : " And pray wouldn't you wish to bo 
 independent? " 
 
 " You're delightful, dear mother you're very delightful ! I 
 particularly like your conception of independence. Doesn't it 
 occur to you that at a pinch I might improve my fortune by 
 some other means than by making a mercenary marriage or 
 by currying favour with a rich old gentleman ? Doesn't it 
 occur to you that I might work ? " 
 
 " Work at politics ? How does that make money, 
 honourably ? " 
 
 " I don't mean at politics." 
 
 " What do you mean, then 1 " Lady Agnes demanded, look- 
 ing 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 re- 
 mained silent, and she continued : " Are you elected or not ? "
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 153 
 
 " It seems a dream," said Nick. 
 
 " If you are, act accordingly and don't mix up things that 
 are as wide asunder as the poles I " She spoke with sternness, 
 and his silence might have been an admission that her stern- 
 ness 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 : " Don't you see 
 how things have turned out for us ; don't you kuow how 
 unhappy I am don't you know what a bitterness 1 " She 
 stopped for a moment, with a sob in her voice, and he recog- 
 nized 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! Everything's 
 dreary but what you can do for us. Everything's odious, 
 down to living in a hole with one's girls who don't marry. 
 Grace is impossible I don't know what's the matter with 
 her ; no one will look at her, and she's so conceited with it 
 sometimes I feel as if I could beat her ! And Biddy will 
 never marry, and we are three dismal women in a filthy house. 
 What are three dismal women, more or less, in London 1 " 
 
 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 garden- 
 less 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
 
 154 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 air, what a regilding of his sisters' possibilities, his marriage 
 to Julia would effect for them. He couldn't trace the differ- 
 ence, 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 tremb- 
 ling into sympathetic response. He had the gift, so embarrass- 
 ing 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 some- 
 thing in his life, and the recognition of them was ready to 
 become a form of enthusiasm in which there was no conscious- 
 ness 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. Julia's 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. Every- 
 thing 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 Agues's tone 
 penetrated further into Nick's spirit than it had done yet, 
 as she syllabled to him, supremely : " Don't desert us don't 
 desert us." 
 
 " Don't desert you 1 " 
 
 " Be great be great," said his mother. " I'm old, I've 
 lived, I've 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.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 155 
 
 "And you'll stay over you'll spend the day with her?" 
 
 " I'll stay till she turns me out ! " 
 
 His mother had hold of his hand again now ; she raised it 
 to her lips and kissed it. " My dearest son, my only joy ! " 
 Then, " I don't see how you can resist her," she added. 
 
 " No more do I ! " 
 
 Lady Agnes looked round the great room with a soft ex- 
 halation of gratitude and hope. " If you're so fond of art, 
 what art is equal to all this ? The joy of living in the midst 
 of it of seeing the finest works every day ! You'll have 
 everything the world can give." 
 
 " That's exactly what was just passing in my own mind. 
 It's too much." 
 
 " Don't be selfish ! " 
 
 " Selfish ] " Nick repeated. 
 
 " Don't be unselfish, then. You'll 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 won't she 
 marry ? " 
 
 " You had better ask Peter Sherringharn," said Lady 
 Agnes. 
 
 " What has he got to do with it I " 
 
 " How odd of you to ask, when it's so plain how she thinks 
 of him that it's a matter of common chaff ! " 
 
 " Yes, we've made it so, and she takes it like an angel. 
 But Peter likes her." 
 
 "Does he? Then it's the more shame to him to behave as 
 he does. He had better leave his actresses alone. That's the 
 love of art, too ! " mocked Lady Agnes. 
 
 " Biddy's so charming she'll marry some one else." 
 
 " Never, if she loves him. But Julia will bring it about 
 Julia Avill help her," said Lady Agnes, more cheerfully. 
 " That's what you'll do for us that she'll do every- 
 thing ! " 
 
 " Why then more than now 1 " Nick asked. 
 
 " Because we shall be yours." 
 
 " You are mine already." 
 
 " Yes, but she isn't. However, she's as good ! " exulted 
 Lady Agnes. 
 
 "She'll turn me out of the house," said Nick.
 
 156 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " Come and tell me when she does ! But there she is go 
 to her ! " And she gave him a push toward one of the windows 
 that stood open to the terrace. Mrs. Dallow had become 
 visible outside ; she passed slowly along the terrace, with her 
 long shadow. " Go to her," Lady Agnes repeated " she's 
 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. 
 
 " He's going to speak," the latter went on. " But don't 
 mention it." 
 
 "Don't mention it?" said Biddy, staring. "Hasn't he 
 spoken enough, poor fellow ? " 
 
 " I mean to Julia," Lady Agnes replied. 
 
 "Don't you understand, you goose?" Grace exclaimed to 
 her sister. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 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,
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 157 
 
 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 fete : 
 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 I'm almost a part of the 
 house, you know I'm. one of the chairs or tables." Nick 
 declared that he had never seen a house so well furnished, and 
 Mrs. Gresham said : "I believe there are to be some people to 
 dinner : rather an interference, isn't it 1 Julia lives so in 
 public. But it's all for you." And after a moment she added : 
 <( It's a wonderful constitution." Nick at first failed to seize 
 her allusion he thought it a retarded political reference, a 
 sudden tribute to the great unwritten instrument by which 
 they were all governed. He was on the point of saying : "The 
 British? Wonderful ! " when he perceived that the intention 
 of his interlocutress was to praise Mrs. Dallow's fine robust- 
 ness. " 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 repandue at the expense 
 of dingier belongings. Her figure was admired that is it was 
 sometimes mentioned and she dressed as if it was expected of 
 her to be smart, like a young woman in a shop or a servant 
 much in view. She slipped in and out, accompanied at the 
 piano, talked to the neglected visitors, walked in the rain and, 
 after the arrival of the post, usually had conferences with her
 
 158 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 circum- 
 stance for granted Avithout 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 impres- 
 sion 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 159 
 
 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 
 one's self and that one should not carry on one's 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 par- 
 ticular branch of it, that on the occasion of a constituency's 
 holding out a cordial hand to him, while it extended another 
 in a different direction, a certain bloom of boyhood that was 
 on him had not 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 com- 
 pliment 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
 
 160 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 one's 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 1 ? 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 conscious- 
 ness than active politics. She was, indeed, active politics ;
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 161 
 
 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 sub- 
 stantial 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 didn't know 
 what a sense of facility, an overpowering fragrance and 
 they had moved together in an immense fraternity. There 
 had been no love-making, no contact that was only personal, 
 no vulgarity of flirtation : the hurry of the days and the 
 sharpness with which they both tended to an outside object 
 had made all that irrelevant. It was as if she had been too 
 near for him to see her separate from himself ; but none the 
 less, when he now drew breath and looked back, what had 
 happened met his eyes as a composed picture a picture of 
 which the subject was inveterately Julia and her ponies : 
 Julia wonderfully fair and fine, 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.
 
 XV. 
 
 WHILE, after leaving Mrs. Gresham, lie 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, that's 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 isn't so good as theirs," said Nick. "I 
 feel as if I had been married and had shoes and rice thrown 
 after me," he went on. " But not to you, Julia nothing so 
 good as that." 
 
 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 163 
 
 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 cousin's standard in 
 lakes was too high, and then talked a little about his mother 
 and the girls, their having gone home, his not having seen 
 them that morning, Lady Agnes's deep satisfaction in his 
 victory and the fact that she would be obliged to " do some- 
 thing " for the autumn take a house or something. 
 
 " I'll 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. Hoppus's article." 
 
 " That's right ; then / sha'n't have to. You'll 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 1 Is that the sort of thing our constituents expect ? 
 Or even worse, pretending to have read him when one hasn't 1 
 Oh, what a tangled web we weave ! " 
 
 " People are talking about it. One has to know. It's the 
 article of the month." 
 
 Nick looked at 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, I'll go with you I'll kill you there." 
 
 "The things I say are the right things," said Mrs. Dallow. 
 
 "It's just the right things that are wrong. It's because
 
 164 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 you're so political," Nick went on. " It's your horrible 
 ambition. The woman who has a salon should have read the 
 article of the month. See how one dreadful thing leads to 
 another." 
 
 " There are some things that lead to nothing." 
 
 " No doubt no doubt. And how are you going to get 
 over to your island 1 " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " Isn't there a boat ? " 
 
 " I don't 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. 
 
 " Don't you know I can do everything ? " 
 
 " Yes, to be sure. That's why I want to kill you. There's 
 the boat." 
 
 " Shall you drown me 1 " 
 
 " Oh, let me perish with you ! " Nick answered with a sigh. 
 The boat had been hidden from them by the bole of a great 
 tree, which rose from the grass at the water' s-edge. It was 
 moored to a small place of embarkation and was large enough 
 to hold as many persons as were likely to wish to visit at once 
 the little temple in the middle of the lake, which Nick liked 
 because it was absurd and Mrs. Dallow had never had a par- 
 ticular 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, coining 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 consider- 
 ably 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.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 165 
 
 "Give me your hand; sit there, and I'll ferry you, ' Nick 
 Dormer said. 
 
 Mrs. Dallow complied, placing herself opposite to him in 
 the boat ; but as lie 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. It's 
 what we have been doing for a week that's attitude ; and to 
 be for half an hour where nobody's looking and one hasn't to 
 keep it up is just what I wanted to put in an idle, irresponsible 
 day for. I am not keeping it up now I suppose you've 
 noticed," Nick went on, as they floated and he scarcely dipped 
 the oars. 
 
 " I don't understand you," 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 1 " 
 
 " I believe there are three or four, but I'll 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. " We'll go home I'll put them off." 
 
 " Ah no, don't go home ; it's too jolly here. Let them 
 come let them come, poor wretches ! " 
 
 " How little you know me, 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 don't criticize 
 
 you." 
 
 " I don't 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 : " Sha'n't we visit the ruin? " 
 
 " If you like. I don't mind seeing how they keep it." 
 
 They reached the white steps which led up to it. Nick
 
 166 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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. " It's 
 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 don't represent 
 the burgesses of Harsh. It's charming it's very delicate 
 work. Surely it has been retouched." 
 
 The interior of the pavilion, lighted by windows which the 
 circle of columns was supposed, outside and at a distance, to 
 conceal, had a vaulted ceiling and was occupied by a few 
 pieces of last-century furniture, spare and faded, of which the 
 colours matched with the decoration of the walls. These and 
 the ceiling, tinted and not exempt from indications of damp, 
 were covered with fine mouldings and medallions. It 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. Hoppus's article 
 to me." 
 
 "Why, is this your salon 1 ?" asked Nick, smiling. 
 
 "Why are you always talking of that? It's an invention 
 of your own." 
 
 " But isn't 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 don't 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 ; you've 
 got charming things." 
 
 " They're supposed to come over every day and look after 
 them." 
 
 "They must come over in force." 
 
 " Oh, no one knows." 
 
 " It's spick and span. How well you have everything 
 done ! " 
 
 " I think you've some reason to say so," said Mrs. Dallow. 
 Her parasol was down and she was again rolling it tight. 
 
 " But you're right about my not knowing you. Why were 
 you so ready to do so much for me 1 ? " 
 
 He stopped in front of her and she looked up at him. Her
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 167 
 
 eyes rested on his a minute ; 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 
 isn't it natural, my wanting to know? " 
 
 " Oh, if you don't know ! " Mrs. Dallow exclaimed. 
 
 " It's a question of being sure." 
 
 " Well, then, if you're not sure 
 
 ' Was it done for me as a friend, as a man ? " 
 
 "You're not a man ^you're a child," 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 1 " 
 
 "You're the most delightful woman, Julia," said Nick, 
 sitting down beside her, " and I can't imagine what you mean 
 by my hating you." 
 
 " If you haven't discovered that I like you, you might as 
 well." 
 
 " Might as well discover it ? " 
 
 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 shouldn't we get on as well forever and ever?" Mrs. 
 Dallow made no answer, and suddenly Nick said to her : "Ah 
 Julia, I don't know what you have done to me, but you've 
 done it. You've done it by strange ways, but it will serve. 
 Yes, I hate you," he added, in a different tone, 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 shouldn't it be forever, for- 
 ever ? " in a voice that had, for her ear, such a vibration as no 
 voice had ever had. 
 
 " You've done it you've 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.
 
 168 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " 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 you'll marry me, why 
 shouldn't 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. 
 
 " You're hard, and it's 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 ? It's 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' didn't know 
 you could," he went on, smiling down at her. " I didn't no, 
 I didn't." 
 
 " It's Avhat I say that you've always hated me." 
 
 " I'll make it up to you." 
 
 She leaned on the doorway with her head against the lintel. 
 ' You don't even deny it." 
 
 " Contradict you now ? I'll admit it, though it's rubbish, on 
 purpose to live it down." 
 
 " It doesn't matter," she said, slowly ; " for however much 
 you might have liked me, you would never have done so half 
 as much as I have cared for you." 
 
 " Oh, I'm so poor ! " Nick murmured, cheerfully. 
 
 She looked at him, smiling, and slowly shook her head. 
 Then she declared: "You never can." 
 
 " I like that ! Haven't I asked you to marry me ? When 
 did you ever ask me 1 " 
 
 " Every day of my life ! As I say, it's hard for a proud 
 woman." 
 
 "Yes, you're too proud even to answer me." 
 
 " We must think of it, we must talk of it." 
 
 " Think of it? I've thought of it ever so much." 
 
 "I mean together. There are things to be said."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 169 
 
 "The principal thing is to give me your word." 
 
 Mrs. Dallow looked at him in silence ; then she exclaimed : 
 " I wish I didn't adore you ! " She went straight down the 
 steps. 
 
 " You don't, if you leave me now. Why do you go ? It's 
 so charming here, and we are so delightfully alone." 
 
 " Detach the boat; we'll 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. 
 
 " I'll get in myself, I'll 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 mother's appeal to him the 
 day before had been the idea that he must act with unim- 
 peachable honour. He was capable of taking it as an assur- 
 ance that Julia had placed him under an obligation which a 
 gentleman could regard only in one way. If she had under- 
 stood 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 turn- 
 ing 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 didn't like, in general, to be told such 
 things) ; but the responsibility seemed easier to carry and he
 
 170 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 was less shy about it when once he was away from other eyes, 
 with only Julia's own to express that truth and with indifferent 
 nature all around. Besides, what discovery had he made this 
 morning but that he also was in love 1 
 
 11 You must be a very great man," she said to him, in the 
 middle of the lake. " I don't know what you mean about 
 my salon ; but I am ambitious." 
 
 " We must look at life in a large, bold way," Nick replied, 
 resting his oars. 
 
 "That's what I mean. If I didn't think you could I 
 wouldn't look at you." 
 
 "I could what?" 
 
 " Do everything you ought everything I imagine, I dream 
 of. You are clever : you can never make me believe the con- 
 trary, after your speech on Tuesday. Don't speak to me ! 
 I've seen, I've heard and I know what's in you. I shall hold 
 you to it. You are everything that you pretend not to be." 
 
 Nick sat looking at the water while she talked. " Will it 
 always be so amusing 1 " he asked. 
 
 " Will what always be 1 " 
 
 "Why, my career." 
 
 " Sha'n't I make it so?" 
 
 " It will be yours ; it won't be mine," said Nick. 
 
 "Ah, don't say that: don't make me out that sort of 
 woman ! If they should say it's me, I'd drown myself." 
 
 " If they should say what's you? " 
 
 " Why, your getting on. If they should say I push you, 
 that I do things for you." 
 
 " Well, won't you do them ? It's just what I count on." 
 
 "Don't be dreadful," said Mrs. Dallow. "It would be 
 loathsome if I were said to be cleverer than you. That's 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 delight- 
 ful," Nick declared, as if he fully perceived the sweetness of it. 
 " I dare say that will keep me in heart." 
 
 " In heart ? Why shouldn't you be in heart ? " Julia's 
 eyes, lingering on him, searching him, seemed to question him 
 still more than her lips. 
 
 " Oh, it will be all right ! " cried Nick. 
 
 " You'll like success, as well as any one else. Don't tell me 
 you're not so ethereal ! "
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 171 
 
 " Yes, I shall like success." 
 
 " So shall I ! And of course I am glad that you'll be able 
 to do things," Mrs. Dallow went on. "I'm glad you'll have 
 things. I'm glad I'm not poor." 
 
 " Ah, don't speak of that," Nick murmured. " Only be 
 nice to my mother : \ve shall make her supremely happy." 
 
 " I'm glad I like your people," Mrs. Dallow dropped. 
 " Leave them to me ! " 
 
 " You're generous you're noble," stammered Nick. 
 
 " Your mother must live at Broadwood ; she must have it 
 for life. It's not at all bad." 
 
 " Ah, Julia," her companion replied, " it's well I love 
 you ! " 
 
 " Why shouldn't you?" 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 conse- 
 quence, strolling in a direction which was not that of the 
 house. There was a vista that drew them on, a grassy path 
 skirting the foundations of scattered beeches and leading to a 
 stile from which the charmed wanderer might drop into another 
 division of Mrs. Dallow's property. This lady said something 
 about their going as far as the stile ; then the next instant 
 she exclaimed : " How stupid of you you've forgotten Mr. 
 Hoppus ! " 
 
 " We left him in the temple of Vesta. Darling, I had other 
 things to think of there." 
 
 " I'll 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, say- 
 ing they would go as far as the stile. " Of course I know 
 you're fearfully vague," she presently resumed. 
 
 " I wasn't vague at all. But you were in such a hurry to 
 get away." 
 
 "It doesn't signify. I 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. Dallow's charge of vagueness. They had
 
 172 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 
 
 won't paint ? " 
 
 " "Who says it won't ? " 
 
 "I don't know some of them. It will in France; but 
 somehow it won't here." 
 
 "What are you talking about?" Mrs. Dallow demanded. 
 
 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 1 It shows how you've 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. " It's neither too small nor too big, and it 
 takes care of itself. There's nothing to be done : you can't 
 spend a penny." 
 
 " And don't you want to use it 1 " 
 
 " We can go and stay with them," said Mrs. Dallow. 
 
 " They'll 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. Yoti seemed 
 to want to frighten me."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 173 
 
 " Why should you have been frightened ? I can't imagine 
 what I had in my head : not now." 
 
 " You are vague," said Julia, with a little flush. 
 
 " Not about the great thing." 
 
 "The great thing]" 
 
 " That I owe you everything an honest man has to offer. 
 How can I care about the fine arts now? " 
 
 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 1 " She tossed her head toward 
 the lake. 
 
 "I think I spoke to you because I couldn't help it." 
 
 " You are vague." And Mrs. Dallow walked on again. 
 
 " You affect me differently from any other woman." 
 
 " Oh, other women ! Why shouldn't you care about the 
 fine arts now] " she added. 
 
 "There will be no time. All my days and my years will 
 be none too much to do what you expect of me." 
 
 ': I don't expect you to give up anything. I only expect 
 you to do more." 
 
 " To do more I must do less. I have no talent." 
 
 " No talent ? " 
 
 " I mean for painting." 
 
 Mrs. Dallow stopped again. " That's odious 1 You have 
 you must." 
 
 Nick burst out laughing. " You're altogether delightful. 
 But how little you know about it about the honourable 
 practice of any art ! " 
 
 " What do you call practice ? You'll have all our things 
 you'll live in the midst of them." 
 
 " Certainly I shall enjoy looking at them, being so near 
 them." 
 
 " Don't say I've taken you away then." 
 
 " Taken me away ? " 
 
 " From the love of art. I like them myself now, poor 
 George's treasures. I didn't, of old, so much, because it 
 seemed to me he made too much of them he was always 
 talking." 
 
 " Well, I won't talk," said Nick. 
 
 " You may do as you like they're yours." 
 
 '' Give them to the nation." Nick went on. 
 
 " I like that ! When we have done with them." 
 
 <; We shall have done with them when your Vandykes and
 
 174 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 Moronis have cured me of the delusion that I may be of their 
 family. Surely that won't take long." 
 
 " You shall paint me," said Julia. 
 
 " Never, never, never ! " 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 : " Sha'n't we really go and fetch 
 Mr. Hoppus?" 
 
 She hesitated. "You may go; I won't, please." 
 
 " That's not what I want." 
 
 "Oblige me by going. I'll wait here." With which 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 don't know. Because I'm so happy." 
 
 "May I tell mother?" 
 
 " You may tell her she shall have Broad wood. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 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. Carteret' s leisure, a 
 sense of which came to him now afresh, in the summer 
 evening, as he walked up the hill toward the quiet house 
 where enjoyment, for him, had ever been mingled with a 
 vague oppression. He was a little boy again, under Mr. 
 Carteret's roof a little boy on whom it had been duly im- 
 pressed that in the wide, plain, peaceful rooms he was not to 
 " touch." When he paid a visit to his father's old friend 
 there were in fact many things many topics from which
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 175 
 
 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. Carteret' s 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 interpene- 
 trating, 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 cobble- 
 stones, opened opposite to Mr. Carteret's 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 pro- 
 prietor 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 
 Nick's 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
 
 176 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 permit himself this freedom ; never giving a sign of recog- 
 nition, often as the young man had been at the house. He was 
 most attentive to the visitor's wants, but apparently feared 
 that if he allowed a familiarity it might go too far. There 
 was always the same question to be asked had Mr. Carteret 
 finished his nap ? He usually had not finished it, and this 
 left Nick what he liked time to smoke a cigarette in the 
 garden or even, before dinner, to take a turn about the place. 
 He observed now, every time he came, that Mr. Carteret's 
 nap lasted a little longer. There was each year a little more 
 strength to be gathered for the ceremony of dinner : this was 
 the principal symptom almost the only one that the clear- 
 cheeked old gentleman gave of not being so fresh as of yore. 
 He was still wonderful for his age. To-day he was particu- 
 larly 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. Carteret's 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 repre- 
 sented and apparently exhausted the master's sense of pleas- 
 ing 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. Carteret's 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 re- 
 ceptacles ; 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 177 
 
 dirjner. 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 compli- 
 ments 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 restor- 
 ation of the abbey ; it would give rise to a considerable deal 
 of orderly debate. Lord Bottomley, oddly enough, would 
 probably oppose the expensive project, but on grounds that 
 would be characteristic of him even if the attitude were not. 
 Nick's nerves, 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 Bottomley's treating a 
 question of aesthetics. 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 architec- 
 tural 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
 
 178 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 would be dropped at last however, after half an hour's gentle 
 worrying, and the conversation would incline itself to public 
 affairs. Mr. Carteret would find his natural level the pro- 
 duction of anecdote in regard to the formation of early 
 ministries. He knew more than any one else about the 
 personages of whom certain cabinets would have consisted if 
 they had not consisted of others. His favourite exercise was 
 to illustrate how different everything might have been from 
 what 'it was, and how the reason of the difference had always 
 been somebody's inability to " see his way " to accept the view 
 of somebody else a view usually, at the time, discussed, in 
 strict confidence, with Mr. Carteret, who surrounded his 
 actual violation of that confidence, thirty years later, with 
 many precautions against scandal. In this retrospective vein, 
 at the head of his table, the old gentleman 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 one's being able to say anything. 
 Nick knew the moment when he himself would take a glass 
 of a particular port and, surreptitiously looking at his watch, 
 perceive it was ten o'clock. 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 corn- 
 fields and magistrates and vicars), and these things were con- 
 nected 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 respon- 
 sibility. 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 179 
 
 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 achieve- 
 ment 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. Carteret's blindness on certain sides. 
 Presently he perceived it was nearly half-past seven, and as 
 he went back to his old friend's 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 Parlia- 
 ment if one was still sensitive to an intimation on the part of 
 such a functionary that one ought already to have begun to 
 dress. Chayter' s words meant that Mr. Carteret would expect 
 to have a little comfortable conversation with him before 
 dinner. Nick's usual rapidity in dressing was however quite 
 adequate to the occasion, 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
 
 180 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 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 par- 
 ticular years. To many of these facts he attached great im- 
 portance, 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 man's courtesy a thing so charming in itself 
 that it would have been grossness to speak of him as a bore. 
 The difficulty was that he took for granted all kinds of positive 
 assent, and Nick, in 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. 
 Carteret's aspect and his appreciation were still so fresh, this 
 relation of his to his late distinguished friend made the latter 
 appear to Nick even more irrecoverably dead. The good old 
 man had almost a vocabulary of his own, made up of old- 
 fashioned political phrases and quite untainted with the new 
 terms, mostly borrowed from America ; indeed, his language and 
 his tone made those of almost any one who might be talking 
 with him 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
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 181 
 
 so much of affairs that draAv 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 Nick's perception, his variations his 
 back windows opening into grounds more private. That was 
 visible from the way his eye grew cold and his whole polite 
 face rather austere when he listened to something that he didn't 
 agree with or perhaps even understand; as if his modesty 
 did not in strictness forbid the suspicion that a thing he didn't 
 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 lordship's 
 second daughter. There were recurrent allusions to Nick's 
 victory, as to which he had the fear that he might appear to 
 exhibit less interest in it than the company did. He took 
 energetic precautions against this and felt repeatedly a little 
 spent with them, for the subject always came up once more. 
 Yet it was not as his but as theirs that they liked the 
 triumph. Mr. Carteret took leave of him for the night 
 directly after the other guests had gone, using at this moment 
 the words that he had often used before 
 
 "You may sit up to any hour you like. I only ask that 
 you don't read in bed."
 
 XVII. 
 
 NICK'S little visit was to terminate immediately after 
 luncheon the following day : much as the old man enjoyed 
 his being there he 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 correspond- 
 ence, 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 retire- 
 ment he had not exactly been a statesman. A young man, 
 a very sharp, handy young man, came every morning at ten 
 o'clock and wrote for him till lunch-time. The young man 
 had a holiday to-day, in honour of Nick's visit a facfc the 
 mention of which led Nick to make some not particularly 
 sincere speech about Ms being ready to write anything if Mr. 
 Carteret were at all pressed. 
 
 " Ah, but your "own budget : what will become of that ? " 
 the old gentleman objected, glancing at Nick's pockets as if 
 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 won't do them justice you won't do 
 them justice." He talked for ten minutes, in his rich, simple, 
 urbane way, about the fatal consequences of getting behind. 
 It was his favourite doctrine that one should always be a 
 little before ; and his own eminently regular respiration
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 183 
 
 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 doesn't observe me," he said to himself; "if he did he 
 would see, he wouldn't think And the end of this private 
 cogitation was a vague impatience of all the things his 
 venerable host took for granted. He didn't see any of the 
 things 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 wouldn't 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 Nick's 
 attention to the fact that he still so far clung to his conviction 
 as to hold (though of what might be urged on the other side 
 he was perfectly aware,), that a representative should at least 
 be as resident as possible. This gave Nick an opening for 
 saying something that had been on and off his lips all the 
 morning. 
 
 " According to that I ought to take up iny abode at Harsh.' ;
 
 184 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " 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. 
 " I've got a piece of news for you which I've kept, as one 
 keeps that sort of thing (for it's very good), till the last." He 
 waited a little, to see if Mr. Carteret would guess, and at first 
 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." 
 
 " It's 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 don't 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 don't 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 at the same time 
 she's a very political woman," Nick remarked. 
 
 " Isn't it rather in the family \ I remember once going to 
 see her mother in town and finding the leaders of both parties 
 sitting with her." 
 
 " My principal friend, of the others, is her brother Peter. I 
 don't think he troubles himself much about that sort of 
 thing." 
 
 "What does he trouble himself about?" Mr. Carteret 
 inquired, with a certain gravity. 
 
 " He's in the diplomatic service ; he's a secretary in Paris." 
 
 "That may be serious," said the old man. 
 
 " He takes a great interest in the theatre ; I suppose you'll 
 say that may be serious too," Nick added, laughing.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 185 
 
 "Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Carteret, looking as if he scarcely 
 understood. Then he continued : " Well, it can't hurt you." 
 
 "It can't hurt me?" 
 
 " If Mrs. Dallow takes an interest in your interests." 
 
 " When a man's in my situation he feels as if nothing could 
 hurt him." 
 
 "I'm very glad you're happy," said Mr. Carteret. He 
 rested his mild eyes on our young man, who had a sense of 
 seeing in them for a moment the faint ghost of an old story, 
 the dim revival of a sentiment that had become the memory 
 of a memory. This glimmer of wonder and envy, the revela- 
 tion of a life intensely celibate, was for an instant infinitely 
 touching. Kick had always had a theory, suggested by a 
 vague allusion from his father, who had been discreet, that 
 their benevolent friend had had in his youth an unhappy 
 love-affair which had led him to forswear for ever the com- 
 merce of woman. What remained in him of conscious 
 renunciation gave a throb as he looked at his bright com- 
 panion, who proposed to take the matter so much the other 
 way. " It's good to marry, and I think it's right. I've not 
 done right, I know it. If she's a good woman it's the best 
 thing," Mr. Carteret went on. " It's what I've been hoping 
 for you. Sometimes I've thought of speaking to you." 
 
 " She's a very good woman," said Nick. 
 
 " And I hope she's not poor." Mr. Carteret spoke with 
 exactly the same blandness. 
 
 " No, indeed, she's rich. Her husband, whom I knew and 
 liked, left her a large fortune." 
 
 " And on what terms does she enjoy it ? " 
 
 "I haven't the least i^ea," said Nick. 
 
 Mr. Carteret was silent a moment. " I see. It doesn't 
 concern you. It needn't concern you," he added in a moment. 
 
 Nick thought of his mother, at this, but he remarked : " I 
 dare say she can do what she likes with her money." 
 
 " So can I, my dear young friend," said Mr. Carteret. 
 
 Nick tried not to look conscious, for he felt a significance 
 in the old man's face. He turned his own everywhere but 
 towards it, thinking again of his mother. " That must be 
 very pleasant, if one has any." 
 
 " I wish you had a little more. 
 
 " I don't particularly care," said Nick. 
 
 " Your marriage will assist you ; you can't help that," Mr. 
 Carteret went on. "But I should like you to be under 
 obligations not quite so heavy."
 
 186 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " Oh, I'm so obliged to her for caring for me ! " 
 
 "That the rest doesn't count? Certainly it's nice of her to 
 like you. But why shouldn't she? Other people do." 
 
 " Some of them make me feel as if I abused it," said Nick, 
 looking at his host. " That is, they don't make me, but I feel 
 it," he added, correcting himself. 
 
 " I have no son," said Mr. Carteret. " Sha'n't you be very 
 kind to her?" he pursued. "You'll gratify her ambition." 
 
 "Oh, she thinks me cleverer than I am." 
 
 " That's because she's in love," hinted the old gentleman, as 
 if this were very subtle. " However, you must be as clever as 
 we think you. If you don't prove so " And he paused, 
 with his folded hands. 
 
 "Well, if I don't?" asked Nick. 
 
 "Oh, it won't do it won't do," said Mr. Carteret, in a tone 
 his companion was destined to remember afterwards: "I say 
 I have no son," he continued; " but if I had had one he should 
 have risen high." 
 
 "It's well for me such a person doesn't exist. I shouldn't 
 easily have found a wife." 
 
 " He should have gone to the altar with a little money 
 in his pocket." 
 
 " That would have been the least of his advantages, sir." 
 
 " When are you to be married ? " Mr. Carteret asked. 
 
 "Ah, that's the question. Mrs. Dallow won't say." 
 
 " Well, you may consider that when it comes off I will 
 make you a settlement." 
 
 " I feel your kindness more than I can say," Nick replied ; 
 " but that will probably be the moment when I shall be least 
 conscious of wanting anything." 
 
 " You'll appreciate it later -you'll appreciate it very soon. 
 I shall like you to appreciate it," Mr. Carteret went on, as 
 if he had a just vision of the way a young man of a proper 
 spirit should feel. Then he added : " Your father would have 
 liked you to appreciate it." 
 
 " Poor father ! " Nick exclaimed vaguely, rather embarrassed, 
 reflecting on the oddity of a position in which the ground for 
 holding up his head as the husband of a rich woman would be 
 that he had accepted a present of money from another source. 
 It was plain that he was not fated to go in for independence ; 
 the most that he could treat himself to would be dependence 
 that was duly grateful. "How much you expect of me!" 
 he pursued, with a grave face. 
 
 " It's only what your father did. He so often spoke of you,
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 187 
 
 I remember, at the last, just after you had been with him 
 alone you know I saw him then. He was greatly moved by 
 his interview with you, and so was I by what he told me of it. 
 He said he should live on in you he should work in you. It 
 has always given me a very peculiar feeling, if I may use the 
 expression, about you." 
 
 " The feelings are indeed peculiar, dear Mr. Carteret, which 
 take so munificent a form. But you do oh, you do expect 
 too much." 
 
 " I expect you to repay me ! " said the old man gaily. " As 
 for the form, I have it in my mind." 
 
 "The form of repayment? " 
 
 "No, no of settlement." 
 
 " Ah, don't talk of it now," said Nick, " for, you see, 
 nothing else is settled. No one has been told except my 
 mother. She has only consented to my telling you." 
 
 " Lady Agnes, do you mean? " 
 
 " Ah, no ; dear mother would like to publish it on the 
 house-tops. She's so glad she wants us to have it over to- 
 morrow. But Julia wishes to wait. Therefore kindly mention 
 it for the present to no one." 
 
 " My dear boy, at this rate there is nothing to mention. 
 What does Julia want to wait for ? " 
 
 " Till I like her better that's what she says." 
 
 " It's the way to make you like her worse. Hasn't she 
 your affection ? " 
 
 " So much so that her delay makes me exceedingly un- 
 happy." 
 
 Mr. Carteret looked at his young friend as if he didn't 
 strike him as very unhappy ; but he demanded : " Then what 
 more does she want 1 ?" Nick laughed out at this, but he 
 perceived his host had not meant it as an epigram ; while the 
 latter went on : "I don't understand. You're engaged or 
 you're not engaged." 
 
 " She is, but I am not. That's what she says about it. 
 The trouble is she doesn't believe in me." 
 
 " Doesn't she love you then 1 " 
 
 " That's what I ask her. Her answer is that she loves me 
 only too well. She's so afraid of being a burden to me that 
 she gives me my freedom till I've taken another year to 
 think." 
 
 " I like the way you talk about other years ! " Mr. Carteret 
 exclaimed. " You had better do it while I'm here to bless 
 you."
 
 188 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " She thinks I proposed to her because she got me in for 
 Harsh," said Nick. 
 
 " Well, I'm sure it would be a very pretty return." 
 
 " Ah, she doesn't believe in me," Nick murmured. 
 
 " Then I don't believe in her." 
 
 " Don't say that don't say that. She's a very rare creature. 
 But she's proud, shy, suspicious." 
 
 " Suspicious of what 1 " 
 
 " Of everything. She thinks I'm not persistent." 
 
 "Persistent^" 
 
 " She can't believe I shall arrive at true eminence." 
 
 "A good wife should believe what her husband believes," 
 j?aid Mr. Carteret. 
 
 "Ah, unfortunately I don't believe it either." 
 
 Mr. Carteret looked serious. "Your dear father did." 
 
 "I think of that I think of that," Nick replied. "Cer- 
 tainly it will help me. If I say we're engaged," he went on, 
 " it's because I consider it so. She gives me my liberty, but 
 I don't take it." 
 
 " Does she expect you to take back your word ? " 
 
 " That's what I ask her. 8he never will. Therefore we're 
 as good as tied." 
 
 " I don't like it," said Mr. Carteret, after a moment. " I 
 don't like ambiguous, uncertain situations. They please me 
 much better when they are definite and clear." The retreat 
 of expression had been sounded in his face the aspect it 
 wore when he wished not to be encouraging. But after an 
 instant he added in a tone softer than this : " Don't disappoint 
 me, my dear boy." 
 
 " Disappoint you 1 " 
 
 " I've told you what I want to do for you. See that the 
 conditions come about promptly in which I may do it. Are 
 you sure that you do everything to satisfy Mrs. Dallow 1 " 
 Mr. Carteret continued. 
 
 " I think I'm very nice to her," Nick protested. " But 
 she's so ambitious. Frankly speaking, it's a pity for her 
 that she likes me." 
 
 " She can't help that." 
 
 " Possibly. But isn't it a reason for taking me as I am I 
 What she wants to do is to take me as I may be a year hence." 
 
 " I don't understand if, as you say, even then she won't 
 take back her word," said Mr. Carteret. 
 
 " If she doesn't marry me I think she'll never marry again 
 at all."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 189 
 
 "What then does she gain by delay?" 
 
 "Simply this, as I make it out that she'll feel she has 
 been very magnanimous. She won't have to reproach herself 
 with not having given me a chance to change." 
 
 " To change ? What does she think you liable to do 1 " 
 
 Nick was silent a minute. " I don't know ! " he said, not 
 at all candidly. 
 
 " Everything has altered : young people in my day looked 
 at these questions more naturally," Mr. Carteret declared. 
 " A woman in love has no need to be magnanimous. If she 
 is, she isn't in love," he added shrewdly. 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Dallow's safe she's safe," Nick smiled. 
 
 " If it were a question between you and another gentleman 
 one might comprehend. But what does it mean, between you 
 and nothing ? " 
 
 " I'm much obliged to you, sir," Nick returned. " The 
 trouble is that she doesn't know what she has got hold of." 
 
 " Ah, if you can't make it clear to her ! " 
 
 " I'm such a humbug," said the young man. His companion 
 stared, and he continued : " I deceive people without in the 
 least intending it." 
 
 " W T hat on earth do you mean ] Are you deceiving me ? " 
 
 " I don't know it depends on what you think." 
 
 " I think you're nighty," said Mr. Carteret, with the nearest 
 approach to sternness that Nick had ever observed in him. 
 ' : I never thought so before." 
 
 "Forgive me; it's all right. I'm not frivolous; that I 
 affirm I'm not." 
 
 " You have deceived me if you are." 
 
 "It's all right," Nick stammered, with a blush. 
 
 " Remember your name carry it high." 
 
 ' I will as high as possible." 
 
 " You've no excuse. Don't tell me, after your speeches at 
 Harsh ! " Nick was on the point of declaring again that he 
 was a humbug, so vivid was his inner sense of what he thought 
 of his factitious public utterances, which had the cursed 
 property of creating dreadful responsibilities and importunate 
 credulities for him. If he was " clever," what fools many 
 other people were ! He repressed his impulse, and Mr. 
 Carteret pursued : "If, as you express it, Mrs. Dallow doesn't 
 know what she has got hold of, won't it clear the matter up a 
 little if you inform her that the day before your marriage is 
 definitely settled to take place you will come into something 
 comfortable ? "
 
 190 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 A quick vision of what Mr. Carteret would be likely to 
 regard as something comfortable flitted before Nick, but it did 
 not prevent him from replying : " Oh, I'm afraid that won't 
 do any good. It would make her like you better, but it 
 wouldn't make her like me. I'm afraid she won't care for any 
 benefit that comes to me from another hand than hers. Her 
 affection is a very jealous sentiment." 
 
 "It's a very peculiar one ! " sighed Mr. Carteret. " Mine's 
 a jealous sentiment too. However, if she takes it that way 
 don't tell her." 
 
 " I'll let you know as soon as she comes round," said Nick. 
 
 " And you'll tell your mother," said Mr. Carteret. " I shall 
 like her to know." 
 
 " It will be delightful news to her. But she's keen enough 
 already." 
 
 " I know that. I may mention now that she has written 
 to me," the old man added. 
 
 " So I suspected." 
 
 " We have corresponded on the subject," Mr. Carteret con- 
 tinued to confess. " My view of the advantageous character 
 of such an alliance has entirely coincided with hers." 
 
 " It was very good-natured of you to leave me to speak 
 first," said Nick. 
 
 " I should have been disappointed if you hadn't. I don't 
 like all you have told me. But don't disappoint me now." 
 
 " Dear Mr. Carteret ! " Nick exclaimed. 
 
 " I won't disappoint you," the old man went on, looking at 
 his big, old-fashioned watch. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 AT first Peter Sherringham thought of asking to be trans- 
 ferred to another post and went so far, in London, as to take 
 what he believed to be good advice on the subject. The advice 
 perhaps struck him as the better for consisting of a strong 
 recommendation to do nothing so foolish. Two or three reasons 
 were mentioned to him why such a request would not, in the 
 particular circumstances, raise him in the esteem of his 
 superiors, and he promptly recognized their force. It next 
 appeared to him that it might help him (not with his superiors, 
 but with himself,) to apply for an extension of leave ; but on 
 further reflection he remained convinced that though there are
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 191 
 
 .some dangers before which it is perfectly consistent with 
 honour to flee, it was better for every one concerned that he 
 should fight this especial battle on the spot. During his 
 holiday his plan of campaign gave him plenty of occupation. 
 He refurbished his arms, rubbed up his strategy, laid out his 
 lines of defence. 
 
 There was only one thing in life that his mind had been 
 very much made up to, but on this question he had never 
 wavered : he would get on to the utmost in his profession. 
 It was a point on which it was perfectly lawf ul to be unamiable 
 to others to be vigilant, eager, suspicious, selfish. He had 
 not in fact been unamiable to others, for his affairs had not 
 required it : he had got on well enough without hardening his 
 heart. Fortune had been kind to him and he had passed so 
 many competitors on the way that he could forswear jealousy 
 and be generous. But he had always flattered himself that 
 his hand would not falter on the day he should find it necessary 
 to drop bitterness into his cup. This day would be sure to 
 dawn, for no career was all clear water to the end ; and then 
 the sacrifice would find him ready. His mind was familiar 
 with the thought of a sacrifice : it is true that nothing could 
 be plain in advance about the occasion, the object, the victim. 
 All that was tolerably definite was that the propitiatory offer- 
 ing would have to be some cherished enjoyment. Yery likely 
 indeed this enjoyment would be associated with the charms of 
 another person a probability pregnant with the idea that 
 such charms would have to be dashed out of sight. At any 
 rate it never had occurred to Sherringham that he himself 
 might be the sacrifice. You had to pay to get on ; but at 
 least you borrowed from others to do it. When you couldn't 
 borrow you didn't get on : for what was the situation in life in 
 which you met the whole requisition yourself ? 
 
 Least of all had it occurred to our friend that the wrench 
 might come through his interest in that branch of art on which 
 Nick Dormer had rallied him. The beauty of a love of the 
 theatre was precisely that it was a passion exercised on the 
 easiest terms. This was not the region of responsibility. It 
 had the discredit of being sniffed at by the austere ; but if it 
 was not, as they said, a serious field, was not the compensation 
 just that you could not be seriously entangled in it 1 Sherring- 
 ham's great advantage, as he regarded the matter, was that he 
 had always kept his taste for the drama quite in its place. 
 His facetious cousin was free to pretend that it sprawled 
 through his life ; but this was nonsense, as any unprejudiced
 
 192 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 observer of that life would unhesitatingly attest. There had 
 not been the least sprawling, and his fancy for the art of 
 Garrick had never worn the proportions of an eccentricity. 
 It had never drawn down from above anything approaching 
 a reprimand, a remonstrance, a remark. Sherringbam was 
 positively proud of his discretion ; for he was a little proud of 
 what he did know about the stage. Trifling for trifling there 
 were plenty of his fellows who had in their lives private 
 infatuations much sillier and less confessable. Had he not 
 known men who collected old invitation-cards (hungry for 
 those of the last century), and others who had a secret passion 
 for shuffleboard 1 His little weaknesses were intellectual 
 they were a part of the life of the mind. All the same on 
 the day they showed a symptom of interfering they should be 
 plucked off with a turn of the wrist. 
 
 Sherringham scented interference now, and interference in 
 rather an invidious form. It might be a bore, from the point 
 of view of the profession, to find one's self, as a critic of the 
 stage, in love with a coquine ; but it was a much greater bore 
 to find one's self in love with a young woman whose character 
 remained to be estimated. Miriam Rooth was neither fish nor 
 flesh : one had with her neither the guarantees of one's own 
 class nor the immunities of hers. What was hers, if one came 
 to that 1 ? A certain puzzlement about this very point was 
 part of the fascination which she had ended by throwing over 
 him. Poor Sherringham's scheme for getting on had contained 
 no proviso against falling in love, but it had embodied an 
 important clause on the subject of surprises. It was always a 
 surprise to fall in love, especially if one were looking out for 
 it ; so this contingency had not been worth official paper. But 
 it became a man who respected the service he had undertaken 
 for the State to be on his guard against predicaments from 
 which the only issue was the rigour of matrimony. An 
 ambitious diplomatist would probably be wise to marry, but 
 only with his eyes very much open. That was the fatal sur- 
 prise to be led to the altar in a dream. Sherringham's view 
 of the proprieties attached to such a step was high and strict ; 
 and if he held that a man in his position was, especially as the 
 position improved, essentially a representative of the greatness 
 of his country, he considered that the wife of such a personage 
 would exercise in her degree (for instance, at a foreign court) 
 a function no less symbolic. She would always be, in short, a 
 very important quantity, and the scene was strewn with 
 illustrations of this general truth. She might be such a help
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 193 
 
 and she might be such a blight that common prudence required 
 that one should test her in advance. Sherringham had seen 
 women in the career who were stupid or vulgar make a mess 
 of things it was enough to wring your heart. Then he had 
 his positive idea of the perfect ambassadress, the full-blown 
 lily of the future ; and with this idea Miriam Booth presented 
 no analogy whatever. 
 
 The girl had described herself with characteristic directness 
 as " all right " ; and so she might be, so she assuredly was : 
 only all right for what ? He had divined that she was not 
 sentimental that whatever capacity she might have for 
 responding to a devotion or for desiring it was at any rate 
 not in the direction of vague philandering. With him cer- 
 tainly she had no disposition to philander. Sherringham was 
 almost afraid to think of this, lest it should beget in him a 
 rage convertible mainly into caring for her more. Rage or 
 no rage, it would be charming to be in love with her if there 
 were no complications ; but the complications were in advance 
 just what was clearest in the business. He was perhaps cold- 
 blooded to think of them ; but it must be remembered that 
 they were the particular thing which his training had equipped 
 him for dealing with. He was at all events not too cold- 
 blooded to have, for the two months of his holiday, very little 
 inner vision of anything more abstract than Miriam's face. 
 The desire to see it again was as pressing as thirst ; but he 
 tried to teach himself the endurance of the traveller in the 
 desert. He kept the Channel between them, but his spirit 
 moved every day an inch nearer to her, until (and it was not 
 long) there were no more inches left. The last thing he 
 expected the future ambassadress to have been was a fille de 
 theatre. The answer to this objection was of course that 
 Miriam was not yet so much of one but that he could easily 
 head her off. Then came worrying retorts to that, chief 
 among which was the sense that to his artistic conscience 
 heading her off would be simple shallowness. The poor girl 
 had a right to her chance, and he should not really alter any- 
 thing by taking it away from her ; for was she not the artist 
 to the tips of her tresses (the ambassadress never in the 
 world), and would she not take it out in something else if one 
 were to make her deviate 1 So certain was that irrepressible 
 deviltry to insist ever on its own. 
 
 I Besides, could one make her deviate? If she had no dis- 
 position to philander, what was his warrant for supposing that 
 she could be corrupted into respectability 1 How could the
 
 194 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 career (his career) speak to a nature which had glimpses, as 
 vivid as they were crude, of such a different range, and for 
 which success meant quite another sauce to the dish 1 "Would 
 the brilliancy of marrying Peter Sherringham be such a bribe 
 to relinquishment ? How could he think so without fatuity 
 how could he regard himself as a high prize ? Relinquishment 
 of the opportunity to exercise a rare talent was not, in the 
 nature of things, an easy effort to a young lady who was con- 
 ceited as well as ambitious. Besides, she might eat her cake 
 and have it might make her fortune both on the stage and 
 in the world. Successful actresses had ended by marrying 
 dukes, and was not that better than remaining obscure and 
 marrying a commoner ? There were moments when Sherring- 
 ham tried to think that Miriam's talent was not a force to 
 reckon with ; there was so little to show for it as yet that the 
 caprice of believing in it would perhaps suddenly leave her. 
 But his suspicion that it was real was too uneasy to make 
 such an experiment peaceful, and he came back moreover to 
 his deepest impression that of her being of the turn of mind 
 for which the only consistency is talent. Had not Madame 
 Carre said at the last that she could " do anything " ? It was 
 true that if Madame Carr6 had been mistaken in the first 
 place she might also be mistaken in the second. But in this 
 latter case she would be mistaken with him, and such an error 
 would be too like a truth. 
 
 I ought possibly to hesitate to say how much Sherringham 
 felt the discomfort, for him, of the advantage that Miriam had 
 of him the advantage of her presenting herself in a light 
 which rendered any passion that he might entertain an impli- 
 cation of duty as well as of pleasure. Why there should be 
 this implication was more than he could say ; sometimes he 
 declared to himself that he was superstitious for seeing it. 
 He didn't know, he could scarcely conceive of another case 
 of the same general type in which he would have seen it. In 
 foreign countries there were very few ladies of Miss Booth's 
 intended profession who would not have regarded it as too 
 strong an order that to console them for not being admitted 
 into drawing-rooms they should have no offset but the exercise 
 of a virtue in which no one would believe. Because in foreign 
 countries actresses were not admitted into drawing-rooms : 
 that was a pure English drollery, ministering equally little to 
 histrionics and to the tone of these resorts. Did the sanctity 
 which to his imagination made it a burden to have to reckon 
 with Miriam come from her being English 1 Sherringham
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 195 
 
 could remember cases in which that privilege operated as 
 little as possible as a restriction. It came a great deal from 
 Mrs. Rooth, in whom he apprehended depths of calculation 
 as to what she might achieve for her daughter by " working" 
 the idea of a blameless life. Her romantic turn of mind 
 would not in the least prevent her from regarding that idea 
 as a substantial capital, to be laid out to the best worldly 
 advantage. Miriam's essential irreverence was capable, on a 
 pretext, of making mince-meat of it that he was sure of ; 
 for the only capital she recognized was the talent which some 
 day managers and agents would outbid each other in paying 
 for. But she was a good-natured creature ; she was fond of 
 her mother, would do anything to oblige (that might work in 
 all sorts of ways), and would probably like the loose slippers 
 of blamelessness quite as well as the high standards of the 
 opposite camp. 
 
 Sherringham, I may add, had no desire that she should 
 indulge a different preference : it was foreign to him to com- 
 pute the probabilities of a young lady's misbehaving for his 
 advantage (that seemed to him definitely base), and he would 
 have thought himself a blackguard if, professing a tenderness 
 for Miriam, he had not wished the thing that was best for her. 
 The thing that was best for her would no doubt be to become 
 the wife of the man to whose suit she should incline her ear. 
 That this would be the best thing for the gentleman in 
 question was however a very different matter, and Sherring- 
 ham's final conviction was that it would never do for him to 
 act the part of that hypothetic personage. He asked for no 
 removal and no extension of leave, and he proved to himself 
 how well he knew what he was about by never addressing a 
 line, during his absence, to the Hotel de la Garonne. He 
 would simply go straight and inflict as little injury upon 
 Peter Sherringham as upon any one else. He remained away 
 to the last hour of his privilege and continued to act lucidly 
 in having nothing to do with the mother and daughter for 
 several days after his return to Paris. 
 
 It was when this discipline came to an end, one afternoon 
 after a week had passed, that he felt most the force of the 
 reference that has just been made to Mrs. Rooth' s private 
 reckonings. He found her at home alone, writing a letter 
 under the lamp, and as soon as he came in she cried out that 
 he was the very person to whom the letter was addressed. 
 She could bear it no longer ; she had permitted herself to 
 reproach him with his terrible silence to ask why he had
 
 196 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 quite forsaken them. It was an illustration of the way in 
 which her visitor had come to regard her that he rather dis- 
 believed than believed this description of the crumpled papers 
 lying on the table. He was not sure even that he believed 
 that Miriam had just goije out. He told her mother how 
 busy he had been all the while he was away and how much 
 time in particular he had had to give, in London, to seeing on 
 her daughter's behalf the people connected with the theatres. 
 
 " Ah, if you pity me, tell me that you've got her an engage- 
 ment ! " Mrs. Rooth cried, clasping her hands. 
 
 " I took a great deal of trouble ; I wrote ever so many 
 notes, sought introductions, talked with people -such im- 
 possible people some of them. In short I knocked at every 
 door, I went into the question exhaustively." And he 
 enumerated the things he had done, imparted some of the 
 knowledge he had gathered. The difficulties were serious, 
 and even with the influence he could command (such as it 
 was) there was very little to be achieved in face of them. 
 Still he had gained ground : there were two or three fellows, 
 men with small theatres, who had listened to him better than 
 the others, and there was one in particular whom he had a 
 hope he might really have interested. From him he had 
 extracted certain merciful assurances : he would see Miriam, 
 he would listen to her, he would do for her what he could. 
 The trouble was that no one would lift a finger for a girl 
 unless she were known, and yet that she never could become 
 known until innumerable fingers were lifted. You couldn't 
 go into the water unless you could swim, and you couldn't 
 swim until you had been in the water. 
 
 " But new performers appear ; they get theatres, they get 
 audiences, they get notices in the newspapers," Mrs. Rooth 
 objected. " I know of these things only what Miriam tells 
 me. It's no knowledge that I was born to." 
 
 " It's perfectly true ; it's all done with money." 
 
 "And how do they come by money?" Mrs. Rooth asked, 
 candidly. 
 
 "When they're women people give it to them." 
 
 " Well, what people, now ? " 
 
 " People who believe in them." 
 
 "As you believe in Miriam 1 ?" 
 
 Sherringham was silent a moment. " No, rather differently. 
 A poor man doesn't believe anything in the same way that a 
 rich man does." 
 
 "Ah, don't call yourself poor ! " groaned Mrs. Rooth.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 197 
 
 " What good would it do me to be rich ? " 
 
 " Why, you could take a theatre ; you could do it all 
 yourself." 
 
 " And what good would that do me 1 ? " 
 
 "Why, don't you delight in her genius'?" demanded Mrs. 
 Rooth. 
 
 " I delight in her mother. You think me more disinterested 
 than I am," Sherringham added, with a certain soreness of 
 irritation. 
 
 " I know why you didn't write ! " Mrs. Rooth declared, 
 archly. 
 
 "You must go to London," Peter said, without heeding 
 this remark. 
 
 " Ah, if we could only get there it would be a relief. I 
 should draw a long breath. There at least I know where I 
 am, and what people are. But here one lives on hollow 
 ground ! " 
 
 "The sooner you get away the better," Sherringham 
 went on. 
 
 "I know why you say that." 
 
 "It's just what I'm explaining." 
 
 "I couldn't have held out if I hadn't been so sure of 
 Miriam," said Mrs. Rooth. 
 
 "Well, you needn't hold out any longer." 
 
 " Don't you trust her 1 " asked Sherringham's hostess. 
 
 "Trust her?" 
 
 " You don't trust yourself. That's why you were silent, 
 why we might have thought you were dead, why we might 
 have perished ourselves." 
 
 "I don't think I understand you; I don't know what 
 you're talking about," Sherringham said. "But it doesn't 
 matter." 
 
 " Doesn't it 1 Let yourself go : why should you struggle ? " 
 the old woman inquired. 
 
 Her unexpected insistence annoyed her visitor, and he was 
 silent again, looking at her, on the point of telling her that 
 he didn't like her tone. But he had his tongue under such 
 control that he was able presently to say, instead of this 
 and it was a relief for him to give audible voice to the 
 reflection : " It's a great mistake, either way, for a man to 
 be in love with an actress. Either it means nothing serious, 
 and what's the use of that ? or it means everything, and that's 
 still more delusive." 
 
 " Delusive ? "
 
 198 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 ''Idle, unprofitable." 
 
 " Surely a pure affection is its own reward," Mrs. Rooth 
 rejoined, with soft reasonableness. 
 
 "In such a case how can it be pure ? " 
 
 " I thought you were talking of an English gentleman," 
 said Mrs. Rooth. 
 
 "Call the poor fellow whatever you like : a man with his 
 life to lead, his way to make, his work, his duties, his career 
 to attend to. If it means nothing, as I say, the thing it 
 means least of all is marriage." 
 
 " Oh, my own Miriam ! " murmured Mrs. Rooth. 
 
 " On the other hand fancy the complication if such a man 
 marries a woman who's on the stage." 
 
 Mrs. Rooth looked as if she were trying to follow. 
 "Miriam isn't on the stage yet." 
 
 " Go to London and she soon will be." 
 
 " Yes, and then you'll have your excuse." 
 
 " My excuse? " 
 
 "For deserting us altogether." 
 
 Sherringham broke into laughter at this, the tone was so 
 droll. Then he rejoined : " Show me some good acting and I 
 won't desert you." 
 
 " Good acting ? Ah, what is the best acting compared 
 with the position of an English lady 1 If you'll take her as 
 she is you may have her," Mrs. Rooth suddenly added. 
 
 " As she is, with all her ambitions unassuaged ? " 
 
 " To marry you might not that be an ambition ? " 
 
 " A very paltry one. Don't answer for her, don't attempt 
 that," said Sherringham. "You can do much better." 
 
 " Do you think you can ? " smiled Mrs. Rooth. 
 
 " I don't want to ; I only want to let it alone. She's an 
 artist ; you must give her her head," Peter went on. " You 
 must always give an artist his head." 
 
 "But I have known great ladies who were artists. In 
 English society there is always a field." 
 
 " Don't talk to me of English society ! Thank heaven, in 
 the first place, I don't live in it. Do you want her to give up 
 her genius'? " 
 
 " I thought you didn't care for it." 
 
 " She'd say 'No, I thank you, dear mamma.' " 
 
 "My gifted child ! " Mrs. Rooth murmured. 
 
 " Have you ever proposed it to her ] " 
 
 "Proposed it?" 
 
 "That she should give up trying."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 199 
 
 Mrs. Rooth hesitated, looking down. " Not for the reason 
 you mean. We don't talk about love," she simpered. 
 
 " Then it's so much less time wasted. Don't stretch out 
 your hand to the worse when it may some day grasp the 
 better," Sherringham pursued. Mrs. Rooth raised her eyes 
 at him as if she recognized the force there might be in that, 
 and he added : " Let her blaze out, let her look about her. 
 Then you may talk to me if you like." 
 
 " It's very puzzling," the old woman remarked, artlessly. 
 
 Sherringham laughed again ; then he said : " Now don't tell 
 me I'm not a good friend." 
 
 " You are indeed you're a very noble gentleman. That's 
 just why a quiet life with you 
 
 " It wouldn't be quiet for me ! " Sherringham broke in. 
 "And that's not what Miriam was made for." 
 
 " Don't say that, for my precious one ! " Mrs. Rooth 
 quavered. 
 
 " Go to London go to London," her visitor repeated. 
 
 Thoughtfully, after an instant, she extended her hand and 
 took from the table the letter on the composition of which he 
 had found her engaged. Then with a quick movement she 
 tore it up. ''That's what Mr. Dashwood says." 
 
 "Mr. Dashwood?" 
 
 " I forgot you don't know him. He's the brother of that 
 lady we met the day you were so good as to receive us ; the 
 one who was so kind to us Mrs. Lovick." 
 
 "I never heard of him." 
 
 "Don't you remember that she spoke of him and Mr. 
 Lovick didn't seem very kind about him 1 She told us that if 
 he were to meet us and she was so good as to insinuate that 
 it would be a pleasure to him to do so he might give us, as 
 she said, a tip." 
 
 Sherringham indulged in a visible effort to recollect. " Yes, 
 he comes back to me. He's an actor." 
 
 " He's a gentleman too," said Mrs. Rooth. 
 
 " And you've met him and he has given you a tip 1 " 
 
 " As I say, he wants us to go to London." 
 
 " I see, but even I can tell you that." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Mrs. Rooth ; " but he says he can help us." 
 
 " Keep hold of him then r if he's in the business." 
 
 " He's a perfect gentleman," said Mrs. Rooth. " He's 
 immensely struck with Miriam." 
 
 " Better and better. Keep hold of him." 
 
 " Well, I'm glad you don't object," Mrs. Rooth smiled.
 
 200 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 "Why should I object?" 
 
 " You don't consider us as all your own ? " 
 
 " My own 1 Why, I regard you as the public's the world's." 
 
 Mrs. Rooth gave a little shudder. " There's a sort of chill 
 in that. It's grand, but it's cold. However, I needn't hesitate 
 then to tell you that it's with Mr. Dashwood that Miriam has 
 gone out." 
 
 " Why hesitate, gracious heaven 1 " But in the next breath 
 Sherringham asked : " Where has she gone 1 " 
 
 11 You don't like it ! " laughed Mrs. Rooth. 
 
 " Why should it be a thing to be enthusiastic about ? " 
 
 "Well, he's charming, and / trust him." 
 
 "So do I," said Sherringham. 
 
 " They've gone to see Madame Carre." 
 
 " She has come back then ? " 
 
 " She was expected back last week. Miriam wants to show 
 her how she has improved." 
 
 " And Juts she improved 1 " 
 
 "How can I tell with my mother's heart?" asked Mrs. 
 Rooth. " I don't judge ; I only wait and pray. But Mr. 
 Dashwood thinks she's wonderful." 
 
 " That's a blessing. And when did he turn up? " 
 
 " About a fortnight ago. We met Mrs. Lovick at the 
 English church, and she was so good as to recognize us and 
 speak to us. She said she had been away with her children, 
 or she would have come to see us. She had just returned to 
 Paris." 
 
 " Yes, I've not yet seen her," said Sherringham. " I see 
 Lovick, but he doesn't talk of his brother-in-law." 
 
 "I didn't, that day, lik.e his tone about him," Mrs. Rooth 
 observed. " We walked a little way with Mrs. Lovick and 
 she asked Miriam about her prospects and if she were working. 
 Miriam said she had no prospects." 
 
 " That was not very nice to me," Sherringham interrupted. 
 
 " But when you had left us in black darkness, where were 
 our prospects?" 
 
 " I see ; it's all right. Go on." 
 
 ' ' Then Mrs. Lovick said her brother was to be in Paris a 
 few days and she would tell him to come and see us. He 
 arrived, she told him and he came. Voila ! " said Mrs. Rooth. 
 
 " So that now (so far as Tie is concerned) Miss Rooth has 
 prospects ? " 
 
 "He isn't a manager unfortunately." 
 
 " Where does he act ? "
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 201 
 
 " He isn't acting just now ; he has been abroad. He has 
 been to Italy, I believe, and he is just stopping here on his 
 way to London." 
 
 " I see ; he is a perfect gentleman," said Sherringham. 
 
 " Ah, you're jealous of him." 
 
 " No, but you're trying to make me so. The more com- 
 petitors there are for the glory of bringing her out, the better 
 for her." 
 
 " Mr. Dashwood wants to take a theatre," said Mrs. Rooth. 
 
 " Then perhaps he's our man." 
 
 "Oh, if you'd help him?" cried Mrs. Booth. 
 
 "Help him?" 
 
 " Help him to help us." 
 
 " We'll all work together ; it will be very jolly," said Sher- 
 ringham gaily. " It's a sacred cause, the love of art, and we 
 shall be a happy band. Dashwood's his name 1 " he added in a 
 moment. " Mrs. Lovick wasn't a Dashwood." 
 
 "It's his nom de theatre Basil Dashwood. Do you like 
 it?" Mrs. Booth inquired. 
 
 " You say that as Miriam might do : her talent is catching." 
 
 " She's always practising always saying things over and 
 over, to seize the tone. I have her voice in my ears. He 
 wants her not to have any." 
 
 " Not to have any ? " 
 
 " Any nom de thedtre. He wants her to use her own ; he 
 likes it so much. He says it will do so well you can't 
 better it." 
 
 " He's a capital adviser," said Sherringham, getting up. 
 " I'll come back to-morrow." 
 
 " I won't ask you to wait till they return, they may be so 
 long," Mrs. Booth replied. 
 
 "Will he come back with her?" Sherringham inquired, 
 smoothing his hat. 
 
 " I hope so, at this hour. With my child in the streets 
 I tremble. We don't live in cabs, as you may easily 
 suppose." 
 
 " Did they go on foot? " Sherringham continued. 
 
 " Oh yes ; they started in high spirits." 
 
 " And is Mr. Basil Dashwood acquainted with Madame 
 Carre?" 
 
 " Oh no, but he longed to be introduced to her ; he im- 
 plored Miriam to take him. Naturally she wishes to oblige 
 him. She's very nice to him if he can do anything." 
 
 " Quite right ; that's the way."
 
 202 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " And she also wanted him to see what she can do for the 
 great critic," Mrs. Kooth added. 
 
 "The great critic ?" 
 
 " I mean that terrible old woman in the red wig." 
 
 "That's what I should like to see too," said Sherringham. 
 
 " Oh, she has gone ahead ; she" is pleased with herself. 
 ' Work, work, work,' said Madame Carre. Well, she has 
 worked, worked, worked. That's what Mr. Dashwood is 
 pleased with even more than with other things." 
 
 " What do you mean by other things 1 " 
 
 " Oh, her genius and her fine appearance." 
 
 ''He approves of her fine appearance? I ask because you 
 think he knows what will take." 
 
 "I know why you ask," said Mrs. Kooth. "He says it 
 will be worth hundreds of thousands to her." 
 
 "That's the sort of thing I like to hear," Sherringham 
 rejoined. " I'll come in to-morrow," he repeated. 
 
 "And shall you mind if Mr. Dashwood's here?" 
 
 " Does he come every day ? " 
 
 " Oh, they're always at it." 
 
 " Always at it ? " 
 
 " Why, she acts to him every sort of thing and he says 
 if it will do." 
 
 " How many days has he been here then ? " 
 
 Mrs. Rooth reflected. " Oh, I don't know. Since he turned 
 up they've passed so quickly." 
 
 " So far from ' minding ' it I'm eager to see him," Sherring- 
 ham declared ; " and I can imagine nothing better than what 
 you describe if he isn't an ass." 
 
 " Dear me, if he isn't clever you must tell us : we can't 
 afford to be deceived ! " Mrs. Rooth exclaimed, innocently 
 and plaintively. "What do we know how can we judge ?" 
 she added. 
 
 Sherringham hesitated, with his hand on the latch. " Oh, 
 I'll tell you what I think of him ! " 
 
 XIX. 
 
 WHEN he got into the street he looked about him for a cab, 
 but he was obliged to walk some distance before encountering 
 one. In this little interval he saw no reason to modify the 
 determination he had formed in descending the steep staircase
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 203 
 
 of the Hotel de la Garonne ; indeed the desire which prompted 
 it only quickened his pace. He had an hour to spare and he 
 too would go to see Madame Carre. If Miriam and her 
 companion had proceeded to the Rue de Constantinople on 
 foot he would probably reach the house as soon as they. It 
 was all quite logical : he was eager to see Miriam that was 
 natural enough ; and he had admitted to Mrs. Rooth that he 
 was keen on the subject of Mrs. Lovick's theatrical brother, 
 in whom such effective aid might perhaps reside. To catch 
 Miriam really revealing herself to the old actress (since that 
 was her errand), with the jump she believed herself to have 
 taken, would be a very happy stroke, the thought of which 
 made her benefactor impatient. He presently found his cab 
 and, as he bounded in, bade the coachman drive fast. He 
 learned from Madame Carre's portress that her illustrious 
 locataire was at home and that a lady and a gentleman had 
 gone up some time before. 
 
 In the little antechamber, after he was admitted, he heard a 
 high voice issue from the salon, and, stopping a moment to listen, 
 perceived that Miriam was already launched in a recitation. 
 He was able to make out the words, all the more that before 
 he could prevent the movement the maid-servant who had 
 let him in had already opened the door of the room (one of 
 the wings of it, there being, as in most French doors, two 
 pieces), before which, within, a heavy curtain was suspended. 
 Miriam was in the act of rolling out some speech from the 
 English poetic drama 
 
 "For I am sick and capable of fears, 
 Oppressed with wrongs and therefore full of fears." 
 
 He recognized one of the great tirades of Shakespeare's Con- 
 stance and saw she had just begun the magnificent scene at 
 the beginning of the third act of King John, in which the 
 passionate, injured mother and widow sweeps in wild organ- 
 tones up and down the scale of her irony and wrath. The 
 curtain concealed him and he lurked there for three minutes 
 after he had motioned to the femme de chambre to retire on 
 tiptoe. The trio in the salon, absorbed in the performance, 
 had apparently not heard his entrance or the opening of the 
 door, which was covered by the girl's splendid declamation. 
 Sherringham listened intently, he was so arrested by the 
 spirit with which she attacked her formidable verses. He 
 had needed to hear her utter but half a dozen of them to 
 comprehend the long stride she had taken in his absence;
 
 204 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 they told him that she had leaped into possession of her 
 means. He remained where he was till she arrived at 
 
 "Then speak again ; not all thy former tale, 
 But this one word, whether thy tale be true." 
 
 This apostrophe, being briefly responded to in another voice, 
 gave him time quickly to raise the curtain and show himself, 
 passing into the room with a " Go on, go on ! " and a gesture 
 earnestly deprecating a stop. 
 
 Miriam, in the full swing of her part, paused but for an 
 instant and let herself ring out again, while Peter sank into 
 the nearest chair and she fixed him with her illumined eyes, 
 or rather with those of the raving Constance. Madame 
 Carre, buried in a chair, kissed her hand to him, and a young 
 man who stood near the girl giving her the cue stared at 
 him over the top of a little book. " Admirable magnificent ; 
 go on," Sherringham repeated "go on to the end of the 
 scene do it all ! " Miriam flushed a little, but he immediately 
 discovered that she had no personal emotion in seeing him 
 again ; the cold passion of art had perched on her banner and 
 she listened to herself with an ear as vigilant as if she had 
 been a Paganini drawing a fiddle-bow. This effect deepened 
 as she went on, rising and rising to the great occasion, moving 
 with extraordinary ease and in the largest, clearest style on 
 the dizzy ridge of her idea. That she had an idea was visible 
 enough and that the whole thing was very different from all 
 that Sherringham had hitherto heard her attempt. It 
 belonged quite to another class of effort ; she seemed now like 
 the finished statue lifted from the ground to its pedestal. It 
 was as if the sun of her talent had risen above the hills and 
 she knew that she was moving, that she would always move, 
 in its guiding light. This conviction was the one artless thing 
 that glimmered like a young joy through the tragic mask of 
 Constance, and Sherringham' s heart beat faster as he caught 
 it in her face. It only made her appear more intelligent ; and 
 yet there had been a time when he had thought her stupid ! 
 Intelligent was the whole spirit in which she carried the scene, 
 making him cry to himself from point to point : " How she 
 feels it how she sees it how she creates it ! " 
 
 He looked at moments at Madame Carre and perceived 
 that she had an open book in her lap, apparently a French 
 prose version, brought by her visitors, of the play ; but she 
 never either glanced at him or at the volume ; she only sat 
 screwing into the girl her hard bright eyes, polished by expe-
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 205 
 
 rience like fine old brasses. The young man uttering the lines 
 of the other speakers was attentive in another degree ; he 
 followed Miriam in his own copy of the play, to be sure not 
 to miss the cue ; but he was elated and expressive, was evi- 
 dently even surprised ; he coloured and smiled, and when he 
 extended his hand to assist Constance to rise, after Miriam, 
 acting out her text, had seated herself grandly on " the huge, 
 firm earth," he bowed over her as obsequiously as if she had 
 been his veritable sovereign. He was a very good-looking 
 young man, tall, well-proportioned, straight-featured and fair, 
 of whom manifestly the first thing to be said on any occa- 
 sion was that he looked remarkably like a gentleman. He 
 carried this appearance, which proved inveterate and impor- 
 tunate, to a point that was almost a negation of its spirit ; 
 that is it might have been a question whether it could be in 
 good taste to wear any character, even that particular one, so 
 much on one's sleeve. It was literally on his sleeve that this 
 young man partly wore his own ; for it resided considerably 
 in his attire and especially in a certain close-fitting dark 
 blue frock-coat (a miracle of a fit), which moulded his young 
 form just enough and not too much and constituted (as 
 Sherringham was destined to perceive later) his perpetual 
 uniform or badge. It was not till later that Sherringham 
 began to feel exasperated by Basil Dashwood's " type " (the 
 young stranger was of course Basil Dash wood), and even by 
 his blue frock-coat, the recurrent, unvarying, imperturbable 
 " good form " of his aspect. This unprofessional air ended by 
 striking the observer as the profession that he had adopted, 
 and was indeed (so far as had as yet been indicated) his 
 theatrical capital, his main qualification for the stage. 
 
 The powerful, ample manner in which Miriam handled her 
 scene produced its full impression, the art with which she 
 surmounted its difficulties, the liberality with which she met 
 its great demand upon the voice, and the variety of expression 
 that she threw into a torrent of objurgation. It was a real 
 composition, studded with passages that called a suppressed 
 "Brava!" to the lips and seeming to show that a talent 
 capable of such an exhibition was capable of anything. 
 
 " But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy, 
 Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great : 
 Of Nature's gifts thou mayst with lilies boast, 
 And with the half-blown rose." 
 
 As Miriam turned to her imagined child with this exquisite 
 apostrophe (she addressed Mr. Dashwood as if he were playing
 
 206 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 Arthur, and he lowered his book, dropped his head and his 
 eyes and looked handsome and ingenuous), she opened at a 
 stroke to Sherringham's vision a prospect that they would 
 yet see her express tenderness better even than anything else. 
 Her voice was enchanting in these lines, and the beauty of 
 her performance was that while she uttered the full fury of 
 the part she missed none of its poetry. 
 
 " Where did she get hold of that where did she get hold 
 of that 1 ?" Sherringham wondered while his whole sense 
 vibrated. " She hadn't got hold of it when I went away." 
 And the assurance flowed over him again that she had found 
 the key to her box of treasures. In the summer, during their 
 weeks of frequent meeting, she had only fumbled with the 
 lock. One October day, while he was away, the key had 
 slipped in, had fitted, or her finger at last had touched the 
 right spring, and th capricious casket had flown open. 
 
 It was during the present solemnity that Sherringham, 
 excited by the way she came out and with a hundred startled 
 ideas about her wheeling through his mind, was for the first 
 time and most vividly visited by a perception that ended by 
 becoming frequent with him that of the perfect presence of 
 mind, unconfused, unhurried by emotion, that any artistic 
 performance requires and that all, whatever the instrument, 
 require in exactly the same degree : the application, in other 
 words, clear and calculated, crystal-firm as it were, of the 
 idea conceived in the glow of experience, of suffering, of joy. 
 Sherringham afterwards often talked of this with Miriam, 
 who however was not able to present him with a neat theory 
 of the subject. She had no knowledge that it was publicly 
 discussed ; she was just practically on the side of those who 
 hold that at the moment of production the artist cannot have 
 his wits too much about him. When Peter told her there 
 were people who maintained that in such a crisis he must lose 
 himself in the flurry she stared with surprise and then broke 
 out : " Ah, the idiots ! " She eventually became in her judg- 
 ments, in impatience and the expression of contempt, very 
 free and absolutely irreverent. 
 
 " What a splendid scolding ! " Sherringham exclaimed when, 
 on the entrance of the Pope's legate, her companion closed the 
 book upon the scene. Peter pressed his lips to Madame Carre's 
 finger-tips ; the old actress got up and held out her arms to 
 Miriam. The girl never took her eyes off Sherringham while 
 she passed into Madame Carre's embrace and remained there. 
 They were full of their usual sombre fire, and it was always
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 207 
 
 the case that they expressed too much anything that they 
 expressed at all ; but they were not defiant nor even triumph- 
 ant now they were only deeply explicative ; they seemed to 
 say : " That's the sort of thing I meant ; that's what I had 
 in mind when I asked you to try to do something for me." 
 Madame Carre folded her pupil to her bosom, holding her 
 there as the old marquise in a comedie de mceurs might, in the 
 last scene, have held her god-daughter the ingenue. 
 
 " Have you got me an engagement 1 " Miriam asked of 
 Sherringham. " Yes, he has done something splendid for 
 me," she went on to Madame Carre, resting her hand caress- 
 ingly on one of the actress's while the old woman discoursed 
 with Mr. Dashwood, who was telling her in very pretty 
 French that he was tremendously excited about Miss Rooth. 
 Madame Carre looked at him as if she wondered how he 
 appeared when he was calm and how, as a dramatic artist, he 
 expressed that condition. 
 
 " Yes, yes, something splendid, for a beginning," Sherring- 
 ham answered, radiantly, recklessly ; feeling now only that he 
 would say anything, do anything, to please her. He spent 
 on the spot, in imagination, his last penny. 
 
 " It's such a pity you couldn't follow it ; you would have 
 liked it so much better," Mr. Dashwood observed to his hostess. 
 
 "Couldn't follow it 1 Do you take me for une sotte ?" the 
 celebrated artist cried. " I suspect I followed it de plus pres 
 que vous, monsieur ! " 
 
 " Ah, you see the language is so awfully fine," Basil Dash- 
 wood replied, looking at his shoes. 
 
 " The language ] Why, she rails like a fish-wife. Is that 
 what you call language I Ours is another business." 
 
 " If you understood if you understood you would see the 
 greatness of it," Miriam declared. And then, in another tone : 
 " Such delicious expressions ! " 
 
 " On dit que cest ires-fort. But who can tell if you really 
 say it ? " Madame Carre demanded. 
 
 " Ah, par exemple, I can ! " Sherringham exclaimed. 
 
 " Oh, you you're a Frenchman." 
 
 " Couldn't he tell if he were not ? " asked Basil Dashwood. 
 
 The old woman shrugged her shoulders. " He wouldn't 
 know." 
 
 " That's flattering to me." 
 
 "Oh, you don't you pretend to complain," Madame Carre 
 said. " I prefer our imprecations those of Camille," she went 
 on. " They have the beauty des plus belles choses."
 
 208 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " I can say them too," Miriam broke in. 
 " Insolente ! " smiled Madame Carre. " Camille doesn't squat 
 down on the floor in the middle of them." 
 
 " For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop. 
 To me and to the state of my great grief 
 Let kings assemble," 
 
 Miriam quickly declaimed. " Ah, if you don't feel the way 
 she makes a throne of it ! " 
 
 " It's really tremendously fine, chere madame," Sherringham 
 said. " There's nothing like it." 
 
 " Vous etes insuppor tables" the old woman answered. " Stay 
 with us. I'll teach you Phedre." 
 
 " Ah, Phsedra Phaedra ! " Basil Dashwood vaguely -ejacu- 
 lated, looking more gentlemanly than ever. 
 
 " You have learned all I have taught you, but where the 
 devil have you learned what I haven't taught you ? " Madame 
 Carre went on. 
 
 " I've worked I have ; you'd call it work all through the 
 bright, late summer, all through the hot, dull, empty days. 
 I've battered down the door I did hear it crash one day. 
 But I'm not so very good yet: I'm only in the right 
 direction." 
 
 " Malicieuse ! " murmured Madame Carre". 
 
 " Oh, I can beat that," the girl went on. 
 
 " Did you wake up one morning and find you had grown a 
 pair of wings ? " Sherringham asked. " Because that's what 
 the difference amounts to you really soar. Moreover you're 
 an angel," he added, charmed with her unexpectedness, the 
 good-nature of her forbearance to reproach him for not having 
 written to her. And it seemed to him privately that she was 
 angelic when in answer to this she said ever so blandly : 
 
 " You know you read King John with me before you went 
 away. I thought over constantly what you said. I didn't 
 understand it much at the time I was so stupid. But it all 
 came to me later." 
 
 " I wish you could see yourself," Sherringham answered. 
 
 " My dear fellow, I do. What do you take me for ? I didn't 
 miss a vibration of my voice, a fold of my robe." 
 
 " I didn't see you looking," Sherringham returned. 
 
 " No one ever will. Do you think I would show it 1 " 
 
 " Ars celare artem," Basil Dashwood jocosely dropped. 
 
 " You must first have the art to hide," said Sherringham, 
 wondering a little why Miriam didn't introduce her young
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 209 
 
 friend to him. She was, however, both then and later, per- 
 fectly neglectful of such cares, never thinking or heeding how 
 other people got on together. When she found they didn't get 
 on she laughed at them : that was the nearest she came to 
 arranging for them. Sherringham observed, from the moment 
 she felt her strength, the immense increase of her good- 
 humoured inattention to detail all detail save that of her 
 work, to which she was ready to sacrifice holocausts of feelings, 
 when the feelings were other people's. This conferred on her 
 a kind of profanity, an absence of ceremony in her social 
 relations, which was both amusing, because it suggested that 
 she would take what she gave, and formidable, because it 
 was inconvenient and you might not care to give what she 
 Avould take. 
 
 " If you haven't got any art it's not quite the same as if you 
 didn't hide it, is it 1 " asked Basil Dashwood. 
 
 "That's right say one of your clever things ! " murmured 
 Miriam, sweetly, to the young man. 
 
 " You're always acting," he answered, in English, with a 
 laugh, while Sherringham remained struck with his expressing 
 just what he himself had felt weeks before. 
 
 " And when you have shown them your fish-wife, to your 
 public de Id-bas, what will you do next ? " asked Madame 
 Carre. 
 
 " I'll do Juliet I'll do Cleopatra." 
 
 " Rather a big bill, isn't it ? " Mr. Dashwood volunteered to 
 Sherringham, in a friendly, discriminating manner. 
 
 " Constance and Juliet take care you don't mix them," 
 said Sherringham. 
 
 " I want to be various. You once told me I had a hundred 
 characters," Miriam replied. 
 
 " Ah, vous-en-etes la ? " cried the old actress. " You may 
 have a hundred characters, but you have only three plays. I'm 
 told that's all there are in English." 
 
 Miriam appealed to Sherringham. " What arrangements have 
 you made ? What do the people want ] " 
 
 " The people at the theatre? " 
 
 " I'm afraid they don't want King John, and I don't believe 
 they hunger for Antony and Cleopatra," Basil Dashwood 
 suggested. " Ships and sieges and armies and pyramids, you 
 know ; we mustn't be too heavy." 
 
 " Oh, I hate scenery ! " sighed Miriam. 
 
 " Elle est superbe," said Madame Carre. "You must put 
 those pieces on the stage : how will you do it? " 
 
 p
 
 210 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " Oh, we know how to get up a play in London, Madame 
 Carre," Basil Dash wood responded, genially. "They put 
 money on it, you know." 
 
 " On it 1 But what do they put in it ? Who will interpret 
 them? Who will manage a style like that the style of which 
 the verses she just repeated are a specimen ? Whom have you 
 got that one has ever heard of 1 " 
 
 " Oh, you'll hear of a good deal when once she gets started," 
 Basil Dashwood contended, cheerfully. 
 
 Madame Carre looked at him a moment ; then, " You'll 
 become very bad," she said to Miriam. "I'm glad I sha'n't 
 see it." 
 
 "People will do things for me I'll make them," the girl 
 declared. " I'll stir them up so that they'll have ideas." 
 
 " What people, pray ? " 
 
 "Ah, terrible woman!" Sherringham moaned, theatrically. 
 
 " We translate your pieces there will be plenty of parts," 
 Basil Dashwood said. 
 
 " Why then go out of the door to come in at the window ? 
 especially if you smash it ! An English arrangement of a 
 French piece is a pretty woman with her back turned." 
 
 " Do you really want to keep her? " Sherringham asked of 
 Madame Carre, as if he were thinking for a moment that this 
 after all might be possible. 
 
 She bent her strange eyes on him. " No, you are all too 
 queer together ; we couldn't be bothered with you, and you're 
 not worth it." 
 
 " I'm glad it's together; we can console each other." 
 
 " If you only would ; but you don't seem to ! In short, I 
 don't understand you I give you up. But it doesn't matter," 
 said the old woman, wearily, " for the theatre is dead and even 
 you, ma toute-belle, won't bring it to life. Everything is going 
 from bad to worse, and I don't care what becomes of you. You 
 wouldn't understand us here and they won't understand you 
 there, and everything is impossible, and no one is a whit the 
 wiser, and it's not of the least consequence. Only when you 
 raise your arms lift them just a little higher," Madame Carre 
 added. 
 
 " My mother will be happier cJiez nous" said Miriam, 
 throwing her arms straight up with a noble tragic movement. 
 
 "You won't be in the least in the right path till your 
 mother's in despair." 
 
 "Well, perhaps we can bring that about even in London," 
 Sherringham suggested, laughing.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 211 
 
 " Dear Mrs. Booth she's great fun," Mr. Dashwood 
 dropped. 
 
 Miriam transferred the gloomy beauty of her gaze to him, 
 as if she were practising. " You won't upset her, at any 
 rate." Then she stood with her fatal mask before Madame 
 Carre. "I want to do the modern too. I want to do le 
 drame, with realistic effects." 
 
 " And do you want to look like the portico of the 
 Madeleine when it's draped for a funeral 1 " her instructress 
 mocked. " Never, never. I don't believe you're various : 
 that's not the way I see you. You're pure tragedy, with 
 de grands effets de voix, in the great style, or you're 
 nothing." 
 
 "Be beautiful be only that," Sherringham advised. "Be 
 only what you can be so well something that one may turn 
 to for glimpse of perfection, to lift one out of all the vulgarities 
 of the day." 
 
 Thus apostrophized, the girl broke out with one of the 
 speeches of Racine's Phaedra, hushing her companions on the 
 instant. " You'll be the English Rachel," said Basil Dashwood 
 when she stopped. 
 
 " Acting in French ! " Madame Carre exclaimed. " I don't 
 believe in an English Rachel." 
 
 "I shall have to work it out, what I shall be," Miriam 
 responded with a rich, pensive effect. 
 
 " You're in wonderfully good form to-day," Sherringham 
 said to her ; his appreciation revealing a personal subjection 
 which he was unable to conceal from his companions, much as 
 he wished it. 
 
 " I really mean to do everything." 
 
 "Very well; after all, Garrick did." 
 
 "Well, I shall be the Garrick of my sex." 
 
 " There's a very clever author doing something for me ; I 
 should like you to see it," said Basil Dashwood, addressing 
 himself equally to Miriam and to her diplomatic friend. 
 
 " Ah, if you have very clever authors ! " Madame Carre 
 spun the sound to the finest satiric thread. 
 
 "I shall be very happy to see it," said Sherringham. 
 
 This response was so benevolent that Basil Dashwood 
 presently began : " May I ask you at what theatre you have 
 made arrangements 1 " 
 
 Sherringham looked at him a moment. " Come and see 
 me at the Embassy and I'll tell you." Then he added : "I 
 know your sister, Mrs. Lovick."
 
 212 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " So I supposed : that's why I took the liberty of asking 
 such a question." 
 
 " It's no liberty ; but Mr. Sherringham doesn't appear to 
 be able to tell you," said Miriam. . 
 
 " Well, you know it's a very curious world, all those 
 theatrical people over there," Sherringham said. 
 
 "Ah, don't say anything against them, when I'm one of 
 them," Basil Dash wood laughed. 
 
 " I might plead the absence of information, as Miss Rooth 
 has neglected to make us acquainted." 
 
 Miriam smiled : " I know you both so little." But she 
 presented them, with a great stately air, to each other, and 
 the two men shook hands while Madame Carre observed them. 
 
 " Tiens f you gentlemen meet here for the first time 1 You 
 do right to become friends that's the best thing. Live to- 
 gether in peace and mutual confidence. C'est de beaucoup le 
 plus sage." 
 
 " Certainly, for yoke-fellows," said Sherringham. 
 
 He began the next moment to repeat to his new acquaint- 
 ance some of the things he had been told in London ; but 
 their hostess stopped him off, waving the talk away with 
 charming overdone stage-horror and the young hands of the 
 heroines of Marivaux. " Ah, wait till you go, for that ! Do 
 you suppose I care for news of your mountebanks' booths?" 
 
 XX. 
 
 As many people know, there are not, in the famous Theatre 
 Fran^ais, more than a dozen good seats accessible to ladies. 
 The stalls are forbidden them, the boxes are a quarter of a 
 mile from the stage and the balcony is a delusion save for a 
 few chairs at either end of its vast horseshoe. But there are 
 two excellent baignoires d'avant-scene, which indeed are by no 
 means always to be had. It was however into one of them 
 that, immediately after his return to Paris, Sherringham 
 ushered Mrs. Rooth and her daughter, with the further escort 
 of Basil Dashwood. He had chosen the evening of the reap- 
 pearance of the celebrated Mademoiselle Voisin (she had been 
 enjoying a conge of three months), an actress whom Miriam 
 had seen several times before and for whose method she pro- 
 fessed a high though somewhat critical esteem. It was only 
 for the return of this charming performer that Sherringham
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 213 
 
 had been waiting to respond to Miriam's most ardent wish 
 that of spending an hour in the foyer des artistes of the great 
 theatre. She was the person whom he knew best in the house 
 of Moliere ; he could count upon her to do them the honours 
 some night when she was in the " bill," and make the occasion 
 sociable. Miriam had been impatient for it she was so con- 
 vinced that her eyes would be opened in the holy of holies ; 
 but wishing particularly, as he did, to participate in her 
 impression he had made her promise that she would not taste 
 of this experience without him not let Madame Carre, for 
 instance, take her in his absence. There were questions the 
 girl wished to put to Mademoiselle Voisin questions which, 
 having admired her from the balcony, she felt she was exactly 
 the person to answer. She was more " in it " now, after all, 
 than Madame Carre, in spite of her slenderer talent : she was 
 younger, fresher, more modern and (Miriam found the word) 
 less academic. Sherringham perfectly foresaw the day when 
 his young friend would make indulgent allowances for poor 
 Madame Carre, patronizing her as an old woman of good 
 intentions. 
 
 The play, to-night, was six months old, a large, serious, 
 successful comedy, by the most distinguished of authors, with 
 a thesis, a chorus, embodied in one character, a scene afaire 
 and a part full of opportunities for Mademoiselle Voisin. 
 There were things to be said about this artist, strictures to be 
 dropped as to the general quality of her art, and Miriam 
 leaned back now, making her comments as if they cost her 
 less ; but the actress had knowledge and distinction and pathos, 
 and our young lady repeated several times : " How quiet she 
 is, how wonderfully quiet 1 Scarcely anything moves but her 
 face and her voice. Le geste rare, but really expressive when 
 it comes. I like that economy ; it's the only way to make the 
 gesture significant." 
 
 "I don't admire the way she holds her arms," Basil Dash- 
 wood said : " like a demoiselle de magasin trying on a jacket." 
 
 " Well, she holds them, at any rate. I dare say it's more 
 than you do with yours." 
 
 " Oh, yes, she holds them ; there's no mistake about that. 
 ' I hold them, I hope, hein ? ' she seems to say to all the 
 house." The young English professional laughed good- 
 humouredly, and Sherringham was struck with the pleasant 
 familiarity he had established with their brave companion. 
 He was knowing and ready, and he said, in the first entr'acte 
 (they were waiting for the second to go behind), amusing,
 
 214 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 perceptive things. " They teach them to be ladylike, and 
 "Voisin is always trying to show that. ' See how I walk, see 
 how I sit, see how quiet I am and how I have le geste rare. 
 Now can you say I ain't a lady 1 ' She does it all as if she 
 had a class." 
 
 " Well, to-night I'm her class," said Miriam. 
 
 " Oh, I don't mean of actresses, but of femmes du monde. 
 She shows them how to act in society." 
 
 "You had better take a few lessons," Miriam retorted. 
 
 " You should see Yoisin in society," Sherringham interposed. 
 
 " Does she go into it 1 " Mrs. Rooth demanded, with interest. 
 
 Sherringham hesitated. " She receives a great many people." 
 
 " Why shouldn't they, when they're nice ? " Mrs. Booth 
 continued. 
 
 " When the people are nice ? " Miriam asked. 
 
 "Now don't tell me she's not what one would wish," said 
 Mrs. Rooth to Sherringham. 
 
 " It depends upon what that is," he answered, smiling. 
 
 "What I should wish if she were my daughter," the old 
 woman rejoined, blandly. 
 
 " Ah, wish your daughter to act as well as that, and you'll 
 do the handsome thing for her ! " 
 
 " Well, she seems to feel what she says," Mrs. Rooth 
 murmured, piously. 
 
 " She has some stiff things to say. I mean about her past," 
 Basil Dash wood remarked. " The past the dreadful past 
 on the stage ! " 
 
 " Wait till the end, to see how she comes out. We must all 
 be merciful ! " sighed Mrs. Rooth. 
 
 "We've seen it before; you know what happens," Miriam 
 observed to her mother. 
 
 "I've seen so many, I get them mixed." 
 
 " Yes, they're all in queer predicaments. Poor old mother 
 what we show you ! " laughed the girl. 
 
 " Ah, it will be what you show me : something noble and 
 wise ! " 
 
 "I want to do this ; it's a magnificent part," said Miriam. 
 
 "You couldn't put it on in London ; they wouldn't swallow 
 it," Basil Dashwood declared. 
 
 " Aren't there things they do there, to get over the 
 difficulties ] " 
 
 " You can't get over what she did," the young man replied. 
 
 " Yes, we must pay, we must expiate ! " Mrs. Rooth 
 moaned, as the curtain rose again.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 215 
 
 When the second act was over our friends passed out of 
 their baignoire into those corridors of tribulation where the 
 bristling ouvreuse, like a pawnbroker driving a roaring trade, 
 mounts guard upon piles of heterogeneous clothing, and, gain- 
 ing the top of the fine staircase which forms the state entrance 
 and connects the statued vestibule of the basement with the 
 grand tier of boxes, opened an ambiguous door, composed of 
 little mirrors, and found themselves in the society of the 
 initiated. The janitors were courteous folk who greeted 
 Sherringham as an acquaintance, and he had no difficulty in 
 marshalling his little troop toward the foyer. They traversed 
 a low, curving lobby, hung with pictures and furnished with 
 velvet-covered benches, where several unrecognized persons, of 
 both sexes, looked at them without hostility, and arrived at an 
 opening on the right from which by a short flight of steps 
 there was a descent to one of the wings of the stage. Here 
 Miriam paused in silent excitement, like a young warrior 
 arrested by a glimpse of the battle-field. Her vision was 
 carried off through a lane of light to the point of vantage 
 from which the actor held the house ; but there was a 
 hushed guard over the place, and curiosity could only glance 
 and pass. 
 
 Then she came with her companions to a sort of parlour 
 with a polished floor, not large and rather vacant, where her 
 attention flew delightedly to a coat-tree, in a corner, from 
 which three or four dresses were suspended dresses that she 
 immediately perceived to be costumes in that night's play 
 accompanied by a saucer of something and a much-worn 
 powder-puff casually left upon a sofa. This was a familiar 
 note in a general impression (it had begun at the threshold) 
 of high decorum a sense of majesty in the place. Miriam 
 rushed at the powder-puff (there was no one in the room), 
 snatched it up and gazed at it with droll veneration ; then 
 stood rapt a moment before the charming petticoats (" That's 
 Dunoyer's first under-skirt," she said to her mother), while 
 Sherringham explained that in this apartment an actress 
 traditionally changed her gown, when the transaction was 
 simple enough, to save the long ascent to her loge. He felt 
 like a cicerone showing a church to a party of provincials ; 
 and indeed there was a grave hospitality in the air, mingled 
 with something academic and important, the tone of an 
 institution, a temple, which made them all, out of respect and 
 delicacy, hold their breath a little and tread the shining floors 
 with discretion.
 
 216 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 These precautions increased (Mrs. Rooth crept in like a 
 friendly but undomesticated cat), after they entered the foyer 
 itself, a square spacious saloon, covered with pictures and 
 relics and draped in official green velvet, where the genius loci 
 holds a reception every night in the year. The effect was 
 freshly charming to Sherringham ; he was fond of the place, 
 always saw it again with pleasure, enjoyed its honourable 
 look and the way, among the portraits and scrolls, the records 
 of a splendid history, the green velvet and the waxed floors, 
 the genius loci seemed to be " at home " in the quiet lamp- 
 light. At the end of the room, in an ample chimney, blazed 
 a fire of logs. Miriam said nothing; they looked about, 
 noting that most of the portraits and pictures were " old- 
 fashioned," and Basil Dashwood expressed disappointment at 
 the absence of all the people they wanted most to see. Three 
 or four gentlemen in evening dress circulated slowly, looking, 
 like themselves, at the pictures, and another gentleman stood 
 before a lady, with whom he was in conversation, seated 
 against the wall. The foyer, in these conditions, resembled 
 a ball-room cleared for the dance, before the guests or the 
 music had arrived. 
 
 " Oh, it's enough to see this ; it makes my heart beat," said 
 Miriam. "It's full of the vanished past, it makes me cry. 
 I feel them here, the great artists I shall never see. Think 
 of Rachel (look at her grand portrait there !) and how she 
 stood on these very boards and trailed over them the robes of 
 Hermione and Phedre ! " The girl broke out theatrically, as 
 on the spot was right, not a bit afraid of her voice as soon as 
 it rolled through the room ; appealing to her companions as 
 they stood under the chandelier and making the other persons 
 present, who had already given her some attention, turn round 
 to stare at so unusual a specimen of the English miss. She 
 laughed musically when she noticed this, and her mother, 
 scandalized, begged her to lower her tone. " It's all right. I 
 produce an effect," said Miriam: "it sha'n't be said that I 
 too haven't had my little success in the maison de Moliere." 
 And Sherringham repeated that it was all right the place 
 was familiar with mirth and passion, there was often 
 wonderful talk there, and it was only the setting that was 
 still and solemn. It happened that this evening there was 
 no knowing in advance the scene was not characteristically 
 brilliant ; but to confirm his assertion, at the moment he 
 spoke, Mademoiselle Dunoyer, who was also in the play, came 
 into the room attended by a pair of gentlemen.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 217 
 
 She was the celebrated, the perpetual, the necessary ingenue, 
 who with all her talent could not have represented a woman 
 of her actual age. She had the gliding, hopping movement 
 of a small bird, the same air of having nothing to do with 
 time, and the clear, sure, piercing note, a miracle of exact 
 vocalization. She chaffed her companions, she chaffed the 
 room ; she seemed to be a very clever little girl trying to 
 personate a more innocent big one. She scattered her ami- 
 ability about (showing Miriam how much the children of 
 Moliere took their ease), and it quickly placed her in the 
 friendliest communication with Peter Sherringham, who already 
 enjoyed her acquaintance and who now extended it to his 
 companions and in particular to the young lady sur le point 
 d'entrer au theatre. 
 
 " You deserve a happier lot," said the actress, looking up 
 at Miriam brightly, as if to a great height, and taking her 
 in ; upon which Sherringham left them together a little and 
 led Mrs. Rooth and young Dash wood to consider further some 
 of the pictures. 
 
 " Most delightful, most curious," the old woman murmured, 
 about everything ; while Basil Dashwood exclaimed, in the 
 presence of most of the portraits : " But their ugliness their 
 ugliness : did you ever see such a collection of hideous people ? 
 And those who were supposed to be good-looking the beauties 
 of the past they are worse than the others. Ah, you may 
 say what you will, nous sommes mieux que a I " Sherringham 
 suspected him of irritation, of not liking the theatre of the 
 great rival nation to be thrust down his throat. They 
 returned to Miriam and Mademoiselle Dunoyer, and Sherring- 
 ham asked the actress a question about one of the portraits, 
 to which there was no name attached. She replied, like a, 
 child who had only played about the room, that she was toute 
 honteuse not to be able to tell him the original : she had 
 forgotten, she had never asked " Vous allez me trouver lien 
 legere I " She appealed to the other persons present, who 
 formed a gallery for her, and laughed in delightful ripples at 
 their suggestions, which she covered with ridicule. She be- 
 stirred herself ; she declared she would ascertain, she should 
 not be happy till she did, and swam out of the room, with the 
 prettiest paddles, to obtain the information, leaving behind 
 her a perfume of delicate kindness and gaiety. She seemed 
 above all things obliging, and Sherringham said that she was 
 almost as natural off the stage as on. She didn't come back.
 
 XXI. 
 
 WHETHER Sherringham had prearranged it is more than I 
 can say, but Mademoiselle Voisin delayed so long to show 
 herself that Mrs. Rooth, who wished to see the rest of the 
 play, though she had sat it out on another occasion, expressed 
 a returning relish for her corner of the baignoire and gave 
 her conductor the best pretext he could have desired for 
 asking Basil Dashwood to be so good as to escort her back. 
 When the young actor, of whose personal preference Sherring- 
 ham was quite aware, had led Mrs. Rooth away with an 
 absence of moroseness which showed that his striking analogy 
 with a gentleman was not kept for the footlights, the two 
 others sat on a divan in the part of the room furthest from 
 the entrance, so that it gave them a degree of privacy, and 
 Miriam watched the coming and going of their fellow-visitors 
 and the indefinite people, attached to the theatre, hanging 
 about, while her companion gave a name to some of the 
 figures, Parisian celebrities. 
 
 "Fancy poor Dashwood, cooped up there with mamma!" 
 the girl exclaimed, whimsically. 
 
 "You're awfully cruel to him; but that's of course," said 
 Sherringham. 
 
 " It seems to me I'm as kind as you : you sent him off." 
 
 " That was for your mother : she was tired." 
 
 " Oh, gammon ! And why, if I were cruel, should it be of 
 course? " 
 
 "Because you must destroy and torment and consume 
 that's your nature. But you can't help you* type, can you 1 " 
 
 " My type ? " the girl repeated. 
 
 " It's bad, perverse, dangerous. It's essentially insolent." 
 
 " And pray what is yours, when you talk like that ? Would 
 you say such things if you didn't know the depths of my 
 good-nature ?" 
 
 "Your good-nature all comes back to that," said Sherring- 
 ham. " It's an abyss of ruin for others. You have no 
 respect. I'm speaking of the artistic character, in the direc- 
 tion and in the plenitude in which you have it. It's 
 unscrupulous, nervous, capricious, wanton." 
 
 " I don't know about respect : one can be good," Miriam 
 reasoned.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 219 
 
 "It doesn't matter, so long as one is powerful," answered 
 Sherringham. " We can't have everything, and surely we 
 ought to understand that we must pay for things. A splendid 
 organization for a special end, like yours, is so rare and rich 
 and fine that we oughtn't to grudge it its conditions." 
 
 "What do you call its conditions?" Miriam demanded, 
 turning and looking at him. 
 
 " Oh, the need to take its ease, to take up space, to make 
 itself at home in the world, to square its elbows and knock 
 others about. That's large and free ; it's the good-nature you 
 speak of. You must forage and ravage and leave a track 
 behind you ; you must live upon the country you occupy. 
 And you give such delight that, after all, you are welcome 
 you are infinitely welcome ! " 
 
 " I don't know what you mean. I only care for the idea," 
 Miriam said. 
 
 " That's exactly what I pretend ; and we must all help you 
 to it. You use us, you push us about, you break us up. We 
 are your tables and chairs, the simple furniture of your life." 
 
 " Whom do you mean by ' we ' ? " 
 
 Sherringham gave a laugh. " Oh, don't be afraid there 
 will be plenty of others." 
 
 Miriam made no rejoinder to this, but after a moment she 
 broke out again : " Poor Dash wood, immured with mamma 
 he's like a lame chair that one has put into the corner." 
 
 " Don't break him up before he has served. I really believe 
 that something will come out of him," her companion went 
 on. " However, you'll break me up first," he added, "and him 
 probably never at all." 
 
 "And why shall I honour you so much more?" 
 
 " Because I'm a better article, and you'll feel that." 
 
 " You have the superiority of modesty I see." 
 
 " I'm better than a young mountebank I've vanity enough 
 to say that." 
 
 She turned upon him with a flush in her cheek and a 
 splendid dramatic face. " How you hate us ! Yes, at bottom, 
 below your little taste, you hate us ! " she repeated. 
 
 He coloured too, met her eyes, looked into them a minute, 
 seemed to accept the imputation, and then said quickly : "Give 
 it up ; come away with me." 
 
 " Come away with you 1 ?" 
 
 " Leave this place : give it up." 
 
 " You brought me here, you insisted it should be only you, 
 and now you must stay," she declared, with a head-shake and
 
 220 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 a laugh. ' You should know what you want, dear Mr. 
 Sherringham." 
 
 " I do I know now. Come away, before she comes." 
 
 " Before she comes] " 
 
 " She's success this wonderful Voisin she's triumph, she's 
 full accomplishment : the hard, brilliant realization of what I 
 want to avert for you." Miriam looked at him in silence, the 
 angry light still in her face, and he repeated : " Give it up 
 give it up." 
 
 Her eyes softened after a moment ; she smiled and then 
 she said : "Yes, you're better than poor Dashwood." 
 
 " Give it up and we'll live for ourselves, in ourselves, in 
 something that can have a sanctity." 
 
 " All the same, you do hate us," the girl went on. 
 
 " I don't want to be conceited, but I mean that I'm 
 sufficiently fine and complicated to tempt you. I'm an expen- 
 sive modern watch, with a wonderful escapement therefore 
 you'll smash me if you can." 
 
 " Never never ! " said the girl, getting up. " You tell me 
 the hour too well." She quitted her companion and stood 
 looking at Gerome's fine portrait of the pale Rachel, invested 
 with the antique attributes of tragedy. The rise of the curtain 
 had drawn away most of the company. Sherringham, from 
 his bench, watched Miriam a little, turning his eye from her 
 to the vivid image of the dead actress and thinking that his 
 companion suffered little by the juxtaposition. Presently he 
 came over and joined her again, and she said to him : " I wonder 
 if that is what your cousin had in his mind." 
 
 "My cousin?" 
 
 " What was his name 1 Mr. Dormer ; that first day at 
 Madame Carre's. He offered to paint my portrait." 
 
 " I remember. I put him up to it." 
 
 "Was he thinking of this?" 
 
 " I don't think he has ever seen it. I dare say I was." 
 
 " Well, when we go to London he must do it," said Miriam. 
 
 " Oh, there's no hurry," Sherringham replied. 
 
 " Don't you want my picture ? " asked the girl, with one of 
 her successful touches. 
 
 "I'm not sure I want it from you. I don't know quite 
 what he'd make of you." 
 
 "He looked so clever I liked him. I saw him again at 
 your party." 
 
 "He's a dear fellow; but what is one to say of a painter 
 who goes for his inspiration to the House of Commons ? "
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 221 
 
 " To the House of Commons 1 " 
 
 " He has lately got himself elected." 
 
 "Dear me, what a pity! I wanted to sit for him; but 
 perhaps he won't have me, as I'm not a member of 
 Parliament." 
 
 " It's my sister, rather, who has got him in." 
 
 " Your sister who was at your house that day ? What has 
 she to do with it ] " 
 
 " Why, she's his cousin, just as I am. And in addition," 
 Sherringham went on, "she's to be married to him." 
 
 " Married really 1 So he paints her, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Not much, probably. His talent in that line isn't what 
 she esteems in him most." 
 
 " It isn't great, then 1 " 
 
 " I haven't the least idea." 
 
 " And in the political line 1 " 
 
 " I scarcely can tell. He's very clever." 
 
 " He does paint then ? " 
 
 " I dare say." 
 
 Miriam looked at Gerome's picture again. " Fancy his 
 going into the House of Commons ! And your sister put 
 him there]" 
 
 " She worked, she canvassed." 
 
 " Ah, you're a queer family ! " the girl exclaimed, turning 
 round at the sound of a step. 
 
 "We're lost here's Mademoiselle "Voisin," said Sher- 
 ringham. 
 
 This celebrity presented herself smiling and addressing 
 Miriam. " I acted for you to-night I did my best." 
 
 " What a pleasure to speak to you, to thank you ! " the 
 girl murmured, admiringly. She was startled and dazzled. 
 
 " I couldn't come to you before, but now I've got a rest 
 for half an hour," the actress went on. Gracious and passive, 
 as if she were a little tired, she let Sherringham, without 
 looking at him, take her hand and raise it to his lips. " I'm 
 sorry I make you lose the others they are so good in this 
 act," she added. 
 
 "We have seen them before, and there's nothing so good 
 as you," Miriam replied. 
 
 " I like my part," said Mademoiselle Voisin, gently, smiling 
 still at our young lady with clear, charming eyes. " One is 
 always better in that case." 
 
 "She's so bad sometimes, you know ! " Sherringham jested, 
 to Miriam ; leading the actress to glance at him kindly and
 
 222 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 vaguely, with a little silence which, with her, you could not 
 call embarrassment, but which was still less affectation. 
 
 "And it's so interesting to be here so interesting!" 
 Miriam declared. 
 
 "Ah, you like our old house? Yes, we are very proud of 
 it." And Mademoiselle Voisin smiled again at Sherringham, 
 good-hum ouredly, as if to say : " Well, here I am, and what 
 do you want of me? Don't ask me to invent it myself, but 
 if you'll tell me I'll do it." Miriam admired the note of 
 discreet interrogation in her voice the slight suggestion of 
 surprise at their "old house" being liked. The actress was 
 already an astonishment to her, from her seeming still more 
 perfect on a nearer view ; which was not, she had an idea, 
 what actresses usually did. This was very encouraging to 
 her : it widened the programme of a young lady about to 
 embrace the scenic career. To have so much to show before 
 the footlights and yet to have so much left when you came 
 off that was really wonderful. Mademoiselle Voisin' s eyes, 
 as one looked into them, were still more agreeable than the 
 distant spectator would have supposed ; and there was in her 
 appearance an extreme finish which instantly suggested to 
 Miriam that she herself, in comparison, was big and rough 
 and coarse. 
 
 ''You're lovely to-night you're particularly lovely," said 
 Sherringham, very frankly, translating Miriam's own im- 
 pression and at the same time giving her an illustration of 
 the way that, in Paris at least, gentlemen expressed them- 
 selves to the stars of the drama. She thought she knew her 
 companion very well and had been witness of the degree to 
 which, under these circumstances, his familiarity could in- 
 crease ; but his address to the slim, distinguished, harmonious 
 woman before them had a different quality, the note of a 
 special usage. If Miriam had had any apprehension that such 
 directness might be taken as excessive, it was removed by the 
 manner in which Mademoiselle Voisin returned 
 
 " Oh, one is always well enough when one is made up ; one 
 is always exactly the same." That served as an example of 
 the good taste with which a star of the drama could receive 
 homage that was wanting in originality. Miriam determined 
 on the spot that this should be the way she would receive it. 
 The grace of her new acquaintance was the greater as the 
 becoming bloom which she alluded to as artificial was the 
 result of a science so consummate that it had none of the 
 grossness of a mask. The perception of all this was exciting
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 223 
 
 to our young aspirant, and her excitement relieved itself in 
 the inquiry, which struck her as rude as soon as she had 
 uttered it 
 
 "You acted for me? How did you know? What am I 
 to you 1 ?" 
 
 " Monsieur Sherringham has told me about you. He says 
 we are nothing beside you ; that you are to be the great star 
 of the future. I'm proud that you've seen me." 
 
 " That of course is what I tell every one," Sherringham said, 
 a trifle awkwardly, to Miriam. 
 
 " I can believe it when I see you. Je vous ai bien observee," 
 the actress continued, in her sweet, conciliatory tone. 
 
 Miriam looked from one of her interlocutors to the other, 
 as if there was a joy to her in this report of Sherringham's 
 remarks, accompanied however, and partly mitigated, by a 
 quicker vision of what might have passed between a secretary 
 of embassy and a creature so exquisite as Mademoiselle Voisin. 
 " Ah, you're wonderful people a most interesting impres- 
 sion ! " she sighed. 
 
 " I was looking for you ; he had prepared me. We are 
 such old friends ! " said the actress, in a tone courteously 
 exempt from intention : upon which Sherringham again took 
 her hand and raised it to his lips, with a tenderness which 
 her whole appearance seemed to bespeak for her, a sort of 
 practical consideration and carefulness of touch, as if she were 
 an object precious and frail, an instrument for producing 
 rare sounds, to be handled, like a legendary violin, with a 
 recognition of its value. 
 
 " Your dressing-room is so pretty show her your dressing- 
 room," said Sherringham. 
 
 "Willingly, if she'll come up. Vous savez, c'est une montee." 
 
 " It's a shame to inflict it on you," Miriam objected. 
 
 " Comment done ? If it will interest you in the least ! " 
 They exchanged civilities, almost caresses, trying which could 
 have the nicest manner to the other. It was the actress's 
 manner that struck Miriam most ; it denoted such a training, 
 so much taste, expressed such a ripe conception of urbanity. 
 
 "N"o wonder she acts well when she has that tact feels, 
 perceives, is so remarkable, mon Dieu, mon Dieuf" Miriam 
 said to herself as they followed their conductress into another 
 corridor and up a wide, plain staircase. The staircase was 
 spacious and long, and this part of the establishment was 
 sombre and still, with the gravity of a college or a convent. 
 They reached another passage, lined with little doors, on each
 
 224 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 of which the name of a comedian was painted ; and here the 
 aspect became still more monastic, like that of a row of 
 solitary cells. Mademoiselle Voisin led the way to her own 
 door, obligingly, as if she wished to be hospitable, dropping 
 little subdued, friendly attempts at explanation on the way. 
 At her threshold the monasticism stopped. Miriam found 
 herself in a wonderfully upholstered nook, a nest of lamplight 
 and delicate cretonne. Save for its pair of long glasses it 
 looked like a tiny boudoir, with a water-colour drawing of 
 value in each panel of stretched stuff, its crackling fire, its 
 charming order. It was intensely bright and extremely hot, 
 singularly pretty and exempt from litter. Nothing was lying 
 about, but a small draped doorway led into an inner sanctuary. 
 To Miriam it seemed royal ; it immediately made the art of 
 the comedian the most distinguished thing in the world. It 
 was just such a place as they should have, in the intervals, if 
 they were expected to be great artists. It was a result of the 
 same evolution as Mademoiselle Voisin herself not that our 
 young lady found this particular term to her hand, to express 
 her idea. But her mind was flooded with an impression of 
 style, of refinement, of the long continuity of a tradition. 
 The actress said, " Voila, c'est tout ! " as if it were little 
 enough and there were even something clumsy in her having 
 brought them so far for nothing and in their all sitting there 
 waiting and looking at each other till it was time for her to 
 change her dress. But to Miriam it was occupation enough 
 to note what she did and said : these things and her whole 
 person and carriage struck her as exquisite in their adaptation 
 to the particular occasion. She had had an idea that foreign 
 actresses were rather of the cabotin order ; but her hostess 
 suggested to her much more a princess than a cabotine. She 
 would do things as she liked, and straight off : Miriam 
 couldn't fancy her in the gropings and humiliations of re- 
 hearsal. Everything in her had been sifted and formed, her 
 tone was perfect, her amiability complete, and she might have 
 been the charming young wife of a secretary of state receiving 
 a pair of strangers of distinction. Miriam observed all her 
 movements. And then, as Sherringham had said, she was 
 particularly lovely. 
 
 Suddenly she told Sherringham that she must put him a la 
 porte she wanted to change her dress. He retired and 
 returned to the foyer, where Miriam was to rejoin him after 
 remaining the few minutes more with Mademoiselle Voisin 
 and coming down with her. He waited for his companion,
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 225 
 
 ' -walking up and down and making up his mind ; and when she 
 presently came in he said to her : 
 
 " Please don't go back for the rest of the play. Stay here." 
 They now had the foyer virtually to themselves. 
 
 "I want to stay here. I like it better." She moved back 
 to the chimney-piece, from above which the cold portrait of 
 Rachel looked down, and as he accompanied her he said : 
 
 "I meant what I said just now." 
 
 " What you said to Yoisin ? " 
 
 "No, no; to you. Give it up and live with me." 
 
 " Give it up? " And she turned her stage face upon him. 
 
 " Give it up and I'll marry you to-morrow." 
 
 " This a happy time to ask it ! " she mocked. " And this is 
 a good place." 
 
 " Yery good indeed, and that's why I speak : it's a place 
 to make one choose it puts it all before one." 
 
 " To make you choose, you mean. I'm much obliged, but 
 that's not my choice," laughed Miriam. 
 
 " You shall be anything you like except this." 
 
 " Except what I most want to be 1 I am much obliged." 
 
 "Don't you care for me 1 ? Haven't you any gratitude?" 
 Sherringham asked. 
 
 " Gratitude for kindly removing the blessed cup from my 
 lips ? I want to be what she is I want it more than ever." 
 
 " Ah, what she is ! " he replied impatiently. 
 
 " Do you mean I can't ? We'll see if I can't. Tell me 
 more about her tell me everything." 
 
 " Haven't you seen for yourself, and can't you judge 1 " 
 
 " She's strange, she's mysterious," Miriam declared, looking 
 at the fire. " She showed us nothing nothing of her real 
 self." 
 
 " So much the better, all things considered." 
 
 "Are there all sorts of other things in her life? That's 
 what I believe," Miriam went on, raising her eyes to him. 
 
 " I can't tell you what there is in the life of such a woman." 
 
 " Imagine when she's so perfect ! " the girl exclaimed, 
 thoughtfully. "Ah, she kept me off she kept me off ! Her 
 charming manner is in itself a kind of contempt. It's an 
 abyss it's the wall of China. She has a hard polish, an 
 inimitable surface, like some wonderful porcelain that costs 
 more than you'd think." 
 
 " Do you want to become like that ? " Sherringham asked. 
 
 "If I could I should be enchanted. One can always try." 
 
 " You must act better than she," said Sherringham.
 
 226 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " Better ? I thought you wanted me to give it up. ;> 
 
 " Ah, I don't know what I want, and you torment me and 
 turn me inside out ! What I want is you yourself." 
 
 '" Oh, don't worry," said Miriam, kindly. Then she added 
 that Mademoiselle Yoisin had asked her to come to see her ; 
 to which Sherringham replied, with a certain dryness, that she 
 would probably not find that necessary. This made Miriam 
 stare, and she asked, " Do you mean it won't do, on account 
 of mamma's prejudices 1 " 
 
 " Say, this time, on account of mine. :i 
 
 " Do you mean because she has lovers 1 " 
 
 " Her lovers are none of our business." 
 
 " None of mine, I see. So you have been one of them? " 
 
 " No such luck." 
 
 " What a pity ! I should have liked to see that. One 
 must see everything, to be able to do everything." And as 
 he inquired what she had wished to see she replied : " The 
 way a woman like that receives one of the old ones." 
 
 Sherringham gave a groan at this, which was at the same 
 time partly a laugh, and, turning away and dropping upon a 
 bench, ejaculated : " You'll do you'll do ! " 
 
 He sat there some minutes with his elbows on his knees 
 and his face in his hands. Miriam remained looking at the 
 portrait of Bachel ; after which she demanded : " Doesn't such 
 a woman as that receive receive every one? " 
 
 " Every one who goes to see her, no doubt." 
 
 " And who goes ? " 
 
 " Lots of men clever men, eminent men." 
 
 " Ahj what a charming life ! Then doesn't sho go oxit ? " 
 
 " Not what we Philistines mean by that not into society, 
 never. She never enters a lady's drawing-room." 
 
 " How strange, when one's as distinguished as that ; except 
 that she must escape a lot of stupidities and corvees. Then 
 where does she learn such manners 1 " 
 
 " She teaches manners, a ses heures : she doesn't need to 
 learn them." 
 
 " Oh, she has given me ideas ! But in London actresses go 
 into society," Miriam continued. 
 
 " Oh, in London nous melons Jes genres ! " 
 
 " And sha'n't / go I mean if I want 1 " 
 
 " You'll have every facility to bore yourself. Don't doubt 
 of it." 
 
 "And doesn't she feel excluded? " Miriam asked. 
 
 " Excluded from what 1 She has the fullest life."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 227 
 
 The fullest ? " 
 
 " An intense artistic life. The cleverest men in Paris talk 
 over her work with her ; the principal authors of plays discuss 
 with her subjects and characters and questions of treatment. 
 She lives in the world of art." 
 
 " Ah, the world of art how I envy her ! And you offer 
 me Dashwood ! " 
 
 Sherringham rose in his emotion. " I offer you 1 " 
 
 Miriam burst out laughing. " You look so droll ! You 
 offer me yourself then, instead of all these things." 
 
 " My child, I also am a very clever man," he said, smiling, 
 though conscious that for a moment he had stood gaping. 
 
 "You are you are; I delight in you. No ladies at all 
 no femmes comme il faut ] " Miriam began again. 
 
 " Ah, what do they matter ? Your business is the artistic 
 life ! " he broke out with inconsequence and with a little 
 irritation at hearing her sound that trivial note again. 
 
 " You're a dear your charming good sense comes back to 
 you ! What do you want of me then ? " 
 
 " I want you for myself not for others ; and now, in time, 
 before anything's done." 
 
 " Why then did you bring me here 1 Everything's done ; 
 I feel it to-night." 
 
 " I know the way you should look at it if you do look at 
 it at all," Sherringham conceded. 
 
 " That's so easy ! I thought you liked the stage so," 
 Miriam said, artfully. 
 
 " Don't you want me to be a great swell ? '' 
 
 " And don't you want me to be 1 " 
 
 "You will be you'll share my glory." 
 
 " So will you share mine." 
 
 " The husband of an actress ? Yes, I see that ! " Sherringham 
 cried, with a frank ring of disgust. 
 
 " It's a silly position, no doubt. But if you're too good for 
 it why talk about it 1 Don't you think I'm important ? " 
 Miriam inquired. Her companion stood looking at her, and 
 she suddenly said in a different tone : " Ah, why should we 
 quarrel, when you have been so kind, so generous? Can't we 
 always be friends the solidest friends'? " 
 
 Her voice sank to the sweetest cadence and her eyes were 
 grateful and good as they rested on him. She sometimes said 
 things with such perfection that they seemed dishonest, but 
 in this case Sherringham was stirred to an expressive response. 
 Just as he was making it, however, he was moved to utter
 
 228 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 other words "Take care, here's Dashwood ! " Mrs. Rooth's 
 companion was in the doorway. He had come back to say- 
 that they really must relieve him. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 MRS. D ALLOW came up to London soon after the meeting of 
 Parliament ; she made no secret of the fact that she was fond 
 of the place, and naturally in present conditions it would not 
 have become less attractive to her. But she prepared to with- 
 draw from it again for the Easter vacation, not to return to 
 Harsh, but to pay a couple of country visits. She did not 
 however leave town with the crowd she never did anything 
 with the crowd but waited till the Monday after Parliament 
 rose ; facing with composure, in Great Stanhope Street, the 
 horrors, as she had been taught to consider them, of a Sunday 
 out of the session. She had done what she could to mitigate 
 them by asking a handful of "stray men" to dine with her 
 that evening. Several members of this disconsolate class 
 sought comfort in Great Stanhope Street in the afternoon, 
 and them for the most part she also invited to come back at 
 eight o'clock. There were therefore almost too many people 
 at dinner there were even a couple of wives. Nick Dormer 
 came to dinner, but he was not present in the afternoon. 
 Each of the persons who were had said on coming in : " So 
 you've not gone I'm awfully glad." Mrs. Dallow had 
 replied, "No, I've not gone," but she had in no case added 
 that she was glad, nor had she offered an explanation. She 
 never offered explanations : she always assumed that no one 
 could invent them so well as those who had the florid taste to 
 desire them. 
 
 And in this case she was right, for it is probable that few 
 of her visitors failed to say to themselves that her not having 
 gone would have had something to do with Dormer. That 
 could pass for an explanation with many of Mrs. Dallow's 
 visitors, who as a general thing were not morbidly analytic ; 
 especially with those who met Nick as a matter of course at 
 the dinner. His being present at this lady's entertainments, 
 being in her house whenever, as the phrase was, a candle was 
 lighted, was taken as a sign that there was something rather 
 particular between them. Nick had said to her more than 
 once that people would wonder why they didn't marry ; but
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 229 
 
 he was wrong in this, inasmuch as there were many of their 
 friends to whom it would not have occurred that his position 
 could be improved by it. That they were cousins was a fact 
 not so evident to others as to themselves, in consequence of 
 which they appeared remarkably intimate. The person seeing 
 clearest in the matter was Mrs. Gresham, who lived so much 
 in the world that being alone had become her idea of true 
 sociability. She knew very well that if she had been privately 
 engaged to a young man as amiable as Nick Dormer she would 
 have managed that publicity should not play such a part in 
 their intercourse ; and she had her secret scorn for the stupidity 
 of people whose conception of Nick's relation to Julia Dallow 
 rested on the fact that he was always included in her parties. 
 " If he never was there they might talk," she said to herself. 
 But Mrs. Gresham was supersubtle. To her it would have 
 appeared natural that Julia should celebrate the parliamentary 
 recess by going down to Harsh and securing Nick's company 
 there for a fortnight ; she recognized Mrs. Dallow's actual 
 plan as a comparatively poor substitute the project of spend- 
 ing the holidays in other people's houses, to which Nick had 
 also promised to come. Mrs. Gresham was romantic ; she 
 wondered what was the good of mere snippets and snatches, 
 the chances that any one might have, when large, still days 
 a deux were open to you chances of which half the sanctity 
 was in what they excluded. However, there were more 
 unsettled matters between Mrs. Dallow and her queer kins- 
 man than even Mrs. Gresham' s fine insight could embrace. 
 She was not present on the Sunday before Easter at the 
 dinner in Great Stanhope Street ; but if she had been Julia's 
 singular indifference to observation would have stopped short 
 of encouraging her to remain in the drawing-room with Nick 
 after the others had gone. I may add that Mrs. Gresham's 
 extreme curiosity would have emboldened her as little to do 
 so. She would have taken for granted that the pair wished 
 to be alone together, though she would have regarded this 
 only as a snippet. 
 
 The guests stayed late and it was nearly twelve o'clock 
 when Nick, standing before the fire in the room they had 
 quitted, broke out to his companion : 
 
 " See here, Julia, how long do you really expect me to 
 endure this kind of thing?" Mrs. Dallow made him no 
 answer ; she only leaned back in her chair with her eyes upon 
 his. He met her gaze for a moment ; then he turned round 
 to the fire and for another moment looked into it. After this
 
 230 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 he faced Mrs. Dallow again with the exclamation : " It's so 
 foolish it's so damnably foolish ! " 
 
 She still said nothing, but at the end of a minute she 
 spoke without answering him. " I shall expect you on 
 Tuesday, and I hope you'll come by a decent train." 
 
 " "What do you mean by a decent train 1 " 
 
 " I mean I hope you'll not leave it till the last thing before 
 dinner, so that we can have a little walk or something." 
 
 " What's a little walk or something 1 Why, if you make 
 such a point of my coming to Griffin, do you want me to come 
 at all?" 
 
 Mrs. Dallow hesitated an instant ; then she exclaimed : u I 
 knew you hated it ! " 
 
 " You provoke me so," said Nick. " You try to, I think." 
 
 " And Severals still worse. You'll get out of that if you 
 can," Mrs. Dallow went on. 
 
 " If I can ? What's to prevent me ] '' 
 
 " You promised Lady Whiteroy. But of course that's 
 nothing." 
 
 " I don't care a straw for Lady Whiteroy." 
 
 " And you promised me. But that's less still." 
 
 " It is foolish it's quite idiotic," said Nick, with his hands 
 in his pockets and his eyes on the ceiling. 
 
 There was another silence, at the end of which Mrs. Dallow 
 remarked : " You might have answered Mr. Macgeorge when 
 he spoke to you." 
 
 " Mr. Macgeorge what has he to do with it? " 
 
 " He has to do with your getting on a little. If you think 
 that's the way ! " 
 
 Nick broke into a laugh. " I like lessons in getting on 
 in other words I suppose you mean in urbanity from you, 
 Julia ! " 
 
 " Why not from me ? " 
 
 " Because you can do nothing base. You're incapable of 
 putting on a flattering manner, to get something by it : there- 
 fore why should you expect me to ? You're unflattering 
 that is you're austere in proportion as there may be some- 
 thing to be got. 1 ' 
 
 Mrs. Dallow sprang up from her chair, coming towards him. 
 " There is only one thing I want in the world you know very 
 well." 
 
 " Yes, you want it so much that you won't even take it when 
 it's pressed upon you. How long do you seriously expect me 
 to bear it ? " Nick repeated.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 231 
 
 " I never asked you to do anything base," she said, standing 
 in front of him. "If I'm not clever about throwing myself 
 into things, it's all the more reason you should be." 
 
 " If you're not clever, my dear Julia ] " Nick, standing close 
 to her, placed his hands on her shoulders and shook her a little 
 with a mixture of tenderness and passion. " You're clever 
 enough to make me furious, sometimes ! " 
 
 She opened and closed her fan, looking down at it while she 
 submitted to this attenuated violence. " All I want is that 
 when a man like Mr. Macgeorge talks to you, you shouldn't 
 appear to be bored to death. You used to be so charming in 
 that sort of way. And now you appear to take no interest in 
 anything. At dinner to-night you scarcely opened your lips ; 
 you treated them all as if you only wished they'd go." 
 
 " I did wish they'd go. Haven't I told you a hundred times 
 what I think of your salon ] " 
 
 " How then do you want me to live 1 " Mrs, Dallow asked. 
 " Am I not to have a creature in the house 1 " 
 
 " As many creatures as you like. Your freedom is complete, 
 and as far as I am concerned always will be. Only when you 
 challenge me and overhaul me not justly I think I must 
 confess the simple truth, that there are many of your friends 
 I don't delight in." 
 
 " Oh, your idea of pleasant people ! '' Julia exclaimed. " I 
 should like once for all to know what it really is." 
 
 " I can tell you what it really isn't : it isn't Mr. Macgeorge. 
 He's a being almost grotesquely limited." 
 
 " He'll be where you'll never be unless you change." 
 
 " To be where Mr. Macgeorge is not would be very nmch my 
 desire. Therefore why should I change 1 " Nick demanded. 
 " However, I hadn't the least intention of being rude to him, 
 and I don't think I was," he went on. " To the best of my 
 ability I assume a virtue if I have it not ; but apparently I'm 
 not enough of a comedian." 
 
 " If you have it not ? It's when you say things like that 
 that you're so dreadfully tiresome. As if there were anything 
 that you haven't or mightn't have ! " 
 
 Nick turned away from his hostess ; he took a few impatient 
 steps in the room, looking at the carpet, with his hands in. his 
 pockets again. Then he came back to the fire with the observ- 
 ation : " It's rather hard to be found so wanting when one has 
 tried to play one's part so beautifully." He paused, with his 
 eyes on Mrs. Dallow's ; then continued, with a vibration in 
 his voice : " I've imperilled my immortal soul, or at least I've
 
 232 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 bemuddled my intelligence, by all the things I don't care for 
 that I've tried to do, and all the things I detest that I've tried 
 to be, and all the things I never can be that I've tried to look 
 as if I were all the appearances and imitations, the pretences 
 and hypocrisies in which I've steeped myself to the eyes ; and 
 at the end of it (it serves me right ! ) my reward is simply to 
 learn that I'm still not half humbug enough ! " 
 
 Mrs. Dallow looked away from him as soon as he had spoken 
 these words ; she attached her eyes to the clock which stood 
 behind him and observed irrelevantly : 
 
 " I'm very sorry, but I think you had better go. I don't 
 like you to stay after midnight." 
 
 ' ' Ah, what you like and what you don't like, and where one 
 begins and the other ends all that's an impenetrable mys- 
 tery ! " the young man declared. But he took no further 
 notice of her allusion to his departure, adding in a different 
 tone : " ' A man like Mr. Macgeorge ! ' When you say a thing 
 of that sort, in a certain particular way, I should rather like 
 to suffer you to perish." 
 
 Mrs. Dallow stared ; it might have seemed for an instant 
 that she was trying to look stupid. " How can I help it if a 
 few years hence he is certain to be at the head of any Liberal 
 government ? " 
 
 " "We can't help it, of course, but we can help talking about 
 it," Nick smiled. " If we don't mention it, it may not be 
 noticed." 
 
 " You're trying to make me angry. You're in one of your 
 vicious moods," observed Mrs. Dallow, blowing out, on the 
 chimney-piece, a guttering candle. 
 
 " That I'm exasperated I have already had the honour very 
 positively to inform you. All the same I maintain that I was 
 irreproachable at dinner. I don't want you to think I shall 
 always be so good as that." 
 
 " You looked so out of it ; you were as gloomy as if every 
 earthly hope had left you, and you didn't make a single con- 
 tribution to any discussion that took place. Don't you think 
 I observe you ? " Mrs. Dallow asked, with an irony tempered 
 by a tenderness that was unsuccessfully concealed. 
 
 " Ah, my darling, what you observe ! " Nick exclaimed, 
 laughing and stopping. But he added the next moment, more 
 seriously, as if his tone had been disrespectful: "You probe 
 me to the bottom, no doubt." 
 
 " You needn't come either to Griffin or to Severals if you 
 don't want to."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 233 
 
 " Give them up yourself ; stay here with me ! " 
 
 She coloured quickly, as he said this, and broke out : Lord ! 
 how you hate political houses ! " 
 
 " How can you say that, when from February to August I 
 spend every blessed night in one? " 
 
 " Yes, and hate that worst of all." 
 
 " So do half the people who are in it. You must have so 
 many things, so many people, so much miie-en-scene and such 
 a perpetual spectacle to live," Nick went on. " Perpetual 
 motion, perpetual visits, perpetual crowds ! If you go into the 
 country you'll see forty people every day and be mixed up with 
 them all day. The idea of a quiet fortnight in town, when by 
 a happy if idiotic superstition everybody goes out of it, discon- 
 certs and frightens you. It's the very time, it's the very place, 
 to do a little work and possess one's soul." 
 
 This vehement allocution found Mrs. Dallow evidently 
 somewhat unprepared ; but she was sagacious enough, instead 
 of attempting for the moment a general rejoinder, to seize on 
 a single phrase and say : " Work 1 What work can you do in 
 London at such a moment as this 1 " 
 
 Nick hesitated a little. " I might tell you that I wanted 
 to get up a lot of subjects, to sit at home and read blue-books; 
 but that wouldn't be quite what I mean." 
 
 " Do you mean you want to paint 1 " 
 
 " Yes, that's it, since you drag it out of me." 
 
 " Why do you make such a mystery about it 1 You're at 
 perfect liberty," said Mrs. Dallow. 
 
 She extended her hand, to rest it on the mantel-shelf, but 
 her companion took it on the way and held it in both his 
 own. " You're delightful, Julia, when you speak in that 
 tone then I know why it is I love you ; but I can't do 
 anything if I go to Griffin, if I go to Severals." 
 
 " I see I see," said Julia, reflectively and kindly. 
 
 " I've scarcely been inside of my studio for months and I 
 feel quite homesick for it. The idea of putting in a few quiet 
 days there has taken hold of me : I rather cling to it." 
 
 "It seems so odd, your having a studio!" Julia dropped, 
 speaking so quickly that the words were almost incom- 
 prehensible. 
 
 " Doesn't it sound absurd, for all the good it does me, or I 
 do in it 1 Of course one can produce nothing but rubbish on 
 such terms without continuity or persistence, with just a few 
 days here and there. I ought to be ashamed of myself, no 
 doubt ; but even my rubbish interests me. ' Guenille si Von
 
 234 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 veut, ma guenille truest chere.' But I'll go down to Harsh with 
 you in a moment, Julia," Nick pursued : " that would do as 
 well, if we could be quiet there, without people, without a 
 creature ; and I should really be perfectly content. You'd sit 
 for me ; it would be the occasion we've so often wanted and 
 never found." 
 
 Mrs. Dallow shook her head slowly, with a smile that had 
 a meaning for Nick. " Thank you, my dear ; nothing would 
 induce me to go to Harsh with you." 
 
 The young man looked at her. " What's the matter, when- 
 ever it's a question of anything of that sort 1 Are you afraid 
 of me 1 ?" She pulled her hand quickly out of his, turning 
 away from him ; but he went on : " Stay with me here then, 
 when everything is so right for it. We shall do beautifully 
 have the whole place, have the whole day to ourselves. Hang 
 your engagements ! Telegraph you won't come. We'll live 
 at the studio you'll sit to me every day. Now or never is 
 our chance when shall we have so good a one ? Think how 
 charming it will be ! I'll make you wish awfully that I shall 
 do something." 
 
 " I can't get out of Griffin it's impossible," returned Mrs. 
 Dallow, moving further away, with her back presented to him. 
 
 "Then you are afraid of me simply?" 
 
 She turned quickly round, very pale. " Of course I am ; you 
 are welcome to know it." 
 
 He went toward her, and for a moment she seemed to make 
 another slight movement of retreat. This however was 
 scarcely perceptible, and there was nothing to alarm in the 
 tone of reasonable entreaty in which Nick said to her as he 
 went toward her : " Put an end, Julia, to our absurd situation 
 it really can't go on : you have no right to expect a man to 
 be happy or comfortable in so false a position. We're talked 
 of odiously of that we may be sure ; and yet what good have 
 we of it?" 
 
 " Talked of I Do I care for that ] " 
 
 "Do you mean you're indifferent because there are no 
 grounds? That's just why I hate it." 
 
 " I don't know what you're talking about," exclaimed Mrs. 
 Dallow, with quick disdain. 
 
 " Be my wife to-morrow be my wife next week. Let us 
 have done with this fantastic probation and be happy," 
 
 " Leave me now come back to-morrow. I'll write to you." 
 She had the air of pleading with him at present as he pleaded 
 with her.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 235 
 
 " You can't resign yourself to the idea of one's looking ' out 
 of it ' ! " laughed Nick. 
 
 "Come to-morrow, before lunch," Mrs. Dallow continued. 
 
 " To be told I must wait six months more and then be sent 
 about my business ? Ah, Julia, Julia ! " murmured the young 
 man. 
 
 Something in this simple exclamation it sounded natural 
 and perfectly unstudied evidently on the instant made a 
 great impression on his companion. " You shall wait no 
 longer," she said after a short silence. 
 
 " What do you mean by no longer? " 
 
 " Give me about five weeks say till the Whitsuntide 
 recess." 
 
 " Five weeks are a great deal," smiled Nick. 
 
 "There are things to be done you ought to understand." 
 
 " I only understand how I love you." 
 
 "Dearest Nick!" said Mrs. Dallow; upon which he caught 
 her in his arms. 
 
 " I have your promise then for five weeks hence, to a day?" 
 he demanded, as she released herself. 
 
 " We'll settle that the exact day : there are things to 
 consider and to arrange. Come to luncheon to-morrow." 
 
 " I'll come early I'll come at one," Nick said ; and for a 
 moment they stood smiling at each other. 
 
 " Do you think I want to wait, any more than you 1 " Mrs. 
 Dallow asked. 
 
 " I don't feel so much out of it now ! " he exclaimed, by way 
 of answer. "You'll stay, of course, now you'll give up your 
 visits?" 
 
 She had hold of the lappet of his coat ; she had kept it in 
 her hand even while she detached herself from his embrace. 
 There was a white flower in his buttonhole which she looked 
 at and played with a moment before she said : " I have a 
 better idea you needn't come to Griffin. Stay in your studio 
 do as you like paint dozens of pictures." 
 
 " Dozens? Barbarian ! " Nick ejaculated. 
 
 The epithet apparently had an endearing suggestion to Mrs. 
 Dallow ; at any rate it led her to allow him to kiss her on 
 her forehead led her to say : " What on earth do I want but 
 that you should do absolutely as you please and be as happy 
 as you can? " 
 
 Nick kissed her again, in another place, at this ; but he 
 inquired : " What dreadful proposition is coming now ? " 
 
 "I'll go off and do up my visits and come back."
 
 236 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " And leave me alone 1 " 
 
 " Don't be affected ! " said Mrs. Dallow. " You know you'll 
 work much better without me. You'll live in your studio I 
 shall be well out of the way." 
 
 " That's not what one wants of a sitter. How can I paint 
 you?" 
 
 " You can paint me all the rest of your life. I shall be a 
 perpetual sitter." 
 
 " I believe I could paint you without looking at you," said 
 Nick, smiling down at her. " You do excuse me, then, from 
 those dreary places ? " 
 
 " How can I insist, after what you said about the pleasure 
 of keeping these days ? " Mrs. Dallow asked sweetly. 
 
 " You're the best woman on earth ; though it does seem odd 
 you should rush away as soon as our little business is settled." 
 
 " "We shall make it up. I know what I'm about. And 
 now go ! " Mrs. Dallow terminated, almost pushing her visitor 
 out of the room. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 IT was certainly singular under the circumstances that on. 
 sitting down in his studio after Julia had left town Nick 
 Dormer should not, as regards the effort to reproduce some 
 beautiful form, have felt more chilled by the absence of a 
 friend who was such an embodiment of beauty. She was 
 away and he longed for her, and yet without her the place 
 was more filled with what he wanted to find in it. He turned 
 into it with confused feelings, the most definite of which was 
 a sense of release and Tecreation. It looked blighted and 
 lonely and dusty, and his old studies, as he rummaged them 
 out, struck him as even clumsier than the last time he had 
 ventured to drop his eyes on them. But amid this neglected 
 litter, in the colourless and obstructed light of a high north 
 window which needed washing, he tasted more sharply the 
 possibility of positive happiness : it appeared to him that, as 
 he had said to Julia, he was more in possession of his soul. 
 It was frivolity and folly, it was puerility to spend valuable 
 hours pottering over the vain implements of an art he had 
 relinquished; and a certain shame that he had felt in pre- 
 senting his plea to Julia Dallow that Sunday night arose 
 from the sense not of what he clung to, but of what he had
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE; 237 
 
 given up. He had turned his back upon serious work, so 
 that pottering was now all he could aspire to. It couldn't be 
 fruitful, it couldn't be anything but ridiculous, almost ignoble ; 
 but it soothed his nerves, it was in the nature of a secret 
 dissipation. He had never suspected that he should ever 
 have on his own part nerves to count with ; but this possi- 
 bility had been revealed to him on the day it became clear 
 that he was letting something precious go. He was glad he 
 had not to justify himself to the critical, for this might have 
 been a delicate business. The critical were mostly absent ; 
 and besides, shut up all day in his studio, how should he ever 
 meet them? It was the place in the world where he felt 
 furthest away from his constituents. That was a part of the 
 pleasure the consciousness that for the hour the coast was 
 clear and his mind was free. His mother and his sister had 
 gone to Broadwood : Lady Agnes (the phrase sounds brutal, 
 but it represents his state of mind) was well out of the way. 
 He had written to her as soon as Julia left town he had 
 apprised her of the fact that his wedding-day was fixed : a 
 relief, for poor Lady Agnes, to a period of intolerable mysti- 
 fication, of taciturn wondering and watching. She had said 
 her say the day of the poll at Harsh ; she was too proud to 
 ask and too discreet to " nag " : so she could only wait for 
 something that didn't arrive. The unconditioned loan of 
 Broadwood had of course been something of a bribe to 
 patience : she had at first felt that on the day she should 
 take possession of that capital house Julia would indeed seem 
 to have come into the family. But the gift had confirmed 
 expectations just enough to make disappointment more bitter ; 
 and the discomfort was greater in proportion as Lady Agnes 
 failed to discover what was the matter. Her daughter Grace 
 was much occupied with this question and brought it up in 
 conversation in a manner irritating to her ladyship, who had 
 a high theory of being silent about it, but who however, in 
 the long run, was more unhappy when, in consequence of a 
 reprimand, the girl suggested no reasons at all than when 
 she suggested stupid ones. It eased Lady Agnes a little to 
 discuss the mystery when she could have the air of not having 
 begun. 
 
 The letter Nick received from her the first day of Passion 
 "Week in reply to his important communication was the only 
 one he read at that moment ; not counting of course several 
 notes that Mrs. Dallow addressed to him from Griffin. There 
 were letters piled up, as he knew, in Calcutta Gardens, which
 
 238 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 his servant had strict orders not to bring to the studio. Nick 
 slept now in the bedroom, attached to this retreat ; got things 
 as he wanted them from Calcutta Gardens ; and dined at his 
 club, where a stray surviving friend or two, seeing him prowl 
 about the library in the evening, was free to suppose that 
 such eccentricity had a crafty political basis. When he 
 thought of his neglected letters he remembered Mr. Carteret's 
 convictions on the subject of not " getting behind"; they 
 made him laugh, in the slightly sonorous painting-room, as 
 he bent over one of the old canvases that he had ventured 
 to turn to the light. He was fully determined however to 
 master his correspondence before going down, the last thing 
 before Parliament should re-assemble, to spend another day 
 at Beauclere. Mastering his correspondence meant in Nick's 
 mind breaking open envelopes ; writing answers was scarcely 
 involved in the idea. But Mr. Carteret would never guess 
 that. Nick was not moved even to write to him that the 
 affair with Mrs. Dallow was on the point of taking the form 
 he had been so good as to desire : he reserved the pleasure of 
 this announcement for a personal interview. 
 
 The day before Good Friday, in the morning, his stillness 
 was broken by a rat-tat-tat on the outer door of his studio, 
 administered apparently by the knob of a walking-stick. 
 His servant was out and he went to the door, wondering who 
 his visitor could be at such a time, especially of the familiar 
 class. The class was indicated by the visitor's failure to look 
 for the bell ; for there was a bell, though it required a little 
 research. In a moment the mystery was solved : the gentle- 
 man who stood smiling at him from the threshold could only be 
 Gabriel Nash. Dormer had not seen this whimsical personage 
 for several months and had had no news of him beyond the 
 general intimation that he was abroad. His old friend had 
 sufficiently prepared him at the time of their reunion in 
 Paris for the idea of the fitful in intercourse : and he had not 
 been ignorant on his return from Paris that he should have 
 had an opportunity to miss him if he had not been too busy 
 to take advantage of it. In London, after the episode at 
 Harsh, Gabriel had not reappeared : he had redeemed none 
 of the pledges given the night they walked together to Notre 
 Dame and conversed on important matters. He was to have 
 interposed in Nick's destiny, but he had not interposed ; he 
 was to have dragged him in the opposite sense from Mrs. 
 Dallow, but there had been no dragging; he was to have 
 saved him, as he called it, and yet Nick was lost. This
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 239 
 
 circumstance indeed constituted his excuse : the member for 
 Harsh had rushed so to perdition. Nick had for the hour 
 seriously wished to keep hold of him : he valued him as a 
 salutary influence. Yet when he came to his senses after his 
 election our young man had recognized that Nash might very 
 well have reflected on the thanklessness of such a slippery 
 subject might have considered that he was released from his 
 vows. Of course it had been particularly in the event of a 
 Liberal triumph that he had threatened tojpake himself felt ; 
 the effect of a brand plucked from the burning would be so 
 much greater if the flames were already high. Yet Nick had 
 not held him to the letter of this pledge, and had so fully 
 admitted the right of a properly -constituted aesthete to lose 
 patience with him that he was now far from greeting his 
 visitor with a reproach. He felt much more thrown on his 
 defence, 
 
 Gabriel did not attack him however. He brought in only 
 blandness and benevolence and a great content at having 
 obeyed the mystic voice it was really a remarkable case of 
 second sight which had whispered to him that the recreant 
 comrade of his prime was in town. He had just come back 
 from Sicily, after a southern winter, according to a custom 
 frequent with him, and had been moved by a miraculous 
 prescience, unfavourable as the moment might seem, to go 
 and ask for Nick in Calcutta Gardens, where he had extracted 
 from his friend's servant an address not known to all the 
 world. He showed Nick what a mistake it had been to fear 
 a reproach from Gabriel Nash, and how he habitually ignored 
 all lapses and kept up the standard only by taking a hundred 
 line things for granted. He also abounded more than ever in 
 his own sense, reminding his friend how no recollection of 
 him, no evocation of him in absence could do him justice. 
 You couldn't recall him without seeming to exaggerate him, 
 and then recognized when you saw him that your exagger- 
 ation had fallen short. He emerged out of vagueness (his 
 Sicily might have been the Sicily of "A Winter's Tale"), and 
 would evidently be reabsorbed in it ; but his presence was 
 positive and pervasive enough. He was very lively while he 
 lasted. His connections were with beauty, urbanity and 
 conversation, as usual, but it was a circle you couldn't find in 
 the Court Guide. Nick had a sense that he knew " a lot of 
 aesthetic people," but he dealt in ideas much more than in 
 names and addresses. He was genial and jocose, sunburnt 
 and romantically allusive. Nick gathered that he had been
 
 240 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 living for many days in a Saracenic tower, where his principal 
 occupation was to watch for the flushing of the west. He 
 had retained all the serenity of his opinions, and made light, 
 with a candour of which the only defect was apparently that 
 it was not quite enough a conscious virtue, of many of the 
 objects of common esteem. "When Nick asked him what he 
 had been doing he replied : " Oh, living, you know ; " and 
 the tone of the words seemed to offer them as a record of 
 magnificent success. He made a long visit, staying to 
 luncheon and after luncheon, so that the little studio heard 
 all at once more conversation, and of a wider scope, than in 
 the several previous years of its history. With much of our 
 story left to tell, it is a pity that so little of this rich colloquy 
 may be transcribed here ; because, as affairs took their course, 
 it marked really (if it be a question of noting the exact point) 
 a turn of the tide in Nick Dormer's personal situation. He 
 was destined to remember the accent with which Nash 
 exclaimed, on his drawing forth sundry specimens of amateurish 
 earnestness : "I say I say I say ! " 
 
 Nick glanced round with a heightened colour. " They're 
 pretty bad, eh ? " 
 
 " Oh, you're a deep one ! " Nash went on. 
 
 "What's the matter?" 
 
 " Do you call your conduct that of a man of honour ? " 
 
 " Scarcely, perhaps. But when no one has seen them 1 " 
 
 " That's your villainy. C'est de Vexqids, du pur exquis. 
 Come, my dear fellow, this is very serious it's a bad business," 
 said Gabriel Nash. Then he added, almost with austerity : 
 " You'll be so good as to place before me every patch of paint, 
 every sketch and scrap that this room contains." 
 
 Nick complied, in great good-humour. He turned out his 
 boxes and drawers, shovelled forth the contents of bulging 
 portfolios, mounted on chairs to unhook old canvases that had 
 been severely " skied." He was modest and docile and patient 
 and amused, and above all quite thrilled thrilled with the 
 idea of eliciting a note of appreciation so late in the day. It 
 was the oddest thing how at present in fact he found himself 
 attributing value to Gabriel Nash attributing to him, among 
 attributions more confused, the dignity of judgment, the 
 authority of intelligence. Nash was an ambiguous being, 
 but he was an excellent touchstone. The two said very little 
 for a while, and they had almost half an hour's silence, during 
 which, after Nick had hastily improvised a little exhibition, 
 there was only a puffing of cigarettes. The visitor walked
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 241 
 
 about, looking at this and that> taking up rough studies and 
 laying them down, asking a question of fact, fishing with his 
 umbrella, on the floor, amid a pile of unarranged sketches. 
 Nick accepted jocosely the attitude of suspense, but there 
 was even more of it in his heart than in his face. So few 
 people had seen his young work almost no one who really 
 counted. He had been ashamed of it, never showing it to 
 bring on a conclusion, inasmuch as it was precisely of a con- 
 clusion that he was afraid. He whistled now while he let 
 his companion take time. He rubbed old panels with his 
 sleeve and dabbed wet sponges on surfaces that had sunk. It 
 was a long time since he had felt so gay, strange as such an 
 assertion sounds in regard to a young man whose bridal-day 
 had at his urgent solicitation lately been" fixed. He had 
 stayed in town to be alone with his imagination, and suddenly, 
 paradoxically, the sense of that result had arrived with 
 Gabriel ISTash. 
 
 " Nicholas Dormer," this personage remarked at last, " for 
 grossness of immorality I think I have never seen your equal." 
 
 " That sounds so well that I hesitate to risk spoiling it by 
 wishing it explained." 
 
 " Don't you recognize in any degree the elevated idea of 
 duty 1 " 
 
 " If I don't grasp it with a certain firmness I'm a great 
 failure, for I was quite brought up in it," Nick said. 
 
 "Then you are the wretchedest failure I know. Life is 
 ugly, after all." 
 
 " Do I gather that you yourself recognize obligations of the 
 order you allude to 1 " asked Nick. 
 
 " Do you ' gather ' 1 " Nash stared. " Why, aren't they 
 the very flame of my faith, the burden of my song 1 " 
 
 " My dear fellow, duty is doing, and I inferred that you 
 think rather poorly of doing that it spoils one's style." 
 
 "Doing wrong, assuredly." 
 
 " But what do you call right ? What's your canon of 
 certainty there 1 " 
 
 "The conscience that's in us that charming, conversible, 
 infinite thing, the intensest thing we know. But you must 
 treat the oracle civilly if you Avish to make it speak. You- 
 mustn't stride into the temple in muddy jack-boots, with your 
 hat on your head, as the Puritan troopers tramped into the. 
 dear old abbeys. One must do one's best to find out the right, 
 and your criminality appears to be that you have . not taken- 
 common trouble/'
 
 242 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " I hadn't you to ask," smiled Nick. " But duty strikes 
 me as doing something. If you are too afraid it may be the 
 wrong thing, you may let everything go." 
 
 "Being is doing, and if doing is duty, being is duty. Do 
 you follow ] " 
 
 " At a great distance." 
 
 " To be what one may be, really and efficacioiisly," Nash 
 went on, " to feel it and understand it, to accept it, adopt it, 
 embrace it that's conduct, that's life." 
 
 " And suppose one's a brute or an ass, where's the 
 efficacy 1 " 
 
 " In one's very want of intelligence. In such cases one is 
 out of it the question doesn't exist ; one simply becomes a 
 part of the duty of others. The brute, the ass, neither feels, 
 nor understands, nor accepts, nor adopts. Those fine processes 
 in themselves classify us. They educate, they exalt, they pre- 
 serve ; so that, to profit by them, we must be as perceptive as 
 we can. We must recognize our particular form, the instru- 
 ment that each of us each of us who carries anything 
 carries in his being. Mastering this instrument, learning to 
 play it in perfection that's what I call duty, what I call 
 conduct, what I call success." 
 
 Nick listened with friendly attention and the air of general 
 assent was in his face as he said : " Every one has it then, this 
 individual pipe 1 ?" 
 
 " ' Every one,' my dear fellow, is too much to say, for the 
 world is full of the crudest remplissage. The book of life is 
 padded, ah but padded a deplorable want of editing. I 
 speak of every one that is any one. Of course there are pipes 
 and pipes little quavering flutes for the concerted movements 
 and big cornets-a-piston for the great solos." 
 
 " I see, I see. And what might your instrument be 1 " 
 
 Nash hesitated not a moment ; his answer was radiantly 
 ready. " To speak to people just as I am speaking to you. 
 To prevent for instance a great wrong being done." 
 
 " A great wrong 1 " 
 
 "Yes to the human race. I talk I talk; I say the 
 things that other people don't, that they can't, that they 
 won't," Gabriel continued, with his inimitable candour. 
 
 " If it's a question of mastery and perfection, you certainly 
 have them," his companion replied. 
 
 " And you haven't, alas ; that's the pity of it, that's the 
 scandal. That's the wrong I want to set right, before it 
 becomes too public a shame. I called you just now grossly
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 243 
 
 immoral, on account of the spectacle you present a spectacle 
 to be hidden from the eye of ingenuous youth : that of a man 
 neglecting his own fiddle to blunder away on that of one of 
 his fellows. We can't afford such mistakes, we can't tolerate 
 such license." 
 
 " You think then I have a fiddle 1 " asked Nick. 
 
 " A regular Stradivarius 1 All these things you have 
 shown me are singularly interesting. You have a talent of a 
 wonderfully pure strain." 
 
 " I say I say I say ! " Nick exclaimed, standing in front 
 of his visitor with his hands in his pockets and a blush on his 
 smiling face, and repeating with a change of accent Nash's 
 exclamation of half an hour before. 
 
 "I like it, your talent; I measure it, I appreciate it, I 
 insist upon it," Nash went on, between the whiffs of his cigar- 
 ette. " I have to be accomplished to do so, but fortunately I 
 am. In such a case that's my duty. I shall make you my 
 business for a while. Therefore," Nash added, piously, " don't 
 say I'm unconscious of the moral law." 
 
 "A Stradivarius?" said Nick, interrogatively, with his eyes 
 wide open and the thought in his mind of how different this 
 was from having gone to Griffin. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 GABRIEL NASH had plenty of further opportunity to eluci- 
 date this and other figurative remarks, for he not only spent 
 several of the middle hours of the day with his friend, but 
 came back with him in the evening (they dined together at a 
 little foreign pot-house in Soho, revealed to Nick on this occa- 
 sion) and discussed the great question far into the night. The 
 great question was whether, on the showing of those examples 
 of his ability with which the room in which they sat was now 
 densely bestrewn, Nick Dormer would be justified in " really 
 going in " for the practice of pictorial art. This may strike 
 many of my readers as a limited and even trivial inquiry, 
 with little of the heroic or the romantic in it ; but it was 
 none the less carried to a very fine point by our clever young 
 men. Nick suspected Nash of exaggerating his encourage- 
 ment in order to play a malign trick on the political world, at 
 whose expense it was his fancy to divert himself (without 
 making that organization bankrupt assuredly), and reminded
 
 244 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 him that his present accusation of immorality was strangely 
 inconsistent with the wanton hope expressed by him in Paris 
 the hope that the Liberal candidate at Harsh would be 
 returned. Nash replied first : " Oh, I hadn't been in this 
 place then ! " but he defended himself more effectually in 
 saying that it was not of Nick's having got elected that he 
 complained : it was of his visible hesitancy to throw up his 
 seat. Nick requested that he wouldn't speak of this, and his 
 gallantry failed to render him incapable of saying : " The fact 
 is I haven't the nerve for it." They talked then for a while 
 of what he could do, not of what he couldn't ; of the mysteries 
 and miracles of reproduction and representation ; of the strong, 
 sane joys of the artistic life. Nick made afresh, with more 
 fullness, his great confession, that his private ideal of happi- 
 ness was the life of a great painter of portraits. He uttered 
 his thought about this so copiously and lucidly that Nash's 
 own abundance was stilled, and he listened almost as if he had 
 been listening to something new, difficult as it was to suppose 
 that there could be a point of view in relation to such a matter 
 with which he was unacquainted. 
 
 " There it is," said Nick at last " there's the naked, pre- 
 posterous truth : that if I were to do exactly as I liked I 
 should spend my years copying the more or less vacuous 
 countenances of my fellow-mortals. I should find peace and 
 pleasure and wisdom and worth, I should find fascination and 
 a measure of success in it : out of the din and the dust and the 
 scramble, the world of party labels, party cries, party bargains 
 and party treacheries of humbuggery, hypocrisy and cant. 
 The cleanness and quietness of it, the independent effort to do 
 something, to leave something which shall give joy to man 
 long after the howling has died away to the last ghost of an 
 echo such a vision solicits me at certain hours with an almost 
 irresistible force." 
 
 As he dropped these remarks Nick lolled on a big divan, 
 with one of his long legs folded up ; and his visitor stopped in 
 front of him, after moving about the room vaguely and softly, 
 almost on tiptoe, not to interrupt him. "You speak with the 
 eloquence that rises to a man's lips on a very particular occa- 
 sion ; when he has practically, whatever his theory may be, 
 renounced the right and dropped hideously into the wrong. 
 Then his regret for the right, a certain exquisite appreci- 
 ation of it, takes on an accent which I know well how to 
 recognize." 
 
 Nick looked up at him a moment. " You've hit it, if you
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 245 
 
 mean by that that I haven't resigned my seat and that I don't 
 intend to." 
 
 " I thought you took it only to give it up. Don't you 
 remember our talk in Paris ? " 
 
 " I like to be a part of the spectacle that amuses you, 
 but I could scarcely have taken so much trouble as that 
 for it." 
 
 " But isn't it an absurd comedy, the life you lead 1 " 
 
 " Comedy or tragedy I don't know which ; whatever it is 
 I appear to be capable of it to please two or three people." 
 . "Then you can take trouble," said Nash. 
 
 "Yes, for the woman I'm to marry." 
 
 " Ah, you're to marry 1 " 
 
 " That's what has come on since we met in Paris, and it 
 makes just the difference." 
 
 " Ah, my poor friend," smiled Gabriel, standing there, " no 
 wonder you have an eloquence, an accent ! " 
 
 " It's a pity I have them in the wrong place. I'm expected 
 to have them in the House of Commons." 
 
 " You will when you make your farewell speech there to 
 announce that you chuck it up. And may I venture to ask 
 Avho's to be your wife ] " Gabriel went on. 
 
 " Mrs. Dallow has kindly consented. I think you saw her 
 in Paris." 
 
 " Ah, yes : you spoke of her to me. I remember asking 
 you if you were in love with her." 
 
 " I wasn't then." 
 
 Nash hesitated a moment. " And are you now 1 ? " 
 
 "Oh dear, yes," said Nick. 
 
 " That would be better if it wasn't worse." 
 
 " Nothing could be better ; it's the best thing that can 
 happen to me." 
 
 "Well," said Nash, "you must let me very respectfully 
 approach her. You must let me bring her round." 
 
 " Bring her round ? " 
 
 "Talk her over." 
 
 " Over to what 1 " Nick repeated his companion's words, a 
 little as if it were to gain time, remembering the effect Gabriel 
 Nash had produced upon Julia an effect which scantily 
 ministered to the idea of another meeting. Julia had had no 
 occasion to allude again to Nick's imperturbable friend ; he 
 had passed out of her life at once and forever ; but there 
 flickered up a vivid recollection of the contempt he had led 
 her to express, together with a sense of how odd she would
 
 246 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 think it that her intended should have thrown over two 
 pleasant visits to cultivate such company. 
 
 " Over to a proper pride in what you may do what you 
 may do above all if she will help you." 
 
 " I scarcely see how she can help me," said Nick, with an 
 air of thinking. 
 
 " She's extremely handsome, as I remember her : you could 
 do great things with her." 
 
 " Ah, there's the rub," Nick went on. " I wanted her to 
 sit for me this week, but she wouldn't." 
 
 " Elle a bien tort. You should do some fine strong type. 
 Is Mrs. Dallow in London ? " Nash inquired. 
 
 " For what do you take her ? She's paying visits." 
 
 " Then I have a model for you." 
 
 "Then you have ?" Nick stared. "What has that to 
 do with Mrs. Dallow's being away ? " 
 
 " Doesn't it give you more time ? " 
 
 " Oh, the time flies ! " sighed Nick, in a manner that caused 
 his companion to break into a laugh a laugh in which for 
 a moment he himself joined, blushing a little. 
 
 "Does she like you to paint?" Nash continued, with one 
 of his candid intonations. 
 
 " So she says." 
 
 " Well, do something fine to show her." 
 
 " I'd rather show it to you," Nick confessed. 
 
 " My dear fellow, I see it from here, if you do your duty. 
 Do you remember the Tragic Muse ? " Nash pursued, ex- 
 plicatively. 
 
 " The Tragic Muse 1 " 
 
 "That girl in Paris, whom we heard at the old actress's 
 and whom we afterwards met at the charming entertainment 
 given by your cousin (isn't he?) the secretary of embassy." 
 
 " Oh, Peter's girl : of course I remember her." 
 
 " Don't call her Peter's ; call her rather mine," Nash said, 
 with good-humoured dissuasiveness. "I invented her, I 
 introduced her, I revealed her." 
 
 " I thought on the contrary you ridiculed and repudiated 
 her." 
 
 " As an individual, surely not ; I seem to myself to have 
 been all the while rendering her services. I said I disliked 
 tea-party ranters, and so I do ; but if my estimate of her 
 powers was below the mark she has more than punished me." 
 " What has she done 1 " asked Nick. 
 " She has become interesting, as I suppose you know."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 247 
 
 " How should I know 1 " 
 
 " You must see her, you must paint her," said Nash. 
 " She tells me that something was said about it that day at 
 Madame Carre's." 
 
 " Oh, I remember said by Peter." 
 
 " Then it will please Mr. Sherringham you'll be glad to 
 do that. I suppose you know all he has done for Miriam 1 " 
 
 " Not a bit. I know nothing about Peter's affairs, unless 
 it be in general that he goes in for mountebanks and mimes 
 and that it occurs to me I have heard one of my sisters 
 mention the rumour had come to her that he has been 
 backing Miss Kooth." 
 
 " Miss Rooth delights to talk of his kindness : she's charm- 
 ing when she speaks of it. It's to his good offices that she 
 owes her appearance here." 
 
 "Here? Is she in London ?" Nick inquired. 
 
 " D'ou tombez-vous ? I thought you people read the papers." 
 
 " What should I read, when I sit (sometimes !) through the 
 stuff they put into them ? " 
 
 " Of course I see that that your engagement at your own 
 theatre keeps you from going to others. Learn then," said 
 Gabriel Nash, " that you have a great competitor and that 
 you are distinctly not, much as you may suppose it, the rising 
 comedian. The Tragic Muse is the great modern personage. 
 Haven't you heard people speak of her, haven't you been taken 
 to see her?" 
 
 "I dare say I've heard of her; but with a good many 
 other things on my mind I had forgotten it." 
 
 " Certainly I can imagine what has been on your mind. 
 She remembers you at any rate ; she repays neglect with 
 sympathy. She wants to come and see you." 
 
 "To see me?" 
 
 "To be seen by you it comes to the same thing. She's 
 worth seeing : you must let me bring her ; you'll find her very 
 suggestive. That idea that you should paint her she appears 
 to consider it a sort of bargain." 
 
 " A bargain ? What will she give me ? " Nick asked. 
 
 " A splendid model. She is splendid." 
 
 " Oh, then bring her," said Nick.
 
 XXV. 
 
 NASH brought her, the great modern personage as ne had 
 described her, the very next day, and it took Nick Dormer 
 but a short time to appreciate his declaration that Miriam 
 Rooth was splendid. She had made an impression upon him 
 ten months before, but it had haunted him only for a day, 
 immediately overlaid with other images. Yet after Nash had 
 spoken of her a few moments he evoked her again ; some of 
 her attitudes, some of her tones began to hover before- him. 
 He was pleased in advance with the idea of painting her. 
 When she stood there in fact however it seemed to him that 
 lie had remembered her wrong : the brilliant young lady who 
 instantly filled his studio with a presence that it had never 
 known was exempt from the curious clumsiness which had 
 interfused his former admiration of her with a certain pity. 
 Miriam Rooth was light and bright and straight to-day 
 straight without being stiff and bright without being garish. 
 To Nick's perhaps inadequately sophisticated mind the model, 
 the actress were figures with a vulgar setting ; but it would 
 have been impossible to show that taint less than his present 
 extremely natural yet extremely distinguished visitor. She 
 was more natural even than Gabriel Nash ("nature" was 
 still Nick's formula for his old friend), and beside her he 
 appeared almost commonplace. i 
 
 Nash recognized her superiority with a frankness that was 
 honourable to both of them, testifying in this manner to his 
 sense that they were all three serious beings, worthy to deal 
 with realities. She attracted crowds to her theatre, but to 
 his appreciation of such a fact as that, important doubtless in 
 its way, there were limits which he had already expressed. 
 What he now felt bound in all integrity to express was his 
 perception that she had, in general and quite apart from the 
 question of the box-office, a remarkable, a very remarkable 
 artistic nature. He confessed that she had surprised him 
 there ; knowing of her in other days mainly that she was 
 hungry to adopt an overrated profession, he had not imputed 
 to her the normal measure of intelligence. Now he saw he 
 had had some talks with her that she was intelligent ; so 
 much so that he was sorry for the embarrassment it would be 
 to her. Nick could imagine the discomfort of having that
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 249 
 
 sort of commodity to dispose of in such conditions. " She's a 
 distinguished woman really a distinguished woman," Nash 
 explained, kindly and lucidly, almost paternally ; " and the 
 head you can see for yourself." 
 
 Miriam, smiling, as she sat on an old Venetian chair, held 
 aloft, with the noblest effect, that portion of her person to 
 which this patronage was extended, and remarked to Nick 
 that, strange as it might appear, she had got quite to like poor 
 Mr. Nash : she could make him go about with her ; it was a 
 relief to her mother. 
 
 " When I take him she has perfect peace," the girl said ; 
 " then she can stay at home and see the interviewers. She 
 delights in that and 1 hate it, so our friend here is a great 
 comfort. Of course & fern/me de theatre is supposed to be able 
 to go out alone, but there's a kind of appearance, an added 
 chic, in having some one. People think he's my companion ; 
 J'm sure they fancy I pay him. I would pay him rather than 
 give him up, for it doesn't matter that he's not a lady. He is 
 one in tact and sympathy, as you see. And base as he thinks 
 the sort of thing I do, he can't keep away from the theatre. 
 When you're celebrated, people will look at you who before 
 could never find out for themselves why they should." 
 
 " When you're celebrated you become handsomer ; at least 
 that's what has happened to you, though you were pretty 
 too of old," Gabriel argued. " I go to the theatre to look 
 at your head ; it gives me the greatest pleasure. I take up 
 anything of that sort as soon as I find it ; one never knows 
 how long it may last." 
 
 " Are you speaking of my appearance 1 ? " Miriam asked. 
 
 "Dear no, of my own pleasure, the first freshness," Nash 
 went on. " Dormer at least, let me tell you in justice to 
 him, hasn't waited till you were celebrated to want to see 
 you again (he stands there open-eyed) ; for the simple reason 
 that he hadn't the least idea of your renown. I had to 
 announce it to him." 
 
 "Haven't you seen me act 1 ?" Miriam asked, without 
 reproach, of her host. 
 
 "I'll go to-night," said Nick. 
 
 " You have your Parliament, haven't you 1 What do they 
 call it the demands of public life 1 '' Miriam continued : to 
 which Gabriel Nash rejoined that he had the demands of 
 private as well, inasmuch as he was in love he was on the 
 point of being married. Miriam listened to this with par- 
 ticipation ; then she said : " Ah, then, do bring your what
 
 250 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 do they call her in English ? I'm always afraid of saying 
 something improper jour future. I'll send you a box, under 
 the circumstances ; you'd like that better." She added that 
 if he were to paint her he would have to see her often on the 
 stage, wouldn't he ? to profit by the optique de la scene (what 
 did they call that in English?) studying her and fixing his 
 impression. Before he had time to respond to this proposition 
 she asked him if it disgusted him to hear her speak like that, 
 as if she were always posing and thinking about herself, 
 living only to be looked at, thrusting forward her person. 
 She often got sick of doing so, already ; but a la guerre comme 
 a la guerre. 
 
 " That's the fine artistic nature, you see a sort of divine 
 disgust breaking out in her," Nash expounded. 
 
 " If you want to paint me at all, of course. I'm struck 
 with the way I'm taking that for granted," Miriam continued. 
 " When Mr. Nash spoke of it to me I jumped at the idea. I 
 remembered our meeting in Paris and the kind things you 
 said to me. But no doubt one oughtn't to jump at ideas 
 when they represent serious sacrifices on the part of others." 
 
 " Doesn't she speak well ! " Nash exclaimed to Nick. 
 "Oh, she'll go far!" 
 
 " It's a great privilege to me to paint you ; what title in 
 the world have I to pretend to such a model?" Nick replied 
 to Miriam. " The sacrifice is yours a sacrifice of time and 
 good-nature and credulity. You come in your beauty and 
 your genius to this shabby place where I've nothing to show, 
 not a guarantee to offer you ; and I wonder what I've done 
 to deserve such a gift of the gods." 
 
 "Doesn't he speak well?" Nash demanded, smiling, of 
 Miriam. 
 
 She took no notice of him, but she repeated to Nick that 
 she hadn't forgotten his friendly attitude in Paris ; and when 
 he answered that he surely had done very little she broke 
 out, first resting her eyes on him a moment with a deep, 
 reasonable smile and then springing up quickly : " Ah, well, 
 if I must justify myself, I liked you ! " 
 
 "Fancy my appearing to challenge you!" laughed Nick. 
 " To see you again is to want tremendously to try something ; 
 but you must have an infinite patience, because I'm an awful 
 duffer." 
 
 Miriam looked round the walls. " I see what you have 
 done bien des choses." 
 
 " She understands she understands," Gabriel dropped.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 251 
 
 And he added to Miriam : " Imagine, when he might do 
 something, his choosing a life of shams ! At bottom he's like 
 you a wonderful artistic nature." 
 
 " I'll have patience," said the girl, smiling at Nick. 
 
 " Then, my children, I leave you the peace of the Lord be 
 with you." With these words Nash took his departure. 
 
 The others chose a position for Miriam's sitting, after she 
 had placed herself in many different attitudes and different 
 lights ; but an hour had elapsed before Nick got to work 
 began, on a large canvas, to knock her in, as he called it. 
 He was hindered a little even by a certain nervousness, the 
 emotion of finding himself, out of a clear sky, confronted with 
 such a sitter and launched in such a task. The situation was 
 incongruous, just after he had formally renounced all manner 
 of "art" the renunciation taking effect not a bit the less 
 from the whim that he had consciously treated himself to as a 
 whim (the last he should ever indulge), the freak of relapsing 
 for a fortnight into a fingering of old sketches, for the 
 purpose, as he might have said, of burning them up, of 
 clearing out his studio and terminating his lease. There were 
 both embarrassment and inspiration in the strange chance of 
 snatching back for an hour a relinquished joy : the jump 
 with which he found he could still rise to such an occasion 
 took away his breath a little, at the same time that the idea 
 the idea of what one might make of such material touched 
 him with an irresistible wand. On the spot, to his inner 
 vision, Miriam became a magnificent result, drawing a 
 hundred formative instincts out of their troubled sleep, defy- 
 ing him where he privately felt strongest and imposing 
 herself triumphantly in her own strength. He had the 
 good fortune to see her, as a subject, without striking matches, 
 in a vivid light, and his quick attempt was as exciting as a 
 sudden gallop it was almost the sense of riding a runaway 
 horse. 
 
 She was in her way so fine that he could only think how 
 to "do" her: that hard calculation soon flattened out the 
 consciousness, lively in him at first, that she was a beautiful 
 woman who had sought him out in his retirement. At the 
 end of their first sitting her having sought him out appeared 
 the most natural thing in the world : he had a perfect right 
 to entertain her there explanations and complications were 
 engulfed in the productive mood. The business of " knocking 
 her in " held up a lamp to her beauty, showed him how much 
 there was of it and that she was infinitely interesting. He
 
 252 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 didn't want to fall in love with her (that would be a sell ! as 
 he said to himself), and she promptly became much too 
 interesting for that. Nick might have reflected, for simpli- 
 fication's sake, as his cousin Peter had done, but with more 
 validity, that he was engaged with Miss Rooth in an under- 
 taking that didn't in the least refer to themselves, that they 
 were working together seriously and that work was a sus- 
 pension of sensibility. But after her first sitting (she came, 
 poor girl, but twice), the need of such exorcisms passed from 
 his spirit : he had so thoroughly, practically taken her up. 
 As to whether Miriam had the same bright, still sense of 
 co-operation to a definite end, the sense of the distinctively 
 technical nature of the answer to every question to which the 
 occasion might give birth, that mystery would be cleared up 
 only if it were open to us to regard this young lady through 
 some other medium than the mind of her friends. We have 
 chosen, as it happens, for some of the advantages it carries 
 with it, the indirect vision ; and it fails as yet to tell us 
 (what Nick of course wondered about before he ceased to 
 care, as indeed he intimated to his visitor) why a young 
 person crowned with success should have taken it into her 
 head that there was something for her in so blighted a spot. 
 She should have gone to one of the regular people, the great 
 people : they would have welcomed her with open arms. 
 When Nick asked her if some of the R. A.'s hadn't expressed 
 a desire to have a crack at her she said : " Oh, dear, no, only 
 the tiresome photographers ; and fancy them, in the future ! 
 If mamma could only do that for me ! " And she added, with 
 the charming fellowship for which she was conspicuous on this 
 occasion : " You know I don't think any one yet has been 
 quite so much struck with me as you." 
 
 "Not even Peter Sherringham 1 " asked Nick, laughing and 
 stepping back to judge of the effect of a line. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Sherringham's different. You're an artist." 
 
 "For heaven's sake, don't say that!" cried Nick. "And 
 as regards your art I thought Peter knew more than any 
 one." 
 
 " Ah, you're severe," said Miriam. 
 
 "Severe?" 
 
 "Because that's what he thinks. But he does know a lot 
 he has been a providence to me." 
 
 "And why hasn't he come here to see you act?" 
 
 Miriam hesitated a moment. " How do you know he 
 hasn't come?"
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 253 
 
 " Because I take for granted he would have called on me if 
 he had." 
 
 ' Does he like you very much ? " asked Miriam. 
 
 ' I don't know. I like him." 
 
 ' Ha's a gentleman pour cela," said Miriam. 
 
 ' Oh, yes, for that ! " Nick went on absently, sketching hard. 
 
 ' But he's afraid of me afraid to see me." 
 
 ' Doesn't he think you're good enough ? " 
 
 ' On the contrary he believes I shall carry him away and 
 he s in a terror of my doing it." 
 
 ' He ought to like that," said Nick. 
 
 ' That's what I mean when I say he's not an artist. How- 
 ever, he declares he does like it, only it appears it is not the 
 right thing for him. Oh, the right thing he's bent upon 
 getting that. But it's not for me to blame him, for I am too. 
 He's coming some night, however : he shall have a dose ! " 
 
 " Poor Peter ! " Nick exclaimed, with a compassion none the 
 less real because it was mirthful : the girl's tone was so 
 expressive of good-humoured, unscrupulous power. 
 
 "He's such a curious mixture," Miriam went on ; "some- 
 times I lose patience with him. It isn't exactly trying to 
 serve both God and Mammon, but it's muddling up the stage 
 and the world. The world be hanged ; the stage, or anything 
 of that sort (I mean one's faith), comes first." 
 
 "Brava, brava, you do me good," Nick murmured, still 
 hilarious and at his work. " But it's very kind of you, when 
 I was in this absurd state of ignorance, to attribute to me the 
 honour of having been more struck with you than any one 
 else," he continued, after a moment. 
 
 "Yes, I confess I don't quite see when the shops were full 
 of my photographs." 
 
 " Oh, I'm so poor I don't go into shops," returned Nick. 
 
 " Are you very poor ? " 
 
 " I live on alms." 
 
 " And don't they pay you the government, the ministry ? " 
 
 "Dear young lady, for what? for shutting myself up with 
 beautiful women? " 
 
 "Ah, you have others, then?" asked Miriam. 
 
 " They are not so kind as you, I confess." 
 
 " I'll buy it from you what you're doing : I'll pay you 
 well when it's done," said the girl. " I've got money now ; I 
 make it, you know a good lot of it. It's too delightful, after 
 scraping and starving. Try it and you'll see. Give up the 
 base, bad world."
 
 254 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 "But isn't it supposed to be the base, bad world that 
 pays?" 
 
 ^ " Precisely ; make it pay, without mercy squeeze it dry. 
 That's what it's meant for to pay for art. Ah, if it wasn't 
 for that ! I'll bring you a quantity of photographs, to-morrow 
 you must let me come back to-morrow : it's so amusing to 
 have them, by the hundred, all for nothing, to give away. 
 That's what takes mamma most : she can't get over it. That's 
 luxury and glory ; even at Castle Nugent they didn't do that. 
 People used to sketch me, but not so much as mamma veut 
 bien le dire ; and in all my life I never had but one poor little 
 carte-de-visite, when I was sixteen, in a plaid frock, with the 
 banks of a river, at three francs the dozen." 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 IT was success, Nick felt, that had made Miriam finer the 
 full possession of her talent and the sense of the recognition 
 of it. There was an intimation in her presence (if he had 
 given his mind to it) that for him too the same cause would 
 produce the same effect that is would show him that there 
 is nothing like being launched in the practice of an art to 
 learn what it may do for one. Nick felt clumsy beside a 
 person who manifestly now had such an extraordinary 
 familiarity with the point of view. He remembered too the 
 inferiority that had been in his visitor something clumsy 
 and shabby, of quite another quality from her actual smart- 
 ness, as London people would call it, her well-appointedness 
 and her evident command of more than one manner. Hand- 
 some as she had been the year before, she had suggested 
 provincial lodgings, bread-and-butter, heavy tragedy and 
 tears ; and if then she was an ill-dressed girl with thick hair 
 who wanted to be an actress, she was already in a few weeks 
 an actress who could act even at not acting. She showed 
 what a light hand she could have, forbore to startle and 
 looked as well for unprofessional life as Julia : which was 
 only the perfection of her professional character. 
 
 This function came out much in her talk, for there were 
 many little bursts of confidence as well as many familiar 
 pauses as she sat there ; and she was ready to tell Nick the 
 whole history of her debut the chance that had suddenly 
 turned up and that she had caught with a jump as it passed.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 255 
 
 He missed some of the details, in his attention to his own 
 task, and some of them he failed to understand, attached as 
 they were to the name of Mr. Basil Dashwood, which he heard 
 for the first time. It was through Mr. Dash wood's extra- 
 ordinary exertions that a hearing a morning performance at 
 a London theatre had been obtained for her. That had been 
 the great step, for it had led to the putting on at night of the 
 play at the same theatre, in place of a wretched thing they 
 were trying (it was no use) to keep on its feet, and to her 
 engagement for the principal part. She had made a hit in it 
 (she couldn't pretend not to know that) ; but she was already 
 tired of it, there were so many other things she wanted to do ; 
 and when she thought it would probably run a month or two 
 more she was in the humour to curse the odious conditions of 
 artistic production in such an age. The play was a simplified 
 version of a new French piece, a thing that had taken in 
 Paris, at a third-rate theatre, and had now, in London, proved 
 itself good enough for houses mainly made up of ten-shilling 
 stalls. It was Dashwood who had said it would go, if they 
 could get the rights and a fellow to make some changes : he 
 had discovered it at a nasty little theatre she had never been 
 to, over the Seine. They had got the rights and the fellow 
 who had made the changes was practically Dashwood himself ; 
 there was another man, in London, Mr. Gushmore Miriam 
 didn't know whether Nick would ever have heard of him 
 (Nick hadn't), who had done some of it. It had been awfully 
 chopped down, to a mere bone, with the meat all gone ; but 
 that was what people in London seemed to like. They were 
 very innocent, like little dogs amusing themselves with a bone. 
 At any rate, she had made something, she had made a figure 
 of the woman (a dreadful idiot, really, especially in what 
 Dashwood had muddled her into) ; and Miriam added, in the 
 complacency of her young expansion : " Oh, give me fifty 
 words, any time, and the ghost of a situation, and I'll set you 
 up a figure. Besides, I mustn't abuse poor Yolande she has 
 saved us," she said. 
 
 "Yolande?" 
 
 " Our ridiculous play. That's the name of the impossible 
 woman. She has put bread into our mouths and she's a loaf 
 on the shelf for the future. The rights are mine." 
 
 " You're lucky to have them," said Nick, a little vaguely, 
 troubled about his sitter's nose, which was somehow Jewish 
 without the convex arch. 
 
 " Indeed I am. He gave them to me. Wasn't it charming ? "
 
 256 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 ' ; He gave them Mr. Dash wood ? " 
 
 " Dear me, no ; where should poor Dash wood have got 
 them 1 He hasn't a penny in the world. Besides, if he had got 
 them he would have kept them. I mean your blessed cousin." 
 
 " I see they're a present from Peter." 
 
 " Like many other things. Isn't he a dear ] If it hadn't 
 been for him the shelf would have remained bare. He bought 
 the play for this country and America for four hundred 
 pounds, and on the "chance : fancy ! There was no rush for 
 it, and how could he tell ] And then he gracefully handed 
 it to me. So I have my little capital. Isn't he a duck 1 
 You have nice cousins." 
 
 Nick assented to the proposition, only putting in an amend- 
 ment to the effect that surely Peter had nice cousins also, and 
 making, as he went on with his work, a tacit preoccupied 
 reflection or two ; such as that it must be pleasant to render 
 little services like that to youth, beauty and genius (he rather 
 wondered how Peter could afford them), and that, " duck " as 
 he was, Miss Rooth's benefactor was rather taken for granted. 
 Sic vos non vobis faintly murmured itself in Nick's brain. 
 This community of interests, or at least of relations, quickened 
 the flight of time, so that he was still fresh when the sitting 
 came to an end. It was settled that Miriam should come 
 back on the morrow, to enable her portrayer to make the most 
 of the few days of the parliamentary recess ; and just before 
 she left she asked 
 
 " Then you will come to-night ] " 
 
 " Without fail. I hate to lose an hour of you." 
 
 " Then I'll place you. It will be my affair." 
 
 " You're very kind," he responded. " Isn't it a simple 
 matter for me to take a stall ? This week I suppose they're 
 to be had." 
 
 "I'll send you a box," said Miriam. " You shall do it well. 
 There are plenty now." 
 
 " Why should I be lost, all alone, in the grandeur of a 
 box?" 
 
 " Can't you bring your friend 1 " 
 
 " My friend 1 " 
 
 " The lady you are engaged to." 
 
 " Unfortunately she's out of town." 
 
 Miriam looked at him with a grand profundity. " Does she 
 leave you alone like that ? " 
 
 " She thought I should like it I should be more free to 
 paint. You see I am."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 257 
 
 " Yes, perhaps it's good for me. Have you got her 
 portrait 1 " Miriam asked. 
 
 " She doesn't like me to paint her." 
 
 " Really ? Perhaps then she won't like you to paint me." 
 
 " That's why I want to be quick," laughed Nick. 
 
 " Before she knows it ? " 
 
 " She'll know it to-morrow. I shall write to her." 
 
 Miriam gave him another of her special looks ; then she 
 said : " I see ; you're afraid of her." And she added, " Mention 
 my name : they'll give you the box at the theatre." 
 
 Whether or no Nick were afraid of Mrs. Dallow, he still 
 protested against receiving this bounty from the hands of Miss 
 Rooth repeated that he would rather take a stall according 
 to his wont and pay for it. This led her to declare with a 
 sudden nicker of passion that if he didn't do as she wished 
 she would never sit to him again. 
 
 "Ah then, you have me," returned Nick. "Only I don't 
 see why you should give me so many things." 
 
 " What in the world have I given you? " 
 
 "Why, an idea." And Nick looked at his picture a little 
 ruefully. " I don't mean to say I haven't let it fall and 
 smashed it." 
 
 " Ah, an idea that is a great thing for people in our line. 
 But you'll see me much better from the box, and I'll send you 
 Gabriel Nash," Miriam added, getting into the hansom which 
 her host's servant had fetched for her. As Nick turned back 
 into his studio after watching her drive away he laughed at 
 the conception that they were in the same " line." 
 
 Nick shared his box at the theatre with Gabriel Nash, who 
 talked during the entr'actes not in the least aboiit the per- 
 formance or the performer, but about the possible greatness 
 of the art of the portraitist its reach, its range, its fascination, 
 the magnificent examples it had left us in the past : windows 
 open into history, into psychology, things that were among 
 the most precious possessions of the human race. He insisted, 
 above all, on the interest, the richness arising from this great 
 peculiarity of it : that, unlike most other forms, it was a 
 revelation of two realities, the man whom it was the artist's 
 conscious effort to reveal and the man (the interpreter) 
 expressed in the very quality and temper of that effort. It 
 offered a double vision, the strongest dose of life that art 
 could give, the strongest dose of art that life could give. Nick 
 Dormer had already become aware that he had two states of 
 mind in listening to Gabriel Nash : one of them in which he 
 
 s
 
 258 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 laughed, doubted, sometimes even reprobated, and at any rate 
 failed to follow or to accept ; the other in which this contem- 
 plative genius seemed to take the words out of his mouth, to 
 utter for him, better and more completely, the very things he 
 was on the point of saying. Nash's saying them at such 
 moments appeared to make them true, to set them up in the 
 world, and to-night he said a good many, especially as to the 
 happiness of cultivating one's own garden ; growing there in 
 stillness and freedom certain strong, pure flowers that would 
 bloom forever, long after the rank weeds of the hour were 
 withered and blown away. 
 
 It was to keep Miriam Rooth in his eye for his object that 
 Nick had come to the play ; and she dwelt there all the 
 evening, being constantly on the stage. He was so occupied 
 in watching her face (for he now saw pretty clearly what he 
 should attempt to make of it) that he was conscious only in a 
 secondary degree of the story she illustrated, and in regard 
 to her acting in particular had mainly a surprised sense that 
 she was extraordinarily quiet. He remembered her loudness, 
 her violence in Paris, at Peter Sherringham's, her wild wails, 
 the first time, at Madame Carre's ; compared with which her 
 present manner was eminently temperate and modern. Nick 
 Dormer was not critical at the theatre ; he believed what he 
 saw and had a pleasant sense of the inevitable ; therefore he 
 would not have guessed what Gabriel Nash had to tell him 
 that for Miriam, with her tragic cast and her peculiar attri- 
 butes, her present performance, full of actuality, of light, fine 
 indications and, in parts, of pointed touches of comedy, was a 
 rare tour de force. It went on altogether in a register that 
 he had not supposed her to possess ; in which, as he said, she 
 didn't touch her capital, doing it wholly with her little savings. 
 It gave him the idea that she was capable of almost anything. 
 
 In one of the intervals they went round to see her ; but for 
 Nick this purpose was partly defeated by the wonderful ami- 
 ability with which he was challenged by Mrs. Rooth, whom 
 they found sitting with her daughter and who attacked him 
 with a hundred questions about his dear mother and his 
 charming sisters. She maintained that that day in Paris they 
 had shown her a kindness she should never forget. She 
 abounded also in gracious expressions in regard to the portrait 
 he had so cleverly begun, declaring that she was so eager to 
 see it, however little he might as yet have accomplished, that 
 she should do herself the honour to wait upon him in the 
 morning, when Miriam came to sit.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 259 
 
 " I'm acting for you to-night," the girl said to Nick, before 
 lie returned to his place. 
 
 " No, that's exactly what you are not doing," Nash inter- 
 posed, with one of his intellectual superiorities. " You have 
 stopped acting, you have reduced it to the least that will do, 
 you simply are you are just the visible image, the picture on 
 the wall. It keeps you wonderfully in focus. I have never 
 seen you so beautiful." 
 
 Miriam stared at this; then it could be seen that she 
 coloured. "What a luxury in life to have everything ex- 
 plained ! He's the great explainer," she said, turning to 
 Nick. 
 
 He shook hands with her for good-night. " Well then, we 
 must give him lots to do." 
 
 She came to his studio in the morning, but unaccompanied 
 by her mother ; in allusion to whom she simply said : " Mamma 
 wished to come, but I wouldn't let her." They proceeded 
 promptly to business. The girl divested herself of her hat and 
 coat, taking the position already established for her. After 
 they had worked for more than an hour, with much less talk 
 than the day before, Nick being extremely absorbed and 
 Miriam wearing in silence the kindest, most religious air of 
 consideration for the sharp tension she imposed upon him at 
 the end of this period of patience, pervaded by a holy calm, 
 our young lady suddenly got up and exclaimed, " I say, I must 
 see it ! " with which, quickly, she stepped down from her place 
 and came round to the canvas. She had, at Nick's request, 
 not looked at his work the day before. He fell back, glad to 
 rest, and put down his palette and brushes. 
 
 " All bien, c'est tape /" Miriam cried, as she stood before the 
 easel. Nick was pleased with her ejaculation, he was even 
 pleased with what he had done ; he had had a long, happy 
 spurt and felt excited and sanctioned. Miriam, retreating 
 also a little, sank into a high-backed, old-fashioned chair that 
 stood two or three yards from the picture, and reclined in it, 
 with her head on one side, looking at the rough resemblance. 
 She made a remark or two about it, to which Nick replied 
 standing behind her and after a moment leaning on the top of 
 the chair. He wag away from his work and his eyes searched 
 it with a kind of fondness of hope. They rose, however, as he 
 presently became conscious that the door of the large room 
 opposite to him had opened without making a sound and that 
 some one stood upon the threshold. The person on the 
 threshold was Julia Dal low.
 
 260 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 As soon as he perceived her Nick wished he had posted a 
 letter to her the night before. He had written only that 
 morning. Nevertheless there was genuine joy in the words 
 with which he bounded towards her " Ah, my dear Julia, 
 what a jolly surprise ! " for her unannounced descent spoke 
 to him above all of an irresistible desire to see him again 
 sooner than they had arranged. She had taken a step forward, 
 but she had done no more, stopping short at the sight of the 
 strange woman, so divested of visiting-gear that she looked 
 half undressed, who lounged familiarly in the middle of the 
 room and over whom Nick had been still more familiarly 
 hanging. Julia's eyes rested on this embodied unexpectedness, 
 and as they did so she grew pale so pale that Nick, observing 
 it, instinctively looked back to see what Miriam had done to 
 produce such an effect. She had done nothing at all, which 
 was precisely what was embarrassing; only staring at the 
 intruder, motionless and superb. She seemed, somehow, in 
 indolent possession of the place, and even in that instant Nick 
 noted how handsome she looked ; so that he exclaimed some- 
 where, inaudibly, in a region beneath his other emotions : 
 " How I should like to paint her that way ! " Mrs. Dallow 
 transferred her eyes for a single moment to Nick's ; then they 
 turned away away from Miriam, ranging over the room. 
 
 " I've got a sitter, but you mustn't mind that ; we're taking 
 a rest. I'm delighted to see you," said Nick. He closed the 
 door of the studio behind her ; his servant was still at the 
 outer door, which was open and through which he saw Julia's 
 carriage drawn up. This made her advance a little further, 
 but still she said nothing ; she dropped no answer even when 
 Nick went on, with a sense of awkwardness : " When did you 
 come back ? I hope nothing has gone wrong. You come at a 
 very interesting moment," he continued, thinking as soon as 
 he had spoken that they were such words as might have made 
 her laugh. She was far from laughing ; she only managed to 
 look neither at him nor at Miriam and to say, after a little, 
 when he had repeated his question about her return : 
 
 "I came back this morning I came straight here." 
 
 " And nothing's wrong, I hope? " 
 
 " Oh, no everything's all right," she replied very quickly 
 and without expression. She vouchsafed no explanation of her 
 premature return and took no notice of the seat Nick offered 
 her ; neither did she appear to hear him when he begged her 
 not to look yet at the work on the easel it was in such a 
 dreadful state. He was conscious, as he phrased it, that his
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 261 
 
 request gave to Miriam's position directly in front of his 
 canvas an air of privilege which her neglect to recognize in 
 any way Mrs. Dallow's entrance or her importance did nothing 
 to correct. But that mattered less if the appeal failed to reach 
 Julia's intelligence, as he judged, seeing presently how deeply 
 she was agitated. Nothing mattered in face of the sense of 
 danger which took possession of him after she had been in the 
 room a few moments. He wanted to say : " What's the diffi- 
 culty 1 Has anything happened ? " but he felt that she would 
 not like him to utter words so intimate in presence of the 
 person she had been rudely startled to find between them. He 
 pronounced Miriam's name to Mrs. Dallow and Mrs. Dallow's 
 to Miriam, but Julia's recognition of the ceremony was so 
 slight as to be scarcely perceptible. Miriam had the air of 
 waiting for something more before she herself made a sign ; 
 and as nothing more came she continued to be silent and not 
 to budge. Nick added a remark to the effect that Mrs. Dallow 
 would remember to have had the pleasure of meeting Miss 
 Rooth the year before in Paris, that day, at her brother 
 Peter's ; to which Mrs. Dallow rejoined, " Ah, yes," without 
 any qualification, while she looked down at some rather rusty 
 studies, on panels, which were ranged along the floor, resting 
 against the base of the wall. Her agitation was evidently a 
 pain to herself ; she had had a shock of extreme violence, and 
 Nick saw that as Miriam showed no symptom of offering to 
 give up her sitting her stay would be of the briefest. He 
 wished Miriam would do something say she would go, get up, 
 move about ; as it was she had the appearance of watching 
 from her point of vantage Mrs. Dallow's discomfiture. He 
 made a series of inquiries about Julia's doings in the country, 
 to two or three of which she gave answers monosyllabic and 
 scarcely comprehensible, while she turned her eyes round and 
 round the room as if she were looking for something she 
 couldn't find for an escape, for something that was not 
 Miriam. At last she said it was at the end of a very few 
 minutes : 
 
 " I didn't come to stay when you're so busy. I only 
 looked in to see if you were here. Good-bye." 
 
 " It's charming of you to have come. I'm so glad you've 
 seen for yourself how well I'm occupied," Nick replied, not 
 unaware that he was very red. This made Mrs. Dallow look 
 at him, while Miriam considered them both. Julia's eyes had 
 something in them that he had never seen before a flash of 
 fright by which he was himself frightened. " Of course I'll
 
 262 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 see you later," he added, laughing awkwardly, while she 
 reached the door, while she opened it herself and got off 
 without a good-day to Miriam. " I wrote to you this morning 
 you've missed my letter," he repeated behind her, having 
 already given her this information. The door of the studio 
 was very near that of the house, but before Mrs. Dallow had 
 reached the street the visitors' bell was set ringing. The 
 passage was narrow and she kept in advance of Nick, antici- 
 pating his motion to open the street-door. The bell was 
 tinkling still when, by the action of her own hand, a gentle- 
 man on the step stood revealed. 
 
 " Ah my dear, don't go ! " Nick heard pronounced in quick, 
 soft dissuasion and in the now familiar accents of Gabriel 
 Nash. The rectification followed more quickly still, if that 
 were a rectification which scarcely improved the matter : " 1 
 beg a thousand pardons. I thought you were Miriam." 
 
 Gabriel gave way, and Mrs. Dallow dashed out of the 
 house. Her carriage, a victoria with a pair of horses who had 
 got hot, had taken a turn up the street, but the coachman 
 had already perceived his mistress and was rapidly coming 
 back. He drew near ; not so fast however but that Gabriel 
 Nash had time to accompany Mrs. Dallow to the edge of the 
 pavement with an apology for the freedom into which he had 
 blundered. Nick was at her other hand, waiting to put her 
 into her carriage and freshly disconcerted by the encounter 
 with Nash, who somehow, as he stood making Julia an 
 explanation that she didn't listen to, looked less eminent than 
 usual, though not more conscious of difficulties. Nick coloured 
 deeper and watched the footman spring down as the victoria 
 drove up ; he heard Nash say something about the honour of 
 having met Mrs. Dallow in Paris. Nick wanted him to go 
 into the house ; he damned inwardly his want of delicacy. 
 He desired a word with Julia alone as much alone as the two 
 inconvenient servants would allow. But Nash was not too 
 much discouraged to say : " You came for a glimpse of the 
 great model? Doesn't she sit? That's what I wanted too, 
 this morning just a look, for a blessing on the day. Ah, 
 but you, madam " 
 
 Julia had sprung into the carriage while he was still speak- 
 ing and had flashed out to the coachman a "Home ! " which 
 of itself set the vehicle in motion. The carriage went a few 
 yards, but while Gabriel, with a magnificent bow, turned 
 away, Nick Dormer, with his hand on the edge of the hood, 
 moved with it.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 263 
 
 " You don't like it, but I'll explain," he said, laughing and 
 in a low tone. 
 
 " Explain what ? " Mrs. Dallow asked, still very pale and 
 grave, but showing nothing in her voice. She was thinking 
 of the servants. She could think of them even then. 
 
 "Oh, it's all right. I'll conie in at five," Nick returned, 
 gallantly jocular, while the carriage rolled away. 
 
 Gabriel had gone into the studio and Nick found him 
 standing in admiration before Miriam, who had resumed the 
 position in which she was sitting. 
 
 " Lord, she's good to-day ! Isn't she good to-day 1 " Nash 
 broke out, seizing Nick by the arm to give him a certain 
 view. Miriam looked indeed still handsomer than before, 
 and she had taken up her attitude again with a splendid 
 sphinx-like air of being capable of keeping it forever. Nick 
 said nothing, but he went back to work with a tingle of 
 confusion, which proved in fact, when he resumed his palette, 
 to be a sharp and, after a moment, a delightful stimulus. 
 Miriam spoke never a word, but she was doubly grand, and 
 for more than an hour, till Nick, exhausted, declared he must 
 stop, the industrious silence was broken only by the desultory 
 discourse of Gabriel Nash. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 KICK DOKMER went to Great Stanhope Street at five o'clock 
 and learned, rather to his surprise, that Mrs. Dallow was not 
 at home to his surprise because he had told her he would 
 come at that hour, and he attributed to her, with a certain 
 simplicity, an eager state of mind in regard to his explanation. 
 Apparently she was not eager ; the eagerness was his own 
 he was eager to explain. He recognized, not without a certain 
 consciousness of magnanimity in doing so, that there had 
 been some reason for her quick withdrawal from his studio, 
 or at any rate for her extreme discomposure there. He had 
 a few days before put in a plea for a snatch of worship in 
 that sanctuai-y, and she had accepted and approved it ; but 
 the worship, when the curtain happened to blow back, pi-oved 
 to be that of a magnificent young woman, an actress with 
 disordered hair, who wore in a singular degree the aspect of a 
 person settled to spend the day. The explanation was easy : 
 it resided in the circumstance that when one was painting,
 
 264 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 even very badly and only for a moment, one had to have 
 models. Nick was impatient to give it, with frank, affection- 
 ate lips and a full, jocose admission that it was natural Julia 
 should have been startled ; and he was the more impatient 
 that, though he would not in the least have expected her to 
 like finding a strange woman domesticated for the hour 
 under his roof, she had disliked it even more than would have 
 seemed probable. That was because, not having heard from 
 him about the matter, the impression was for the moment 
 irresistible with her that a trick had been played her. But 
 three minutes with him alone would make the difference. 
 
 They would indeed have a considerable difference to make, 
 Nick reflected, as minutes much more numerous elapsed with- 
 out bringing Mrs. Dallow home. For he had said to the butler 
 that he would come in and wait (though it was odd she should 
 not have left a message for him) : she would doubtless return 
 from one moment to the other. Nick had of course full license 
 to wait, anywhere he preferred ; and he was ushered into 
 Julia's particular sitting-room and supplied with tea and the 
 evening papers. After a quarter of an hour however he gave 
 little attention to these beguilements, owing to the increase of 
 his idea that it was odd that when she definitely knew he was 
 coming she should not have taken more pains to be at home. 
 He walked up and down and looked out of the window, took 
 up her books and dropped them again, and then, as half an 
 hour had elapsed, began to feel rather angry. What could 
 she be about when, at a moment when London was utterly 
 empty, she could not be paying visits ? A footman came in to 
 attend to the fire ; whereupon Nick questioned him as to the 
 manner in which Mrs. Dallow was probably engaged. The 
 'man revealed the fact that his mistress had gone out only a 
 quarter of an hour before Nick arrived, and, as if he appre- 
 ciated the opportunity for a little decorous conversation, gave 
 him still more information than he asked for. From this it 
 appeared that, as Nick knew or could surmise, she had the 
 evening previous, in the country, telegraphed for the victoria 
 to meet her in the morning at Paddington and had gone straight 
 from the station to the studio, while her maid, with her 
 luggage, proceeded in a cab to Great Stanhope Street. On 
 leaving the studio however she had not come directly home ; 
 she had chosen this unusual season for an hour's drive in the 
 Park. She had finally re-entered her house, but had remained 
 up-stairs all day, seeing no one and not coming down to 
 luncheon. At four o'clock she had ordered the brougham for
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 265 
 
 four forty-five, and had got into it punctually, saying " To the 
 Park ! " as she did so. 
 
 Nick, after the footman had left him, felt himself much 
 mystified by Julia's sudden passion for the banks of the Ser- 
 pentine, forsaken and foggy now, inasmuch as the afternoon 
 had come on gray and the light was waning. She usually 
 hated the Park and she hated a closed carriage. He had a 
 discomfortable vision of her, shrunken into a corner of her 
 brougham and veiled as if she had been crying, revolving 
 round the solitude of the Drive. She had of course been 
 deeply disconcerted, and she was nervous and upset : the 
 motion of the carriage soothed her and made her fidget less. 
 Nick remembered that in the morning, at his door, she had 1 
 appeared to be going home ; so she had turned into the Park 
 on second thoughts, as she passed. He lingered another half 
 hour, walked up and down the room many times and thought 
 of many things. Had she misunderstood him when he said he 
 would come at five 1 Couldn't she be sure, even if she had, 
 that he would come early rather than late, and might she not 
 have left a message for him on the chance ? Going out that 
 way a few minutes before he was to come had even a little 
 the air of a thing done on purpose to offend him ; as if she 
 had been so displeased that she had taken the nearest occasion 
 of giving him a sign that she meant to break. But were 
 these the things that Julia did and was that the way she did 
 them his fine, proud, delicate, generous Julia? 
 
 When six o'clock came poor Nick felt distinctly resentful ; 
 but he stayed ten minutes longer, on the possibility that Mrs. 
 Dallow would in the morning have understood him to mention 
 that hour. The April dusk began to gather and the un- 
 sociability of her behaviour, especially if she were still rumbling 
 about the Park, became absurd. Anecdotes came back to 
 Nick, vaguely remembered, heard he couldn't have said when 
 or where, of poor artists for whom life had been rendered 
 difficult by wives who wouldn't allow them the use of the 
 living female model and who made scenes if, on the staircase, 
 they encountered such sources of inspiration. These ladies 
 struck him as vulgar and odious persons, with whom it seemed 
 grotesque that Julia should have anything in common. Of 
 course she was not his wife yet, and of course if she were he 
 should have washed his hands of every form of activity 
 requiring the services of the sitter ; but even these quali- 
 fications left him with a capacity to shudder at the way Julia 
 just escaped ranking herself with the heavy-handed.
 
 266 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 At a quarter-past six he rang a bell and told the servant 
 who answered it that he was going and that Mrs. Dallow was 
 to be informed as soon as she came in that he had expected to 
 find her and had waited an hour and a quarter for her. But 
 he had just reached the doorstep, on his departure, when her 
 brougham, emerging from the evening mist, stopped in front 
 of the house. Nick stood at the door, hanging back till she 
 got out, allowing the servants to help her. She saw him 
 she was not veiled, like his mental image of her ; but this did 
 not prevent her from pausing to give an order to the coach- 
 man, a matter apparently requiring some discussion. When 
 she came to the door Nick remarked to her that he had been 
 waiting an eternity for her ; to which she replied that he must 
 not make a grievance to her of that she was too unwell to 
 do justice to it. He immediately professed regret and sym- 
 pathy, adding, however, that in that case she had much better 
 not have gone out. She made no answer to this there were 
 three servants in the hall who looked as if they might under- 
 stand at least what was not said to them : only when he 
 followed her in she asked if his idea had been to stay longer. 
 
 " Certainly, if you're not too ill to see me." 
 
 " Come in, then," Julia said, turning back after having gone 
 to the foot of the stairs. 
 
 This struck him immediately as a further restriction of his 
 visit : she would not readmit him to the drawing-room or to 
 her boudoir ; she would receive him in an impersonal apart- 
 ment down-stairs, in which she saw people on business. What 
 did she want to do to him ? He was prepared by this time 
 for a scene of jealousy ; for he was sure he had learned to read 
 her character justly in feeling that if she had the appearance 
 of a cold woman she had also on certain occasions a liability 
 to extreme emotion. She was very still, but every now and 
 then she would fire off a pistol. As soon as Nick had closed 
 the door she said, without sitting down : 
 
 " I dare say you saw I didn't like that at all." 
 
 " My having a sitter, that way 1 I was very much annoyed 
 at it myself," Nick answered. 
 
 "Why were you annoyed? She's very handsome," said 
 Mrs. Dallow, perversely. 
 
 " I didn't know you looked at her ! " Nick laughed. 
 
 Julia hesitated a moment. " Was I very rude ? " 
 
 " Oh, it was all right. It was only awkward for me, because 
 you didn't know," Nick replied. 
 
 " I did know ; that's why I came."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 267 
 
 "How do you mean? My letter couldn't have reached 
 you." 
 
 "I don't know anything about your letter," said Mrs. 
 Dallow, casting about her for a chair and then seating herself 
 on the edge of a sofa, with her eyes on the floor. 
 
 " She sat to me yesterday ; she was there all the morning ; 
 but I didn't write to tell you. I went at her with great 
 energy and, absurd as it may seem to you, found myself very 
 tired afterwards. Besides, in the evening I went to see her 
 act." 
 
 " Does she act 1 " asked Mrs. Dallow. 
 
 " She's an actress ; it's her profession. Don't you remember 
 her that day at Peter's, in Paris? She's already a celebrity; 
 she has great talent ; she's engaged at a theatre here and is 
 making a sensation. As I tell you, I saw her last night." 
 
 " You needn't tell me," Mrs. Dallow replied, looking up 
 at him with a face of which the intense, the tragic sadness 
 startled him. 
 
 He had been standing before her, but at this he instantly 
 sat down beside her, taking her passive hand. " I want to, 
 please ; otherwise it must seem so odd to you. I knew she 
 was coming when I wrote to you the day before yesterday. 
 But I didn't tell you then, because I didn't know how it- 
 would turn out and I didn't want to exult in advance over a 
 poor little attempt that might come to nothing. Moreover it 
 was no use speaking of the matter at all unless I told you 
 exactly how it came about," Nick went on, explaining kindly, 
 copiously. "It was the result of a visit unexpectedly paid me 
 by Gabriel Nash." 
 
 "That man the man who spoke to me?" Julia asked, 
 startled into a shuddering memory. 
 
 " He did what he thought would please you, but I dare say 
 it didn't. You met him in Paris and didn't like him ; so I 
 thought it best to hold my tongue about him." 
 
 " Do you like him ? " 
 
 " Very much." 
 
 " Great heaven ! " Julia ejaculated, almost under her breath. 
 
 " The reason I was annoyed was because, somehow, when 
 you came in, I suddenly had the air of having got out of those 
 visits and shut myself up in town to do something that I had 
 kept from you. And I have been very unhappy till I could 
 explain." 
 
 "You don't explain you can't explain," Mrs. Dallow de- 
 clared, turning on her companion eyes which, in spite of her
 
 268 THE TRAGIC MUSE. . 
 
 studied stillness, expressed deep excitement. " I knew it I 
 knew everything ; that's why I came." 
 
 " It was a sort of second-sight what they call a brain- 
 wave," Nick smiled. 
 
 " I felt uneasy, I felt a kind of call ; it came suddenly, 
 yesterday. It was irresistible ; nothing could have kept me 
 this morning." 
 
 " That's very serious, but it's still more delightful. You 
 mustn't go away again," said Nick. " We must stick together 
 -forever and ever." 
 
 He put his arm round her, but she detached herself as soon 
 as she felt its pressure. She rose quickly, moving away, while, 
 mystified, he sat looking up at her as she had looked a few 
 moments before at him. " I've thought it all over ; I've been 
 thinking of it all day," she began. "That's why I didn't 
 come in." 
 
 " Don't think of it too much ; it isn't worth it." 
 
 " You like it more than anything else. You do you can't 
 deny it," she went on. 
 
 " My dear child, what are you talking about ? " Nick asked, 
 gently. 
 
 " That's what you like doing what you were this morning ; 
 with women lolling, with their things off, to be painted, and 
 people like that man." 
 
 Nick slowly got up, hesitating. " My dear Julia, apart 
 from the surprise, this morning, do you object to the living 
 model ? " 
 
 " Not a bit, for you." 
 
 "What's the inconvenience, then, since in my studio they 
 are only for me 1 " 
 
 " You love it, you revel in it ; that's what you want, and 
 that's the only thing you want ! " Julia broke out. 
 
 "To have models, lolling women, do you mean 1 " 
 
 " That's what I felt, what I knew, what came over me and 
 haunted me yesterday, so that I couldn't throw it off. It 
 seemed to me that if I could see it Avith my eyes and have the 
 perfect proof I should feel better, I should be quiet. And 
 now I am after a struggle of some hours, I confess. I have 
 seen ; the whole thing's clear and I'm satisfied." 
 
 " I'm not, and to me the whole thing isn't clear. What 
 exactly are you talking about ? " Nick demanded. 
 
 " About what you were doing this morning. That's your 
 innermost preference, that's your secret passion." 
 
 "A little go at something serious? Yes, it was almost
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 269 
 
 serious," said Nick. <; But it was an accident, this morning 
 and yesterday : I got on better than I intended." 
 
 " I'm sure you have immense talent," Mrs. Dallow remarked, 
 with a joylessness that was almost droll. 
 
 " No, no, I might have had. I've plucked it up : it's too 
 late for it to flower. My dear Julia, I'm perfectly incompetent 
 and perfectly resigned." 
 
 " Yes, you looked so this morning, when you hung over her. 
 Oh, she'll bring back your talent ! " 
 
 "She's an obliging and even an intelligent creature, and 
 I've no doubt she would if she could. But I've received from 
 you all the help that any woman is destined to give me. No 
 one can do for me again what you have done." 
 
 " I shouldn't try it again ; I acted in ignorance. Oh, I've 
 thought it all out ! " Julia declared. Then, with a strange 
 face of anguish resting on his, she said : " Before it's too late 
 before it's too late ! " 
 
 " Too late for what 1 " 
 
 " For you to be free for you to be free. And for me for 
 me to be free too. You hate everything I like ! " she ex- 
 claimed, with a trembling voice. " Don't pretend, don't 
 pretend ! " she went on, as a sound of protest broke from him. 
 
 " I thought you wanted me to paint," protested Nick, 
 flushed and staring. 
 
 " I do I do. That's why you must be free, why we must 
 part." 
 
 " Why we must part I " 
 
 " Oh, I've turned it over. I've faced the truth. It wouldn't 
 do at all," said Mrs. Dallow. 
 
 " I like the way you talk of it, as if it were a trimming for 
 your dress ! " Nick rejoined, with bitterness. " Won't it do 
 for you to be loved and cherished as well as any woman in 
 England 1 " 
 
 Mrs. Dallow turned away from him, closing her eyes as if 
 not to see something that would be dangerous to her. " You 
 mustn't give anything up for me. I should feel it all the 
 while and I should hate it. I'm not afraid of the truth, but 
 you are." 
 
 "The truth, dear Julia? I only want to know it," said 
 Nick. " It seems to me I've got hold of it. When two 
 persons are united by the tenderest affection and are sane and 
 generous and just, no difficulties that occur in the union their 
 life makes for them are insurmountable, no problems are 
 insoluble."
 
 270 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 Mrs. Dallow appeared for a moment to reflect upon this ; it 
 was spoken in a tone that might have touched her. At any 
 rate at the end of the moment, lifting her eyes, she announced : 
 " I hate art, as you call it. I thought I did, I knew I did ; 
 but till this morning I didn't know how much." 
 
 " Bless your soul, that wasn't art," pleaded Nick. " The 
 real thing will be a thousand miles away from us ; it will 
 never come into the house, soyez tranquille. Why then should 
 you worry? " 
 
 " Because I want to understand, I want to know what I'm 
 doing. You're an artist : you are, you are ! " Mrs. Dallow 
 cried, accusing him passionately. 
 
 " My poor Julia, it isn't so easy as that, nor a character 
 one can take on from one day to the other. There are all 
 sorts of things ; one must be caught young and put through 
 the mill and see things as they are. There would be sacrifices 
 I never can make." 
 
 " Well then, there are sacrifices for both of us, and I can't 
 make them either. I dare say it's all right for you, but for 
 me it would be a terrible mistake. When I think I'm doing 
 something I mustn't do just the opposite," Julia went on, as 
 if she wished to explain and be clear. "There are things I've 
 thought of, the things I like best ; and they are not what you 
 mean. It would be a great deception, and it's not the way I 
 see my life, and it would be misery if we don't understand." 
 
 Nick looked at her in hard perplexity, for she did not 
 succeed in explaining as well as she wished. " If we don't 
 understand what? " 
 
 " That we are awfully different that you are doing it all 
 for me." 
 
 "And is that an objection to me what I do for you?" 
 asked Nick. 
 
 " You do too much. You're awfully good, you're generous, 
 you're a dear fellow ; but I don't believe in it. I didn't, at 
 bottom, from the first that's why I made you wait, why I 
 gave you your freedom. Oh, I've suspected you ! I had my 
 ideas. It's all right for you, but it won't do for me : I'm 
 different altogether. Why should it always be put upon me, 
 when I hate it ? What have I done ? I was drenched with 
 it, before." These last words, as they broke forth, were 
 accompanied, even as the speaker uttered them, with a quick 
 blush ; so that Nick could as quickly discern in them the un- 
 calculated betrayal of an old irritation, an old shame almost 
 her late husband's flat, inglorious taste for pretty things, his
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 271 
 
 indifference to every chance to play a public part. This 
 had been the mortification of her youth, and it was indeed a 
 perversity of fate that a new alliance should contain for her 
 even an oblique demand for the same spirit of accommodation, 
 impose on her the secret bitterness of the same concessions. 
 As Nick stood there before her, struggling sincerely with the 
 force that he now felt to be strong in her, the intense resolu- 
 tion to break with him, a force matured in a few hours, he 
 read a riddle that hitherto had baffled him, saw a great mystery 
 become simple. A personal passion for him had all but thrown 
 her into his arms (the sort of thing that even a vain man and 
 Nick was not especially vain might hesitate to recognize the 
 strength of) ; held in check, with a tension of the cord at 
 moments of which he could still feel the vibration, by her 
 deep, her rare ambition, and arrested at the last only just in 
 time to save her calculations. His present glimpse of the 
 immense extent of these calculations did not make him think 
 her cold or poor ; there was in fact a positive strange heat in 
 them and they struck him rather as grand and high. The 
 fact that she could drop him even while she longed for him 
 drop him because it was now fixed in her mind that he would 
 not after all serve her determination to be associated, so far 
 as a woman could, with great affairs ; that she could postpone, 
 and postpone to an uncertainty, the satisfaction of a gnawing 
 tenderness and judge for the long run this exhibition of -will 
 and courage, of the large plan that possessed her, commanded 
 his admiration on the spot. He paid the heavy penalty of 
 being a man of imagination ; he was capable of far excursions 
 of the spirit, disloyalties to habit and even to faith, and open 
 to wondrous communications. He ached for the moment to 
 convince her that he would achieve what he wouldn't, for the 
 vision of his future that she had tried to entertain shone before 
 him as a bribe and a challenge. It seemed to him there was 
 nothing he couldn't fancy enough, to be so fancied by her. 
 Presently he said : 
 
 " You want to be sure the man you marry will be prime 
 minister of England. But how can you be sure, with any 
 one 1 ?" 
 
 " I can be sure some men won't," Mrs. Dallow replied. 
 
 "The only safe thing, perhaps, would be to marry Mr. 
 Macgeorge," Nick suggested. 
 
 " Possibly not even him." 
 
 " You're a prime minister yourself," Nick answered. " To 
 hold fast to you as I hold, to be determined to be of your party
 
 272 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 isn't that political enough, since you are the incarnation of 
 politics ? " 
 
 " Ah, how you hate them ! " Julia moaned. " I saw that 
 when I saw you this morning. The whole place reeked of it." 
 
 " My dear child, the greatest statesmen have had their dis- 
 tractions. "What do you make of my hereditary talent ? That's 
 a tremendous force." 
 
 "It wouldn't carry you far." Then Mrs. Dallow added: 
 " You must be a great artist." Nick gave a laugh at the 
 involuntary contempt of this, but she went on : " It's beautiful 
 of you to want to give up anything, and I like you for it. I 
 shall always like you. "We shall be friends, and I shall always 
 take an interest 
 
 He stopped her at this, made a movement which interrupted 
 her phrase, and she suffered him to hold her hand as if she 
 were not afraid of him now. "It isn't only for you," he 
 argued gently ; " you're a great deal, but you're not every- 
 thing. Innumerable vows and pledges repose upon my head. 
 I'm inextricably committed and dedicated. I was brought up 
 in the temple ; my father was a high priest and I'm a child 
 of the Lord. And then the life itself when you speak of it 
 I feel stirred to my depths : it's like a herald's trumpet. Fight 
 with me, Julia not against me ! Be on my side, and we shall 
 do everything. It is fascinating, to be a great man before the 
 people to be loved by them, to be followed by them. An 
 artist isn't never, never. "Why should he be 1 Don't forget 
 how clever I am." 
 
 " Oh, if it wasn't for that ! " she rejoined, flushed with the 
 effort to resist his tone. She asked abruptly : " Do you pre- 
 tend that if I were to die to-morrow you would stay in the 
 House ? " 
 
 " If you were to die ? God knows ! But you do singularly 
 little justice to my incentives," Nick continued. " My political 
 career is everything to my mother." 
 
 Julia hesitated a moment ; then she inquired : " Are you 
 afraid of your mother ? " 
 
 " Yes, particularly ; for she represents infinite possibilities 
 of disappointment and distress. She represents all my father's 
 as well as all her own ; and in them my father tragically lives 
 again. On the other hand I see him in bliss, as I see my 
 mother, over our marriage and our life of common aspirations ; 
 though of course that's not a consideration that I can expect 
 to have power with you." 
 
 Mrs. Dallow shook her head slowly, even smiling a little
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 273 
 
 with an air of recovered calmness and lucidity. " You'll never 
 hold high office." 
 
 " But why not take me as I am 1 ' ' 
 
 "Because I'm abominably keen about that sort of thing; 
 I must recognize it. I must face the ugly truth. I've been 
 through the worst ; it's all settled." 
 
 "The worst, I suppose, was when you found me this 
 morning." 
 
 " Oh, that was all right for you." 
 
 " You're magnanimous, Julia ; but evidently what's good 
 enough for me isn't good enough for you." Nick spoke with 
 bitterness. 
 
 " I don't like you enough that's the obstacle," said Mrs. 
 Dallow bravely. 
 
 ' You did a year ago ; you confessed to it." 
 
 " Well, a year ago was a year ago. Things are changed 
 to-day." 
 
 " You're very fortunate to be able to throw away a 
 devotion," Nick replied. 
 
 Julia had her pocket-handkerchief in her hand, and at this 
 she quickly pressed it to her lips, as if to check an exclama- 
 tion. Then for an instant she appeared to be listening as if 
 for a sound from outside. Nick interpreted her movement 
 as an honourable impulse to repress the words : " Do you mean 
 the devotion that I was witness of this morning 1 ?" But 
 immediately afterwards she said something very different : 
 "I thought I heard a ring. I've telegraphed for Mrs. 
 Gresham." 
 
 " Why did you do that ] " asked Nick. 
 
 " Oh, I want her." 
 
 He walked to the window, where the curtains had not been 
 drawn, and saw in the dusk a cab at the door. When he 
 turned back he said : " Why won't you trust me to make you 
 like me, as you call it, better 1 ? If I make you like me as 
 well as I like you, it will be about enough, I think." 
 
 " Oh, I like you enough for your happiness. And I don't 
 throw away a devotion," Mrs. Dallow continued. " I shall 
 be constantly kind to you. I shall be beautiful to you." 
 
 "You'll make me lose a fortune," declared Nick. 
 
 Julia stared, then she coloured. " Ah, you may have all 
 the money you want." 
 
 " I don't mean yours," he answered, flushing in his turn. 
 He had determined on the instant, since it might serve, to 
 tell her what he had never spoken of to her before. "Mr. 
 
 T
 
 274 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 Carteret last year promised me a pot of money on the day 
 I should stand up with you. He has set his heart on our 
 marriage." 
 
 " I'm sorry to disappoint Mr. Carteret," said Julia. " I'll 
 go and see him. I'll make it all right," she went on. 
 " Besides, you'll make a fortune by your portraits. The great 
 men get a thousand, just for a head." 
 
 "I'm only joking," Nick returned, with sombre eyes that 
 contradicted this profession. " But what things you deserve 
 I should do!" 
 
 " Do you mean striking likenesses ? " 
 
 " You do hate it ! Pushed to that point, it's curious," the 
 young man audibly mused. 
 
 " Do you mean you're joking about Mr. Carteret's promise? " 
 
 " No, the promise is real ; but I don't seriously offer it as 
 a reason." 
 
 "I shall go to Beauclere," said Mrs. Dallow. "You're an 
 hour late," she added in a different tone ; for at that moment 
 the door of the room was thrown open and Mrs. Gresham, the 
 butler pronouncing her name, was ushered in. 
 
 " A.h, don't impugn my punctuality; it's my character?" 
 the useful lady exclaimed, putting a sixpence from the cabman 
 into her purse. Nick went off, at this, with a simplified 
 farewell went off foreseeing exactly what he found the next 
 day, that Mrs. Gresham would have received orders not to 
 budge from her hostess's side. He called on the morrow, late 
 in the afternoon, and Julia saw him liberally, in pursuance of 
 her assertion that she would be " beautiful " to him, that she 
 had not thrown away his devotion ; but Mrs. Gresham re- 
 mained immutably a spectator of her liberality. Julia looked 
 at him kindly, but her companion was more benignant still ; 
 so that what Nick did with his own eyes was not to appeal 
 to Mrs. Dallow to see him for a moment alone, but to solicit, 
 in the name of this luxury, the second occupant of the 
 drawing-room. Mrs. Gresham seemed to say, while Julia said 
 very little : " I understand, my poor friend, I know everything 
 (she has told me only her side, but I'm so competent that I 
 know yours too), and I enter into the whole thing deeply. 
 But it would be as much as my place is worth to accommodate 
 you." Still, she did not go so far as to give him an inkling 
 of what he learned on the third day and what he had not gone 
 so far as to suspect that the two ladies had made rapid 
 arrangements for a scheme of foreign travel. These arrange- 
 ments had already been carried out when, at the door of the
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 275 
 
 house in Great Stanhope Street, the fact was imparted to Nick 
 that Mrs. Dallow and her friend had started that morning for 
 Paris. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 ON their way to Florence, Julia Dallow and Mrs. Gresham 
 spent three days in Paris, where Peter Sherringham had as 
 much conversation with his sister as it often befell one 
 member of that family to have with another. That is on 
 two different occasions he enjoyed half an hour's gossip with 
 her in her sitting-room at the hotel. On one of these 
 occasions he took the liberty of asking her whether or no, 
 definitely, she meant to marry Nick Dormer. Julia expressed 
 to him that she was much obliged for his interest, but that 
 Nick and she were nothing more than relations and good 
 friends. " He wants to marry you, tremendously," Peter 
 remarked ; to which Mrs. Dallow simply made answer : " Well, 
 then, he may want ! " 
 
 After this they sat silent for some moments, as if the 
 subject had been quite threshed out between them. Peter 
 felt no impulse to penetrate further, for it was not a habit 
 of the Sherringhams to talk with each other of their love- 
 affairs ; and he was conscious of the particular deterrent that 
 he and Julia had in general so different a way of feeling that 
 they could never go far together in discussion. He liked her 
 and was sorry for her, thought her life lonely and wondered 
 she didn't make a " great " marriage. Moreover he pitied 
 her for being without the interests and consolations that he 
 had found substantial : those of the intellectual, the studious 
 order he considered these to be, not knowing how much she 
 supposed that she reflected and studied or what an education 
 she had found in her political aspirations, regarded by him 
 as scarcely more a personal part of her than the livery of her 
 servants or the jewels George Dallow's money had bought. 
 Her relations with Nick were unfathomable to him ; but they 
 were not his affair. No affair of Julia's was sufficiently his 
 to justify him in an attempt to understand it. That there 
 should have been any question of her marrying Nick was the 
 anomaly to him, rather than that the question should have 
 been dropped. He liked his clever cousin very well as he 
 was enough to have a vague sense that he might be spoiled
 
 276 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 by being altered into a brother-in-law. Moreover, though he 
 was not perhaps distinctly conscious of this, Peter pressed 
 lightly on Julia's doings from a tacit understanding that in 
 this case she would let him off as easily. He could not have 
 said exactly what it was that he judged it pertinent to be let 
 off from : perhaps from irritating inquiry as to whether he 
 had given any more tea-parties for young ladies connected 
 with the theatre. 
 
 Peter's forbearance however did not bring him all the 
 security he prefigured. After an interval he indeed went so 
 far as to ask Julia if Nick had been wanting in respect to 
 her ; but this was a question intended for sympathy, not for 
 control. She answered : " Dear, no though he's very pro- 
 voking." Thus Peter guessed that they had had a quarrel 
 in which it didn't concern him to interpose : he added the 
 epithet and her flight from England together and they made 
 up, to his perception, one of the little magnified embroilments 
 which do duty for the real in superficial lives. It was worse 
 to provoke Julia than not, and Peter thought Nick's doing so 
 not particularly characteristic of his versatility for good. He 
 might wonder why she didn't marry the member for Harsh 
 if the subject had come up ; but he wondered still more why 
 Nick didn't marry her. Julia said nothing, again, as if to 
 give him a chance to make some inquiry which would save 
 her from gushing ; but as his idea appeared to be to change 
 the subject, and as he changed it only by silence, she was 
 reduced to resuming presently : 
 
 " I should have thought you would have come over to see 
 your friend the actress." 
 
 " Which of my friends ? I know so many actresses," Peter 
 rejoined. 
 
 "The woman you inflicted on us in^this place a year ago 
 the one who is in London now." 
 
 " Oh, Miriam Rooth ! I should have liked to come over, 
 but I've been tied fast. Have you seen her 1 ? " 
 
 " Yes, I've seen her." 
 
 " Do you like her?" 
 
 "Not at all." 
 
 " She has a lovely voice," Peter hazarded, after a moment. 
 
 "I don't know anything about her voice I haven't 
 heard it." 
 
 " But she doesn't act in pantomime, does she 1 " 
 
 " I don't know anything about her acting. I saw her in 
 private in Nick Dormer's studio."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 277 
 
 " In Nick Dormer's studio ? What was she doing there ? " 
 
 " She was sprawling over the room and staring at me." 
 
 If Mrs. Dallow had wished to "draw" her brother it is 
 probable that at this point she suspected she had succeeded, 
 in spite of the care he took to divest his tone of everything 
 like emotion in uttering the words : " Why, does he know her 
 so well ? I didn't know." 
 
 "She's sitting to him for her portrait; at least she was 
 then." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I remember : I put him up to that. I'm greatly 
 interested. Is the portrait good 1 " 
 
 " I haven't the least idea I didn't look at it. I dare say 
 it's clever," Julia added. 
 
 " How in the world does Nick find time to paint 1 " 
 
 "I don't know. That horrid man brought her." 
 
 " What horrid man? " Peter demanded. 
 
 " The one Nick thinks so clever the vulgar little man who 
 was at your place that day and tried to talk to me. I 
 remember he abused theatrical people to me as if I cared 
 anything about them. But he has apparently something to 
 do with this girl." 
 
 " Oh, I recollect him I had a discussion with him," Peter 
 said. 
 
 "How could you 1 ? I must go and dress," Julia went on. 
 
 " He was clever, remarkably. Miss Rooth and her mother 
 were old friends of his, and he was the first person to speak of 
 them to me." 
 
 " What a distinction ! I thought him disgusting ! " 
 exclaimed Mrs. Dallow, who was pressed for time and who 
 had now got up. 
 
 " Oh, you're severe," said Peter ; but as they separated she 
 had given him something to think of. 
 
 That Nick was painting a beautiful actress was no doubt 
 in part at least the reason why he was provoking and why 
 his most intimate female friend had come abroad. The fact 
 did not render him provoking to Peter Sherringham : on the 
 contrary Peter had been quite sincere when he qualified it as 
 interesting. It became indeed on reflection so interesting that 
 it had perhaps almost as much to do with Sherringham's rush 
 over to London as it had to do with Julia's coming away. 
 Reflection taught Peter further that the matter was alto- 
 gether a delicate one, and suggested that it was odd he should 
 be mixed up with it in fact, when, as Julia's business, he had 
 wished only to keep out of it. It was his own business a
 
 278 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 little too : there was somehow a still more pointed implica- 
 tion of that in his sister's saying to him the next day that 
 she wished immensely he would take a fancy to Biddy Dormer. 
 She said more : she said there had been a time when she 
 believed he had done so believed too that the poor child 
 herself had believed the same. Biddy was far away the 
 nicest girl she knew the dearest, sweetest, cleverest, lest, 
 and one of the prettiest creatures in England, which never 
 spoiled anything. She would make as charming a wife as 
 ever a man had, suited to any position, however high, and 
 (Julia didn't mind mentioning it, since Peter would believe 
 it whether she mentioned it or no) was so predisposed in his 
 favour that he would have no trouble at all. In short she 
 herself would see him through she would answer for it that 
 he would only have to speak. Biddy's life at home was 
 horrid ; she was very sorry for her the child was worthy 
 of a better fate. Peter wondered what constituted the horrid- 
 ness of Biddy's life, and perceived that it mainly arose from 
 the fact that Julia disliked Lady Agnes and Grace ; profiting 
 comfortably by the freedom to do so conferred upon her by 
 her having given them a house of which she had perhaps not 
 felt the want till they were in possession of it. He knew she 
 had always liked Biddy, but he asked himself (this was the 
 rest of his wonder) why she had taken to liking her so extra- 
 ordinarily just now. He liked her himself he even liked to 
 be talked to about her and he could believe everything Julia 
 said : the only thing that mystified him was her motive for 
 suddenly saying it. He assured her that he was infinitely 
 indebted to her for her expenditure of imagination on his 
 behalf, but that he was sorry if he had put it into any one's 
 head (most of all into the girl's own) that he had looked at Biddy 
 with a covetous eye. He knew not whether she would make 
 a good wife, but he liked her quite too much to wish to put 
 such a ticklish matter to the test. She was surely not intended 
 for cruel experiments. As it happened he was not thinking 
 of marrying any one he had ever so many reasons against it. 
 Of course one was never safe against accidents, but one could 
 at least take precautions, and he didn't mind telling her that 
 there were several he had taken. 
 
 "I don't know what you mean, but it seems to me quite 
 the best precaution would be to care for a charming, steady 
 girl like Biddy," Mrs. Dallow replied. "Then you would be 
 quite in shelter, you would know the worst that can happen 
 to you, and it wouldn't be bad." The objection Peter had
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 279 
 
 made to this argument is not important, especially as it was 
 not remarkably candid; it need only be mentioned that before 
 he and Julia parted she said to him, still in reference to 
 Bridget Dormer : " Do go and see her and be nice to her : 
 she'll save you disappointments." 
 
 These last words reverberated in Sherringham's mind ; 
 there was a shade of the portentous in them and they seemed 
 to proceed from a larger knowledge of the subject than he 
 himself as yet possessed. They were not absent from his 
 memory when, in the beginning of May, availing himself, to 
 save time, of the night-service, he crossed from Paris to 
 London. He arrived before the breakfast-hour and went to 
 his sister's house in Great Stanhope Street, where he always 
 found quarters whether she were in town or not. If she 
 were at home she welcomed him, and if she were not the 
 relaxed servants hailed him for the chance he gave them to 
 recover their " form." In either case his allowance of space 
 was large and his independence complete. He had obtained 
 permission this year to take in fractions instead of as a single 
 draught the leave of absence to which he was entitled ; and 
 there was moreover a question of his being transferred to 
 another Embassy, in which event he believed that he might 
 count upon a month or two in England before proceeding to 
 his new post. 
 
 He waited after breakfast but a very few minutes before 
 jumping into a hansom and rattling away to the north. A 
 part of his waiting indeed consisted of a fidgety walk up Bond 
 Street, during which he looked at his watch three or four 
 times while he paused at shop-windows for fear of being 'a 
 little early. In the cab, as he rolled along, after having given 
 an address Balaklava Place, St. John's Wood the fear that 
 he should be too early took curiously at moments the form 
 of a fear that he should be too late : a symbol of the incon- 
 sistencies of which his spirit at present was full. Peter 
 Sherringham was nervous, too nervous for a diplomatist, and 
 haunted- with inclinations, and indeed with purposes, which 
 contradicted each other. He wanted to be out of it and yet 
 he dreaded not to be in it, and on this particular occasion the 
 sense of exclusion made him sore. At the same time he was 
 not unconscious of the impulse tojstop his cab and make it 
 turn round and drive due south. He saw himself launched in 
 the breezy fact while, morally speaking, he was hauled up on 
 the hot sand of the principle, and he had the intelligence to 
 perceive how little these two faces of the same idea had in
 
 280 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 common. However, as the sense of movement encouraged 
 him to reflect, a principle was a poor affair if it remained 
 mere inaction. Yet from the moment it turned to action it 
 manifestly could only be the particular action in which he was 
 engaged ; so that he was in the absurd position of thinking 
 his behaviour more consummate for the reason that it was 
 directly opposed to his intentions. 
 
 He had kept away from London ever since Miriam Rooth 
 came over ; resisting curiosity, sympathy, importunate haunt- 
 ing passion and considering that his resistance, founded, to be 
 salutary, on a general scheme of life, was the greatest success 
 he had yet achieved. He was deeply occupied with plucking 
 up the feeling that attached him to her, and he had already, 
 by various little ingenuities, loosened some of its roots. He 
 suffered her to make her first appearance on any stage without 
 the comfort of his voice or the applause of his hand ; saying 
 to himself that the man who could do the more could do the 
 less and that such an act of fortitude was a proof he should 
 keep straight. It was not exactly keeping straight to run 
 over to London three months later and, the hour he arrived, 
 scramble off to Balaklava Place ; but after all he pretended 
 only to be human and aimed in behaviour only at the heroic, 
 not at the monstrous. The highest heroism was three parts 
 tact. He had not written to Miriam that he was coming to 
 England and would call upon her at eleven o'clock in the 
 morning, because it was his secret pride that he had ceased to 
 correspond with her. Sherringham took his prudence where 
 he could find it, and in doing so was rather like a drunkard 
 who should flatter himself that he had forsworn liquor because 
 he didn't touch lemonade. 
 
 It is an example of how much he was drawn in different 
 directions at once that when, on reaching Balaklava Place and 
 alighting at the door of a small much-ivied house which 
 resembled a gate-lodge bereft of its park, he learned that Miss 
 Rooth had only a quarter of an hour before quitted the spot 
 with her mother (they had gone to the theatre, to rehearsal, 
 said the maid who answered the bell he had set tinkling 
 behind a dingy plastered wall) : when at the end 'of his 
 pilgrimage he was greeted by a disappointment he suddenly 
 found himself relieved and for the moment even saved. 
 Providence was after all taking care of him and he submitted 
 to Providence. He would still be watched over doubtless, 
 even if he should follow the two ladies to the theatre, send in 
 his card and obtain admission to the histrionic workshop. All
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 281 
 
 his old technical interest in the girl's development flamed up 
 again, and he wondered what she was rehearsing, what she 
 was to do next. He got back into his hansom and drove 
 down the Edgware Road. By the time he reached the Marble 
 Arch he had changed his mind again he had determined to 
 let Miriam alone for that day. The day would be over at 
 eight o'clock in the evening (he hardly played fair), and then 
 he should consider himself free. Instead of going to the 
 theatre he drove to a shop in Bond Street, to take a place for 
 the play. On first coming out he had tried, at one of those 
 establishments strangely denominated " libraries," to get a 
 stall, but the people to whom he applied were unable to 
 accommodate him they had not a single seat left. His 
 second attempt, at another " library," was more successful : 
 he was unable to obtain a stall, but by a miracle he might 
 have a box. There was a certain wantonness in paying for a 
 box to see a play on which he had already expended four 
 hundred pounds ; but while he was mentally measuring this 
 abyss an idea came into his head which flushed the 
 extravagance with a slight rose-tint. 
 
 Peter came out of the shop with the voucher for the box 
 in his pocket, turned into Piccadilly, noted that the day was 
 growing warm and fine, felt glad that this time he had no 
 business, unless it were business to leave a card or two on 
 official people, and asked himself where he should go if he 
 didn't go after Miriam. Then it was that it struck him as 
 most acutely desirable, and even most important, that he 
 should see Nick Dormer's portrait of her. He wondered which 
 would be the natural place at that hour of the day to look for 
 the artist. The House of Commons was perhaps the nearest 
 one, but Nick, incongruous as his proceedings certainly were, 
 probably didn't keep the picture there ; and moreover it was 
 not generally characteristic of him to be in the natural place. 
 The end of Peter's debate was that he again entered a hansom 
 and drove to Calcutta Gardens. The hour was early for 
 calling, "but cousins with whom one's intercourse was mainly a 
 conversational scuffle would accept it as a practical illustration 
 of that method. And if Julia wanted him to be nice to 
 Biddy (which was exactly, though with a different view, what 
 he wanted himself), what could be nicer than to pay his visit 
 to Lady Agnes (he would have in decency to go to see her 
 some time) at a friendly, fraternizing hour, when they would 
 all be likely to be at home 1 
 
 Unfortunately, as it turned out, they were not at home,
 
 282 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 so that Peter had to fall back on neutrality and the butler, 
 who was however, more luckily, an old friend. Her ladyship 
 and Miss Dormer were absent from town, paying a visit ; and 
 Mr. Dormer was also away, or was on the point of going 
 away for the day. M,iss Bridget was in London, but was 
 out : Peter's informant mentioned with earnest vagueness 
 that he thought she had gone somewhere to take a lesson. 
 On Peter's asking what sort of a lesson he meant, he replied, 
 " Oh, I think the a-sculpture, you know, sir." Peter knew, but 
 Biddy's lesson in a-sculpture (it sounded on the butler's lips 
 like a fashionable new art) struck him a little as a mockery of 
 the benevolent spirit in which he had come to look her up. 
 The man had an air of participating respectfully in his dis- 
 appointment and, to make up for it, added that he might 
 perhaps find Mr. Dormer at his other address. He had gone 
 out early and had directed his servant to come to Rosedale 
 Road in an hour or two with a portmanteau: he was going 
 down to Beauclere in the course of the day, Mr. Carteret 
 being ill perhaps Mr. Sherringham didn't know it. Perhaps 
 too Mr. Sherringham would catch him in Rosedale Road 
 before he took his train he was to have been busy there for 
 an hour. This was worth trying, and Peter immediately 
 drove to Rosedale Road ; where, in answer to his ring, the 
 door was opened to him by Biddy Dormer. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 WHEN Biddy saw him her cheek exhibited the prettiest 
 pleased, surprised red that he had ever observed there, though 
 he was not unacquainted with its fluctuations, and she stood 
 still, smiling at him with the outer dazzle in her eyes, making 
 no motion for him to enter. She only said : " Oh, Peter ! " 
 And then: "I'm all alone." 
 
 " So much the better, dear Biddy. Is that any reason I 
 shouldn't come in 1 " 
 
 " Dear, no do come in. You've just missed Nick ; he has 
 gone to the country half an hour ago." She had on a large 
 apron, and in her hand she carried a small stick, besmeared, 
 as his quick eye saw, with modelling-clay. She dropped 
 the door and fled back before him into the studio, where, 
 when he followed her, she was in the act of flinging a 
 cloth over a rough head, in clay, which, in the middle of the
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 283 
 
 room, was supported on a high wooden stand. The effort to 
 hide what she had been doing before he caught a glimpse of it 
 made her redder still and led to her smiling more, to her 
 laughing with a charming confusion of shyness and gladness. 
 She rubbed her hands on her apron, she pulled it off, she 
 looked delightfully awkward, not meeting Peter's eye, and 
 she said : " I'm just scraping here a little you mustn't mind 
 me. "What I do is awful, you know. Peter, please don't 
 look. I've been coming here lately to make my little mess, 
 because mamma doesn't particularly like it at home. I've had 
 a lesson from a lady who exhibits ; but you wouldn't suppose 
 it, to see what I do. Nick's so kind ; he lets me come here ; 
 he uses the studio so little ; I do what I please. What a pity 
 he's gone he would have been so glad. I'm really alone I 
 hope you don't mind. Peter, please don't look." 
 
 Peter was not bent upon looking ; his eyes had occupation 
 enough in Biddy's own agreeable aspect, which was full of an 
 unusual element of domestication and responsibility. Though 
 she had taken possession, by exception, of her brother's 
 quarters, she struck her visitor as more at home and more 
 herself than he had ever seen her. It was the first time she 
 had been to his vision so separate from her mother and sister. 
 She seemed to know this herself and to be a little frightened 
 by it just enough to make him wish to be reassuring. At 
 the same time Peter also on this occasion found himself 
 touched with diffidence, especially after he had gone back and 
 closed the door and settled down to a regular visit ; for he 
 became acutely conscious of what Julia had said to him in 
 Paris and was unable to rid himself of the suspicion that it 
 had been said with Biddy's knowledge. It was not that he 
 supposed his sister had told the girl that she meant to do 
 what she could to make him propose to her : that would have 
 been cruel to her (if she liked him enough to consent), in 
 Julia's uncertainty. But Biddy participated by imagination, 
 by divination, by a clever girl's secret tremulous instincts, in 
 her good friend's views about her, and this probability consti- 
 tuted for Sherringham a sort of embarrassing publicity. He 
 had impressions, possibly gross and unjust, in regard to the 
 way women move constantly together amid such considerations 
 and subtly intercommunicate, when they do not still more 
 subtly dissemble, the hopes or fears of which persons of the 
 opposite sex form the subject. Therefore poor Biddy would 
 know that if she failed to strike him in the right light it 
 would not be for want of his attention's having been called to
 
 284 ' THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 her claims. She would have been tacitly rejected, virtually 
 condemned. Peter could not, without a slight sense of fatuity, 
 endeavour to make up for this to her by kindness ; he was aware 
 that if any one knew it a man would be ridiculous who should 
 take so much as that for granted. But no one would know 
 it : oddly enough, in this calculation of security he left Biddy 
 herself out. It did not occur to him that she might have a 
 secret small irony to spare for his ingenious and magnanimous 
 impulse to show her how much he liked her in order to make 
 her forgive him for not liking her more. This magnanimity 
 at any rate coloured the whole of Sherringham's visit to 
 Rosedale Road, the whole of the pleasant, prolonged chat that 
 kept him there for more than an hour. He begged the girl to 
 go on with her work and not to let him interrupt it ; and she 
 obliged him at last, taking the cloth off the lump of clay and 
 giving him a chance to be delightful by guessing that the 
 shapeless mass was intended, or would be intended after a while, 
 for Nick. He saw that she was more comfortable when she 
 began to smooth it and scrape it with her little stick again, 
 to manipulate it with an ineffectual air of knowing how ; for 
 this gave her something to do, relieved her nervousness and 
 permitted her to turn away from him when she talked. 
 
 Peter walked about the room and sat down; got up and 
 looked at Nick's things ; watched her at moments in silence 
 (which made her always say in a minute that he was not to 
 look at her so or she could do nothing) ; observed how her 
 position, before her high stand, her lifted arms, her turns of 
 the head, considering her work this way and that, all helped 
 her to be pretty. She repeated again and again that it was 
 an immense pity about Nick, till he was obliged to say he 
 didn't care a straw for Nick : he was perfectly content with 
 the company he found. This was not the sort of thing he 
 thought it right, under the circumstances, to say ; but then 
 even the circumstances did not require him to pretend he liked 
 her less than he did. After all she was his cousin ; she would 
 cease to be so if she should become his wife ; but one advantage 
 of her not entering into that relation was precisely that she 
 would remain his cousin. It was very pleasant to find a 
 young, bright, slim, rose-coloured kinswoman all ready to recog- 
 nize consanguinity when one came back from cousinless foreign 
 lands. Peter talked about family matters ; he didn't know, 
 in his exile, where no one took an interest in them, what a 
 fund of latent curiosity about them was in him. It was in 
 him to gossip about them and to enjoy the sense that he and
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 285 
 
 Biddy had indefeasible properties in common ever so many 
 things as to which they would understand each other a demi- 
 mot. He smoked a cigarette, because she begged him to, said 
 that people always smoked in studios it made her feel so 
 much more like an artist. She apologized for the badness of 
 her work on the ground that Nick was so busy he could scarcely 
 ever give her a sitting ; so that she had to do the head from 
 photographs and occasional glimpses. They had hoped to be 
 able to put in an hour that morning, but news had suddenly 
 come that Mr. Carteret was worse, and Nick had hurried down 
 to Beauclere. Mr. Carteret was very ill, poor old dear, and 
 -Nick and he were immense friends. Nick had always been 
 charming to him. Peter and Biddy took the concerns of the 
 houses of Dormer and Sherringham in order, and the young 
 man felt after a little as if they were as wise as a French 
 conseil de famille, settling what was best for every one. He 
 heard all about Lady Agnes and manifested an interest in the 
 detail of her existence that he had not supposed himself to 
 possess, though indeed Biddy threw out intimations which 
 excited his curiosity, presenting her mother in a light that 
 might call upon his sympathy. 
 
 " I don't think she has been very happy or very pleased, of 
 late," the girl said. "I think she has had some disappoint- 
 ments, poor dear mamma ; and Grace has made her go out of 
 town for three or four days, for a little change. They have 
 gone down to see an old lady, Lady St. Dunstans, who never 
 comes to London now, and who, you know she's tremendously 
 old was papa's godmother. It's not very lively for Grace, but 
 Grace is such a dear she'll do anything for mamma. Mamma 
 will go anywhere to see people she can talk with about papa." 
 
 Biddy added, in reply to a further inquiry from Peter, that 
 what her mother was disappointed about was well, them- 
 selves, her children and all their affairs; and she explained 
 that Lady Agnes wanted all kinds of things for them that 
 didn't come to them, that they didn't get or seem likely to 
 get, so that their life appeared altogether a failure. She 
 wanted a great deal, Biddy admitted ; she really wanted every- 
 thing and she had thought in her happier days that everything 
 was to be hers. She loved them all so much, and then she 
 was proud : she couldn't get over the thought of their not 
 being successful. Sherringham was unwilling to press, at this 
 point, for he suspected one of the things that Lady Agnes 
 wanted ; but Biddy relieved him a little by saying that one of 
 these things was that Grace should get married.
 
 286 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " That's too unselfish of her," rejoined Peter, who didn't 
 care for Grace. " Cousin Agnes ought to keep her near her 
 always, if Grace is so obliging and devoted." 
 
 " Oh, mamma would give up anything of that sort for our 
 good ; she wouldn't sacrifice us that way ! " Biddy exclaimed. 
 "Besides, I'm the one to stay with mamma; not that I can 
 manage and look after her and do everything so well as Grace. 
 But, you know, I want to," said Biddy, with a liquid note in 
 her voice, giving her lump of clay a little stab. 
 
 " But doesn't your mother want the rest of you to get 
 married Percival and Nick and you ? " Peter asked. 
 
 " Oh, she has given up Percy. I don't suppose she thinks 
 it would do. Dear Nick, of course that's just what she does 
 want." 
 
 Sherringham hesitated. " And you, Biddy 1 " 
 
 " Oh, I dare say ; but that doesn't signify I never shall." 
 
 Peter got up, at this ; the tone of it set him in motion and 
 he took a turn round the room. He said something to her 
 about her being too proud ; to which she replied that that was 
 the only thing for a girl to be, to get on. 
 
 "What do you mean by getting on?" Peter demanded, 
 stopping, with his hands in his pockets, on the other side of 
 the studio. 
 
 " I mean crying one's eyes out ! " Biddy unexpectedly ex- 
 claimed ; but she drowned the effect of this pathetic paradox 
 in a foolish laugh and in the quick declaration : " Of course it's 
 about Nick that poor mother's really broken-hearted." 
 
 "What's the matter with Nick?" Sherringham asked, 
 diplomatically. 
 
 " Oh, Peter, what's the matter with Julia? " Biddy quavered 
 softly, back to him, with eyes suddenly frank and mournful. 
 " I dare say you know what we all hoped what we all supposed, 
 from what they told us. And now they won't ! " said Biddy. 
 
 "Yes, Biddy, I know. I had the brightest prospect of 
 becoming your brother-in-law : wouldn't that have been it or 
 something like that ? But it is indeed visibly clouded. What's 
 the matter with them? May I have another cigarette?" 
 Peter came back to the wide, cushioned bench where he had 
 been lounging : this was the way they took up the subject he 
 wanted most to look into. " Don't they know how to love? " 
 he went on, as he seated himself again. 
 
 " It seems a kind of fatality ! " sighed Biddy. 
 
 Peter said nothing for some moments, at the end of which 
 he inquired whether his companion were to be quite alone
 
 THE TKAGIC MUSE. 287 
 
 during her mother's absence. She replied that her mother 
 was very droll about that she would never* leave her alone : 
 she thought something dreadful would happen to her. She 
 had therefore arranged that Florence Tressilian should come 
 and stay in Calcutta Gardens for the next few days, to look 
 after her and see she did no wrong. Peter asked who Florence 
 Tressilian might be : he greatly hoped, for the success of Lady 
 Agnes's precautions, that she was not a flighty young genius 
 like Biddy. She was described to him as tremendously nice 
 and tremendously clever, but also tremendously old and 
 tremendously safe ; with the addition that Biddy was tremend- 
 ously fond of her and that while she remained in Calcutta 
 Gardens they expected to enjoy themselves tremendously. 
 She was to come that afternoon, before dinner. 
 
 " And are you to dine at home? " said Peter. 
 
 " Certainly ; where else ? " 
 
 " And just you two, alone 1 Do you call that enjoying 
 yourselves tremendously 1 " 
 
 "It will do for me. No doubt I oughtn't, in modesty, to 
 speak for poor Florence." 
 
 " It isn't fair to her ; you ought to invite some one to meet 
 her." 
 
 "Do you mean you, Peter?" the girl asked, turning to him 
 quickly, with a look that vanished the instant he caught it. 
 
 " Try me ; I'll come like a shot." 
 
 "That's kind," said Biddy, dropping her hands and now 
 resting her eyes on him gratefully. She remained in this 
 position a moment, as if she were under a charm ; then she 
 jerked herself back to her work with the remai-k : " Florence 
 will like that immensely." 
 
 "I'm delighted to please Florence, your description of her 
 is so attractive ! " Sherringham laughed. And when the girl 
 asked him if he minded if there were not a great feast, because 
 when her mother went away she allowed her a fixed amount 
 for that sort of thing and, as he might imagine, it wasn't 
 millions when Biddy, with the frankness of their pleasant 
 kinship, touched anxiously on this economical point (illus- 
 trating, as Peter saw, the lucidity with which Lady Agnes 
 had had in her old age to learn to recognize the occasions when 
 she could be conveniently frugal), he answered that the shortest 
 dinners were the best, especially when one was going to the 
 theatre. That was his case to-night, and did Biddy think he 
 might look to Miss Tressilian to go with him? They would 
 have to dine early ; he wanted not to miss a moment.
 
 288 THE TEAGIC MUSE. 
 
 "The theatre Miss Tressilian 1 ? " Biddy stared, interrupted 
 and in suspense again. 
 
 " Would it incommode you very much to dine say at 7.15 
 and accept a place in my box 1 The finger of Providence was 
 in it when I took z box an hour ago. I particularly like your 
 being free to go if you are free." 
 
 Biddy became fairly incoherent with pleasure. " Dear 
 Peter, how good you are ! They'll have it at any hour. 
 Florence will be so glad." 
 
 "And has Florence seen Miss Piooth 1 ?" 
 
 " Miss Rooth ? " the girl repeated, redder than before. He 
 perceived in a moment that she had heard that he had devoted 
 much time and attention to that young lady. It was as if she 
 were conscious that he would be conscious in speaking of her, 
 and there was a sweetness in her allowance for him on that 
 score. But Biddy was more confused for him than he was for 
 himself. He guessed in a moment how much she had thought 
 over what she had heard ; this was indicated by her saying 
 vaguely : " No, no, I've not seen her." Then she became 
 aware that she was answering a question he had not asked her, 
 and she went on : " We shall be too delighted. I saw her 
 perhaps you remember in your rooms in Paris. I thought 
 her so wonderful then ! Every one is talking of her here. 
 But we don't go to the theatre much, you know : we don't 
 have boxes offered us except when you come. Poor ]>iick is 
 too much taken up in the evening. I've wanted awfully to 
 see her. They say she's magnificent." 
 
 "I don't know," said Peter. "I haven't seen her." 
 
 " You haven't seen her ? " 
 
 " Never, Biddy. I mean on the stage. In private, often 
 yes," Sherringham added, conscientiously. 
 
 " Oh ! " Biddy exclaimed, bending her face on Nick's bust 
 again. She asked him no question about the new star, and he 
 offered her no further information. There were things in his 
 mind that pulled him different ways, so that for some minutes 
 silence was the result of the conflict. At last he said, after 
 an hesitation caused by the possibility that she was ignorant 
 of the fact he had lately elicited from Julia, though it was 
 more probable she might have learned it from the same 
 source : 
 
 " Am I perhaps indiscreet in alluding to the circumstance 
 that Nick has been painting Miss Rooth's portrait ? " 
 
 " You are not indiscreet in alluding to it to me, because I 
 know it."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 289 
 
 " Then there's no secret nor mystery about it ? " 
 Biddy considered a moment. "I don't think mamma 
 knows it." 
 
 'You mean you have been keeping it from her because she 
 wouldn't like it?" 
 
 "We're afraid she may think that papa wouldn't have 
 liked it." 
 
 This was said with an absence of humour which for an 
 instant moved Sherringham to mirth ; but he quickly recovered 
 himself, repenting of any apparent failure of respect to the 
 high memory of his late celebrated relative. He rejoined 
 quickly, but rather vaguely : " Ah, yes, I remember that great 
 man's ideas;" and then he went on: "May I ask if you 
 know it, the fact that we are talking of, through Julia or 
 through Nick?" 
 
 "I know it from both of them." 
 
 "Then, if you're in their confidence, may I further ask 
 whether this undertaking of Nick's is the reason why things 
 seem to be at an end between them ? " 
 
 "Oh, I don't think she likes it," returned Biddy. 
 "Isn't it good?" 
 
 " Oh, I don't mean the picture she hasn't seen it ; but his 
 having done it." 
 
 " Does she dislike it so much that that's why she won't 
 marry him?" 
 
 Biddy gave up her work, moving away from it to look at 
 it. She came and sat down on the long bench on which 
 Sherringham had placed himself. Then she broke out : " Oh, 
 Peter, it's a great trouble it's a very great trouble ; and I 
 can't tell you, for I don't understand it." 
 
 " If I ask you, it's not to pry into what doesn't concern me ; 
 but Julia is my sister, and I can't, after all, help taking some 
 interest in her life. But she tells me very little. She doesn't 
 think me worthy." 
 
 " Ah, poor Julia ! " Biddy murmured, defensively. Her 
 tone recalled to him that Julia had thought him worthy to 
 unite himself to Bridget Dormer, and inevitably betrayed that 
 the girl was thinking of that also. While they both thought 
 of it they sat looking into each other's eyes. 
 
 " Nick, I'm sure, doesn't treat you that way. I'm sure he 
 confides in you ; he talks to you about his occupations, his 
 ambitions," Peter continued. " And you understand him, you 
 enter into them, you are nice to him, you help him." 
 " Oh, Nick's life it's very dear to me," said Biddy. 
 
 u
 
 290 THE TRAGIC' MUSE. 
 
 "That must be jolly for him." 
 
 " It makes me very happy." 
 
 Peter tittered a low, ambiguous groan ; then he exclaimed, 
 with irritation : " What the deuce is the matter with them 
 then ? Why can't they hit it off and be quiet and rational 
 and do what every one wants them to do 1 " 
 
 " Oh, Peter, it's awfully complicated," said Biddy, with 
 sagacity. 
 
 " Do you mean that Nick's in love with her ? " 
 
 "In love with Julia 1 }" 
 
 " No, no, with Miriam Rooth." 
 
 Biddy shook her head slowly ; then with a smile which 
 struck him as one of the sweetest things he had ever seen (it 
 conveyed, at the expense of her own prospects, such a shy, 
 generous little mercy of reassurance) : " He isn't, Peter," she 
 declared. "Julia thinks it's trifling all that sort of thing," 
 she added. " She wants him to go in for different honours." 
 
 "Julia's the oddest woman. I thought she loved him," 
 Sherringham remarked. " And when you love a person 
 He continued to reflect, leaving his sentence impatiently 
 unfinished, while Biddy, with lowered eyes, sat waiting (it 
 interested her) to learn what you did when you loved a person. 
 " I can't conceive her giving him up. He has great ability, 
 besides being such a good fellow." 
 
 " It's for his happiness, Peter that's the way she reasons," 
 Biddy explained. " She does it for an idea ; she has told me 
 a great deal about it, and I see the way she feels." 
 
 " You try to, Biddy, because you are such a dear good- 
 natured girl, but I don't believe you do in the least. It's too 
 little the way you yourself would feel. Julia's idea, as you 
 call it, must be curious." 
 
 "Well, it is, Peter," Biddy mournfully admitted. "She 
 won't risk not coming out at the top." 
 
 "At the top of what?" 
 
 ^'Oh, of everything." Biddy's tone showed a trace of awe 
 of such high views. 
 
 "Surely one's at the top of everything when one's in love." 
 
 "I don't know," said the girl. 
 
 " Do you doubt it ? " Sherringham demanded. 
 
 " I've never been in love and I never shall be." 
 
 " You're as perverse in your way as Julia. But I confess 
 I don't understand Nick's attitude any better. He seems to 
 me, if I may say so, neither fish nor flesh." 
 
 " Oh, his attitude is very noble, Peter ; his state of mind is
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 291 
 
 wonderfully interesting," Biddy pleaded. " Surely you must 
 be in favour of art," she said. 
 
 Sherringham looked at her a moment. " Dear Biddy, your 
 little digs are as soft as zephyrs." 
 
 She coloured, but she protested. " My little digs ? What 
 do you mean 1 Are you not in favour of art ? " 
 
 "The question is delightfully simple. I don't know what 
 you're talking about. Everything has its place. A parlia- 
 mentary life scarcely seems to me the situation for portrait- 
 painting." 
 
 'That's just what Nick says." 
 
 ' You talk of it together a great deal? " 
 ' Yes, Nick's very good to me." 
 
 ' Clever Nick ! And what do you advise him ? " 
 
 ' Oh, to do something." 
 
 ' That's valuable," Peter laughed. " Not to give up his 
 sweetheart for the sake of a paint-pot, I hope 1 ? " 
 
 " Never, never, Peter ! It's not a question of his giving 
 up, for Julia has herself drawn back. I think she never really 
 felt safe ; she loved him, but she was afraid of him. Now 
 she's only afraid she has lost the confidence she tried to 
 have. Nick has tried to hold her, but she has jerked herself 
 away. Do you know what she said to me 1 She said : ' My 
 confidence has gone forever.' " 
 
 " I didn't know she was such a prig ! " Sherringham ex- 
 claimed. " They're queer people, verily, with water in their 
 veins instead of blood. You and I wouldn't be like that, 
 should we? though you have taken up such a discouraging 
 position about caring for a fellow." 
 
 " I care for art," poor Biddy returned. 
 
 " You do, to some purpose," said Peter, glancing at the bust. 
 
 " To that of making you laugh at me." 
 
 " Would you give a good man up for that ? " 
 
 " A good man ? What man ? " 
 
 "Well, say me if I wanted to marry you." 
 
 Biddy hesitated a little. " Of course I would, in a moment. 
 At any rate, I'd give up the House of Commons. That's what 
 Nick's going to do now only you mustn't tell any one." 
 
 Sherringham stared. " He's going to chuck up his seat 2 " 
 
 " I think his mind is made up to it. He has talked me 
 over we have had some deep discussions. Yes, I'm on the 
 side of art ! " said Biddy, ardently. 
 
 "Do you mean in order to paint to paint Miss RoothT' 
 Peter went on.
 
 292 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " To paint every one that's what he wants. By keeping 
 his seat he hasn't kept Julia, and she was the thing he cared 
 most for, in public life. When he has got out of the whole 
 thing his attitude, as he says, will be at least clear. He's 
 tremendously interesting about it, Peter ; he has talked to me 
 wonderfully ; he has won me over. Mamma's heart-broken ; 
 telling her will be the hardest part." 
 
 " If she doesn't know, why is she heart-broken ? " 
 
 " Oh, at the marriage not coming off she knows that. 
 That's what she wanted. She thought it perfection. She 
 blames Nick fearfully. She thinks he held the whole thing 
 in his hand and that he has thrown away a magnificent 
 opportunity." 
 
 " And what does Nick say to her ? " 
 
 " He says, ' Dear old mummy ! ' ' 
 
 " That's good," said Sherringham. 
 
 " I don't know what will become of her when this other 
 blow arrives," Biddy pursued. " Poor Nick wants to please 
 her he does, he does. But, as he says, you can't please 
 every one, and you must, before you die, please youfself a 
 little." 
 
 Peter Sherringham sat looking at the floor ; the colour had 
 risen to his face while he listened to the girl. Then he sprang 
 up and took another turn about the room. His companion's 
 artless but vivid recital had set his blood in motion. He had 
 taken Nick Dormer's political prospects very much for granted, 
 thought of them as definite and brilliant and seductive. To 
 learn there was something for which he was ready to renounce 
 such honours, and to recognize the nature of that bribe, 
 affected Sherringham powerfully and strangely. He felt as 
 if he had heard the sudden blare of a trumpet, and he felt at 
 the same time as if he had received a sudden slap in the face. 
 Nick's bribe was " art " the strange temptress with whom 
 he himself had been wrestling and over whom he had finally 
 ventured to believe that wisdom and training had won a 
 victory. There was something in the conduct of his old friend 
 and playfellow that made all his reasonings small. Nick's 
 unexpected choice acted on him as a reproach and a challenge. 
 He felt ashamed at having placed himself so unromantically 
 on his guard, rapidly saying to himself that if Nick could 
 afford to allow so much for "art" he might surely exhibit 
 some of the same confidence. There had never been the least 
 avowed competition between the cousins their lines lay too 
 far apart for that ; but nevertheless they rode in sight of each
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 293 
 
 other, and Sherringham had at present the sensation of suddenly 
 seeing Nick Dormer give his horse the spur, bound forward 
 and fly over a wall, He was put on his mettle and he had 
 not to look long to spy an obstacle that he too might ride at. 
 High rose his curiosity to see what warrant his kinsman 
 might have for such risks how he was mounted for such 
 exploits. He really knew little about Nick's talent so little 
 as to feel no right to exclaim " What an ass ! " when Biddy 
 gave him the news which only the existence of real talent 
 could redeem from absurdity. All his eagerness to ascertain 
 what Nick had been able to make of such a subject as 
 Miriam Rooth came back to him ; though it was what mainly 
 had brought him to Rosedale Road he had forgotten it in 
 the happy accident of his encounter with Biddy. He was 
 conscioxis that if the surprise of a revelation of power were 
 in store for him Nick would be justified more than he him- 
 self would feel reinstated in his self-respect. For the courage 
 of renouncing the forum for the studio hovered before him as 
 greater than the courage of marrying an actress whom one 
 was iiVlove with : the reward in the latter case was so much 
 more immediate. Peter asked Biddy what Nick had done 
 with his portrait of Miriam. He hadn't seen it anywhere in 
 rummaging about the room. 
 
 " I think it's here somewhere, but I don't know," Biddy 
 replied, getting up and looking vaguely round her. 
 
 " Haven't you seen it 1 Hasn't he shown it to you? " 
 
 The girl rested her eyes on him strangely a moment ; then 
 she turned them away from him with a mechanical air of seek- 
 ing for the picture. " I think it's in the room, put away with 
 its face to the wall." 
 
 "One of those dozen canvases with their backs to us?" 
 
 " One of those perhaps." 
 
 " Haven't you tried to see 1 " 
 
 " I haven't touched them," said Biddy, colouring. 
 
 " Hasn't Nick had it out to show you 1 ? " 
 
 " He says it's in too bad a state it isn't finished it 
 won't do." 
 
 " And haven't you had the curiosity to turn it round for 
 yourself 1 ? " 
 
 The embarrassed look in poor Biddy's face deepened, and it 
 seemed to Sherringham that her eyes pleaded with him a 
 moment, that there was a menace of tears in them, a gleam of 
 anguish. " I've had an idea he wouldn't like it." 
 
 Her visitor's own desire however had become too lively for
 
 294 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 easy forbearance. He laid his hand on two or three canvases 
 which proved, as he extricated them, to be either blank or 
 covered with rudimentary forms. " Dear Biddy, are you as 
 docile, as obliging as that 1 ? " he asked, pulling out something 
 else. 
 
 The inquiry was meant in familiar kindness, for Peter was 
 struck, even to admiration, with the girl's having a sense of 
 honour which all girls have not. She must in this particular 
 case have longed for a sight of Nick's work the work which 
 had brought about such a crisis in his life. But she had passed 
 hours in his studio alone, without permitting herself a stolen 
 peep ; she was capable of that if she believed it would please 
 him. Sherringham liked a charming girl's being capable of 
 that (he had known charming girls who would not have been), 
 and his question was really an expression of respect. Biddy, 
 however, apparently discovered some light mockery in it, and 
 she broke out incongruously : 
 
 " I haven't wanted so much to see it. I don't care for her 
 so much as that." 
 
 "So much as that? " 
 
 " I don't care for his actress for that vulgar creature. I 
 don't like her ! " said Biddy, unexpectedly. 
 
 Peter stared. " I thought you hadn't seen her." 
 
 " I saw her in Paris -twice. She was wonderfully clever, 
 but she didn't charm me." 
 
 Sherringham quickly considered, and then he said benevo- 
 lently : " I won't inflict the picture upon you then ; we'll 
 leave it alone for the present." Biddy made no reply to this 
 at first, but after a moment she went straight over to the row 
 of stacked canvases and exposed several of them to the light. 
 " Why did you say you wished to go to the theatre to-night ? " 
 her companion continued. 
 
 Still the girl was silent ; then she exclaimed, with her back 
 turned to him and a little tremor in her voice, while she drew 
 forth one of her brother's studies after the other : " For the 
 sake of your company, Peter ! Here it is, I think," she added, 
 moving a large canvas with some effort. "No, no, I'll hold it 
 for you. Is that the light ? " 
 
 She wouldn't let him take it ; she bade him stand off and 
 allow her to place it in the right position. In this position she 
 carefully presented it, supporting it, at the proper angle, from 
 behind and showing her head and shoulders above it. From the 
 moment his eyes rested on the picture Sherringham accepted 
 this service without protest. Unfinished, simplified and in
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 295 
 
 some portions merely suggested, it was strong, brilliant and 
 vivid and had already the look of life and the air of an original 
 thing. Sherringham was startled, he was strangely affected 
 he had no idea Nick moved with that stride. Miriam was 
 represented in three-quarters, seated, almost down to her feet. 
 She leaned forward, with one of her legs crossed over the other, 
 her arms extended and foreshortened, her hands locked together 
 round her knee. Her beautiful head was bent a little, brood- 
 ingly, and her splendid face seemed to look down at life. She 
 had a grand appearance of being raised aloft, with a wide 
 regard, from a height of intelligence, for the great field of the 
 artist, all the figures and passions he may represent. Peter 
 wondered where his kinsman had learned to paint like that. 
 He almost gasped at the composition of the thing, at the draw- 
 ing of the moulded arms. Biddy Dormer abstained from look- 
 ing round the corner of the canvas as she held it ; she only 
 watched, in Peter's eyes, for his impression of it. This she 
 easily caught, and he could see that she had done so when 
 after a few minutes he went to relieve her. She let him lift 
 the thing out of her grasp ; he moved it and rested it, so that 
 they could still see it, against the high back of a chair. " It's 
 tremendously good," he said. 
 
 " Dear, dear Nick," Biddy murmured, looking at it now. 
 " Poor, poor Julia ! " Sherringham was prompted to exclaim, 
 in a different tone. His companion made no rejoinder to this, 
 and they stood another minute or two side by side in silence, 
 gazing at the portrait. Then Sherringham took up his hat 
 he had no more time, he must go. " "Will you come to-night, 
 all the same ? " he asked, with a laugh that was somewhat 
 awkward, putting out his hand to Biddy. 
 "All the same?" 
 
 " Why, you say she's a terrible creature," Peter went on, 
 with his eyes on the painted face. 
 
 " Oh, anything for art ! " said Biddy, smiling. 
 ""Well, at seven o'clock then." And Sherringham went 
 away immediately, leaving the girl alone with the Tragic Muse 
 and feeling again, with a quickened rush, a sense of the beauty 
 of Miriam, as well as a new comprehension of the talent of 
 Nick.
 
 XXX. 
 
 IT was not till noon, or rather later, the next day, that 
 Sherringham saw Miriam Booth. He wrote her a note that 
 evening, to be delivered to her at the theatre, and during the 
 performance she sent round to him a card with " All right 
 come to luncheon to-morrow," scrawled upon it in pencil. 
 
 When he presented himself in Balaklava Place he learned 
 that the two ladies had not come in they had gone again, 
 early, to rehearsal ; but they had left word that he was to be 
 pleased to wait they would come in from one moment to the 
 other. It was further mentioned to him, as he was ushered 
 into the drawing-room, that Mr. Dashwood was on the ground. 
 This circumstance however Sherringham barely noted : he 
 had been soaring so high for the past twelve hours that he had 
 almost lost consciousness of the minor differences of earthly 
 things. He had taken Biddy Dormer and her friend Miss 
 Tressilian home from the play, and after leaving them he had 
 walked about the streets, he had roamed back to his sister's 
 house, in a state of exaltation intensified by the fact that all the 
 evening he had contained himself, thinking it more decorous 
 and considerate, less invidious not to "rave." Sitting there 
 in the shade of the box with his companions, he had watched 
 Miriam in attentive but inexpressive silence, glowing and 
 vibrating inwardly, but, for these fine, deep reasons, not com- 
 mitting himself to the spoken rapture. Delicacy, it appeared 
 to him, should rule the hour ; and indeed he had never had a 
 pleasure more delicate than this little period of still observation 
 and repressed ecstasy. Miriam's art lost nothing by it, and 
 Biddy's mild nearness only gained. This young lady was silent 
 also wonderingly dauntedly, as if she too were conscious in 
 relation to the actress of varicms other things beside her 
 mastery of her art. To this mastery Biddy's attitude was a 
 candid and liberal tribute : the poor girl sat quenched and 
 pale, as if in the blinding light of a comparison by which it 
 would be presumptuous even to be annihilated. Her subjection 
 however was a gratified, a charmed subjection : there was a 
 beneficence in such beauty the beauty of the figure that 
 moved before the footlights and spoke in music even if it 
 deprived one of hope. Peter didn't say to her, in vulgar 
 elation and in reference to her whimsical profession of dislike
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 297 
 
 at the studio : " Well, do you find this performer so disagree- 
 able now 1 ?" and she was grateful to him for his forbearance, 
 for the tacit kindness of which the idea seemed to be : " My 
 poor child, I would prefer you if I could; but judge for your- 
 self how can I ? Expect of me only the possible. Expect 
 that certainly, but only that." In the same degree Peter 
 liked Biddy's sweet, hushed air of judging for herself, of recog- 
 nizing his discretion and letting him off, while she was lost in 
 the illusion, in the convincing picture of the stage. Miss 
 Tressilian did most of the criticism : she broke out cheerfully 
 and sonorously from time to time, in reference to the actress : 
 " Most striking, certainly," or, " She is clever, isn't she ? " It 
 was a manner to which her companions found it impossible to 
 respond. Miss Tressilian was disappointed in nothing but 
 their enjoyment : they didn't seem to think the exhibition as 
 amusing as she. 
 
 Walking away through the ordered void of Lady Agnes's 
 quarter, with the four acts of the play glowing again before 
 him in the smokeless London night, Sherringham found the 
 liveliest thing in his impression the certitude that if he had 
 never seen Miriam before and she had had for him none of 
 the advantages of association, he would still have recognized 
 in her performance the most interesting thing that the theatre 
 had ever offered him. He floated in. a sense of the felicity of 
 it, in the general encouragement of a thing perfectly done, in 
 the almost aggressive bravery of still larger claims for an art 
 which could so triumphantly, so exquisitely render life. 
 "Render it?" Peter said to himself. " Create it and reveal 
 it, rather ; give us something new and large and of the first 
 order!" He had seen Miriam now; he had never seen her 
 before ; he had never seen her till he saw her in her conditions. 
 Oh, her conditions there were many things to be said about 
 them ; they were paltry enough as yet, inferior, inadequate, 
 obstructive, as compared with the right, full, finished setting 
 of such a talent ; but the essence of them was now irre- 
 movably in Sherringham' s eye, the vision of how the uplifted 
 stage and the listening house transformed her. That idea of 
 her having no character of her own came back to him with a 
 force that made him laugh in the empty street : this was a 
 disadvantage she was so exempt from that he appeared to 
 himself not to have known her till to-night. Her character 
 was simply to hold you by the particular spell ; any other 
 the good-nature of home, the relation to her mother, 
 her friends, her lovers, her debts, the practice of virtues or
 
 2&8 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 industries or vices was not worth speaking of. These things 
 were the fictions and shadows ; the representation was the 
 deep substance. 
 
 Sherriiigham had, as he went, an intense vision (he had 
 often had it before) of the conditions which were still absent, 
 the great and complete ones, those which would give the girl's 
 talent a superior, glorious stage. More than ever he desired 
 them, mentally invoked them, filled them out in imagination, 
 cheated himself with the idea that they were possible. He 
 saw them in a momentary illusion and confusion : a great 
 academic, artistic theatre, subsidized and unburdened with 
 money-getting, rich in its repertory, rich in the high quality 
 and the wide array of its servants, and above all in the 
 authority of an impossible administrator a manager person- 
 ally disinterested, not an actor with an eye to the main 
 chance, pouring forth a continuity of tradition, striving for 
 perfection, laying a splendid literature under contribution. 
 He saw the heroine of a hundred "situations," variously 
 dramatic and vividly real; he saw comedy and drama and 
 passion and character and English life ; he saw all humanity 
 and history and poetry, and perpetually, in the midst of them, 
 shining out in the high relief of some great moment, an image 
 as fresh as an unveiled statue. He was not unconscious that 
 he was taking all sorts of impossibilities and miracles for 
 granted ; but it really seemed to him for the time that the 
 woman he had been watching three hours, the incarnation of 
 the serious drama, would be a new and vivifying force. The 
 world was just then so bright to him that Basil Dash wood 
 struck him at first as an harmonious minister of that force. 
 
 It must be added that before Miriam arrived the breeze that 
 filled Sherringharn's sail began to sink a little. He passed out 
 of the eminently "let" draAving-room, where twenty large 
 photographs of the young actress bloomed in the desert ; he 
 went into the garden by a glass-door that stood open, and 
 found Mr. Dashwood reclining on a bench and smoking 
 cigarettes. This young man's conversation was a different 
 music it took him down, as he felt ; showed him, very 
 sensibly and intelligibly, it must be confessed, the actual 
 theatre, the one they were all concerned with, the one they 
 would have to make the miserable best of. It was fortunate 
 for Sherringham that he kept his intoxication mainly to 
 himself : the Englishman's habit of not being effusive still 
 prevailed with him, even after his years of exposure to the 
 foreign infection. Nothing could have been less exclamatory
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 299 
 
 than the meeting of the two men, with its question or two, 
 its remark or two about Sherringham's arrival in London ; 
 its offhand " I noticed you last night I was glad you turned 
 up at last," on one side, and its attenuated " Oh, yes, it was 
 the first time I was very much interested," on the other. 
 Basil Dashwood played a part in " Yolande," and Sherringham 
 had had the satisfaction of taking the measure of his aptitude. 
 He judged it to be of the small order, as indeed the part, 
 which was neither that of the virtuous nor that of the 
 villainous hero, restricted him to two or three inconspicuous 
 effects and three or four changes of dress. He represented 
 an ardent but respectful yoxing lover whom the distracted 
 heroine found time to pity a little and even to rail at ; but it 
 was impressed upon Sherringham that he scarcely represented 
 young love. He looked very well, but Peter had heard him 
 already in a hundred contemporary pieces ; he never got out 
 of rehearsal. He uttered sentiments and breathed vows with 
 a nice voice, with a shy, boyish tremor in it, but as if he 
 were afraid of being chaffed for it afterwards ; giving the 
 spectator in the stalls the feeling of holding the prompt-book 
 and listening to a recitation. He made one think of country- 
 houses and lawn-tennis and private theatricals ; than which 
 there could not be, to Sherringham's sense, an association more 
 disconnected with the actor's art. 
 
 Dashwood knew all about the new thing, the piece in 
 rehearsal ; he knew all about everything receipts and salaries 
 and expenses and newspaper articles, and what old Baskerville 
 said and what Mrs. Runier thought : matters of superficial 
 concern to Sherringham, who wondered, before Miriam ap- 
 peared, whether she talked with her "walking-gentleman" 
 about them by the hour, deep in them and finding them not 
 vulgar and boring, but the natural air of her life and the 
 essence of her profession. Of course she did she naturally 
 would ; it was all in the day's work and he might feel sure 
 she wouldn't turn up her nose at the shop. He had to remind 
 himself that he didn't care if she didn't that he would think 
 worse of her if she should. She certainly had much con- 
 fabulation with her competent playfellow, talking shop by the 
 hour : Sherringham could see that from the familiar, customary 
 way Dashwood sat there with his cigarette, as if he were in 
 possession and on his own ground. He divined a great in- 
 timacy between the two young artists, but asked himself at 
 the same time what he, Peter Sherringham, had to say about 
 it. He didn't pretend to control Miriam's intimacies, it was
 
 300 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 to be supposed ; and if he had encouraged her to adopt a 
 profession which abounded in opportunities for comradeship 
 it was not for him to cry out because she had taken to it 
 kindly. He had already descried a fund of utility in Mrs. 
 Lovick's light brother ; but it irritated him all the same, 
 after a while, to hear Basil Dashwood represent himself as 
 almost indispensable. He was practical there was no doubt 
 of that ; and this idea added to Sherringham's paradoxical 
 sense that as regards the matters actually in question he 
 himself had not this virtue. Dashwood had got Mrs. Booth 
 the house ; it happened by a lucky chance that Laura Lumley, 
 to whom it belonged (Sherringham would know Laura Lumley?) 
 wanted to get rid, for a mere song, of the remainder of a leass. 
 She was going to Australia with a troupe of her own. They 
 just stepped into it ; it was good air the best sort of air to 
 live in, to sleep in, in London, for people in their line. 
 Sherringham wondered what Miriam's personal relations with 
 this deucedly knowing gentleman might be, and was again 
 able to assure himself that they might be anything in the 
 world she liked, for any stake he, Peter, had in them. 
 Dashwood told him of all the smart people who had tried to 
 take up the new star the way the London world had already 
 held out its hand ; and perhaps it was Sherringham's irritation, 
 the crushed sentiment I just mentioned, that gave a little 
 heave in the exclamation : " Oh, that that's all rubbish ; the 
 less of that the better ! " At this Basil Dashwood stared ; he 
 evidently felt snubbed ; he had expected his interlocutor to be 
 pleased with the names of the eager ladies who had " called " 
 which proved to Sherringham that he took a low view of 
 his art. The secretary of embassy explained, it is to be hoped 
 not pedantically, that this art was serious work and that 
 society was humbug and imbecility ; also that of old the great 
 comedians wouldn't have known such people. Garrick had 
 essentially his own circle. 
 
 " No, I suppose they didn't call, in the old narrow-minded 
 time," said Basil Dashwood. 
 
 "Your profession didn't call. They had better company 
 that of the romantic, gallant characters they represented. 
 They lived with them, and it was better all round." And 
 Peter asked himself for the young man looked as if that 
 struck him as a dreary period if he only, for Miriam, in her 
 new life, or among the futilities of those who tried to find 
 her accessible, expressed the artistic idea. This at least, 
 Sherringham reflected, was a situation that could be improved.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 301 
 
 He learned from Dashwood that the new play, the thing 
 they were rehearsing, was an old play, a romantic drama of 
 thirty years before, covered, from infinite queer handling, 
 with a sort of dirty glaze. Dashwood had a part in it, but 
 there was an act in which he didn't appear, and that was the 
 act they were doing that morning. " Yolande " had done all 
 " Yolande " could do : Sherringham. was mistaken if he 
 supposed " Yolande " was such a tremendous hit. It had 
 done vei'y well, it had run three months, but they were by no 
 means coining money Avith it. It wouldn't take them to the 
 end of the season ; they had seen for a month past that they 
 would have to put on something else. Miss Booth moreover 
 wanted a new part ; she was impatient to show what a range 
 she was capable of. She had grand ideas ; she thought herself 
 very good-natured to repeat the same thing for three months. 
 Basil Dashwood lighted another cigarette and described to his 
 companion some of Miss Booth's ideas. He gave Sherringham 
 a great deal of information about her about her character, 
 her temper, her peculiarities, her little ways, her manner of 
 producing some of her effects. He spoke with familiarity and 
 confidence, as if he knew more about her than any one else 
 as if he had invented or discovered her, were in a sense her 
 proprietor or guarantor. It was the talk of the shop, with a 
 perceptible shrewdness in it and a touching young candour ; 
 the expansiveness of the commercial spirit when it relaxes 
 and generalizes, is conscious it is safe with another member 
 of the guild. 
 
 Sherringham could not help protesting against the lame old 
 war-horse whom it was proposed to bring into action, who had 
 been ridden to death and had saved a thousand desperate 
 fields ; and he exclaimed on the strange passion of the good 
 British public for sitting again and again through expected 
 situations, watching for speeches they had heard and surprises 
 that struck the hour. Dashwood defended the taste of London, 
 praised it as loyal, constant, faithful ; to which Sherringham 
 retorted with some vivacity that it was faithful to rubbish. 
 He justified this sally by declaring that the play in rehearsal 
 was rubbish, clumsy mediocrity which had outlived its con- 
 venience, and that the fault was the want of life in the critical 
 sense of the public, which was ignobly docile, opening its 
 mouth for its dose, like the pupils of Dotheboys Hall; not 
 insisting on something different, on a fresh preparation. 
 Dashwood asked him if he then wished Miss Rooth to go on 
 playing for ever a part she had repeated more than eighty
 
 302 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 nights on end : he thought the modern "run" was just what 
 he had heard him denounce, in Paris, as the disease the 
 theatre was dying of. This imputation Sherringham gain- 
 said ; he wanted to know if she couldn't change to something 
 less stale than the piece in question. Dashwood opined that 
 Miss Rooth must have a strong part and that there happened 
 to be one for her in the before-mentioned venerable novelty. 
 She had to take what she could get ; she wasn't a girl to cry 
 for the moon. This was a stop-gap she would try other things 
 later ; she would have to look round her : you couldn't have a 
 new piece 'left at your door every day with the milk. On one 
 point Sherringham's mind might be at rest : Miss Rooth was 
 a woman who would do every blessed thing there was to do. 
 Give her time and she would walk straight through the 
 repertory. She was a woman who would do this she was a 
 woman who would do that : Basil Dashwood employed this 
 phrase so often that Sherringham, nervous, got up and threw 
 an unsmoked cigarette away. Of course she was a woman : 
 there was no need of Dashwood's saying it a hundred times ! 
 
 As for the repertory, the young man went on, the most 
 beautiful girl in the world could give but what she had. He 
 explained, after Sherringham sat down again, that the noise 
 made by Miss Rooth was not exactly what this admirer 
 appeared to suppose. Sherringham had seen the house the 
 night before; would recognize that, though good, it was very 
 far from great. She had done very well, very well indeed, 
 but she had never gone above a point which ."Dashwood 
 expressed in pounds sterling, to the edification of his com- 
 panion, who vaguely thought the figure high. Sherringham 
 remembered that he had been unable to get a stall, but 
 Dashwood insisted that the girl had not leaped into command- 
 ing fame : that was a thing that never happened in fact it 
 happened only in pretentious works of fiction. She had 
 attracted notice, unusual notice for a woman whose name the 
 day before had never been heard of : she was recognized as 
 having, for a novice, extraordinary cleverness and confidence 
 in addition to her looks of course, which were the thing that 
 had really fetched the crowd. But she hadn't been the talk 
 of London ; she had only been the talk of Gabriel Nash. He 
 wasn't London, more was the pity. He knew the aesthetic 
 people the worldly, semi-smart ones, not the frumpy, sickly 
 lot who wore dirty drapery ; and the aesthetic people had run 
 after her. Basil Dashwood instructed Sherringham sketchily 
 as to the different sects in the great religion of beauty, and
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 303 
 
 was able to give him the particular " note " of the critical 
 clique to which Miriam had begun so quickly to owe it that 
 she had a vogue. The information made the secretary of 
 embassy feel very ignorant of the world, very uninitiated and 
 buried in his little professional hole. Dashwood warned him 
 that it would be a long time before the general public would 
 wake up to Miss Booth, even after she had waked up to 
 herself : she would have to do some really big thing first. 
 They knew it was in her, the big thing Sherringham and he, 
 and even poor Nash because they had seen her as no one 
 else had ; but London never took any one on trust it had to 
 be cash down. It would take their young lady two or three 
 years to pay out her cash and get her equivalent. But of 
 course the equivalent would be simply a gold-mine. Within 
 its limits however, her success was already quite a fairy-tale : 
 there was magic in the way she had concealed, from the 
 first, her want of experience. She absolutely made you think 
 she had a lot of it, more than any one else. Mr. Dashwood 
 repeated several times that she was a cool hand a deucedly 
 cool hand ; and that he watched her himself, saw ideas come 
 to her, saw her try different dodges on different nights. She 
 was always alive she liked it herself. She gave him ideas, 
 long as he had been on the stage. Naturally she had a great 
 deal to learn a tremendous lot to learn : a cosmopolite like 
 Sherringham would understand that a girl of that age, who 
 had never had a friend but her mother her mother was 
 greater fun than ever now naturally ivould have. Sherring- 
 ham winced at being called a " cosmopolite " by his young 
 companion, just as he had winced a moment before at hearing 
 himself lumped, in esoteric knowledge, with Dashwood and 
 Gabriel Nash; but the former of these gentlemen took no 
 account of his sensibility while he enumerated a few of the 
 things that the young actress had to learn. Dashwood was 
 a mixture of acuteness and innocent fatuity ; and Sherringham 
 had to recognize that he had some of the elements of criticism 
 in him when he said that the wonderful thing in the girl was 
 that she learned so fast learned something every night, 
 learned from the same old piece a lot more than any one else 
 would have learned from twenty. " That's what it is to be 
 a genius," Sherringham remarked. " Genius is only the art 
 of getting your experience fast, of stealing it, as it were ; and 
 in this sense Miss Booth's a regular brigand." Dashwood 
 assented good-humouredly ; then he added, " Oh, she'll do ! " 
 It was exactly in these simple words, in speaking to her, that
 
 304 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 Sherringham had phrased the same truth; yet he didn't 
 enjoy hearing them on his neighbour's lips : they had a pro- 
 fane, patronizing sound, suggestive of displeasing equalities. 
 
 The two men sat in silence for some minutes, watching a 
 fat robin hop about on the little seedy lawn ; at the end of 
 which they heard a vehicle stop on the other side of the 
 garden -wall and the voices of people descending from it. 
 " Here they come, the dear creatures," said Basil Dashwood, 
 without moving ; and from where they sat Sherringham saw 
 the small door in the wall pushed open. The dear creatures 
 were three in number, for a gentleman had added himself to 
 Mrs. Booth and her daughter. As soon as Miriam's eyes 
 fell upon her Parisian friend she stopped short, in a large, 
 droll theatrical attitude, and, seizing her mother's arm, 
 exclaimed passionately : " Look where he sits, the author of 
 all my woes cold, cynical, cruel ! " She was evidently in 
 the highest spirits ; of which Mrs. Booth partook as she 
 cried indulgently, giving her a slap : "Oh, get along, you 
 gipsy ! " 
 
 "She's always up to something," Basil Dashwood com- 
 mented, as Miriam, radiant and with a conscious stage tread, 
 glided towards Sherringham as if she were coming to the 
 footlights. He rose slowly from his seat, looking at her and 
 struck with her beauty ; he had been impatient to see her, yet 
 in the act his impatience had had a disconcerting check. 
 
 Sherringham had had time to perceive that the man who 
 had come in with her was Gabriel Nash, and this recognition 
 brought a low sigh to his lips as he held out his hand to her 
 a sigh expressive of the sudden sense that his interest in 
 her now could only be a gross community. Of course that 
 didn't matter, since he had set it, at the most, such rigid 
 limits ; but none the less he stood vividly reminded that it 
 would be public and notorious, that inferior people would be 
 inveterately mixed up with it, that she had crossed the line 
 and sold herself to the vulgar, making him indeed only one 
 of an equalized multitude. The way Gabriel Nash turned up 
 there just when he didn't want to see him made Peter feel 
 that it was a complicated thing to have a friendship with an 
 actress so clearly destined to be famous. He quite forgot 
 that Nash had known Miriam long before his own introduction 
 to her and had been present at their first meeting, which he 
 had in fact in a measure brought about. Had Sherringham 
 not been so cut out to make trouble of this particular joy he 
 might have found some adequate assurance that she distin-
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 305 
 
 guished him in the way in which, taking his hand in both of 
 hers, she looked up at him and murmured, " Dear old master ! " 
 Then, as if this were not acknowledgment enough, she raised 
 her head still higher and, whimsically, gratefully, charmingly, 
 almost nobly, she kissed him on the lips, before the other 
 men, before the good mother whose " Oh, you honest creature ! " 
 made everything regular. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 IF Peter Sherringham was ruffled by some of Miriam's cir- 
 cumstances there was comfort and consolation to be drawn 
 from others, beside the essential fascination (there was no 
 doubt about that now) of the young lady's own society. He 
 spent the afternoon, they all spent the afternoon, and the 
 occasion reminded him of a scene in " Wilhelm Meister." 
 Mrs. Rooth had little resemblance to Mignon, but Miriam 
 was remarkably like Philiiia. Luncheon was delayed two or 
 three hours ; but the long wait was a positive source of gaiety, 
 for they all smoked cigarettes in the garden and Miriam gave 
 striking illustrations of the parts she was studying. Sherring- 
 ham was in the state of a man whose toothache has suddenly 
 stopped he was exhilarated by the cessation of pain. The 
 pain had been the effort to remain in Paris after Miriam came 
 to London, and the balm of seeing her now was the measure 
 of the previous soreness. 
 
 Gabriel Nash had, as usual, plenty to say, and he talked of 
 Nick Dormer's picture so long that Sherringham wondered 
 whether he did it on purpose to vex him. They went in and 
 out of the house ; they made excursions to see how lunch was 
 coming on ; and Sherringham got half an hour alone, or vir- 
 tually alone, with the object of his unsanctioned passion- 
 drawing her publicly away from the others and making her 
 sit with him in the most sequestered part of the little gravelled 
 grounds. There was summer enough in the trees to shut out 
 the adjacent villas, and Basil Dashwood and Gabriel Nash 
 lounged together at a convenient distance, while Nick's 
 whimsical friend tried experiments upon the histrionic mind. 
 Miriam confessed that, like all comedians, they ate at queer 
 hours ; she sent Dashwood in for biscuits and sherry she 
 proposed sending him round to the grocer's in the Circus Road 
 for superior wine. Sherriugharn judged him to be the factotum 
 
 x
 
 306 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 of the little household : he knew where the biscuits were kept 
 and the state of the grocer's account. When Peter congratu- 
 lated the young actress on having so useful an associate she 
 said genially, but as if the words disposed of him : " Oh, he's 
 awfully handy ! " To this she added : " You're not, you know ;" 
 resting the kindest, most pitying eyes on him. The sensation 
 they gave him was as sweet as if she had stroked his cheek, 
 and her manner was responsive even to tenderness. She 
 called him " Dear master " again, and sometimes " Cher 
 maitre," and appeared to express gratitude and reverence by 
 every intonation. 
 
 "You're doing the humble dependent now," he said : "you 
 do it beautifully, as you do everything." She replied that she 
 didn't make it humble enough she couldn't ; she was too 
 proud, too insolent in her triumph. She liked that, the 
 triumph, too much, and she didn't mind telling him that she 
 was perfectly happy. Of course as yet the triumph was very 
 limited ; but success was success, whatever its quantity ; the 
 dish was a small one, but it had the right taste. Her imagina- 
 tion had already bounded beyond the first phase, unexpectedly 
 brilliant as this had been : her position struck her as modest 
 compared with a future that was now vivid to her. Sherring- 
 ham had never seen her so soft and sympathetic ; she had 
 insisted, in Paris, that her personal character was that of the 
 good girl (she used the term in a fine loose way), and it was 
 impossible to be a better girl than she showed herself this 
 pleasant afternoon. She was full of gossip and anecdote and 
 drollery ; she had exactly the air that he would have liked her 
 to have that of thinking of no end of things to tell him. It 
 was as if she had just returned from a long journey, had had 
 strange adventures and made wonderful discoveries. She 
 began to speak of this and that, and broke off to speak of 
 something else ; she talked of the theatre, of the newspapers 
 and then of London, of the people she had met and the extra- 
 ordinary things they said to her, of the parts she was going 
 to take up, of lots of new ideas that had come to her about 
 the art of comedy. She wanted to do comedy now to do the 
 comedy of London life. She was delighted to find that seeing 
 more of the world suggested things to her ; they came straight 
 from the fact, from nature, if you could call it nature : so that 
 she was convinced more than ever that the artist ought to 
 live, to get on with his business, gather ideas, lights from 
 experience ought to welcome any experience that would give 
 him lights. But work, of course, was experience, and every-
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 307 
 
 thing in one's life that was good was work. That was the 
 jolly thing in the actor's trade it made up for other elements 
 that were odious : if you only kept your eyes open nothing 
 could happen to you that wouldn't be food for observation 
 and grist to your mill, showing you how people looked and 
 moved and spoke cried and grimaced, or writhed and dis- 
 simulated, in given situations. She saw all round her things 
 she wanted to "do" London was full of them, if you had 
 eyes to see. Miriam demanded imperiously why people didn't 
 take them up, put them into plays and parts, give one a chance 
 with them : she expressed her sharp impatience of the general 
 literary stupidity. She had never been chary of this particular 
 displeasure, and there were moments (it was an old story and 
 a subject of frank raillery to Sherringham) when to hear her 
 you might have thought there was no cleverness anywhere but 
 in her disdainful mind. She wanted tremendous things done, 
 that she might use them, but she didn't pretend to say exactly 
 Avhat they were to be, nor even approximately how they were 
 to be handled : her ground was rather that if site only had a 
 pen it was exasperating to have to explain ! She mainly 
 contented herself with declaring that nothing had really been 
 touched : she felt that more and more as she saw more of 
 people's goings-on. 
 
 Sherringham went to her theatre again that evening and he 
 made no scruple of going every night for a week. Rather, 
 perhaps I should say, he made a scruple ; but it was a part of 
 the pleasure of his life during these arbitrary days to overcome 
 it. The only way to prove to himself that he could overcome 
 it was to go ; and he was satisfied, after he had been seven 
 times, not only with the spectacle on the stage but with his 
 own powers of demonstration. There was no satiety however 
 with the spectacle on the stage, inasmuch as that only pro- 
 duced a further curiosity. Miriam's performance was a living 
 thing, with a power to change, to grow, to develop, to beget 
 new forms of the same life. Peter Sherringham contributed to 
 it in his amateurish way, watching with solicitude the fate 
 of his contributions. He talked it over in Balaklava Place, 
 suggested modifications, variations worth trying. Miriam 
 professed herself thankful for any refreshment that could be ad- 
 ministered to her interest in " Yolande," and, with an effective- 
 ness that showed large resource, touched up her part and drew 
 several new airs from it. Sherringham's suggestions bore 
 upon her way of uttering certain speeches, the intonations 
 that would have more beauty or make the words mean more.
 
 308 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 Miriam had her ideas, or rather she had her instincts, which 
 she defended and illustrated, with a vividness superior to 
 argument, by a happy pictorial phrase or a snatch of mimicry ; 
 but she was always for trying ; she liked experiments and 
 caught at them, and she was especially thankful when some 
 one gave her a showy reason, a plausible formula, in a case 
 where she only stood upon an intuition. She pretended to 
 despise reasons and to like and dislike at her sovereign 
 pleasure ; but she always honoured the exotic gift, so that 
 Sherringham was amused with the liberal way she produced 
 it, as if she had been a naked islander rejoicing in a present 
 of crimson cloth. 
 
 Day after day he spent most of his time in her society, and 
 Miss Laura Lumley's recent habitation -became the place in 
 London to which his thoughts were most attached. He was 
 highly conscious that he was not now carrying out that prin- 
 ciple of abstention which he had brought to such maturity 
 before leaving Paris ; but he contented himself with a much 
 cruder justification of this inconsequence than he would have 
 thought adequate in advance. It consisted simply in the idea 
 that to be identified with the first public steps of a young 
 genius was a delightful experience. What was the harm of 
 it, if the genius were real 1 Sherringham's main security was 
 now that his relations with Miriam had been frankly placed 
 under the protection of the idea of legitimate extravagance. 
 In this department they made a very creditable figure and 
 required much less watching and pruning than when it was 
 his effort to fit them into a worldly plan. Sherringham had a 
 sense of real wisdom Avhen he said to himself that it surely 
 should be enough that this momentary intellectual participa- 
 tion in the girl's dawning fame was a charming thing. Charm- 
 ing things, in a busy man's life, were not frequent enough to 
 be kicked out of the way. Balaklava Place, looked at in this 
 philosophic way, became almost idyllic : it gave Peter the 
 pleasantest impression he had ever had of London. 
 
 The season happened to be remarkably fine ; the temperature 
 was high, but not so high as to keep people from the theatre. 
 Miriam's " business " visibly increased, so that the question of 
 putting on the second play underwent some reconsideration. 
 The girl insisted, showing in her insistence a temper of which 
 Sherringham had already caught some splendid gleams. It 
 was very evident that through her career it would be her 
 expectation to carry things with a high hand. Her managers 
 and agents would not find her an easy victim or a calculable
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 309 
 
 force : but the public would adore her, surround her with the 
 popularity that attaches to a humorous, good-natured princess, 
 and her comrades would have a kindness for her because she 
 wouldn't be selfish. They too would form in a manner a 
 portion of her affectionate public. This Avas the way Sherring- 
 ham read the signs, liking her whimsical tolerance of some of 
 her vulgar playfellows almost well enough to forgive their 
 presence in Balaklava Place, where they were a sore trial to 
 her mother, who wanted her to multiply her points of contact 
 only with the higher orders. There were hours when Sherring- 
 ham thought he foresaw that her principal relation to the 
 proper world would be to have, within two or three years, a 
 grand battle with it, making it take her, if she let it have her 
 at all, absolutely on her own terms : a picture which led our 
 young man to ask himself, with a helplessness that was not 
 exempt, as he perfectly knew, from absurdity, what part he 
 should find himself playing in such a contest and if it would 
 be reserved to him to be the more ridiculous as a peacemaker 
 or as a heavy auxiliary. 
 
 " She might know any one she would, and the only person 
 she appears to take any pleasure in is that dreadful Miss 
 Rover," Mrs. Rooth whimpered, more than once, to Sherring- 
 ham, who recognized in the young lady so designated the 
 principal complication of Balaklava Place. 
 
 Miss Rover was a little actress who played at Miriam's 
 theatre, combining with an unusual aptitude for delicate 
 comedy a less exceptional absence of rigour in private life. 
 She was pretty and quick and clever, and had a fineness that 
 Miriam professed herself already in a position to estimate as 
 rare. She had no control of her inclinations ; yet sometimes 
 they were wholly laudable, like the devotion she had formed 
 for her beautiful colleague, whom she admired not only as an 
 ornament of the profession but as a being of a more fortunate 
 essence. She had had an idea that real ladies were " nasty " ; 
 but Miriam was not nasty, and who could gainsay that Miriam 
 was a real lady 1 ? The girl justified herself to Sherringham, 
 who had found no fault with her ; she knew how much her 
 mother feared that the proper world wouldn't come in if they 
 knew that the improper, in the person of pretty Miss Rover, 
 was on the ground. What did she care who came and who 
 didn't, and what was to be gained by receiving half the snobs 
 in London 1 People would have to take her exactly as they 
 found her that they would have to learn ; and they would be 
 much mistaken if they thought her capable of becoming S,
 
 310 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 snob too for the sake of their sweet company. She didn't 
 pretend to be anything but what she meant to be, the best 
 general actress of her time ; and what had that to do with her 
 seeing or not seeing a poor ignorant girl who had lov "Well, 
 she needn't say what Fanny had. She had met her in the way 
 of business she didn't say she would have run after her. She 
 had liked her because she wasn't a stick, and when Fanny 
 Rover had asked her quite wistfully if she mightn't come and 
 see her, she hadn't bristled with scandalized virtue. Miss 
 Rover was not a bit more stupid or more ill-natured than any 
 one else : it would be time enough to shut the door when she 
 should become so. 
 
 Sherringham commended even to extravagance the liberality 
 of such comradeship ; said that of course a woman didn't go 
 into that profession to see how little she could swallow. She 
 was right to live with the others so long as they were at all 
 possible,. and it was for her, and only for her, to judge how 
 long that might be. This was rather heroic on Peter's part, 
 for his assumed detachment from the girl's personal life still 
 left him a margin, for some forms of uneasiness. It would 
 have made, in his spirit, a great difference for the worse that 
 the woman he loved, and for whom he wished no baser lover 
 than himself, should have embraced the prospect of consorting 
 only with the cheaper kind. It was all very well, but Fanny 
 Rover was simply a cabotine, and that sort of association was 
 an odd training for a young woman who was to have been 
 good enough (he couldn't forget that he kept remembering 
 it as if it might still have a future vise) to be his wife. 
 Certainly he ought to have thought of such things before he 
 permitted himself to become so interested in a theatrical 
 nature. His heroism did him service however for the hour : 
 it helped him by the end of the week to feel tremendously 
 broken in to Miriam's little circle. What helped him most 
 indeed was to reflect that she would get tired of a good many 
 of its members herself in time ; for it was not that they were 
 shocking (very few of them shone with that intense light), but 
 that they could be trusted in the long run to bore you. 
 
 There was a lovely Sunday in particular that he spent 
 almost wholly in Balaklava Place he arrived so early 
 when, in the afternoon, all sorts of odd people dropped in. 
 Miriam held a reception in the little garden and insisted on 
 almost all the company's staying to supper. Her mother shed 
 tears to Sherringham, in the desecrated house, because they 
 had accepted, Miriam and she, an invitation and in Crom-
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 311 
 
 well Road too for the evening. Miriam decreed that they 
 shouldn't go : they would have much better fun with their 
 good friends at home. She sent off a message it was a 
 terrible distance by a cabman, and Sherringham had the 
 privilege of paying the messenger. Basil Dashwood, in 
 another vehicle, proceeded to an hotel that he knew, a mile 
 away, for supplementary provisions, and came back with a 
 cold ham and a dozen of champagne. It was all very Bohe- 
 mian and journalistic and picturesque, very supposedly droll 
 and enviable to outsiders ; and Miriam told anecdotes and 
 gave imitations of the people she would have met if she had 
 gone out : so no one had a sense of loss the two occasions 
 were fantastically united . Mrs. Rooth drank champagne for 
 consolation ; though the consolation was imperfect when she 
 remembered that she might have drunk it (not quite so much 
 indeed) in Cromwell Road. 
 
 Taken in connection with the evening before, the day 
 formed for Sherringham the most complete exhibition he had 
 had of Miriam Rooth. He had been at the theatre, to which 
 the Saturday night happened to have brought the fullest house 
 she had yet played to, and he came early to Balaklava Place, 
 to tell her once again (he had told her half a dozen times the 
 evening before) that, with the excitement of her biggest 
 audience, she had surpassed herself, acted with remarkable 
 intensity. It pleased her to hear it, and the spirit with which 
 she interpreted the signs of the future and, during an hour he 
 spent alone with her, Mrs. Rooth being tip-stairs and Basil 
 Dashwood not arrived, treated him to specimens of fictive 
 emotion of various kinds, was beyond any natural abundance 
 that he had yet seen in a woman. The impression could 
 scarcely have been other if she had been playing wild snatches 
 to him at the piano : the bright, up-darting flame of her talk 
 rose and fell like an improvisation on the keys. Later, all the 
 rest of the day, he was fascinated by the good grace with 
 which she fraternized with her visitors, finding the right 
 words for each, the solvent of incongruities, the right ideas to 
 keep vanity quiet and make humility gay. It was a wonderful 
 expenditure of generous, nervous life. But what Sherringham 
 read in it above all was the sense of success in youth, with the 
 future large, and the action of that force upon all the faculties. 
 Miriam's limited past had yet pinched her enough to make 
 emancipation sweet, and the emancipation had come at last in 
 an hour. She had stepped into her magic shoes, divined and 
 appropriated everything they could give her, become in a day
 
 312 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 a really original contemporary. Sherringham was of course 
 not less conscious of that than Nick Dormer had been when, 
 in the cold light of his studio, he saw how she had altered. 
 
 But the great thing, to his mind and, these first days, the 
 irresistible seduction of the theatre, was that she was a rare 
 incarnation of beauty. Beauty was the principle of every- 
 thing she did and of the way, unerringly, she did it an 
 exquisite harmony of line and motion and attitude and tone, 
 what was most general and most characteristic in her per- 
 formance. Accidents and instincts played together to this 
 end and constituted something which was independent of her 
 talent or of her merit, in a given case, and which in its 
 influence, to Sherringham's imagination, was far superior to 
 any merit and to any talent. It was a supreme infallible 
 felicity, a source of importance, a stamp of absolute value. To 
 see it in operation, to sit within its radius and feel it shift and 
 revolve and change and never fail, was a corrective to the 
 depression, the humiliation, the bewilderment of life. It 
 transported Sherringham from the vulgar hour and the ugly 
 fact ; drew him to something which had no reason but its 
 sweetness, no name nor place save as the pure, the distant, the 
 antique. It was what most made him say to himself : " Oh, 
 hang it, what does it matter?" when he reflected that an 
 homme serieux (as they said in Paris) rather gave himself 
 away (as they said in America) by going every night to the 
 same theatre for all the world to stare. It was what kept 
 him from doing anything but hover round Miriam kept him 
 from paying any other visits, from attending to any business, 
 from going back to Calcutta Gardens. It was a spell which 
 he shrank intensely from breaking, and the cause of a hundred 
 postponements, confusions and incoherences. It made of the 
 crooked little stucco villa in St. John's Wood a place in the 
 upper air, commanding the prospect ; a nest of winged liberties 
 and ironies, hanging far aloft above the huddled town. One 
 should live at altitudes when one could they braced and 
 simplified ; and for a happy interval Sherringham never 
 touched the earth. 
 
 It was not that there were no influences tending at moments 
 to drag him down an abasement from which he escaped only 
 because he was up so high. We have seen that Basil Dash- 
 wood could affect him at times like a piece of wood tied to 
 his ankle, through the circumstance that he made Miriam's 
 famous conditions those of the public exhibition of her 
 genius seem small and prosaic ; so that Sherringham had to
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 313 
 
 remind himself that perhaps this smallness was involved in 
 their being at all. She carried his imagination off into infinite 
 spaces, whereas she carried Dashwood's only into the box- 
 office and the revival of plays that were barbarously bad. 
 The worst was that it was open to him to believe that a sharp 
 young man who was in the business might know better than 
 he. Another possessor of superior knowledge (he talked, that 
 is, as if he knew better than any one) was Gabriel Nash, who 
 appeared to have abundant leisure to haunt Balaklava Place, 
 or in other words appeared to enjoy the same command of his 
 time as Peter Sherringham. Our young diplomatist regarded 
 him with mingled feelings, for he had not forgotten the con- 
 tentious character of their first meeting or the degree to which 
 he had been moved to urge upon Nick Dormer's consideration 
 that his talkative friend was probably an ass. This personage 
 turned up now as an admirer of the charming creature he 
 had scoffed at, and there was something exasperating in the 
 quietude of his inconsistency, of which he had not the least 
 embarrassing consciousness. Indeed he had such arbitrary 
 and desultory ways of looking at any question that it was 
 difficult, % in vulgar parlance, to have him ; his sympathies 
 hummed about like bees in a garden, with no visible plan, no 
 economy in their flight. He thought meanly of the modern 
 theatre and yet he had discovered a fund of satisfaction in the 
 most promising of its exponents ; so that Sherringham more 
 than once said to him that he should really, to keep his 
 opinions at all in hand, attach more value to the stage or less 
 to the interesting actress. Miriam made infinitely merry at 
 his expense and treated him as the most abject of her slaves : 
 all of which Avas worth seeing as an exhibition, on Nash's part, 
 of the imperturbable. When Sherringham mentally pro- 
 nounced him impudent he felt guilty of an injustice Nash had 
 so little the air of a man with something to gain. Neverthe- 
 less he felt a certain itching in his boot-toe when his fellow- 
 visitor exclaimed, explicatively (in general to Miriam herself), 
 in answer to a charge of tergiversation : " Oh, it's all right : 
 it's the voice, you know the enchanting voice ! " He meant 
 by this, as indeed he more fully set forth, that he came to 
 the theatre, or to the villa in St. John's Wood, simply to 
 treat his ear to the sound (the richest then to be heard 011 
 earth, as he maintained) issuing from Miriam's lips. Its 
 richness was quite independent of the words she might pro- 
 nounce or the poor fable they might subserve, and if the 
 pleasure of hearing her in public was the greater by reason of
 
 314 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 the larger volume of her utterance, it was still highly agree- 
 able to see her at home, for it was there that the artistic 
 nature that he freely conceded to her came out most. He 
 spoke as if she had been formed by the bounty of nature to 
 be his particular recreation, and as if, being an expert in 
 innocent joys, he took his pleasure wherever he found it. 
 
 He was perpetually in the field, sociable, amiable, communi- 
 cative, inveterately contradicted but never confounded, ready 
 to talk to any one about anything and making disagreement 
 (of which he left the responsibility wholly to others) a basis of 
 intimacy. Every one knew what he thought of the theatrical 
 profession, and yet it could not be said that he did not regard 
 its members as the exponents of comedy, inasmuch as he often 
 elicited their foibles in a way that made even Sherringham 
 laugh, notwithstanding his attitude of reserve where Nash 
 was concerned. At any rate, though he had committed 
 himself on the subject of the general fallacy of their attempt, 
 he put up with their company, for the sake of Miriam's 
 accents, with a practical philosophy that was all his own. 
 Miriam pretended that he was her supreme, her incorrigible 
 adorer, masquerading as a critic to save his vanity and toler- 
 ated for his secret constancy in spite of being a bore. To 
 Sherringham he was not a bore, and the secretary of embassy 
 felt a certain displeasure at not being able to regard him as 
 one. He had seen too many strange countries and curious 
 things, observed and explored too much to be void of illus- 
 tration. Peter had a suspicion that if he himself was in the 
 grandes espaces Gabriel Nash probably had a still wider range. 
 If among Miriam's associates Basil Dashwood dragged him 
 down, Gabriel challenged him rather to higher and more 
 fantastic flights. If he saw the girl in larger relations than 
 the yoving actor, who mainly saw her in ill- written parts, Nash 
 went a step further and regarded her, irresponsibly and sub- 
 limely, as a priestess of harmony, with whom the vulgar ideas 
 of success and failure had nothing to do. He laughed at 
 her " parts," holding that without them she would be great. 
 Sherringham envied him his power to content himself with 
 the pleasures he could get : he had a shrewd impression that 
 contentment was not destined to be the sweetener of his own 
 repast. 
 
 Above all Nash held his attention by a constant element of 
 unstudied reference to Nick Dormer, who, as we know, had 
 suddenly become much more interesting to his cousin. Sher- 
 ringham found food for observation, and in some measure for
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 315 
 
 perplexity, in the relations of all these clever people with each 
 other. He knew why his sister, who had a personal impa- 
 tience of unapplied ideas, had not been agreeably affected by 
 Mr. Nash and had not viewed with complacency a predilection 
 for him in the man she was to marry. This was a side by 
 which he had no desire to resemble Julia Dallow, for he 
 needed no teaching to divine that Gabriel had not set her 
 intelligence in motion. He, Peter, would have been sorry to 
 have to confess that he could not understand him. He 
 understood furthermore that Miriam, in Nick's studio, might 
 very well have appeared to Julia a formidable power. She 
 was younger, but she had quite as much her own form and 
 she was beautiful enough to have made Nick compare her 
 with Mrs. Dallow even if he had been' in love with that lady 
 a pretension as to which Peter had private ideas. 
 
 Sherringham for many days saw nothing of the member 
 for Harsh, though it might have been said that, by implica- 
 tion, he participated in the life of Balaklava Place. Had 
 Nick given Julia tangible grounds, and was his unexpectedly 
 fine rendering of Miriam an act of virtual infidelity ? In that 
 case in what degree was Miriam to be regarded as an accom- 
 plice in his defection, and what was the real nature of this 
 young lady's esteem for her new and (as he might be called) 
 distinguished ally 1 These questions would have given Peter 
 still more to think about if he had not flattered himself that 
 he had made up his mind that they concerned Nick and 
 Miriam infinitely more than they concerned him. Miriam 
 was personally before him, so that he had no need to consult 
 for his pleasure his fresh recollection of the portrait. But he 
 thought of this striking production each time he thought of 
 his enterprising kinsman. And that happened often, for in his 
 hearing Miriam often discussed the happy artist and his possi- 
 bilities with Gabriel Nash, and Gabriel broke out about them to 
 Miriam. The girl's tone on the subject was frank and simple : 
 she only said, with an iteration that was slightly irritating, 
 that Mr. Dormer had been tremendously kind to her. She 
 never mentioned Julia's irruption to Julia's brother ; she only 
 referred to the portrait, with inscrutable amenity, as a direct 
 consequence of Peter's fortunate suggestion that first day at 
 Madame Carre's. Gabriel Nash, however, showed such a 
 disposition to expatiate sociably and luminously on the pecu- 
 liarly interesting character of what he called Dormer's pre- 
 dicament and on the fine suspense which it was fitted to kindle 
 in the breast of discerning friends, that Peter wondered, as I
 
 316 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 have already hinted, if this insistence were not a subtle pei*- 
 versity, a devilish little invention to torment a man whose 
 jealousy was presumable. Yet on the whole Nash struck him 
 as but scantily devilish and as still less occupied with the 
 prefigurement of his emotions. Indeed, he threw a glamour of 
 romance over Nick ; tossed off such illuminating yet mystify- 
 ing references to him that Sherringham found himself capable 
 of a magnanimous curiosity, a desire to follow out the chain of 
 events. He learned from Gabriel that Nick was still away, 
 and he felt as if he could almost submit to instruction, to 
 initiation. The rare charm of these unregulated days was 
 troubled it ceased to be idyllic when, la.te on the evening 
 of the second Sunday, he walked away with Gabriel southward 
 from St. John's Wood. For then something came out. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 IT mattered not so much what the doctors thought (and Sir 
 Matthew Hope, the greatest of them all, had been down twice 
 in one week) as that Mr. Chayter, the omniscient butler, de- 
 clared with all the authority of his position and his experience 
 that Mr. Carteret was very bad indeed. Nick Dormer had a 
 long talk with him (it lasted six minutes) the day he hurried 
 to Beauclere in response to a telegram. It was Mr. Chayter 
 who had taken upon himself to telegraph, in spite of the 
 presence in the house of Mr. Carteret's nearest relation and 
 only surviving sister, Mrs. Lendon. This lady, a large, mild, 
 healthy woman, with a heavy tread, who liked early break- 
 fasts, uncomfortable chairs and the advertisement-sheet of the 
 Times, had arrived the week before and was awaiting the turn 
 of events. She was a widow and lived in Cornwall, in a house 
 nine miles from a station, which had, to make up for this 
 inconvenience, as she had once told Nick, a delightful old 
 herbaceous garden. She was extremely fond of an herbaceous 
 garden ; her principal interest was in that direction. Nick 
 had often seen her she came to Beauclere once or twice a 
 year. Her sojourn there made no great difference ; she was 
 only an " Urania dear," for Mr. Carteret to look across the 
 table at when, on the close of dinner, it was time for her to 
 retire. She went out of the room always as if it were after 
 some one else ; and on the gentlemen " joining " her later
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 317 
 
 (the junction was not very close) she received them with an 
 air of gratified surprise. 
 
 Chayter honoured Nick Dormer with a regard which ap- 
 proached, without improperly competing with it, the affection 
 his master had placed on the same young head, and Chayter 
 knew a good many things. Among them he knew his place ; 
 but it was wonderful how little that knowledge had rendered 
 him inaccessible to other kinds. He took upon himself to 
 send for Nick without speaking to Mrs. Lendon, whose influ- 
 ence was now a good deal like that of a large occasional piece 
 of furniture which had been introduced in case it should be 
 required. She was one of the solid conveniences that a com- 
 fortable house would have ; but you couldn't talk with a 
 mahogany sofa or a folding-screen. Chayter knew how much 
 she had " had " from her brother, and how much her two 
 daughters had each received on marriage ; and he was of the 
 opinion that it was quite enough, especially considering the 
 society in which they (you could scarcely call it) moved. He 
 knew beyond this that they would all have more, and that 
 was why he hesitated little about communicating with Nick. 
 If Mrs. Lendon should be ruffled at the intrusion of a young 
 man who neither was the child of a cousin nor had been form- 
 ally adopted, Chayter was parliamentary enough to see that 
 the forms of debate were observed. He had indeed a slightly 
 compassionate sense that Mrs. Lendon was not easily ruffled. 
 She was always down an extraordinary time before breakfast 
 (Chayter refused to take it as in the least admonitory), but 
 she visually went straight into the garden (as if to see that 
 none of the plants had been stolen in the night), and had in 
 the end to be looked for by the footman in some out-of-the- 
 way spot behind the shrubbery, where, plumped upon the 
 ground, she was doing something "rum " to a flower. 
 
 Mr. Carteret himself had expressed no wishes. He slept 
 most of the time (his failure at the last had been sudden, but 
 he was rheumatic and seventy-seven), and the situation was in 
 Chayter' s hands. Sir Matthew Hope had opined, even on his 
 second visit, that he would rally and go on, in rudimentary 
 comfort, some time longer ; but Chayter took a different and 
 a still more intimate view. Nick was embarrassed : he scarcely 
 knew what he was there for from the moment he could give 
 his good old friend no conscious satisfaction. The doctors, 
 the nurses, the servants, Mrs. Lendon, and above all the 
 settled equilibrium of the square, thick house, where an im- 
 mutable order appeared to slant through the polished windows
 
 318 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 and tinkle in the quieter bells, all represented best the kind 
 of supreme solace to which the master was most accessible. 
 
 For the first day it was judged better that Nick should not 
 be" introduced into the darkened chamber. This was the de- 
 cision of the two decorous nurses, of whom the visitor had 
 had a glimpse and who, with their black uniforms and fresh 
 faces of business, suggested a combination of the barmaid and 
 the - nun. He was depressed, yet restless, felt himself in a 
 false position and thought it lucky Mrs. Lendon had powers 
 of placid acceptance. They were old acquaintances: she 
 treated him with a certain ceremony, but it was not the rigour 
 of mistrust. It was much more an expression of remote 
 Cornish respect for young abilities and distinguished connec- 
 tions, inasmuch as she asked him a great deal about Lady 
 Agnes and about Lady Flora and Lady Elizabeth. He knew 
 she was kind and ungrudging, and his principal chagrin was 
 the sense of meagre information and of responding poorly in 
 regard to his uninteresting aunts. He sat in the garden with 
 newspapers and looked at the lowered blinds in Mr. Carteret's 
 windows ; he wandered around the abbey with cigarettes and 
 lightened his tread and felt grave, wishing that everything 
 were over. He would have liked much to see Mr. Carteret 
 again, but he had no desire that Mr. Carteret should see 
 him. In the evening he dined with Mrs. Lendon, and she 
 talked to him, at his request and as much as she could, 
 about her brother's early years, his beginnings of life. She 
 was so much younger that they appeared to have been rather 
 a tradition of her own youth ; but her talk made Nick feel 
 how tremendously different Mr. Carteret had been at that 
 period from what he, Nick, was to-day. He had published 
 at the age of thirty a little volume (it was thought wonder- 
 fully clever) called " The Incidence of Rates " ; but Nick had not 
 yet collected the material for any such treatise. After dinner 
 Mrs. Lendon, who was in full dress, retired to the drawing- 
 room, where at the end of ten minutes she was followed by 
 Nick, who had remained behind only because he thought 
 Chayter would expect it. Mrs. Lendon almost shook hands 
 with him again, and then Chayter brought in coffee. Almost 
 in no time afterwards he brought in tea, and the occupants 
 of the drawing-room sat for a slow half-hour, during which 
 the lady looked round at the apartment with a sigh and said : 
 "Don't you think poor Charles had exquisite taste? " 
 
 Fortunately at this moment the " local man " was ushered 
 in. He had been up-stairs and he entered, smiling, with the
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 319 
 
 remark : " It's quite wonderful it's quite wonderful." What 
 was wonderful was a marked improvement in the breathing, a 
 distinct indication of revival. The doctor had some tea and 
 he chatted for a quarter of an hour in a way that showed 
 what a "good" manner and how large an experience a local 
 man could have. When he went away Nick walked out with 
 him. The doctor's house was near by and he had come on 
 foot. He left Nick with the assurance that in all probability 
 Mr. Carteret, who was certainly picking up, would be able to 
 see him on the morrow. Our young man turned his steps 
 ^again to the abbey and took a stroll about it in the starlight. 
 It never looked so huge as when it reared itself in the night, 
 and Nick had never felt more fond of it than on this occa- 
 sion, more comforted and confirmed by its beauty. When 
 he came back he was readmitted by Chayter, who surveyed 
 him in respectful deprecation of the frivolity which had led 
 him to attempt to help himself through such an evening in 
 such a way. 
 
 Nick went to bed early and slept badly, which was unusual 
 with him ; but it was a pleasure to him to be told almost as 
 soon as he came out of his room that Mr. Carteret had asked 
 for him. He went in to see him and was struck with the 
 change in his appearance. He had however spent a day with 
 him just after the New Year, and another at the beginning of 
 March, so that he had perceived the first symptoms of mortal 
 alteration. A week after Julia Dallow's departure for the 
 Continent Nick had devoted several hours to Beauclere and 
 to the intention of telling his old friend how the happy event 
 had been brought to naught the advantage that he had been 
 so good as to desire for him and to make the condition of a 
 splendid gift. Before this, for a few days, Nick had been 
 keeping back, to announce it personally, the good news that 
 Julia had at last set their situation in order : he wanted to 
 enjoy the old man's pleasure so sore a trial had her arbitrary 
 behaviour been for a year. Mrs. Dallow had offered Mr. 
 Carteret a conciliatory visit before Christmas had come down 
 from London one day to lunch with him, but only with the 
 effect of making him subsequently exhibit to poor Nick, as 
 the victim of her whimsical hardness, a great deal of earnest 
 commiseration in a jocose form. Upon his honour, as he 
 said, she was as clever and " specious " a woman (this was the 
 odd expression he used) as he had ever seen in his life. The 
 merit of her behaviour on this occasion, as Nick knew, was 
 that she had not been specious at her lover's expense : she had
 
 320 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 breathed no doubt of his public purpose and had had the 
 feminine courage to say that in truth she was older than he, 
 so that it was only fair to give his affections time to mature. 
 But when Nick saw their sympathizing host after the rupture 
 that I lately narrated he found him in no state to encounter 
 a disappointment : he was seriously ailing, it was the begin- 
 ning of Avorse things and no time for trying on a sensation. 
 After this excursion Nick went back to town saddened by 
 Mr. Carteret's now unmistakably settled decline, but rather 
 relieved that he had not been forced to make his confession. 
 It had even occurred to him that the need for making it might m 
 not come up if the ebb of his old friend's strength should con- 
 tinue unchecked. He might pass away in the persuasion that 
 everything would happen as he wished it, though indeed with- 
 out enriching Nick on his wedding-day to the tune that he had 
 promised. Very likely he had made legal arrangements in 
 virtue of which his bounty would take effect in the right 
 conditions and in them alone. At present Nick had a larger 
 confession to treat him to the last three days had made the 
 difference ; but, oddly enough, though his responsibility had 
 increased his reluctance to speak had vanished : he was posi- 
 tively eager to clear up a situation over which it was not 
 consistent with his honour to leave a shade. 
 
 The doctor had been right when he came in after dinner ; 
 it was clear in the morning that they had not seen the last of 
 Mr. Carteret's power of picking up. Chayter, who had been 
 in to see him, refused austerely to change his opinion with 
 every change in his master's temperature ; but the nurses took 
 the cheering view that it would do their patient good for Mr. 
 Dormer to sit with him a little. One of them remained in 
 the room, in the deep window-seat, and Nick spent twenty 
 minutes by the bedside. It was not a case for much con- 
 versation, but Mr. Carteret seemed to like to look at him. 
 There was life in his kind old eyes, which would express itself 
 yet in some further wise provision. He laid his liberal hand 
 on Nick's with a confidence which showed it was not yet 
 disabled. He said very little, and the nurse had recommended 
 that the visitor himself should not overflow in speech ; but 
 from time to time he murmured with a faint smile : " To- 
 night's division, you know you mustn't miss it." There was 
 to be no division that night, as it happened, but even Mr. 
 Carteret's aberrations were parliamentary. Before Nick left 
 him he had been able to assure him that he was rapidly getting 
 better, that such valuable hours must not be wasted. " Come
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 321 
 
 back on Friday, if they come to the second reading." These 
 were the words with which Nick was dismissed, and at noon 
 the doctor said the invalid was doing very well, but that Nick 
 had better leave him alone for that day. Our young man 
 accordingly determined to go up to town for the night and 
 even, if he should receive no summons, for the next day. He 
 arranged with Chayter that he should be telegraphed to if 
 Mr. Carteret were either better or worse. 
 
 "Oh, he can't very well be worse, sir," Chayter replied, 
 inexorably ; but he relaxed so far as to remark that of course 
 it wouldn't do for Nick to neglect the House. 
 
 "Oh, the House!" Nick sighed, ambiguously, avoiding the 
 butler's eye. It would be easy enough to tell Mr. Carteret, 
 but nothing would have sustained him in the effort to make 
 a clean breast to Chayter. 
 
 He might be ambiguous about the House, but he had the 
 sense of things to be done awaiting him in London. He 
 telegraphed to his servant and spent that night in Rosedale 
 Road. The things to be done were apparently to be done in 
 his studio : his servant met him there with a large bundle of 
 letters. He failed that evening to stray within two miles of 
 ."Westminster, and the legislature of his country reassembled 
 without his support. The next morning he received a telegram 
 from Chayter, to whom he had given Rosedale Road as an 
 address. This missive simply informed him that Mr. Carteret 
 wished to see him, and it seemed to imply that he was better, 
 though Chayter wouldn't say so. Nick again took his place 
 in the train to Beauclere. He had been there very often, but 
 it was present to him that now, after a little, he should go 
 only once more, for a particular dismal occasion. All that 
 was over everything that belonged to it was over. He 
 learned on his arrival he saw Mrs. Lendon immediately 
 that his old friend had continued to pick up. He had ex- 
 pressed a strong and a perfectly rational desire to talk with 
 Nick, and the doctor had said that if it was about anything im- 
 portant it was much better not to oppose him. " He says 
 it's about something very important," Mrs. Lendon remarked, 
 resting shy eyes on him while she added that she was looking 
 after her brother for the hour. She had sent those wonderful 
 young ladies out to see the abbey. Nick paused with her out- 
 side of Mr. Carteret's door. He wanted to say something 
 comfortable to her in return for her homely charity give her 
 a hint, which she was far from looking for, that practically 
 he had now no interest in her brother's estate. This was 
 
 Y
 
 322 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 impossible of course. Her absence of irony gave him no pre- 
 text, and such an allusion would be an insult to her simple dis- 
 cretion. She was either not thinking of his interest at all, or 
 she was thinking of it with the tolerance of a mind trained to 
 a hundred decent submissions. Nick looked for an instant 
 into her mild, uninvestigating eyes, and it came over him 
 supremely that the goodness of these people was singularly 
 pure : they were a part of what was cleanest and sanest and 
 dullest in humanity. There had been just a little mocking in- 
 flection in Mrs. London's pleasant voice ; but it was dedicated 
 to the young ladies in the black uniforms (she could perhaps 
 be satirical about them), and not to the theory of the "im- 
 portance " of Nick's interview with her brother. Nick's 
 arrested desire to let her know he was not dangerous translated 
 itself into a vague friendliness and into the abrupt, rather 
 bewildering words : " I can't tell you half the good I think of 
 you." As he passed into Mr. Carteret's room it occurred to 
 him that she would perhaps interpret this speech as an 
 acknowledgment of obligation of her good-nature in- not 
 keeping him away from the rich old man. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 MR. CARTERET was propped up on pillows, and in this atti- 
 tude, beneath the high, spare canopy of his bed, presented 
 himself to Nick's picture-seeking vision as a figure in a clever 
 composition or a novel. He had gathered strength, though 
 this strength was not much in his voice ; it was mainly in his 
 brighter eye and his air of being pleased with himself. He 
 put out his hand and said : " I dare say you know why I sent 
 for you ; " upon which Nick sank into the seat he had occupied 
 the day before, replying that he had been delighted to come, 
 whatever the reason. Mr. Carteret said nothing more about 
 the division or the second reading; he only murmured that 
 they were keeping the newspapers for him. " I'm rather 
 behind I'm rather behind," he went on ; " but two or three 
 quiet mornings will make it all right. You can go back to- 
 night, you know you can easily go back." This was the 
 only thing not quite straight that Nick saw in him his 
 making light of his young friend's flying to and fro. Nick 
 sat looking at him with a sense that was half compunction and
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 323 
 
 half the idea of the rare beauty of his face, to which, strangely, 
 the waste of illness now seemed to have restored some of its 
 youth. Mr. Carteret was evidently conscious that this morn- 
 ing he should not be able to go on long, so that he must be 
 practical and concise. " I dare say you know you have only 
 to remember," he continued. 
 
 " You know what a pleasure it is to me to see you there 
 can be no better reason than that." 
 
 " Hasn't the year come round the year of that foolish 
 arrangement? " 
 
 Nick thought a little, asking himself if it were really neces- 
 sary to disturb his companion's earnest faith. Then the con- 
 sciousness of the falsity of his own position surged over him 
 again, and he replied : "Do you mean the period for which 
 Mrs. Dallow insisted on keeping me dangling? Oh, that's 
 over." 
 
 " And are you married has it come off 1 " the old man asked, 
 eagerly. " How long have I been ill? " 
 
 " We are uncomfortable, unreasonable people, not deserving 
 of your interest. "We are not married," Nick said. 
 
 " Then I haven't been ill so long," Mr. Carteret sighed, with 
 vague relief. 
 
 " Not very long but things are different," Nick continued. 
 
 The old man's eyes rested on his, and Nick noted how much 
 larger they appeared. " You mean the arrangements are 
 made the day is at hand?" 
 
 "There are no arrangements," Nick smiled: "but why 
 should it trouble you?" 
 
 "What then will you do without arrangements?" Mr. 
 Carteret' s inquiry was plaintive and childlike. 
 
 " We shall do nothing there is nothing to be done. We 
 are not to be married it's all off," said Nick. Then he 
 added : " Mrs. Dallow has gone abroad." 
 
 The old man, motionless among his pillows, gave a long 
 groan. " Ah, I don't like that." 
 
 "No more do I, sir." 
 
 " What's the matter? It was so good so good." 
 
 " It wasn't good enough for her," Nick Dormer declared. 
 
 " For her ? Is she so great as that ? She told me she had 
 the greatest regard for you. You're good enough for the best, 
 my dear boy," Mr. Carteret went on. 
 
 " You don't know me ; I am disappointing. Mrs. Dallow 
 had, I believe, a great regard for me ; but I have forfeited her 
 regard."
 
 324 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 The old man stared at this cynical announcement : he 
 searched his companion's face for some attenuation of the 
 words. But Nick apparently struck him as unashamed ; and 
 a faint colour coming into his withered cheek indicated his 
 mystification and alarm. " Have you been unfaithful to her] " 
 he demanded, considerately. 
 
 " She thinks so it comes to the same thing. As I told 
 you a year ago, she doesn't believe in me." 
 
 " You ought to have made her you ought to have made 
 her," said Mr. Carteret. Nick was about to utter some rejoinder 
 when he continued : " Do you remember what I told you I 
 would give you if you did I Do you remember what I told 
 you I would give you on your wedding-day ? " 
 
 " You expressed the most generous intentions ; and I re- 
 member them as much as a man may do who has no wish to 
 remind you of them." 
 
 " The money is there I have put it aside." 
 
 " I haven't earned it I haven't earned a penny of it. Give 
 it to those who deserve it more." 
 
 " I don't understand I don't understand," Mr. Carteret 
 murmured, with the tears of weakness coming into his eyes. 
 His face flushed and he added : " I'm not good for much dis- 
 cussion ; I'm very much disappointed." 
 
 " I think I may say it's not my fault I have done what I 
 can," returned Nick. 
 
 " But when people are in love they do more than that." 
 
 " Oh, it's all over ! " Nick exclaimed ; not caring much now, 
 for the moment, how disconcerted his companion might be, so 
 long as he disabused him of the idea that they were partners 
 to a bargain. " We've tormented each other and we've tor- 
 mented you ; and that is all that has come of it." 
 
 " Don't you care for what I would have done for you 
 shouldn't you have liked it ? " 
 
 " Of course one likes kindness one likes money. But it's 
 all over," Nick repeated. Then he added : " I fatigue you, I 
 knock you up, with telling you these uncomfortable things. I 
 only do so because it seems to me right you should know. 
 But don't be worried everything will be all right." 
 
 He patted his companion's hand reassuringly, he leaned 
 over, him affectionately ; but Mr. Carteret was not easily 
 soothed. He had practised lucidity all his life, he had ex- 
 pected it of others and he had never given his assent to an 
 indistinct proposition. He was weak, but he was not too 
 weak to perceive that he had formed a calculation which was
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 325 
 
 now vitiated by a wrong factor put his name to a contract of 
 which the other side had not been carried out. More than 
 fifty years of conscious success pressed him to try to under- 
 stand ; he had never muddled his affairs and he couldn't 
 muddle them now. At the same time he was aware of the 
 necessity of economizing his effort, and he evidently gathered 
 himself, within, patiently and almost cunningly, for the right 
 question and the right induction. He was still able to make 
 his agitation reflective, and it could still consort with his high 
 hopes of Nick that he should find himself regarding the 
 declaration that everything would be all right as an in- 
 adequate guarantee. So, after he had looked a moment into 
 his companion's eyes, he inquired : 
 ' Have you done anything bad ? " 
 'Nothing worse than usual," laughed Nick. 
 ' Everything should have been better than usual." 
 ' Ah, well, it hasn't been that that I must say." 
 ' Do you sometimes think of your father ? " Mr. Carteret 
 continued. 
 
 Nick hesitated a moment. " You make me think of him 
 you have always that pleasant effect." 
 
 " His name would have lived it mustn't be lost." 
 
 "Yes, but the competition to-day is terrible," Nick replied. 
 
 Mr. Carteret considered this a moment, as if he found a 
 serious flaw in it ; after which he began again : " I never 
 supposed you were a trifler." 
 
 "I'm determined not to be." 
 
 "I thought her charming. Con't you love her?" Mr. 
 Carteret asked. 
 
 " Don't ask me that to-day, for I feel sore and resentful. I 
 don't think she has treated me well." 
 
 " You should have held her you shouldn't have let her go," 
 the old man returned, with xinexpected fire. 
 
 His companion flushed at this, so strange it seemed to him 
 to receive a lesson in energy from a dying octogenarian. Yet 
 after an instant Nick answered modestly enough : " I haven't 
 been clever enough, no doubt." 
 
 "Don't say that don't say that," Mr. Carteret murmured, 
 looking almost frightened. " Don't think I can allow you 
 any mitigation of that sort. I know how well you've done. 
 You're taking your place. Several gentlemen have told me. 
 Hasn't she felt a scruple, knowing my settlement on you was 
 contingent 1 " he pursued. 
 
 " Oh, she hasn't known hasn't known anything about it."
 
 326 THE TRAGIC MUSE, 
 
 "I don't understand; though I think you explained some- 
 what, a year ago," Mr. Carteret said, with discouragement. 
 " I think she wanted to speak to me of any intentions I 
 might have in regard to you the day she was here. Very 
 nicely, very properly she would have done it, I'm sure. I 
 think her idea was that I ought to make any settlement quite 
 independent of your marrying her or not marrying her. But 
 I tried to convey to her I don't know whether she understood 
 me that I liked her too much for that, I wanted too much to 
 make sure of her." 
 
 " To make sure of me, you mean," said Nick. " And now, 
 after all, you see you haven't." 
 
 "Well, perhaps it was that," sighed the old man, con- 
 fusedly. 
 
 "All this is very bad for you we'll talk again," Nick 
 rejoined. 
 
 " No, no let us finish it now. I like to know what I'm 
 doing. I shall rest better when I do know. There are great 
 things to be done ; the future will be full the future Avill be 
 fine," Mr. Carteret wandered. 
 
 " Let me say this for Julia : that if we hadn't been sundered 
 her generosity to me would have been complete, she would 
 have put her great fortune absolutely at my disposal," Nick 
 said, after a moment. " Her consciousness of all that naturally 
 carries her over any particular distress in regard to what won't 
 come to me now from another source." 
 
 " Ah, don't lose it," pleaded the old man, painfully. 
 
 " It's in your hands, sir," reasoned Nick. 
 
 " I mean Mrs. Dallow's fortune. It will be of the highest 
 utility. That was what your father missed." 
 
 " I shall miss more than my father did," said Nick. 
 
 " She'll come back to you I can't look at you and doubt 
 that." 
 
 Nick shook his head slowly, smiling. " Never, never, never ! 
 You look at me, my grand old friend, but you don't see me. 
 I'm not what you think." 
 
 " What is it what is it 1 Have you been bad ? " Mr. 
 Carteret panted. 
 
 " No, no ; I'm not bad. But I'm different." 
 
 "Different^" 
 
 " Different from my father different from Mrs. Dallow 
 different from you." 
 
 " Ah, why do you perplex me ? " moaned the old man. 
 " You've done something."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 327 
 
 " I don't want to perplex you, but I have done something," 
 said Kick, getting up. 
 
 He had heard the door open softly behind him and Mrs. 
 Lendon come forward with precautions. " What has he done 
 what has he done 1 " quavered Mr. Carteret to his sister. 
 She however, after a glance at the patient, motioned Nick 
 away and, bending over the bed, replied, ia a voice expressive 
 at that moment of a sharply contrasted plenitude of vital 
 comfort : 
 
 " He has only excited you, I'm afraid, a little more than is 
 good for you. Isn't your dear old head a little too high?" 
 Nick regarded himself as justly banished and he quitted the 
 room with a ready acquiescence in any power to carry on the 
 scene of which Mrs. Lendon might find herself possessed. He 
 felt distinctly brutal as he heard his host emit a soft, troubled 
 exhalation of assent to some change of position. But he 
 would have reproached himself more if he had wished less to 
 guard against the acceptance of an equivalent for duties 
 unperformed. Mr. Carteret had had in his mind, character- 
 istically, the idea of an enlightened agreement, and there was 
 something more to be said about that. 
 
 Nick went out of the house and stayed away for two or 
 three hours, quite ready to consider that the place was quieter 
 and safer without him. He haunted the abbey, as usual, and 
 sat a long time in its simplifying stillness, turning over many 
 things. He came into the house again at the luncheon-hour, 
 through the garden, and heard, somewhat to his surprise and 
 greatly to his relief, that Mr. Carteret had composed himself 
 promptly enough after their agitating interview. Mrs. Lendon 
 talked at luncheon much as if she expected her brother to 
 be, as she said, really quite fit again. She asked Nick no 
 embarrassing question ; which was uncommonly good of her, 
 he thought, considering that she might have said : " What in 
 the world were you trying to get out of him?" She only 
 told our young man that the invalid had very little doubt he 
 should be able to see him again, about half-past seven, for a 
 very short time : this timid emphasis Was Mrs. Lendon's 
 single tribute to the critical spirit. Nick divined that Mr. 
 Carteret' s desire for further explanations was really strong 
 and had been capable of sustaining him through a bad morning 
 capable even of helping him (it would be a secret and 
 wonderful momentary victory over his weakness) to pass it 
 off for a good one. He wished he might make a sketch of 
 him from the life, as he had seen him after breakfast ; he had
 
 328 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 a conviction he could make a strong one, and it would be a 
 precious memento. But he shrank from proposing this Mr. 
 Carteret might think it unparliamentary. The doctor had 
 called while Nick was out, and he came again at five o'clock, 
 without our young man's seeing him. Nick was busy in his 
 room at that hour : he wrote a short letter which took him a 
 long time. But apparently there had been no veto on a 
 resumption of talk, for at half-past seven the old man sent for 
 him. The nurse, at the door, said : " Only a moment, I hope, 
 sir ? " but she took him in and then withdrew. 
 
 The prolonged daylight was in the room, and Mr. Carteret 
 was again established on his pile of pillows, but with his head 
 a little lower. Nick sat down by him and began to express 
 the hope that he had not upset him in the morning ; but the 
 old man, with fixed, expanded eyes, took up their conversation 
 exactly where they had left it. 
 
 " What have you done what have you done 1 Have you 
 associated yourself with some other woman 1 " 
 
 " No, no ; I don't think she can accuse me of that." 
 
 " Well, then, she'll come back to you, if you take the right 
 way with her." 
 
 It might have been droll to hear Mr. Carteret, in his 
 situation, giving his views on the right way with women ; 
 but Nick was not moved to enjoy that diversion. " I've taken 
 the wrong way. I've done something which will spoil my 
 prospects in that direction for ever. I've written a letter," 
 Nick went on ; but his companion had already interrupted 
 him. 
 
 " You've written a letter ? " 
 
 " To my constituents, informing them of my determination 
 to resign my seat." 
 
 " To resign your seat ] " 
 
 "I've made up my mind, after no end of reflection, dear 
 Mr. Carteret, to work in a different line. I have a project 
 of becoming a painter. So I've given up the idea of a political 
 life." 
 
 " A painter 1 " Mr. Carteret seemed to turn whiter. 
 
 " I'm going in for the portrait in oils : it sounds absurd, 
 I know, and I only mention it to show you that I don't in 
 the least expect you to count upon me." Mr. Carteret had 
 continued to stare, at first ; then his eyes slowly closed and 
 he lay motionless and blank. " Don't let it trouble you now ; 
 it's a long story and rather a poor one ; when you get better 
 I'll tell you all about it. We'll talk it over amicably, and
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 329 
 
 I'll bring you to my side," Nick went on hypocritically. He 
 had laid his hand on Mr. Carteret's again : it felt cold, and as 
 the old man remained silent he had a moment of exaggerated 
 fear. 
 
 "This is dreadful news," said Mr. Carteret, opening his 
 eyes. 
 
 " Certainly it must seem so to you, for I've always kept 
 from you (I was ashamed, and my present confusion is a just 
 chastisement) the great interest I have always taken in the " 
 Nick hesitated, and then added, with an intention of humour 
 and a sense of foolishness "in the pencil and the brush." 
 He spoke of his present confusion ; but it must be confessed 
 that his manner showed it but little. He was surprised at his 
 own serenity, and had to recognize that at the point things 
 had come to now he was profoundly obstinate and quiet. 
 
 "The pencil the brush? They're not the weapons of a 
 gentleman," said Mr. Carteret. 
 
 ^"1 was sure that would be your view. I repeat that I 
 mention them only because you once said you intended to do 
 something for me, as the phrase is, and I thought you oughtn't 
 to do it in ignorance." 
 
 "My ignorance was better. Such knowledge isn't good 
 for me." 
 
 " Forgive me, my dear old friend. When you're better 
 you'll see it differently." 
 
 " I shall never be better now." 
 
 " Ah, no," pleaded Nick, " it will do you good after a little. 
 Think it over quietly and you'll be glad I've stopped being a 
 humbug." 
 
 " I loved you I loved you as my son," moaned the old 
 man. 
 
 Nick sank on his knee beside the bed and leaned over him 
 tenderly. " Get better, get better, and I'll be your son for 
 the rest of your life." 
 
 " Poor Dormer poor Dormer ! " Mr. Carteret softly wailed. 
 
 " I admit that if he had lived I probably shouldn't have 
 done it," said Nick. " I dare say I should have deferred to 
 his prejudices, even if I thought them narrow." 
 
 "Do you turn against your father?" Mr. Carteret asked, 
 making, to disengage his arm from the young man's touch, 
 an effort in which Nick recognized the irritation of conscious 
 weakness. Nick got up, at this, and stood a moment looking 
 down at him, while Mr. Carteret went on : " Do you give up 
 your name, do you give up your country ? "
 
 330 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 "If I do something good my country may like it," Nick 
 contended. 
 
 " Do you regard them as equal, the two glories?" 
 
 " Here comes your nurse, to blow me up and turn me out," 
 said Nick. 
 
 The nurse had come in, but Mr. Carteret managed to direct 
 to her an audible, dry, courteous " Be so good as to wait till 
 I send for you," which arrested her, in the large room, at 
 some distance from the bed, and then had the effect of making 
 her turn on her heel with a professional laugh. She appeared 
 to think that an old gentleman with the fine manner of his 
 prime might still be trusted to take care of himself. When 
 she had gone Mr. Carteret went on, addressing Nick, with the 
 inquiry for which his deep displeasure lent him strength : " Do 
 you pretend there is a nobler life than a high political career ? " 
 
 "I think the noble life is doing one's work well. One can 
 do it very ill and be very base and mean in what you call a 
 high political career. I haven't been in the House so many 
 months without finding that out. It contains some very small 
 souls." 
 
 " You should stand against them you should expose them !" 
 stammered Mr. Carteret. 
 
 " Stand against them against one's own party ? " 
 
 The old man looked bewildered a moment at this ; then he 
 broke out : " God forgive you, are you a Tory are you a 
 Tory?" 
 
 " How little you understand me ! " laughed Nick, with a 
 ring of bitterness. 
 
 "Little enough little enough, my boy. -Have yon sent 
 your electors your dreadful letter 1 " 
 
 "Not yet ; but it's ready, and I sha'n't change my mind." 
 
 " You will you will ; you'll think better of it, you'll see 
 your duty," said the old man, almost coaxingly. 
 
 " That seems very improbable, for my determination, crudely 
 and abruptly as, to my great regret, it comes to you here, is 
 the fruit of a long and painful struggle. The difficulty is 
 that I see my duty just in this other effort." 
 
 " An effort ? Do you call it an effort to fall away, to sink 
 far down, to give up every effort? What does your mother 
 say, heaven help her?" Mr. Carteret pursued, before Nick 
 could answer the other question. 
 
 " I haven't told her yet." 
 
 " You're ashamed, you're ashamed ! " Nick only looked 
 out of the western window at this ; he felt himself growing
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 331 
 
 red. " Tell her it would have been sixty thousand ; I had 
 the money all ready." 
 
 " I sha'n't tell her that," said Nick, redder still. 
 
 " Poor woman poor dear woman ! " Mr. Carteret whim- 
 pered. 
 
 " Yes, indeed ; she won't like it." 
 
 " Think it all over again ; don't throw away a splendid 
 future ! " These words were uttered with a recovering flicker 
 of passion. Nick Dormer had never heard such an accent on 
 his old friend's lips. But the next instant Mr. Carteret began 
 to murmur : " I'm tired I'm very tired," and sank back with 
 a groan and with closed lips. 
 
 Nick assured him tenderly that he had only too much 
 cause to be exhausted, but that the worst was over now. He 
 smoothed his pillows for him and said he must leave him, he 
 would send in the nurse. 
 
 " Come back come back," Mr. Carteret pleaded before he 
 quitted him ; " come back and tell me it's a horrible dream." 
 
 Nick did go back, very late that evening ; Mr. Carteret 
 had sent a message to his room. But one of the nurses was 
 on the ground this time and she remained there with her 
 watch in her hand. The invalid's chamber was shrouded and 
 darkened ; the shaded candle left the bed in gloom. Nick's inter- 
 view with his venerable host was the affair of but a moment ; 
 the nurse interposed, impatient and not understanding. She 
 heard Nick tell Mr. Carteret that he had posted his letter 
 now, and Mr. Carteret flashed out, with an acerbity which 
 savoured still of the sordid associations of a world he had not 
 done with : " Then of course my settlement doesn't take 
 effect ! " 
 
 " Oh, that's all right," Nick answered, kindly ; and he 
 went off the next morning by the early train his injured 
 host was still sleeping. Mrs. Lendon's habits made it easy 
 for her to be present in matutinal bloom at the young man's 
 hasty breakfast, and she sent a particular remembrance to 
 Lady Agnes and (when Nick should see them) to the Ladies 
 Flora and Elizabeth. Nick had a prevision of the spirit in 
 which his mother at least would now receive hollow compli- 
 ments from Beauclere. 
 
 i The night before, as soon as he had quitted Mr. Carteret, 
 the old man said to the nurse that he wished her to tell Mr. 
 Chayter that, the first thing in the morning, he must go 
 and fetch Mr. Mitton. Mr. Mitton was the first solicitor at 
 Beauclere.
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 THE really formidable thing for Nick was to tell his 
 mother : a truth of which he was so conscious that he had the 
 matter out with her the very morning he returned from 
 Beauclere. She and Grace had come back the afternoon 
 before from Lady St. Dunstans', and knowing this (she had 
 written him her intention from the country), he drove 
 straight from the station to Calcutta Gardens. There was a 
 little room there, on the right of the house-door, which was 
 known as his own room, but in which of a morning, when he 
 was not at home, Lady Agnes sometimes wrote her letters. 
 These were always numerous, and when she heard our young 
 man's cab she happened to be engaged with them at the big 
 brass-mounted bureau which had belonged to his father, 
 where, behind an embankment of works of political reference, 
 she seemed to herself to make public affairs feel the point of 
 her elbow. 
 
 She came into the hall to meet her son and to hear about 
 Mr. Carteret, and Nick went straight back into the room 
 with her and closed the door. It would be in the evening 
 paper and she would see it, and he had no right to allow her 
 to wait for that. It proved indeed a terrible hour ; and 
 when, ten minutes later, Grace, who learned up-stairs that 
 her brother had come back, went down for further news of 
 him she heard from the hall a sound of voices which made 
 her first pause and then retrace her steps on tiptoe. She 
 mounted to the drawing-room and crept about there, palpi- 
 tating, looking at moments into the dull street and wondering 
 what on earth was going on. She had no one to express her 
 wonder to, for Florence Tressilian had departed and Biddy, 
 after breakfast, had betaken herself, in accordance with a 
 custom now inveterate, to Kosedale Road. Her mother was 
 crying passionately a circumstance tremendous in its signi- 
 ficance, for Lady Agnes had not often been brought so low. 
 Nick had seen her cry, but this almost awful spectacle had 
 seldom been given to Grace ; and it forced her to believe at 
 present that some dreadful thing had happened. 
 
 That was of course in order, after Nick's mysterious 
 quarrel with Julia, which had made his mother so ill and 
 which now apparently had been followed up with new horrors.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 333 
 
 The row, as Grace mentally phrased it, had had something 
 to do with this incident, some deeper depth of disappointment 
 had opened up. Grace asked herself if they were talking 
 about Broadwood; if Nick had demanded that, in the con- 
 ditions so unpleasantly altered, Lady Agnes should restore 
 that pretty property to its owner. This was very possible, 
 but why should he so suddenly have broken out about it 1 ? 
 And moreover their mother, though sore to bleeding about 
 the whole business for Broadwoocl, in its fresh comfort, was 
 too delightful would not have met this pretension with 
 tears, inasmuch as she had already declared that they couldn't 
 decently continue to make use of the place. Julia had said 
 of course they must go on, but Lady Agnes was prepared 
 with an effective rejoinder to this. It didn't consist of words 
 it was to be austerely practical, was to consist of letting 
 Julia see, at the moment she should least expect it, that they 
 quite wouldn't go on. Lady Agnes was ostensibly waiting 
 for that moment the moment when her renunciation would 
 be most impressive. 
 
 Grace was conscious of how, for many days, her mother and 
 she had been moving in darkness, deeply stricken by Nick's 
 culpable (oh, he was culpable !) loss of his prize, but feeling 
 there was an element in the matter they didn't grasp, an 
 undiscovered explanation which would perhaps make it still 
 worse, though it might make them a little better. Nick had 
 explained nothing ; he had simply said : " Dear mother, we don't 
 hit it off, after all ; it's an awful bore, but we don't," as if 
 that were, under the circumstances, an adequate balm for two 
 aching hearts. From Julia, naturally, satisfying attenuations 
 were not to be looked for ; and though Julia very often did the 
 thing you wouldn't suppose she was not unexpectedly apologetic 
 in this case. Grace recognized that in such a position it would 
 savour of apology for her to impart to Lady Agnes her 
 grounds for letting Nick off ; and she would not have liked 
 to be the person to suggest to Julia that any one looked for 
 anything from her. Neither of the disunited pair blamed the 
 other or cast an aspersion, and it was all very magnanimous 
 and superior and impenetrable and exasperating. With all 
 this Grace had a suspicion that Biddy knew something more, 
 that for Biddy the tormenting curtain had been lifted. 
 
 Biddy came and went in these days with a perceptible air 
 of detachment from the tribulations of home. It made her 
 fortunately very pretty still prettier than usual; it some- 
 times happened that at moments when Grace was most angry
 
 334 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 she had a faint, sweet smile which might have been drawn 
 from a source of private consolation. It was perhaps in some 
 degree connected with Peter Sherringham's visit, as to which 
 the girl was not silent. When Grace asked her if she had 
 secret information and if it pointed to the idea that everything 
 would be all right in the end, she pretended to know nothing 
 (What should she know ] she asked, with the loveliest 
 candour), and begged her sister not to let Lady Agnes believe 
 that she was any better off than they. She contributed nothing 
 to their gropings toward the light save a better patience than 
 theirs, but she went with noticeable regularity, on the pre- 
 text of her foolish modelling, to Bosedale Road. She was 
 frankly on Nick's side ; not going so far as to say he had 
 been right, but saying distinctly that she was sure that, what- 
 ever had happened, he couldn't help it. This was striking, 
 because, as Grace knew, the younger of the sisters had been 
 much favoured by Julia and would not have sacrificed her 
 easily. It associated itself in the irritated mind of the elder 
 with Biddy's frequent visits to the studio and made Miss 
 Dormer ask herself whether the crisis in Nick's and Julia's 
 business had not somehow been linked to that unnatural 
 spot. 
 
 She had gone there two or three times while Biddy was 
 working, to pick up any clue to the mystery that might peep 
 out. But she had put her hand upon nothing, save once on 
 the personality of Gabriel Nash. She found this strange 
 creature, to her surprise, paying a visit to her sister he had 
 come for Nick, who was absent : she remembered how they 
 had met him in Paris and how he had frightened her. When 
 she asked Biddy afterwards how she could receive him that 
 way Biddy replied that even she, Grace, would have some 
 charity for him if she could hear how fond he was of poor 
 Nick. He talked to her only of Nick -of nothing else. 
 Grace observed how she spoke of Nick as injured, and noted 
 the implication that some one else had ceased to be fond of 
 him and was thereby condemned in Biddy's eyes. It seemed 
 to Grace that some one else had at least a right not to like 
 some of his friends. The studio struck her as mean and 
 horrid ; and so far from suggesting to her that it could have 
 played a part in making Nick and Julia fall out, she only felt 
 how little its dusty want of consequence could count one way 
 or the other for Julia. Grace, who had opinions on art, saw 
 no merit whatever in those " impressions " on canvas, from 
 Nick's hand, with which the place was bestrewn. She didn't
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 335 
 
 wish her brother to have talent in that direction ; yet it was 
 secretly humiliating to her that he had not more. 
 
 Nick felt a pang of almost horrified penitence, in the little 
 room on the right of the hall, the moment after he had made 
 his mother really understand that he had thrown up his seat 
 and it would probably be in the evening papers. That she 
 would take it badly was an idea that had pressed upon him 
 hard enough ; but she took it even worse than he had feared. 
 He measured, in the look that she gave him when the full 
 truth loomed upon her, the mortal cruelty of her discomfiture : 
 her face was like that of a passenger on a ship who sees the 
 huge bows of another vessel towering close out of the fog. 
 There are visions of dismay before which the best conscience 
 recoils ; and though Nick had made his choice on all the 
 grounds there were a few minutes in which he would gladly 
 have admitted that his wisdom was a dark mistake. His 
 heart was in his throat, he had gone too far ; he had been 
 ready to disappoint his mother he had not been ready to 
 destroy her. 
 
 Lady Agnes, I hasten to add, was not destroyed ; she made, 
 after her first drowning gasp, a tremendous scene of opposition, 
 in the face of which Nick speedily fell back upon his intrench- 
 ments. She must know the worst, he had thought; so he 
 told her everything, including the little story of the forfeiture 
 of his "expectations" from Mr. Carteret. He showed her 
 this time not only the face of the matter but what lay below 
 it ; narrated briefly the incident in his studio which had led 
 to Julia Callow's deciding that she couldn't after all put up 
 with him. This was wholly new to Lady Agnes ; she had had 
 no clue to it, and he could instantly see how it made the case 
 worse for her, adding a hideous positive to an abominable 
 negative. He perceived now that, distressed and distracted 
 as she had been by his rupture with Julia, she had still held 
 to the faith that their engagement would come on again ; 
 believing evidently that he had a personal empire over the 
 mistress of .Harsh which would bring her back. Lady Agnes 
 was forced to recognize that empire as precarious, to forswear 
 the hope of a. blessed renewal, from the moment it was a 
 question of base infatuations on his own part. Nick confessed 
 to an infatuation but did his best to show her it was not base; 
 that it was not (since Julia had had faith in his loyalty) for 
 the person of the young lady who had been discovered postur- 
 ing to him and whom he had seen but half a dozen times in 
 his life. He endeavoured to give his mother a notion of who
 
 336 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 this young lady was and to remind her of the occasion, in 
 Paris, when they all had seen her together. But Lady Agnes' s 
 mind and memory were a blank on the subject of Miss Miriam 
 Rooth, and she wanted to know nothing whatever about her : 
 it was enough that she was the cause of their ruin, that she 
 was mixed up with his unspeakable folly. Her ladyship 
 needed to know nothing of Miss Rooth to allude to her as if 
 it were superfluous to give a definite name to the class to 
 which she belonged. 
 
 But she gave a name to the group in which Nick had now 
 taken his place, and it made him feel, after the lapse of years, 
 like a small blamed, sorry boy again ; for it was so far away 
 he could scarcely remember it (besides there having been but a 
 moment or two of that sort in his happy childhood), the time 
 when his mother had slapped him and called him a little 
 fool. He was a big fool now a huge, immeasurable one ; she 
 repeated the term over and over, with high-pitched passion. 
 The most painful thing in this painful hour was perhaps his 
 glimpse of the strange feminine cynicism that lurked in her 
 fine sense of injury. Where there was such a complexity of 
 revolt it would have been difficult to pick out particular com- 
 plaints; but Nick could see that to Lady Agnes's imagination 
 he was most a fool for not having kept his relations with the 
 actress, whatever they were, better from Julia's knowledge. 
 He remained indeed freshly surprised at the ardour with 
 which she had rested her hopes on Julia. Julia was certainly 
 a combination she was fascinating, she was a sort of leading 
 woman and she was rich ; but after all (putting aside what 
 she might be to a man in love with her), she was not the 
 keystone of the universe. Yet the form in which the con- 
 sequences of his apostasy appeared most to come home to 
 Lady Agnes was the loss, for the Dormer family, of the 
 advantages attached to the possession of Mrs. Dallow. The 
 larger mortification would round itself later ; for the hour the 
 damning thing was that Nick had really made Julia a present 
 of an unforgivable grievance. He had clinched their separation 
 by his letter to his electors; and that above all was the 
 wickedness of the letter. Julia would have got over the other 
 woman, but she would never get over his becoming a nobody. 
 
 Lady Agnes challenged him upon this low prospect exactly 
 as if he had embraced it with the malignant purpose of 
 making Julia's return impossible. She contradicted her pre- 
 mises and lost her way in her wrath. What had made him 
 suddenly turn round if he had been in good faith before ? He
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 337 
 
 had never been in good faith never, never ; he had had from 
 his earliest childhood the nastiest hankerings after a vulgar 
 little daubing, trash- talking life ; they were not in him, the 
 grander, nobler aspirations they never had been and he 
 had been anything but honest to lead her on, to lead them all 
 on, to think he would do something : the fall and the shame 
 would have been less for them if they had come earlier. 
 Moreover, what need under heaven had he to tell Charles 
 Carteret of his cruel folly on his very death-bed ? as if he 
 mightn't have let it all alone and accepted the benefit the old 
 man was so delighted to confer. No wonder the old man 
 would keep his money for his heirs, if that was the way Nick 
 proposed to repay him ; but where was the common sense, 
 where was the common charity, where was the common 
 decency, of tormenting him with such vile news in his last 
 hours ? "Was he trying what he could invent that would 
 break her heart, that would send her in sorrow down to her 
 grave 1 "Weren't they all miserable enough, and hadn't he a 
 ray cf pity for his wretched sisters? 
 
 The relation of effect and cause, in regard to his sisters' 
 wretchedness, was but dimly discernible to Nick, who how- 
 ever easily perceived that his mother genuinely considered 
 that his action had disconnected them all, still more than she 
 held they were already disconnected, from the good things of 
 life. Julia was money, Mr. Carteret Avas money, and every- 
 thing else was poverty. If these precious people had been 
 primarily money for Nick, it was after all a gracious tribute 
 to his distributive power to have taken for granted that for 
 the rest of the family too the difference would have been so 
 great. For days, for weeks and months afterward the little 
 room on the right of the hall seemed to our young man to 
 vibrate, as if the very walls and window-panes still suffered, 
 with the most disagreeable ordeal he had ever been through. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 THAT evening the evening of his return from Beauclere 
 Nick was conscious of a keen desire to get away, to go abroad, 
 to leave behind him the little chatter his resignation would 
 be sure to produce in an age of publicity which never dis- 
 criminated as to the quality of events. Then he felt it was 
 better to stay, to see the business through on the spot. 
 
 z
 
 338 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 Besides, he would have to meet his constituents (would a 
 parcel of cheese-eating burgesses ever have been " met " on 
 so queer an occasion 1 ?) and when that was over the worst 
 would be over. Nick had an idea that he knew in advance 
 how it would feel to be pointed at as a person who had given 
 up a considerable chance of eventual " office " to take likenesses 
 at so much a head. He wouldn't attempt, down at Harsh, 
 to touch on the question of motive ; for, given the nature of 
 the public mind of Harsh, that would be a strain on his 
 faculty of expression. But as regards the chaff of the political 
 world and of society he had an idea he should find chaff 
 enough for answers. It was true that when his mother 
 chaffed him in her own effective way he had felt rather 
 flattened out ; but then one's mother might have a heavier 
 hand than any one else. 
 
 He had not thrown up the House of Commons to amuse 
 himself ; he had thrown it up to work, to sit quietly down 
 and bend over his task. If he should go abroad his mother 
 might think he had some weak-minded view of joining Julia 
 Dallow and trying, with however little hope, to win her back 
 an illusion, it would be singularly pernicious to encourage. 
 His desire for Julia's society had succumbed, for the present 
 at any rate, to an irresistible interruption he had become 
 more and more conscious that they spoke a different language. 
 Nick felt like a young man who has gone to the Rhineland to 
 " get up " his German for an examination committed to talk, 
 to read, to dream only in the new idiom. Now that he had 
 taken his jump everything was simplified, at the same time 
 that everything was pitched in a higher, more excited key ; 
 and he wondered how in the absence of a common dialect he 
 had conversed on the whole so happily with Julia. Then 
 he had after-tastes of understandings tolerably independent 
 of words. He was excited because every fresh responsibility 
 is exciting, and there was no manner of doubt that he had 
 accepted one. No one knew what it was but himself (Gabriel 
 Nash scarcely counted his whole attitude on the question of 
 responsibility was so wanton), and he would have to ask 
 his dearest friends to take him on trust. Rather, he would 
 ask nothing of any one, but would cultivate independence, 
 mulishness and gaiety and fix his thoughts on a bright if 
 distant morrow. It was disagreeable to have to remember 
 that his task would not be sweetened by a sense of heroism ; 
 for if it might be heroic to give up the muses for the strife 
 of great affairs, no romantic glamour worth speaking of would
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. . _ 339 
 
 ever gather round an Englishman who in the prime of his 
 strength had given up great or even small affairs for the 
 muses. Such an original might himself privately, perversely 
 regard certain phases of this inferior commerce as a great 
 affair ; but who would give him the benefit of that sort of 
 confidence except indeed a faithful, clever, excited little sister 
 Biddy, if he should have the good luck to have one ? Biddy 
 was in fact all ready for heroic flights and eager to think she 
 might fight the battle of the beautiful by her brother's side ; 
 so that Nick had really to moderate her and remind her that 
 his actual job was not a crusade, with bugles and banners, 
 but a gray, sedentary grind, whose charm was all at the core. 
 You might have an emotion about it, and an emotion that 
 would be a help, but this was not the sort of thing you could 
 show the end in view would seem ridiculously small for it. 
 Nick asked Biddy how one could talk to people about the 
 " responsibility " of what she would see him pottering at in 
 his studio. 
 
 Nick therefore didn't talk any more than he was forced to, 
 having moreover a sense that that side of the situation would 
 be plentifully looked after by Gabriel Nash. He left the 
 burden of explanation to others, meeting them on the ground 
 of inexhaustible satire. He saw that he should live for months 
 in a thick cloud of irony, not the finest air of the season, and 
 he adopted the weapon to which a person whose use of tobacco 
 is only occasional resorts when every one else produces a cigar 
 he puffed the empirical, defensive cigarette. He accepted 
 the idea of a mystery in his behaviour and abounded so in 
 that sense that his critics were themselves bewildered. Some 
 of them felt that they got, as the phrase is, little out of him 
 he rose in his good-humour so much higher than the "rise" 
 they had looked for on his very first encounter with the 
 world after his scrimmage with his mother. He went to a 
 dinner-party (he had accepted the invitation many days before), 
 having seen his resignation, in the form of a telegram from 
 Harsh, announced in the evening papers. The people he found 
 there had seen it as well, and the most imaginative of them 
 wanted to know what he was going to do. Even the least 
 imaginative asked if it were true he had changed his politics. 
 He gave different answers to different persons, but left most 
 of them under the impression that he had remarkable con- 
 scientious scruples. This however was not a formidable 
 occasion, for there happened to be no one present he was 
 particularly fond of. There were old friends whom it would
 
 340 THE TRAC4IC MUSE. 
 
 not be so easy to satisfy Nick was almost sorry, for an hour, 
 that he had so many old friends. If he had had more enemies 
 the case would have been simpler ; and he was fully aware 
 that the hardest thing of all would be to be let off too easily. 
 Then he would appear to himself to have been put on his 
 generosity, and his deviation would wear its ugliest face. 
 
 When he left the place at which he had been dining he 
 betook himself to Bosedale Road : he saw no reason why he 
 should go down to the House, though he knew he had not 
 done with that yet. He had a dread of behaving as if he 
 supposed he should be expected to make a farewell speech, 
 and was thankful his eminence was not of a nature to create 
 on such an occasion a demand for his oratory. He had in 
 fact nothing whatever to say in public not a word, not a 
 syllable. Though the hour was late he found Gabriel Nash 
 established in his studio, drawn thither by the fine exhilaration 
 of having seen an evening paper. Trying it late, on the 
 chance, he had been told by Nick's servant that Nick would 
 sleep there that night, and he had come in to wait, he was so 
 eager to congratulate him. Nick submitted with a good grace 
 to his society he was tired enough to go to bed, but he was 
 restless too in spite of feeling now, oddly enough, that Nash's 
 congratulations could add little to his fortitude. He had felt 
 a good deal, before, as if he were in Nash's hands ; but now 
 that he had made his final choice he seemed to himself to be 
 altogether in his own. Gabriel was wonderful, but no Gabriel 
 could assist him much henceforth. 
 
 Gabriel was indeed more wonderful than ever, while he 
 lolled on a divan and emitted a series of reflections which 
 were even more ingenious than opportune. Nick walked up 
 and down the room, and it might have been supposed from 
 his manner that he was impatient for his visitor to withdraw. 
 This idea would have been contradicted however by the fact 
 that subsequently, after Nash had taken leave, he continued 
 to perambulate. He had grown used to Nash had a sense 
 that he had heard all he had to say. That was one's penalty 
 with persons whose main gift was for talk, however irrigating ; 
 talk engendered a sense of sameness much sooner than action. 
 The things a man did were necessarily more different from 
 each other than the things he said, even if he went in for 
 surprising you. Nick felt Nash could never surprise him any 
 more save by doing something. 
 
 He talked of his host's future, he talked of Miriam Rooth 
 and of Peter Sherringham, whom he had seen at Miriam
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 341 
 
 Rooth's and whom he described as in a predicament delightful 
 to behold. Nick asked a question or two about Peter's pre- 
 dicament and learned rather to his disappointment that it 
 consisted only of the fact that he was in love with Miriam. 
 He requested his visitor to do better than this ; whereupon 
 Nash added the touch that Sherringham wouldn't be able to 
 have her. " Oh, they have ideas ! " he said, when Nick asked 
 him why. 
 
 " What ideas 1 So has he, I suppose." 
 
 " Yes, but they're not the same." 
 
 " Oh well, they'll arrange something," said Nick. 
 
 " You'll have to help them a bit. She's in love with 
 another man," Nash returned. 
 
 " Do you mean with you 1 " 
 
 " Oh, I'm never another man," said Nash ; " I'm more the 
 wrong one than the man himself. It's you she's after." And 
 upon Nick's asking him what he meant by this he added : 
 " "While you were engaged in transferring her image to your 
 sensorium you stamped your own upon hers." 
 
 Nick stopped in his walk, staring. " Ah, what a bore ! " 
 
 " A bore 1 Don't you think she's agreeable ? " 
 
 Nick hesitated. " I wanted to go on with her now I can't." 
 
 " My dear fellow, it only makes her handsomer : I wondered 
 what was the matter with her." 
 
 " Oh, that's twaddle," said Nick, turning away. " Besides, 
 has she told you? " 
 
 " No, but her mother has." 
 
 " Has she told her mother ? " 
 
 " Mrs. Rooth says not. But I have known Mrs. Rooth to 
 say that which isn't." 
 
 " Apply that rule then to the information you speak of." 
 
 " Well, since you press me, I know more," said Nash. 
 " Miriam knows you are engaged to a certain lady ; she told 
 me as much, told me she had seen her here. That was enough 
 to set Miriam off she likes forbidden fruit." 
 
 " I'm not engaged to any lady. I was, but we've altered 
 our minds." 
 
 " Ah, what a pity ! " sighed Nash. 
 
 " Mephistopheles ! " Nick rejoined, stopping again and 
 looking at his visitor gravely. 
 
 " Pray, whom do you call Margaret ? May I ask if your 
 failure of interest in the political situation is the cause of this 
 change in your personal one ? " Nash went on. Nick signified 
 to him that he might not; whereupon Gabriel added : " I am
 
 342 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 not in the least devilish I only mean it's a pity you've altered 
 your minds, because now perhaps Miriam will alter hers. She 
 goes from one thing to another. However, I won't tell her." 
 
 " I will, then," said Nick, between jest and earnest. 
 
 " Would that really be prudent ? " Nash asked, with an 
 intonation that made hilarity prevail. 
 
 " At any rate," Nick resumed, " nothing would induce me 
 to interfere with Peter Sherringham. That sounds fatuous, 
 but to you I don't mind appearing an ass." 
 
 " The thing would be to get Sherringham out of spite to 
 entangle himself with another woman." 
 
 " What good would that do ? " 
 
 " Oh, Miriam would begin to fancy him then." 
 
 " Spite surely isn't a conceivable motive for a healthy man." 
 
 " Ah, Sherringham isn't a healthy man. He's too much in 
 love." 
 
 "Then he won't care for another woman." 
 
 " He would try to, and that would produce its effect its 
 effect on Miriam." 
 
 " You talk like an American novel. Let him try, and God 
 keep us all straight." Nick thought, in extreme silence, of 
 his poor little Biddy and hoped he would have to see to it a 
 little that Peter wouldn't " try " on her. He changed the 
 subject and before Nash went away took occasion to remark 
 to him the occasion was offered by some new allusion of the 
 visitor's to the sport he hoped to extract from seeing Nick 
 carry out everything to which he stood committed that the 
 great comedy would fall very flat, the great incident would 
 pass unnoticed. 
 
 " Oh, if you'll simply do your part I'll take care of the rest," 
 said Nash. 
 
 " If you mean by doing my part working like a beaver, it's 
 all right," Nick replied. 
 
 "Ah, you reprobate, you'll become a fashionable painter, a 
 P. E.. A. ! " his companion groaned, getting up to go. 
 
 When he had gone Nick threw himself back on the cushions 
 of the divan and, with his hands locked above his head, sat a 
 long time lost in thought. He had sent his servant to bed ; 
 he was unmolested. . He gazed before him into the gloom 
 produced by the unheeded burning out of the last candle. The 
 vague outer light came in through the tall studio window, and 
 the painted images, ranged about, looked confused in the dusk. 
 If his mother had seen him she might have thought he was 
 staring at his father's ghost.
 
 XXXYI. 
 
 THE night Peter Sherringham walked away from Balaklava 
 Place with Gabriel Nash the talk of the two men directed 
 itself, as was natural under the circumstances, to the question 
 of Miriam's future renown and the pace, as Nash called it, at 
 which she would go. Critical spirits as they both were, and 
 one of them as dissimulative in passion as the other was para- 
 doxical in the absence of it, they yet took this renown for 
 granted as completely as the simple-minded, a pair of hot spec- 
 tators in the pit, might have done, and exchanged observations 
 on the assumption that the only uncertain element would be 
 the pace. This was a proof of general subjugation. Peter 
 wished not to show, but he wished to know ; and in the rest- 
 lessness of his anxiety he was ready even to risk exposure, 
 great as the sacrifice might be of the imperturbable, urbane 
 scepticism most appropriate to a secretary of embassy. He 
 was unable to rid himself of the sense that Gabriel Nash had 
 got up earlier than he, had had opportunities in days already 
 distant, the days of Mrs. Rooth's hungry foreign rambles. 
 Something of authority and privilege stuck to him from this, 
 and it made Sherringham still more uncomfortable when he 
 was most conscious that at the best even the trained diplo- 
 matic mind would never get a grasp of Miriam as a whole. 
 She was constructed to revolve like the terrestrial globe ; some 
 part or other of her was always out of sight or in shadow. 
 
 Sherringham talked to conceal his feelings and, like every 
 man doing a thing from that sort of intention, did it perhaps 
 too much. They agreed that, putting strange accidents aside, 
 Miriam would go further than any one had gone, in England 
 at least and within the memory of man ; and that it was a 
 pity, as regards marking the comparison, that for so long no 
 one had gone any distance worth speaking of. They further 
 agreed that it would naturally seem absurd to any one who 
 didn't know, their prophesying such big things on such small 
 evidence; and they agreed lastly that the absurdity quite 
 vanished as soon as the prophets knew as they knew. Their 
 knowledge (they quite recognized this) was simply confidence 
 raised to a high point the communication of the girl's own 
 confidence. The conditions were enormously to make, but it 
 was of the very essence of Miriam's confidence that she would 
 make them. The parts, the plays, the theatres, the " support,"
 
 344 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 the audiences, the critics, the money were all to be found, but 
 she cast a spell which prevented that from seeming a serious 
 hitch. One might not see from one day to the other what she 
 would do or how she would do it, but she would none the less 
 go on. She would have to construct her own road, as it were, 
 but at the worst there would only be delays in making it. 
 These delays would depend on the hardness of the stones she 
 had to break. 
 
 As Sherringham had perceived, you never knew where to 
 " have " Gabriel Nash ; a truth exemplified in his unexpected 
 delight at the prospect of Miriam's drawing forth the modern- 
 ness of the age. You might have thought he would loathe 
 that modernness ; but he had a brilliant, amused, amusing 
 vision of it, saw it as something huge and ornamentally vulgar. 
 Its vulgarity would rise to the grand style, like that of a 
 London railway station, and Miriam's publicity would be as 
 big as the globe itself. All the machinery was ready, the 
 platform laid ; the facilities, the wires and bells and trumpets, 
 the colossal, deafening newspaperism of the period its most 
 distinctive sign were waiting for her, their predestined mis- 
 tress, to press her foot on the spring and set them all in motion. 
 Gabriel brushed in a large bright picture of her progress 
 through the time and round the world, round it and round it 
 again, from continent to continent and clime to clime ; with 
 populations and deputations, reporters and photographers, 
 placards and interviews and banquets, steamers, railways, 
 dollars, diamonds, speeches and artistic ruin all jumbled into 
 her train. Regardless of expense the spectacle would be and 
 thrilling, though somewhat monotonous, the drama a drama 
 more bustling than any she would put on the stage and a 
 spectacle that would beat everything for scenery. In the end 
 her divine voice would crack, screaming to foreign ears and 
 antipodal barbarians, and her clever manner would lose all 
 quality, simplified to a few unmistakable knock-down dodges. 
 Then she would be at the fine climax of life and glory, still 
 young and insatiate, but already coarse, hard and raddled, 
 with nothing left to do and nothing left to do it with, the 
 remaining years all before her and the raison d'etre all behind. 
 It would be curious and magnificent and grotesque. 
 
 " Oh, she'll have some good years they'll be worth having," 
 Sherringham insisted, as they went. " Besides, you see her 
 too much as a humbug and too little as a real producer. She 
 has ideas great ones ; she loves the thing for itself. That 
 may keep a woman serious."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 345 
 
 " Her greatest idea must always be to show herself ; and 
 fortunately she has a splendid self to show. I think of her 
 absolutely as a real producer, but as a producer whose produc- 
 tion is her own person. No ' person/ even as fine a one as 
 hers, will stand that for more than an hour, so that hum- 
 buggery has very soon to lend a hand. However," Nash 
 continued, " if she's a fine humbug it will do as well, and 
 perfectly suit the time. We can all be saved by vulgarity ; 
 that's the solvent of all difficulties and the blessing of this 
 delightful age. Let no man despair; a new hope has dawned." 
 
 " She'll do her work like any other worker, with the ad- 
 vantage over many that her talent is rare," Peter replied. 
 " Compared with the life of many women, that's security and 
 sanity of the highest order. Then she can't help her beauty. 
 You can't vulgarize that." 
 
 " Oh, can't you? " exclaimed Gabriel Nash. 
 
 " It will abide with her till the day of her death. It isn't 
 a mere superficial freshness. She's very noble." 
 
 " Yes, that's the pity of it," said Nash. " She's a capital 
 girl, and 1 quite admit that she'll do for a while a lot of good. 
 She will have brightened up the world for a great many 
 people ; she will have brought the ideal nearer to them, held 
 it fast for an hour, with its feet on earth and its great wings 
 trembling. That's always something, for blessed is he who 
 has dropped even the smallest coin into the little iron box 
 that contains the precious savings of mankind. Miriam will 
 doubtless have dropped a big gold piece. It will be found, in 
 the general scramble, on the day the race goes bankrupt. And 
 then, for herself, she will have had a great go at life." 
 
 " Oh, yes, she'll have got out of her hole ; she won't have 
 vegetated," said Sherringham. "That makes her touching to 
 me ; it adds to the many good reasons for which one may 
 want to help her. She's tackling a big job, and tackling it 
 by herself ; throwing herself upon the world, in good faith, 
 and dealing with it as she can ; meeting alone, in her youth, 
 her beauty and her generosity all the embarrassments of 
 notoriety and all the difficulties of a profession of which, if 
 one half is what's called brilliant, the other half is odious." 
 
 " She has great courage, but should you speak of her as 
 solitary, with such a lot of us all round her? " Gabriel asked. 
 
 " She's a great thing for you and me, but we're a small 
 thing for her." 
 
 41 Well, a good many small things may make up a consider- 
 able one," Nnsh returned. " There must always be the man ;
 
 346 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 he's the indispensable element in such a life, and he'll be the 
 last thing she'll ever want for." 
 
 " What man are you talking about 1 " Sherringham asked, 
 rather confusedly. 
 
 "The man of the hour, whoever he is. She'll inspire 
 innumerable devotions." 
 
 " Of course she will, and they will be precisely a part of the 
 insufferable side of her life." 
 
 " Insufferable to whom ? " Nash inquired. " Don't forget 
 that the insufferable side of her life will be just the side she'll 
 thrive on. You can't eat your cake and have it, and you can't 
 make omelettes without breaking eggs. You can't at once sit 
 by the fire and fly about the world, and you can't go round 
 and round the globe without having adventures. You can't 
 be a great actress without quivering nerves. If you haven't 
 them you'll only be a small one. If you have them, your 
 friends will be pretty sure to hear of them. Your nerves and 
 your adventures, your eggs and your cake, are part of the cost 
 of the most expensive of professions. If you do your business 
 at all you should do it handsomely, so that the costs may run 
 up tremendously. You play with human passions, with exalt- 
 ations and ecstasies and terrors, and if you trade on the fury 
 of the elements you must know how to ride the storm." 
 
 " Those are the fine old commonplaces about the artistic 
 temperament, but I usually find the artist a very meek, decent 
 little person," said Sherringham. 
 
 " You never find the artist you only find his work, and 
 that's all you need find. When the artist's a woman and 
 the woman's an actress, meekness and decency will doubtless 
 be there in the right proportions," Nash went on. " Miriam 
 will represent them for you, if you give her her starting- 
 point, with the utmost charm." 
 
 " Of course she'll have devotions that's all right," said 
 Sherringham, impatiently. 
 
 " And don't you see ? they'll mitigate her solitude, they'll 
 even enliven it," Nash remarked. 
 
 " She'll probably box a good many ears : that'll te lively," 
 Peter rejoined, with some grimness. 
 
 " Oh, magnificent ! it will be a merry life. Yet with its 
 tragic passages, its distracted or its pathetic hours," Nash 
 continued. " In short a little of everything." 
 
 The two men walked on without further speech, till at last 
 Sherringham said : " The best thing for a woman in her 
 situation is to marry some good fellow."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 347 
 
 " Oh, I dare say she'll do that too ! " ISTash laughed ; a 
 remark in consequence of which Peter again lapsed into 
 silence. Gabriel left him to enjoy his silence for some 
 minutes ; after which he added : " There's a good fellow she'd 
 marry to-morrow." 
 
 Peter hesitated. "Do you mean her friend Dashwood?" 
 
 " No, no, I mean Nick Dormer." 
 
 " She'd marry him ? " Sherringham. asked. 
 
 " I mean her head's full of him. But she'll hardly get the 
 chance." 
 
 " Does she like him so much as that 1 " Sherringham 
 went on. 
 
 " I don't know quite how much you mean, but enough for 
 all practical ends." 
 
 " Marrying a fashionable actress that's hardly a practical 
 end." 
 
 " Certainly not, but I'm not speaking from his point of 
 view. Moreover I thought you just now said it would be 
 such a good thing for her." 
 
 " To marry Nick Dormer ? " 
 
 " You said a good fellow, and he's the very best." 
 
 " I wasn't thinking of the man, but of the marriage. It 
 would protect her, make things safe and comfortable for her 
 and keep a lot of cads and blackguards away." 
 
 " She ought to marry the prompter or the box-keeper," said 
 Nash. " Then it would be all right. I think indeed they 
 generally do, don't they ? " 
 
 Sherringham felt for a moment a strong disposition to 
 drop his companion on the spot to cross to the other side 
 of the street and walk away without him. But there was a 
 different impulse which struggled with this one and, after a 
 minute, overcame it the impulse which led to his saying 
 presently : " Has she told you that that she's in love with 
 Nick?" 
 
 ." No, no that's not the way I know it." 
 
 " Has Nick told you, then 1 " 
 
 " On the contrary, I've told him." 
 
 " You've rendered him a questionable service if you've no 
 proof," said Peter. 
 
 " My proof is only that I've seen her with him. She's 
 charming, poor thing." 
 
 " But surely she isn't in love with every man she's charm- 
 ing to." 
 
 " I mean she's charming to me," Nash replied. " I see her
 
 348 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 that way. But judge for yourself the first time you get a 
 chance." 
 
 " When shall I get a chance? Nick doesn't come near her." 
 
 " Oh, he'll come, he'll come ; his picture isn't finished." 
 
 " You mean hell be the box-keeper then 1 " 
 
 " My dear fellow, I shall never allow it," said Gabriel Nash. 
 " It would be idiotic and quite unnecessary. He's beauti- 
 fully arranged, in quite a different line. Fancy his taking 
 that sort of job on his hands ! Besides, she would never 
 expect it ; she's not such a goose. They're very good friends 
 it will go on that way. She's an excellent sort of woman 
 for him to know ; she'll give him lots of ideas of the plastic 
 kind. He would have been up there before this, but he has 
 been absorbed in this delightful squabble with his constituents. 
 That of course is pure amusement ; but when once it's well 
 launched he'll get back to business and his business will be a 
 very different matter from Miriam's. Imagine him writing 
 her advertisements, living on her money, adding up her profits, 
 having rows and recriminations with her agent, carrying her 
 shawl, spending his days in her rouge-pot. The right man for 
 that, if she must have one, will turn up. ' Pour le mariage, 
 non.' Miriam isn't an idiot ; she really, for a woman, quite 
 sees things as they are." 
 
 As Sherringham had not crossed the street and left Gabriel 
 planted, he was obliged to brave the torment of this sugges- 
 tive flow. But descrying in the dusky vista of the Edgware 
 Road a vague and vigilant hansom, he waved his stick with 
 eagerness and with the abrupt declaration that he was tired, 
 must drive the rest of the way. He offered Nash, as he 
 entered the vehicle, no seat, but this coldness was not reflected 
 in the lucidity with which that master of every subject went 
 on to affirm that there was, of course, a danger the danger 
 that in given circumstances Miriam would leave the stage. 
 
 " Leave it you mean for some man? " 
 
 " For the man we're talking about." 
 
 ''For Nick Dormer ?" Peter asked from his place in the 
 cab, his paleness lighted by its lamps. 
 
 " If he should make it a condition. But why should he 
 why should he make any conditions 1 He's not an ass either. 
 You see it would be a bore," Nash continued while the han- 
 som waited, " because if she were to do anything of that sort 
 she would make him pay for the sacrifice." 
 
 "Oh yes, she'd make him pay for the sacrifice," Sherringham 
 repeated.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 349 
 
 " And then, when he had paid, she'd go back to her foot- 
 lights," Gabriel added, explicatively, from the curbstone, as 
 Sherringham closed the apron of the cab. 
 
 " I see she'd go back good-night," Peter replied. " Phase 
 go on ! " he cried to the driver through the hole in the roof. 
 And when the vehicle rolled away he subjoined to himself : 
 " Of course she would and quite right ! " 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 " JUDGE for yourself when you get a chance," Nash had said ; 
 and as it turned out Sherringham was able to judge two days 
 later, for he found his cousin in Balaklava Place on the 
 Tuesday following his walk with Gabriel. He had not only 
 stayed away from the theatre on the Monday evening (he 
 regarded this as an achievement of some importance), but had 
 not been near Miriam during the day. He had meant to 
 absent himself from her company on Tuesday as well ; a 
 determination confirmed by the fact that the afternoon turned 
 out wet. But when, at ten minutes to five o'clock, he jumped 
 into a hansom and directed its course to St. John's Wood, it 
 was precisely upon the weather that he shifted the responsibility 
 of his behaviour. 
 
 Miriam had dined when he reached the villa, but she was 
 lying down she was tired before going to the theatre. 
 Mrs. Booth was however in the drawing-room with three 
 gentlemen, in two of whom the fourth visitor was not startled 
 to recognize Basil Dashwood and Gabriel Nash. Dashwood 
 appeared to have become Miriam's brother-in-arms and a 
 second child a fonder one to Mrs. Booth ; it had come to 
 Sherringham' s knowledge the last time he was in Balaklava 
 Place that the young actor had finally moved his lodgings 
 into the quarter, making himself a near neighbour for all sorts 
 of convenience. " Hang his convenience ! " Peter thought, 
 perceiving that Mrs. Lovick's " Arty " was now altogether one 
 of the family. Oh, the family it was a queer one to be con- 
 nected with ; that consciousness was acute in Sherringham's 
 breast to-day as he entered Mrs. Booth's little circle. The 
 room was filled with cigarette-smoke and there was a messy 
 coffee-service on the piano, whose keys Basil Dashwood lightly 
 touched for his own diversion. Nash, addressing the room,
 
 350 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 of course, was at one end of a little sofa, with his nose in the 
 air, and Nick Dormer was at the other end, seated much at his 
 ease, with a certain privileged appearance of having been 
 there often before, though Sherringham knew he had not. 
 He looked uncritical and very young, as rosy as a school- boy 
 on a half-holiday. It was past five o'clock in the day, but 
 Mrs. Rooth was not dressed ; there was however no want of 
 finish in her elegant attitude the same relaxed grandeur 
 (she seemed to let you understand) for which she used to be 
 distinguished at Castle Nugent when the house was full. She 
 toyed incongruously, in her unbuttoned wrapper, with a large 
 tinsel fan which resembled a theatrical property. 
 
 It was one of the discomforts of Sherringham's situation 
 that many of those minor matters which are, superficially at 
 least, most characteristic of the histrionic life had power to 
 displease him, so that he was obliged to make the effort of 
 indulgence. He disliked besmoked drawing-rooms and irregular 
 meals and untidy arrangements ; he could suffer from the 
 vulgarity of Mrs. Booth's apartments, the importunate photo- 
 graphs (they gave on his nerves), the barbarous absence of 
 signs of an orderly domestic life, the odd volumes from the 
 circulating library (you could see what they were the very 
 covers told you at a glance) tumbled about with cups or 
 glasses on them. He had not waited till now to make the 
 reflection that it was a strange thing fate should have goaded 
 him into that sort of contact ; but as he stood before Mrs. 
 Eooth and her companions he made it perhaps more 
 pointedly than ever. Her companions, somehow, who were 
 not responsible, didn't keep him from making it ; which was 
 particularly odd, as they were not, superficially, in the least 
 of Bohemian type. Almost the first thing that struck him, 
 as it happened, in coming into the room, was the essential 
 good looks of his cousin, who was a gentleman to the eye in 
 a different degree from the high-collared Dashwood. Peter 
 didn't hate him for being such a pleasant young Englishman ; 
 his consciousness was traversed rather by a fresh wave of 
 annoyance at Julia's failure to get on with him on that 
 substantial basis. 
 
 It was Sherringham's first encounter with Nick since his 
 arrival in London : they had been, on one side and the other, 
 so much taken up with their own affairs. Since their last 
 meeting Nick had, as we know, to his kinsman's perception, 
 really taken on a new character : he had done a fine stroke of 
 business in a quiet way. This made him a figure to be counted
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 351 
 
 with, and in just the sense in which Peter desired least to 
 count with him. Poor Sherringham, after his summersault in 
 the blue, was much troubled these last days ; he was ravaged 
 by contending passions ; he paid, every hour, in a torment of 
 unrest, for what was false in his position, the impossibility of 
 being consistent, the opposition of interest and desire. Nick, 
 his junior and a lighter weight, had settled his problem and 
 showed no wounds : there was something impertinent and 
 mystifying in it. He looked too innocently young and happy 
 there, and too careless and modest and amateurish for a rival 
 or for the genius that he was apparently going to try to be 
 the genius that, the other day in the studio with Biddy, 
 Peter had got a startled glimpse of his capacity for being. 
 Sherringham would have liked to feel that he had grounds of 
 resentment, that Julia had been badly treated or that Nick 
 was fatuous, for in that case he might have regarded him as 
 offensive. But where was the offence of his merely being 
 liked by a woman in respect to whom Peter had definitely 
 denied himself the luxury of pretensions, especially if the 
 offender had taken no action in the matter ? It could scarcely 
 be called culpable action to call, casually, on an afternoon 
 when the lady was invisible. Peter, at any rate, was distinctly 
 glad Miriam was invisible ; and he proposed to himself to 
 suggest to Nick after a little that they should adjourn 
 together they had such interesting things to talk about. 
 Meanwhile Nick greeted him with candid tones and pleasant 
 eyes, in which he could read neither confusion nor defiance. 
 Sherringham was reassured against a danger he believed he 
 didn't recognize and puzzled by a mystery he flattered him- 
 self he didn't mind. And he was still more ashamed of 
 being reassured than of being puzzled. 
 
 It must be recorded that Miriam remained invisible only a 
 few minutes longer. Nick, as Sherringham gathered, had 
 been about a quarter of an hour in the house, which would 
 have given the girl, aroused from her repose, about time to 
 array herself to come down to him. At all events she was in 
 the room, prepared apparently to go to the theatre, very 
 shortly after Sherringham had become sensible of how glad he 
 was she was out of it. Familiarity had never yet cured him 
 of a certain tremor of expectation and even of suspense in 
 regard to her entrances ; a flutter caused by the simple cir- 
 cumstance of her infinite variety. To say she was always 
 acting suggests too much that she was often fatiguing ; for 
 her changing face affected this particular admirer at least not
 
 352 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 as a series of masks, but as a response to perceived differences, 
 an intensity of sensibility, or still more as something cleverly 
 constructive, like the shifting of the scene in a play or a room 
 with many windows. Her incarnations were incalculable, but 
 if her present denied her past and declined responsibility for 
 her future, it made a good thing of the hour and kept the 
 actual very actual. This time the actual was a bright, gentle, 
 graceful, smiling young woman in a new dress, eager to go out, 
 drawing on fresh gloves, who looked as if she were about to 
 step into a carriage and (it was Gabriel Nash who thus 
 formulated her physiognomy) do a lot of London things. 
 
 The young woman had time to spare however, and she sat 
 down and talked and laughed and presently gave, as it seemed 
 to Sherringham, a finer character to the tawdry little room. 
 It was honourable enough if it belonged to her. She described 
 herself as in a state of nervous bewilderment exhausted, 
 stupefied, blinded with the rehearsals of the forthcoming piece 
 (the first night was close at hand and it was going to be d'un 
 mauvais they would all see !), but there was no corre- 
 spondence between this account of the matter and her present 
 kindly gaiety. She sent her mother away to " put on some 
 clothes or something " and, left alone with the visitors, went 
 to a long glass between the windows, talking always to Nick 
 Dormer, and revised and rearranged a little her own attire. 
 She talked to Nick over her shoulder, and to Nick only, as if 
 he were the guest to recognize and the others didn't count. 
 She broke out immediately about his having thrown up his 
 seat, wished to know if the strange story told her by Mr. Nash 
 were true that he had knocked all the hopes of his party 
 into pie. 
 
 Nick took it in this way and gave a jocular picture of his 
 party's ruin, the critical condition of public affairs : evidently 
 as yet he remained inaccessible to shame or repentance. 
 Sherringham, before Miriam's entrance, had not, in shaking 
 hands with Nick, made even a roundabout allusion to his odd 
 " game : " there seemed a sort of muddled good taste in being 
 silent about it. He winced a little on seeing how his scruples 
 had been wasted, and was struck with the fine, jocose, direct 
 turn of his kinsman's conversation with the young actress. 
 It was a part of her unexpectedness that she took the heavy 
 literal view of Nick's behaviour; declared frankly, though 
 without ill-nature, that she had no patience with his folly. 
 She was horribly disappointed she had set her heart on his 
 being a great statesman, one of the rulers of the people and
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 353 
 
 the glories of England. What was so useful, what was so 
 noble 1 how it belittled everything else ! She had expected 
 him to wear a cordon and a star some day (and to get them 
 very soon), and to come and see her in her loge : it would 
 look so well. She talked like a lovely Philistine, except 
 perhaps when she expressed surprise at hearing she heard 
 it from Gabriel Nash that in England gentlemen accoutred 
 with those emblems of their sovereign's esteem didn't so far 
 forget themselves as to stray into the dressing-rooms of 
 actresses. She admitted, after a moment, that they were 
 quite right the dressing-rooms of actresses were nasty 
 places ; but she was sorry, for that was the sort of thing she 
 had always figured, in a corner a distinguished man, slightly 
 bald, in evening dress, with orders, admiring the smallness 
 of a satin shoe and saying witty things. Gabriel Nash was 
 convulsed with hilarity at this such a vision of the British 
 political hero. Coming back from the glass and making him 
 give her his place on the sofa, she seated herself near Nick 
 and continued to express her regret at his perversity. 
 
 "They all say that all the charming women, but I 
 shouldn't have looked for it from you," Nick replied. "I've 
 given you such an example of what I can do in another 
 line." 
 
 "Do you mean my portrait? Oh, I've got it, with your 
 name and 'M.P.' in the corner, and that's precisely why I'm 
 content. 'M.P.' in the corner of a picture is delightful, but 
 I want to break the mould : I don't in the least insist on 
 your giving specimens to others. And the artistic life, when 
 you can lead another if you have any alternative, however 
 modest is a very poor business. It comes last in dignity 
 after everything else. Ain't I up to my eyes in it and don't 
 I know?" 
 
 " You talk like my broken-hearted mother," said Nick. 
 "Does she hate it so intensely?" 
 
 "She has the darkest ideas about it the wildest theories. 
 I can't imagine where she gets them ; partly, I think, from 
 a general conviction that the ' aesthetic ' a horrible insidious 
 foreign disease is eating the healthy core out of English 
 life (dear old English life !) and partly from the charming 
 drawings in Punch and the clever satirical articles, pointing 
 at mysterious depths of contamination, in the other weekly 
 papers. She believes there's a dreadful coterie of uncannily 
 clever and desperately refined people, who wear a kind of 
 loose, faded uniform and worship only beauty -which is a 
 
 A A
 
 354 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 fearful thing that Nash has introduced me to it, that I now 
 spend all my time in it, and that for its sweet sake I have 
 repudiated the most sacred engagements. Poor Nash, who, 
 so far as I can make out, isn't in any sort of society, however 
 bad ! " 
 
 " But I'm uncannily clever," Nash interposed, " and though 
 I can't afford the uniform (I believe you get it best some- 
 where in South Audley Street), I do worship beauty. I really 
 think it's me the weekly paper means." 
 
 " Oh, I've read the articles I know the sort ! " said Basil 
 Dashwood. 
 
 Miriam looked at him. " Go and see if the brougham's 
 there I ordered it early." 
 
 Dashwood, without moving, consulted his watch. " It isn't 
 time yet I know more about the brougham than you. I've 
 made a rattling good arrangement for her it really costs 
 her nothing," the young actor continued confidentially to 
 Sherringham, near whom he had placed himself. 
 
 " Your mother's quite right to be broken-hearted," Miriam 
 declared, "and I can imagine exactly what she has been 
 through. I should like to talk with her I should like to see 
 her." Nick broke into ringing laughter, reminding her that 
 she had talked to him, while she sat for her portrait, in 
 directly the opposite sense, most suggestively and inspiringly ; 
 and Nash explained that she was studying the part of a 
 political duchess and wished to take observations for it, to 
 work herself into the character. Miriam might in fact have 
 been a political duchess as she sat with her head erect and 
 her gloved hands folded, smiling with aristocratic dimness at 
 Nick. She shook her head with stately sadness ; she might 
 have been representing Mary Stuart in Schiller's play. " I've 
 changed since that. I want you to be the grandest thing 
 there is the counsellor of kings." 
 
 Peter Sherringham wondered if possibly it were not since 
 she had met his sister in Nick's studio that she had changed, 
 if perhaps it had not occurred to her that it would give Julia 
 the sense of being more effectually routed to know that the 
 woman who had thrown the bomb was one who also tried to 
 keep Nick in the straight path. This indeed would involve 
 an assumption that Julia might know, whereas it was perfectly 
 possible that she mightn't and more than possible that if she 
 should she wouldn't care. Miriam's essential fondness for 
 trying different ways was always there as an adequate reason 
 for any particular way ; a truth which however sometimes
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 355 
 
 only half prevented the particular way from being vexatious 
 to Sherringham. 
 
 "Yet after all who is more aesthetic than you and who 
 goes in more for the beautiful ? " Nick asked. " You're never 
 so beautiful as when you pitch into it." 
 
 "Oh, I'm an inferior creature, of an inferior sex, and I 
 have to earn my bread as I can. I'd give it all up in a 
 moment, my odious trade for an inducement." 
 
 " And pray what do you mean by an inducement ? " Nick 
 demanded. 
 
 "My dear fellow, she means you if you'll give her a 
 permanent engagement to sit for you ! " exclaimed Gabriel 
 Nash. "What crude questions you ask!" 
 
 " I like the way she talks," Basil Dashwood broke in, 
 " when I gave up the most brilliant prospects, of very much 
 the same kind as Mr. Dormer's, expressly to go on the stage." 
 
 "You're an inferior creature too," said Miriam. 
 
 " Miss Rooth is very hard to satisfy," Sherringham observed. 
 " A man of distinction, slightly bald, in evening dress, with 
 orders, in the corner of her loge she has such a personage 
 ready made to her hand and she doesn't so much as look at 
 him. Am I not an inducement ? Have I not offered you a 
 permanent engagement?" 
 
 " Your orders where are your orders 1 " Miriam inquired 
 with a sweet smile, getting up. 
 
 " I shall be a minister next year and an ambassador before 
 you know it. Then I shall stick on everything that can be 
 had." 
 
 " And they call us mountebanks ! " cried the girl. " I've 
 been so glad to see you again do you want another sitting 1 " 
 she went on, to Nick, as if to take leave of him. 
 
 " As many as you'll give me I shall be grateful for all," 
 Nick answered. "I should like to do you as you are at 
 present. You're totally different from the woman I painted 
 you're wonderful." 
 
 "The Comic Muse!" laughed Miriam. "Well, you must 
 wait till our first nights are over I'm sur les dents till then. 
 There's everything to do, and I have to do it all. That 
 fellow's good for nothing for nothing but domestic life," and 
 she glanced at Basil Dashwood. " He hasn't an idea not one 
 that you'd willingly tell of him, though he's rather useful for 
 the stables. We've got stables now or we try to look as if 
 we had : Dashwood's ideas are de cette force. In ten days I 
 shall have more time."
 
 356 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 "The Comic Muse? Never, never," Sherringham protested. 
 "You're not to go smirking through the age and down 
 to posterity I'd rather see you as Medusa crowned with 
 serpents. That's what you look like when you look best." 
 
 " That's consoling when I've just bought a new bonnet ! 
 I forgot to tell you just now that when you're an ambassador 
 you may propose anything you like," Miriam went on. " But 
 excuse me if I make that condition. Seriously speaking, come 
 to me glittering with orders and I shall probably succumb. I 
 can't resist stars and garters. Only you must, as you say, 
 have them all. I don't like to hear Mr. Dormer talk the 
 slang of the studio like that phrase just now : it is a fall to 
 a lower state. However, when one is low one must crawl, and 
 I'm crawling down to the Strand. Dash wood, see if mamma's 
 ready. If she isn't I decline to wait ; you must bring her in 
 a hansom. I'll take Mr. Dormer in the brougham ; I want to 
 talk with Mr. Dormer ; he must drive with me to the theatre. 
 His situation is full of interest." Miriam led the way out of 
 the room as she continued to chatter, and when she reached 
 the house-door, with the four men in her train, the carriage 
 had just drawn up at the garden-gate. It appeared that Mrs. 
 Rooth was not ready, and the girl, in spite of a remonstrance 
 from Nick, who had the sense of usurping the old lady's place, 
 repeated her injunction that she should be brought on in a 
 cab. Miriam's companions accompanied her to the gate, and 
 she insisted upon Nick's taking his seat in the brougham and 
 taking it first. Before she entered she put out her hand to 
 Sherringham and, looking up at him, held his own kindly. 
 "Dear old master, aren't you coming to-night? I miss you 
 when you're not there." 
 
 "Don't go don't go it's too much," Nash interposed. 
 "She is wonderful," said Basil Dashwood, regarding her 
 admiringly ; " she has gone into the rehearsals, tooth and nail. 
 But nothing takes it out of her." 
 
 "Nothing puts it into you, my dear!" Miriam returned. 
 Then she went on, to Sherringham : " You're the faithful one 
 you're the one I count on." He was not looking at her ; 
 his eyes travelled into the carriage, where they rested on Nick 
 Dormer, established on the further seat with his face turned 
 toward the further window. He was the one, faithful or no, 
 counted on or no, whom a charming woman had preferred to 
 carry off, and there was a certain triumph for him in that 
 fact ; but it pleased Sherringham to imagine that his attitude 
 was a little foolish. Miriam discovered something of this sort
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 357 
 
 in Sherringham's eyes ; for she exclaimed abruptly : ' Don't 
 kill him he doesn't care for me ! " With this she passed into 
 the carriage, which rolled away. 
 
 Sherringham stood watching it a moment, till he heard 
 Basil Dashwood again beside him. " You wouldn't believe 
 what I made him do it for a little fellow I know." 
 
 " Good-bye ; take good care of Mrs. Rooth," said Gabriel 
 Nash, waving a cheerful farewell to the young actor. He 
 gave a smiling survey of the heavens and remarked to Sher- 
 ringham that the rain had stopped. Was he walking, was he 
 driving, should they be going in the same direction? Sher- 
 ringham cared little about his direction and had little account 
 of it to give ; he simply moved away in silence, with Gabriel 
 at his side. Gabriel was partly an affliction to him ; indeed 
 the fact that he had assumed a baleful fascination made him 
 only a deeper affliction. Sherringham moreover did him the 
 justice to observe that he could hold his peace occasionally : he 
 had for instance this afternoon taken little part in the con- 
 versation in Balaklava Place. Peter greatly disliked to talk 
 to him of Miriam, but he liked Nash to talk of her and he 
 even liked him to say such things as he might contradict. He 
 was not however moved to contradict an assertion dropped by 
 his companion, disconnectedly, at the end of a few minutes, to 
 the effect that she was after all the most good-natured creature 
 alive. All the same, Nash added, it wouldn't do for her to 
 take possession of an organization like Nick's ; and he repeated 
 that for his part he would never allow it. It would be on 
 his conscience to interfere. To which Sherringham replied 
 disingenuously that they might all do as they liked it didn't 
 matter a button to him. And with an effort to carry off that 
 comedy he changed the subject. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 PETER SHERRINGHAM would not for a moment have admitted 
 that he was jealous of Nick Dormer, but he would almost 
 have liked to be accused of it ; for this would have given him 
 an opportunity to declare with plausibility that so uncomfort- 
 able a passion had no application to his case. How could a 
 man be jealous when he was not a suitor? how could he 
 pretend to guard a property which was neither his own nor
 
 358 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 destined to become his own 1 There could be no question of 
 loss when one had nothing at stake and no question of envy 
 when the responsibility of possession was exactly what one 
 prayed to be delivered from. The measure of one's suscepti- 
 bility was one's pretensions, and Peter was not only ready to 
 declare over and over again that, thank God, he had none : 
 his spiritual detachment was still more complete he literally 
 suffered from the fact that the declaration was but little 
 elicited. He connected an idea of virtue and honour with his 
 attitude ; for surely it was a high example of conduct to have 
 quenched a personal passion for the sake of the public service. 
 He had gone over the whole question at odd, irrepressible 
 hours ; he had returned, spiritually speaking, the buffet ad- 
 ministered to him in a moment, that day in Rosedale Road, 
 by the spectacle of the crdnerie with which Nick could let 
 worldly glories slide. Resolution for resolution he preferred 
 after all another sort, and his own cranerie would be shown 
 in the way he should stick to his profession and stand up for 
 British interests. If Nick had leaped over a wall he would 
 leap over a river. The course of his river was already traced 
 and his loins were already girded. Thus he was justified iu 
 holding that the measure of a man's susceptibility was a man's 
 attitude : that was the only thing he was bound to give an 
 account of. 
 
 He was perpetually giving an account of it to his own soul, 
 in default of other listeners. He was quite angry at having 
 tasted a sweetness in Miriam's assurance, at the carriage door, 
 bestowed indeed with very little solemnity, that Nick didn't 
 care for her. Wherein did it concern him that Nick cared for 
 her or that Nick didn't 1 Wherein did it signify to him that 
 Gabriel Nash should have taken upon himself to disapprove 
 of a union between the young actress and the young painter 
 and to frustrate an accident that might perhaps be happy ? 
 For those had also been cooling words at the hour, though 
 Peter blushed on the morrow to think that he had perceived 
 in them anything but Nash's personal sublimity. He was 
 ashamed of having been refreshed, and refreshed by so sickly 
 a draught, because it was his theory that he was not in a 
 fever. As for keeping an eye on Nick, it would soon become 
 clear to that young man and that young man's charming friend 
 that he had quite other uses for his sharpness. Nick and 
 Miriam and Gabriel Nash could straighten out their complica- 
 tions according to their light. He would never speak to Nick 
 of Miriam ; he felt indeed just now as if he should never
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 359 
 
 speak to Nick of anything. He had traced the course of his 
 river, as I say, and the real proof would be the way he should 
 fly through the air. It was a case for action for vigorous, 
 unmistakable action. He had done very little since his arrival 
 in London but moon round a fille de theatre who was taken up 
 partly, though she bluffed it off, with another man and partly 
 with arranging new petticoats for a beastly old " poetic 
 drama ; " but this little waste of time should instantly be 
 made up. He had given himself a certain rope and he had 
 danced to the end of his rope, and now he would dance back. 
 That was all right so right that Sherringham could only 
 express to himself how right it was by whistling gaily. 
 
 He whistled as he went to dine with a great personage, the 
 day after his meeting with Kick in Balaklava Place ; a great 
 personage to whom he had originally paid his respects it was 
 high time the day before that meeting, the Monday previous. 
 The sense of omissions to repair, of a superior line to take, 
 perhaps made him study with more intensity to please the 
 personage, who gave him ten minutes and asked him five 
 questions. A great many doors were successively opened 
 before any palpitating pilgrim who was about to enter the 
 presence of this distinguished man ; but they were discreetly 
 closed again behind Sherringham, and I must ask the reader 
 to pause with me at the nearer end of the momentary vista. 
 This particular pilgrim fortunately felt that he could count 
 upon being recognized not only as a faithful if obscure official 
 in the great hierarchy, but as a clever young man who 
 happened to be connected by blood with people his lordship 
 had intimately known. No doubt it was simply as the clever 
 young man that Peter received the next morning from the 
 dispenser of his lordship's hospitality a note asking him to 
 dine on the morrow. He had received such cards before and 
 he always responded to the invitation : he did so however on 
 the present occasion with a sense of unusual intention. In 
 due course his intention was translated into words : before 
 the gentlemen left the dining-room he took the liberty of 
 asking his noble host if during the next few days there 
 would be three minutes more that he might, in his extreme 
 benevolence, bestow upon him. 
 
 "What is it you want 1 ? Tell me now," the master of his 
 fate replied, motioning to the rest of the company to pass out 
 and detaining Peter in the dining-room. 
 
 Peter's excellent training covered every contingency : he 
 could be concise or diffuse, as the occasion required. Even he
 
 360 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 himself however was surprised at the quick felicity of the 
 terms in which he was conscious of conveying that if it were 
 compatible with higher conveniences he should peculiarly like 
 to be transferred to duties in a more distant quarter of the 
 globe. Indeed though Sherringham was fond of thinking of 
 himself as a man of emotions controlled by training, it is not 
 impossible that there was a greater candour than he knew in 
 the expression of his face and even the slight tremor of his 
 voice as he presented this petition. He had wished extremely 
 that his manner should be good in doing so, but perhaps the 
 best part of it for his interlocutor was just the part in which 
 it failed in which it confessed a secret that the highest 
 diplomacy would not have confessed. Sherringham remarked 
 to the minister that he didn't care in the least where the 
 place might be, nor how little coveted a post ; the further 
 away the better and the climate didn't matter. He would 
 only prefer of course that there should be really something 
 to do, although he would make the best of it even if there 
 were not. He stopped in time, or at least he thought he did, 
 not to appear to suggest that he covertly sought relief from 
 the misery of a hindered passion in a flight to latitudes un- 
 favourable to human life. His august patron gave him a 
 sharp look which, for a moment, seemed the precursor of a 
 sharper question ; but the moment elapsed and the question 
 did not come. This considerate omission, characteristic of a 
 true man of the world and representing quick guesses and 
 still quicker indifferences, made Sherringham from that 
 moment his lordship's ardent partisan. What did come was a 
 good-natured laugh and the exclamation : " You know there 
 are plenty of swamps and jungles, if you want that sort of 
 thing." Sherringham replied that it was very much that sort 
 of thing he did want ; whereupon his interlocutor continued : 
 " I'll see I'll see ; if anything turns up, you shall hear." 
 
 Something turned up the very next day : our young man, 
 taken at his word, found himself indebted to the post for a 
 large, stiff, engraved official letter, in which the high position 
 of minister to the smallest of Central American republics was 
 offered to him. The republic, though small, was big enough 
 to be "shaky," and the position, though high, was not so 
 exalted that there were not much greater altitudes above it 
 to which it was a stepping-stone. Sherringham took one 
 thing with another, rejoiced at his easy triumph, reflected that 
 he must have been even more noticed at headquarters than he 
 had hoped, and, on the spot, consulting nobody and waiting
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 361 
 
 for nothing, signified his unqualified acceptance of the place. 
 Nobody with a grain of sense would have advised him to do 
 anything else. It made him happier than he had supposed he 
 should ever be again ; it made him feel professionally in the 
 train, as they said in Paris ; it was serious, it was interesting, 
 it was exciting, and Sherringham's imagination, letting itself 
 loose into the future, began once more to scale the crowning 
 heights. It was very simple to hold one's course if one really 
 tried, and he blessed shaky republics. A further communica- 
 tion informed him that he would be expected to return to 
 Paris for a short interval a week later and that he would 
 before that time be advised of the date at which he was to 
 proceed to his remoter duties. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 THE first thing Peter now did was to go and see Lady Agnes 
 Dormer ; it is not unworthy of note that he took on the 
 other hand no step to make his promotion known to Miriam 
 Rooth. To render it more probable he should find her he 
 went at the luncheon-hour ; and she was indeed on the point 
 of sitting down to that repast with Grace. Biddy was not at 
 home Biddy was never at home now, her mother said : she 
 was always at Nick's place, she spent her life there, she ate 
 and drank there, she almost slept there. What she found to 
 do there in so many hours, or what was the irresistible spell, 
 Lady Agnes could not pretend that she had succeeded in 
 discovering. She spoke of this baleful resort only as " Mck's 
 place," and she spoke of it at first as little as possible. She 
 thought it very probable however that Biddy would come in 
 early that afternoon : there was something or other, some 
 common social duty, that she had condescended to promise 
 she would perform with Grace. Poor Lady Agnes, whom 
 Sherringham found in a very grim yet very tremulous con- 
 dition (she assured her visitor her nerves were all gone), 
 almost abused her younger daughter for two minutes, having 
 evidently a deep-seated need of abusing some one. I must 
 add however that she didn't wait to meet Grace's eye before 
 recovering, by a rapid gyration, her view of the possibilities 
 of things those possibilities from which she still might 
 squeeze, as a mother, the drop that would sweeten her cup. 
 " Dear child," she had the presence of mind to add, " her only
 
 362 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 fault is after all that she adores her brother. She has a 
 capacity for adoration and must always take her gospel from 
 some one." 
 
 Grace declared to Peter that her sister would have stayed 
 at home if she had dreamed he was coming, and Lady Agnes 
 let him know that she had heard all about the hour he had 
 spent with the poor child at Nick's place and about his 
 extraordinary good-nature in taking the two girls to the play. 
 Peter lunched in Calcutta Gardens, spending an hour there 
 which proved at first unexpectedly and, as it seemed to him, 
 unfairly dismal. He knew from his own general perceptions, 
 from what Biddy had told him and from what he had heard 
 Nick say in Balaklava Place, that Lady Agnes would have 
 been wounded by her son's apostasy ; but it was not till he 
 saw her that he appreciated the dark difference this young 
 man's behaviour had made in the outlook of his family. 
 Evidently that behaviour had, as he phrased it, pulled the 
 bottom out of innumerable private calculations. These were 
 things that no outsider could measure and they were none 
 of an outsider's business ; it was enough that Lady Agnes 
 struck him really as a woman who had received her death- 
 blow. She looked ten years older ; she was white and haggard 
 and tragic. Her eyes burned with a strange intermittent fire 
 which made him say to himself that her children had better 
 look out for her. When they were not filled with this un- 
 natural flame they were suffused with comfortless tears ; and 
 altogether the afflicted lady was very bad very bad indeed. 
 It was because he had known she would be very bad that he 
 had in his kindness called upon her 'in exactly this manner; 
 but he recognized that to undertake to be kind to her in 
 proportion to her need might carry one very far. He was 
 glad he himself had not a wronged, mad mother, and he 
 wondered how Nick Dormer could endure the home he had 
 ruined. Apparently he didn't endure it very much, but had 
 taken definitive and highly convenient refuge in Rosedale 
 Pioad. 
 
 Peter's judgment of his young kinsman was considerably 
 confused, and a sensible element in it was the consciousness 
 that he was perhaps just now not in the best state of mind 
 for judging him at all. At the same time, though he held 
 in general that an intelligent man has a legible warrant for 
 doing the particular thing he prefers, he could scarcely help 
 asking himself whether in the exercise of a virile freedom 
 it had been absolutely indispensable that Nick should work
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 363 
 
 such domestic woe. He admitted indeed that this was an 
 anomalous vision of Nick, as the worker of domestic woe. 
 Then he saw that Lady Agnes's grievance (there came a 
 moment, later, when she asserted as much) was not quite 
 what Nick, in Balaklava Place, had represented it with 
 questionable taste perhaps to a mocking actress ; was not a 
 mere shocked quarrel with his adoption of a "low" career, or 
 a horror, the old-fashioned horror, of the strange licenses 
 taken by artists under pretext of being conscientious : the 
 day for this was past and English society thought the brush 
 and the fiddle as good as anything else, with two or three 
 exceptions. It was not what he had taken up but what he 
 had put down that made the sorry difference, and the tragedy 
 would have been equally great if he had become a wine- 
 merchant or a horse-dealer. Peter had gathered at first that 
 Lady Agnes would not trust herself to speak directly of her 
 trouble, and he obeyed what he supposed to be the best 
 discretion in making no allusion to it. But a few minutes 
 before they rose from luncheon she broke out, and when he 
 attempted to utter a word of mitigation there was something 
 that went to his heart in the way she returned : " Oh, you 
 don't know you don't know ! " 
 
 He perceived Grace's eyes fixed upon him at this instant 
 with a look of supplication, and he was uncertain as to what 
 she wanted that he should say something more to console 
 her mother or should hurry away from the subject. Grace 
 looked old and plain and (he had thought, on coming in) 
 rather cross, but she evidently wanted something. " You 
 don't know," Lady Agnes repeated, with a trembling voice 
 "you don't know." She had pushed her chair a little away 
 from the table ; she held her pocket-handkerchief pressed hard 
 to her mouth, almost stuffed into it, and her eyes were fixed 
 on the floor. She made him feel as if he did know knew 
 what towering piles of confidence and hope had been dashed 
 to the earth. Then Lady Agnes finished her sentence un- 
 expectedly : " You don't know what my life with my husband 
 was." Here, on the other hand, Peter was slightly at fault- 
 he didn't exactly see what her life with her husband had to 
 do with it. "What was clear to him however was that they 
 literally had looked for the very greatest things from Nick. 
 It was not quite easy to see why this had been the case it 
 had not been precisely Sherringham's own prefigurement. 
 Nick appeared to have had the faculty of communicating that 
 sort of faith to women ; he had originally given Julia a
 
 364 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 tremendous dose of it, though she had since shaken off the 
 effects. 
 
 "Do you really think he would have done such great 
 things, politically speaking 1 ?" Peter inquired. "Do you 
 consider that the root of the matter was in him?" 
 
 Lady Agnes hesitated a moment, looking rather hard at 
 her visitor. " I only think what all his friends all his 
 father's friends have thought. He was his father's son, 
 after all. No young man ever had a finer training, and he 
 gave, from the first, repeated proof of having the highest sort 
 of ability, the highest sort of ambition. See how he got in 
 everywhere. Look at his first seat look at his second," 
 Lady Agnes continued. " Look at what every one says at 
 this moment." 
 
 "Look at all the papers!" said Grace. "Did you ever 
 hear him speak] " she asked. And when Peter reminded her 
 that he had spent his life in foreign lands she went on : 
 "Well, you lost something." 
 
 " It was very charming," said Lady Agnes quietly. 
 
 " Of course he's charming, whatever he does," Peter conceded. 
 " He'll be a charming artist." 
 
 " Oh, heaven ! " groaned Lady Agnes, rising quickly. 
 
 " He won't that's the worst," Grace amended. " It isn't 
 as if he'd do things people would like. I've been to his place 
 and I never saw such a horrid lot of things not at all clever 
 or pretty." 
 
 " You know nothing whatever about the matter ! " Lady 
 Agnes exclaimed, with unexpected asperity. Then she added, 
 to Peter, that, as it happened, her children did have a good 
 deal of artistic taste : Grace was the only one who was totally 
 deficient in it. Biddy was very clever Biddy really might 
 learn to do pretty things. And anything the poor child could 
 learn was now no more than her duty there was so little 
 knowing what the future had in store for them all. 
 
 "You think too much of the future you take terribly 
 gloomy views," said Peter, looking for his hat. 
 
 " What other views can one take, when one's son has 
 deliberately thrown away a fortune?" 
 
 " Thrown one away 1 Do you mean through not marry- 
 ing?" 
 
 " I mean through killing by his perversity the best friend 
 he ever had." 
 
 Sherringham stared a moment ; then with laughter : '' Ah, 
 but Julia, isn't dead of it? "
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 365 
 
 " I'm not talking of Julia," said Lady Agnes, with a good 
 deal of majesty. " Nick isn't mercenary, and I'm not com- 
 plaining of that." 
 
 "She means Mr. Carteret," Grace explained. "He would 
 have done anything if Nick had stayed in the House." 
 
 "But he's not dead?" 
 
 "Charles Carteret is dying," said Lady Agnes "his end is 
 very, very near. He has been a sort of providence to us he 
 was Sir Nicholas's second self. But he won't stand such 
 nonsense, and that chapter's closed." 
 
 " You mean he has dropped Nick out of his will 1 " 
 
 " Cut him off utterly. He has given him notice." 
 
 " The old scoundrel ! But Nick will work the better for 
 that he'll depend on himself." 
 
 "Yes, and whom shall we depend on? " Grace demanded. 
 
 " Don't be vulgar, for God's sake ! " her mother ejaculated 
 with a certain inconsequence. 
 
 " Oh, leave Nick alone he'll make a lot of money," Peter 
 declared cheerfully, following his two companions into the hall. 
 
 " I don't in the least care whether he does or not," said 
 Lady Agnes. " You must come up-stairs again I've lots to 
 say to you yet," she went on, seeing that Peter had taken his 
 hat. " You must arrange to come and dine with us immedi- 
 ately ; it's only because I've been so steeped in misery that I 
 didn't write to you the other day directly after you called. 
 We don't give parties, as you may imagine, but if you'll come 
 just as we are, for old acquaintance' sake 
 
 " Just with Nick if Nick will come and dear Biddy," 
 Grace interposed. 
 
 " Nick must certainly come, as well as dear Biddy, whom I 
 hoped so much to find," Peter rejoined. " Because I'm going 
 away I don't know when I shall see them again." 
 
 " Wait with mamma. Biddy will come in at any moment," 
 Grace urged. 
 
 " You're going away ? " asked Lady Agnes, pausing at the 
 foot of the stairs and turning her white face upon him. Some- 
 thing in the tone of her voice showed that she had been struck 
 by his own tone. 
 
 " I have had promotion, and you must congratulate me. 
 They are sending me out as minister to a little hot hole in 
 Central America five thousand miles away. I shall have to 
 go rather soon." 
 
 " Oh, I'm so glad ! " Lady Agnes breathed. Still she 
 paused at the foot of the stair and still she gazed.
 
 366 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " How very delightful, because it will lead, straight off, to 
 all sorts of other good things ! " Grace exclaimed. 
 
 "Oh, I'm crawling up, and I'm an excellency," Peter 
 laughed. 
 
 " Then if you dine with us your excellency must have great 
 people to meet you." 
 
 " Nick and Biddy they're great enough." 
 
 " Come up-stairs come up-stairs," said Lady Agnes, turning 
 quickly and beginning to ascend. 
 
 "Wait for Biddy I'm going out," Grace continued, extend- 
 ing her hand to her kinsman. " I shall see you again not 
 that you care ; but good-bye now. Wait for Biddy," the girl 
 repeated in a lower tone, fastening her eyes on his with the 
 same urgent, mystifying gleam that he thought he had 
 perceived in them at luncheon. 
 
 " Oh, I'll go and see her in Rosedale Road," he answered. 
 
 " Do you mean to-day now ?" 
 
 "I don't know about to-day, but before I leave England." 
 
 " Well, she'll be in immediately," said Grace. "Good-bye 
 to your excellency." 
 
 " Come up, Peter please come up," called Lady Agnes, 
 from the top of the stairs. 
 
 He mounted, and when he found himself in the drawing- 
 room with her, with the door closed, she told him that she 
 was exceedingly interested in his fine prospects, that she 
 wished to hear all about his new position. She rang for 
 coffee and indicated the seat he would find most comfortable : 
 he had for a moment an apprehension that she would tell him 
 he might if he liked light a cigar. For Peter Sherringham 
 had suddenly become restless too restless to occupy a com- 
 fortable chair ; he seated himself in it only to jump up again, 
 and he went to the window while he communicated to his 
 hostess the very little that he knew about his prospective post 
 on hearing a vehicle drive up to the door. A strong light 
 had just been thrown into his mind, and it seemed to grow 
 stronger when, looking out of the window, he saw Grace 
 Dormer issue from the house in a bonnet and jacket which 
 had all the air of having been assumed with extraordinary 
 speed. Her jacket was unbuttoned, her gloves were dangling 
 from her hand and she was tying her bonnet-strings. The 
 vehicle into which she hastily sprang was a hansom-cab which 
 had been summoned by the butler from the doorstep and which 
 rolled away with her after she had given the cabman an 
 address.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 367 
 
 " Where is Grace going in such a hurry ? " he asked of 
 Lady Agnes ; to which she replied that she had not the least 
 idea her children, at the pass they had all come to, knocked 
 about as they liked. 
 
 Peter sat down again ; he stayed a quarter of an hour and 
 then he stayed longer, and during this time his appreciation 
 of what Lady Agnes had in her mind gathered force. She 
 showed him clearly enough what she had in her mind, although 
 she showed it by no clumsy nor reprehensible overtures. It 
 looked out of her sombre, conscious eyes and quavered in her 
 preoccupied, perfunctory tones. She manifested an extrava- 
 gant interest in his future proceedings, the probable succession 
 of events in his career, the different honours he would be likely 
 to come in for, the salary attached to his actual appointment, 
 the salary attached to the appointments that would follow 
 they would be sure to, wouldn't they? and what he might 
 reasonably expect to save. Oh, he must save Lady Agnes 
 was an advocate of saving ; and he must take tremendous 
 pains and get on and be clever and ambitious : he must make 
 himself indispensable and rise to the top. She was urgent 
 and suggestive and sympathetic ; she threw herself into the 
 vision of his achievements and emoluments as if to satisfy a 
 little the sore hunger with which Nick's treachery had left 
 her. This was touching to Peter Sherringham, and he did 
 not remain unmoved even at those more importunate moments 
 when, as she fell into silence, fidgeting feverishly with a 
 morsel of fancy-work that she had plucked from a table, her 
 whole presence became an intense repressed appeal to him. 
 What that appeal would have been had it been uttered was : 
 " Oh, Peter, take little Biddy ; oh, my dear young friend, 
 understand your interests at the same time that you under- 
 stand mine ; be kind and reasonable and clever ; save me all 
 further anxiety and tribulation and accept my lovely, faultless 
 child from my hands." 
 
 That was what Lady Agnes had always meant, more or 
 less, that was what Grace had meant, and they meant it with 
 singular lucidity on the present occasion. Lady Agnes meant 
 it so much that from one moment to another Peter scarcely 
 knew what she might do ; and Grace meant it so much that 
 she had rushed away in a hansom to fetch her sister from the 
 studio. Grace, however, was a fool, for Biddy certainly 
 wouldn't come. The news of his promotion had set them off, 
 adding brightness to their idea of his being an excellent match ; 
 bringing home to them sharply the sense that if he were going
 
 368 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 away to strange countries he must take Biddy with him that 
 something at all events must be settled about Biddy before he 
 went. They had suddenly began to throb with the conviction 
 that they had no time to lose. 
 
 Strangely enough, the perception of all this had not the 
 effect of throwing Peter on the defensive, or at least of making 
 him wish to bolt. When once he had discovered what was in 
 the air he recognized a propriety, a real felicity in it ; could 
 not deny that he was in certain ways a good match, since it 
 was quite probable he would go far ; and was even generous 
 enough (as he had no fear of being dragged to the altar) to 
 enter into the conception that he might offer some balm to a 
 mother who had had a horrid disappointment. The feasibility 
 of marrying Biddy was not exactly augmented by the idea 
 that his doing so would be a great offset to what Nick had 
 made Lady Agnes suffer ; but at any rate Peter did not dis- 
 like his strenuous companion so much as to wish to punish 
 her for being strenuous. He was not afraid of her, whatever 
 she might do ; and though he was unable to grasp the practical 
 relevancy of Biddy's being produced on the instant he was 
 willing to linger for half an hour on the chance of her 
 turning up. 
 
 There was a certain contagion in Lady Agnes's appeal it 
 made him appeal sensibly to himself. For indeed, as it is 
 time to say, the glass of our young man's spirit had been 
 polished for that reflection. It was only at this moment that 
 he became really candid with himself. When he made up his 
 mind that his only safety was in flight and took the strong 
 measure of asking for assistance to flee, he was very conscious 
 that another and probably still more effectual safeguard 
 (especially if the two should be conjoined) lay in the hollow of 
 his hand. Julia Dallow's words in Paris had come back to 
 him and had seemed much wiser than when they were spoken : 
 " She'll save you disappointments ; you would know the worst 
 that can happen to you, and it wouldn't be bad." Julia had 
 put it into a nutshell Biddy would probably save him disap- 
 pointments. And then she was well, she was Biddy. Peter 
 knew better what that was since the hour he had spent with 
 her in Rosedale Road. But he had brushed away the sense of 
 it, though he was aware that in doing so he took only half 
 measures, was even guilty of a sort of fraud upon himself. If 
 he was sincere in wishing to put a gulf between his future and 
 that portion of his past and present which was associated with 
 Miriam Rooth, there was a very simple way to do so. He had
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 369 
 
 dodged that way, dishonestly fixing upon another which, taken 
 alone, was far from being so good ; but Lady Agnes brought 
 him back to it. She held him in magnanimous contemplation 
 of it, during which the safety, as Julia had called it, of the 
 remedy became fascinating to his mind, especially as that 
 safety appeared not to exclude a concomitant sweetness. It 
 would be simple and it would swallow up his problems ; it 
 would put an end to all alternatives, which, as alternatives 
 were otherwise putting an end to him, would be an excellent 
 thing. It would settle the whole question of his future, and 
 it was high time this should be settled. 
 
 Peter took two cups of coffee while he made out his future 
 with Lady Agnes, but though he drank them slowly he had 
 finished them before Biddy turned up. He stayed three- 
 quarters of an hour, saying to himself that she wouldn't come 
 why should she come? Lady Agnes said nothing about 
 this ; she really, in vulgar vocables, said nothing about any 
 part of the business. But she made him fix the next day but 
 one for coming to dinner, and her repeated declaration that 
 there would be no one else, not another creature but them- 
 selves, had almost the force of a legal paper. In giving his 
 word that he would come without fail and not write the next 
 day to throw them over for some function that he should 
 choose to dub obligatory, Peter felt quite as if he were putting 
 his name to such a document. He went away at half-past 
 three ; Biddy of course hadn't come, and he had been certain 
 she wouldn't. He couldn't imagine what Grace's idea had 
 been, nor what pretext she had put forward to her sister. 
 Whatever it had been, Biddy had seen through it and hated 
 such machinations. Peter could only like her the better 
 for that. 
 
 XL. 
 
 LADY AGNES would doubtless have done better, in her own 
 interest or in that of her child, to have made sure of Peter's 
 company for the very next evening. This she had indeed 
 attempted, but the application of the idea had failed. Peter 
 had a theory that he was inextricably engaged ; moreover her 
 ladyship could not take upon herself to answer for Nick. Of 
 course they must have Nick, though, to tell the truth, the 
 hideous truth, she and her son were scarcely upon terms. 
 
 B B
 
 370 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 Peter insisted on !Nlck, he wished particularly to see him and 
 he gave his hostess notice that he would make each of them 
 forgive everything to the other. Lady Agnes declared that 
 all her son had to forgive was her loving him more than her 
 life, and she would have challenged Peter, had he allowed it, 
 on the general ground of the comparative dignity of the two 
 arts of painting portraits and governing nations. Peter 
 declined the challenge ; the most he did was to intimate that 
 he perhaps saw Nick more vividly as a painter than as a 
 governor. Later he remembered vaguely something Lady Agnes 
 had said about their being a governing family. 
 
 He was going, by what he could ascertain, to a very queer 
 climate, and he had many preparations to make. He gave his 
 best attention to these, and for a couple of hours after leaving 
 Lady Agnes he rummaged London for books from which he 
 might extract information about his new habitat. It made 
 apparently no great figure in literature, so that Peter could 
 reflect that he was perhaps destined to find a salutary distrac- 
 tion in filling the void with a volume of impressions. After 
 he had gathered that there were no books he went into the 
 Park. He treated himself to an afternoon or two there 
 when he happened to drop upon London in the summer : it 
 refreshed his sense of the British interests he would have to 
 stand up for. Moreover, he had been hiding more or less, and 
 now all that was changed and this was the simplest way not 
 to hide. He met a host of friends, made his situation as 
 public as possible and accepted on the spot a great many 
 invitations, subject to the mental reservation that he should 
 allow none of them to interfere with his being present the 
 first night of Miriam's new venture. He was going to the 
 equator to get away from her, but to break with the past with 
 some decency of form he must show an affected interest, if he 
 could muster none other, in an occasion that meant so much 
 for her. The least intimate of her associates would do that, 
 and Peter remembered that, at the expense of good manners, 
 he had stayed away from her first appearance on any stage. 
 He would have been shocked if he had found himself obliged 
 to go back to Paris without giving her his personal countenance 
 at the imminent crisis, so good a right had she to expect it. 
 
 It was nearly eight o'clock when he went to Great Stanhope 
 Street to dress for dinner and learn that a note which he 
 found on the hall table, and which bore the marks of hasty 
 despatch, had come in three or four hours before. It exhibited 
 the signature of Miriam Rooth and informed him that she
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 371 
 
 positively expected him at the theatre at eleven o'clock the 
 next morning, for which hour a dress-rehearsal of the revived 
 play had been hurriedly determined upon, the first night being 
 now definitely fixed for the impending Saturday. She counted 
 upon his attendance at both ceremonies, but she had particular 
 reasons for wishing to see him at the rehearsal. " I want 
 you to see and judge and tell me," she said, " for my mind's 
 like a flogged horse it won't give another kick." It was for 
 the Saturday he had made Lady Agnes his promise ; he had 
 thought of the possibility of the play in doing so, but had 
 rested in the faith that, from valid symptoms, this complication 
 would not occur till the following week. He decided nothing 
 on the spot in relation to the conflict it was enough to dash 
 off three words to Miriam to the effect that he would sooner 
 perish than fail her on the morrow. 
 
 He went to the theatre in the morning, and the episode 
 proved curious and instructive. Though there were twenty 
 people in the stalls it bore little resemblance to those repeti- 
 tions generales to which, in Paris, his love of the drama had 
 often attracted him and which, taking place at night in the 
 theatre closed to the public, are virtually first performances 
 with invited spectators. They were, to his sense, always 
 settled and stately and were rehearsals of the premiere even 
 more than rehearsals of the play. The present occasion was 
 less august ; it was not so much a concert as a confusion of 
 sounds, and it took audible and at times disputatious counsel 
 with itself. It was rough and frank and spasmodic, but it 
 was vivid and strong and, in spite of the serious character of 
 the piece, often exceedingly droll ; while it gave Sherringham, 
 oddly enough, a livelier sense than he had ever had of bending 
 over the hissing, smoking, sputtering caldron in which a 
 palatable performance is stewed. He looked into the gross 
 darkness that may result from excess of light ; that is he 
 understood how knocked up, on the eve of production, every 
 one concerned in the preparation of a play might be, with 
 nerves overstretched and glasses blurred, awaiting the test and 
 the response, the echo to be given back by the big, receptive, 
 artless, stupid, delightful public. Sherringham's interest had 
 been great in advance, and as Miriam, since his arrival, had 
 taken him much into her confidence he knew what she in- 
 tended to do and had discussed a hundred points with her. 
 They had differed about some of them and she had always 
 said : " Ah, but wait till you see how I shall do it at the time ! " 
 That was usually her principal reason and her most convincing
 
 372 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 argument. She had made some changes at the last hour she 
 was going to do several things in another way. But she 
 wanted a touchstone, she wanted a fresh ear and, as she told 
 Sherringham when he went behind after the first act, that was 
 why she had insisted on this private performance, to which 
 a few fresh ears were to be admitted. They didn't want to 
 let her have it they were a parcel of donkeys ; but as to what 
 she meant in general to have she had given them a hint 
 which she flattered herself they wouldn't soon forget. 
 
 Miriam spoke as if she had had a great battle with her 
 fellow-workers and had routed them utterly. It was not the 
 first time Sherringham had heard her talk as if such a life as 
 hers could only be a fighting life, so that she frankly re- 
 cognized the fine uses of a faculty for making a row. She 
 rejoiced that she had this faculty, for she knew what to do 
 with it; and though there might be a certain swagger in 
 taking such a stand in advance, when one had done the 
 infinitely little that she had done, yet she trusted to the 
 future to show how right she should have been in believing 
 that a pack of idiots would never hold out against her, would 
 know that they couldn't afford to. Her assumption of course 
 was that she fought for the light and the right, for the good 
 way and the thorough, for doing a thing properly if one did 
 it at all. What she had really wanted was the theatre closed 
 for a night and the dress-rehearsal, put on for a few people, 
 given instead of " Yolande." That she had not got, but she 
 would have it the next time. She spoke as if her triumphs 
 behind the scenes as well as before would go by leaps and 
 bounds, and Sherringham perfectly believed, for the time, that 
 she would drive her coadjutors in front of her like sheep. Her 
 tone was the sort of thing that would have struck one as 
 prepostercms if one didn't believe in her ; but if one did 
 believe in her it only seemed thrown in with the other gifts. 
 How was she going to act that night, and what could be said 
 for such a hateful way of doing things 1 She asked Sherring- 
 ham questions that he was quite unable to answer ; she 
 abounded in superlatives and tremendously strong objections. 
 He had a sharper vision than usual of the queer fate, for a 
 peaceable man, of being involved in a life of so violent a 
 rhythm : one might as well be hooked to a Catharine-wheel 
 and whiz round in flame and smoke. 
 
 It was only for five minutes, in the wing, amid jostling and 
 shuffling and shoving, that they held this conference. Miriam, 
 splendid in a brocaded anachronism, a false dress of the
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 373 
 
 beginning of the century, and excited and appealing, imperious 
 and reckless and good-natured, full of exaggerated propositions, 
 supreme determinations and comical irrelevancies, showed as 
 radiant a young head as the stage had ever seen. Other 
 people quickly surrounded her, and Sherringham saw that 
 though she wanted a fresh ear and a fresh eye she was liable 
 to tell those who possessed these advantages that they didn't 
 know what they were talking about. It was rather hard with 
 her (Basil Dashwood let him into this, wonderfully painted 
 and in a dress even more beautiful than Miriam's that of a 
 young dandy of the ages of silk) : if you were not in the 
 business you were one kind of donkey and if you were in the 
 business you were another kind. Sherringham noted with a 
 certain displeasure that Gabriel ISTash was not there ; he pre- 
 ferred to believe that it was from this observation that his 
 annoyance happened to come when Miriam, after the remark 
 just quoted from Dashwood, laughing and saying that at any 
 rate the thing would do because it would just have to do, 
 thrust vindictively but familiarly into the young actor's face 
 a magnificent feather fan. " Isn't he too lovely," she asked, 
 " and doesn't he know how to do it ? " Basil Dashwood had 
 the sense of costume even more than Sherringham supposed, 
 inasmuch as it now appeared that he had gone profoundly into 
 the question of what his clever comrade was to wear. He 
 had drawn patterns and hunted up stuffs, had helped her to 
 try on her clothes, had bristled with ideas and pins. It is not 
 perfectly easy to explain why Sherringham grudged Gabriel 
 Nash the cynicism of his absence ; it may even be thought 
 singular that he should have missed him. At any rate he 
 flushed a little when Miriam, of whom he inquired whether 
 she hadn't invited her oldest and dearest friend, exclaimed : 
 " Oh, he says he doesn't like the kitchen fire he only wants 
 the pudding ! " It would have taken the kitchen fire to 
 account at that moment for the red of Sherringham's cheek ; 
 and he was indeed uncomfortably heated by helping to handle, 
 as he phrased it, the saucepans. 
 
 This he felt so much after he had returned to his seat, 
 which he forbore to quit again till the curtain had fallen on 
 the last act, that in spite of the high beauty of that part of 
 the performance of which Miriam carried the weight there 
 was a moment when his emancipation led him to give a sup- 
 pressed gasp of relief, as if he were scrambling up the bank 
 of a toi*rent after an immersion. The girl herself, at any rate, 
 as was wholly right, was of the incorruptible faith : she had
 
 374 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 been saturated to good purpose with the great spirit of Madame 
 Carre. That was conspicuous as the play went on and she 
 watched over the detail with weary piety and passion. Sher- 
 ringham had never liked the piece itself ; he thought that as 
 clumsy in form and false in feeling it did little honour to 
 the British theatre ; he hated many of the speeches, pitied 
 Miriam for having to utter them and considered that, lighted 
 by that sort of candle, the path of fame might very well 
 lead nowhere. 
 
 When the rehearsal was over he went behind again, and in 
 the rose-coloured satin of the denoiiment the heroine of the 
 occasion said to him : " Fancy my having to drag through 
 that other stuff to-night the brutes ! " He was vague about 
 the persons designated in this allusion, but he let it pass : he 
 had at the moment a kind of detached foreboding of the way 
 any gentleman familiarly connected with Miriam in the future 
 would probably form the habit of letting objurgations and 
 some other things pass. This had become indeed, now, a 
 frequent state of mind with him ; the instant he was before 
 her, near her, next her, he found himself a helpless subject of 
 the spell which, so far at least as he was concerned, she put 
 forth by contact and of which the potency was punctual and 
 absolute : the fit came on, as he said, exactly as some esteemed 
 express-train on a great line bangs at a given moment into 
 the station. At a distance he partly recovered himself that 
 was the encouragement for going to the shaky republic ; but 
 as soon as he entered her presence his life struck him as a 
 thing disconnected from his will. It was as if he had been 
 one thing and his behaviour another ; he had glimpses of 
 pictures of this difference, drawn, as they might be, from the 
 coming years little illustrative scenes in which he saw him- 
 self in strange attitudes of resignation, always rather sad and 
 still, with a slightly bent head. Such images should not have 
 been inspiring, but it is a fact that they were decidedly 
 fascinating. The gentleman with the bent head had evidently 
 given up something that was dear to him, but it was exactly 
 because he had got his price that he was there. " Come and 
 see me three or four hours hence," Miriam said " come, that 
 is, about six. I shall rest till then, but I want particularly to 
 talk with you. There will be no one else not the end of any 
 one's nose. You'll do me good." So of course Peter drove up 
 to Balaklava Place about six.
 
 XLI. 
 
 " I DON'T know I haven't the least idea I don't care 
 don't ask me," he broke out immediately, in answer to some 
 question that she put to him, with little delay, about his sense 
 of the way she had done certain things at the theatre. Had 
 she not frankly better give up that way and return to their 
 first idea, the one they had talked over so much ? Sherringham 
 declared that it was no idea of his; that at any rate he 
 should never have another as long as he lived ; and that, so 
 help him heaven, they had talked such things over more than 
 enough. 
 
 " You're tired of me yes, already," said Miriam, sadly and 
 kindly. They were alone, her mother had not peeped out, and 
 she had prepared herself to return to the theatre. " However, 
 it doesn't matter, and of course your head is full of other 
 things. You must think me ravenously selfish perpetually 
 chattering about my little shop. What will you have, when 
 one's a shop-girl 1 You used to like it, but then you weren't a 
 minister." 
 
 "What do you know about my being a minister?" Sher- 
 ringham asked, leaning back in his chair and gazing at her 
 from sombre eyes. Sometimes he thought she looked better 
 on the stage than she did off it, and sometimes he thought the 
 exact contrary. The former of these convictions had held his 
 mind in the morning, and it was now punctually followed 
 by the other. As soon as she stepped on the boards a great 
 and special alteration usually took place in her she was in 
 focus and in her frame ; yet there were hours too in which she 
 wore her world's face before the audience, just as there were 
 hours when she wore her stage face in the world. She took 
 up either mask as it suited her humour. To-day Sherringham 
 was seeing each in its order, and he thought each the best. 
 
 " I should know very little if I waited for you to tell me 
 that's very certain," Miriam answered. "It's in the papers 
 that you've got a high appointment, but I don't read the 
 papers unless there's something in them about myself. Next 
 week I shall devour them and think them drivelling too, no 
 doubt. It was Basil Dash wood told me, this afternoon, of 
 your promotion he has seen it announced somewhere. I'm 
 delighted if it gives you more money and more advantages,
 
 376 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 but don't expect me to be glad that you're going away to some 
 distant, disgusting country." 
 
 " The matter has only just been settled and we have each 
 been busy with our own affairs. Even if you hadn't given me 
 these opportunities," Sherringham went on, " I should have 
 tried to see you to-day, to tell you my news and take leave 
 of you." 
 
 " Take leave ? Aren't you coming to-morrow ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I shall see you through that. But I shall rush 
 away the very moment it's over." 
 
 "I shall be much better then really I shall," the girl said. 
 
 " The better you are the worse you are." 
 
 Miriam returned his gaze with a beautiful charity. " If it 
 would do you any good I would be bad." 
 
 "The worse you are the better you are ! " laughed Sherring- 
 ham. " You're a kind of devouring demon." 
 
 "Not a bit! It's you." 
 
 "It's I? I like that." 
 
 "It's you who make trouble, who are sore and suspicious 
 and supersubtle, not taking things as they come and for what 
 they are, but twisting them into misery and falsity. Oh, I've 
 watched you enough, my dear friend, and I've been sorry for 
 you and sorry for myself ; for I'm not so taken up with 
 myself as you think. I'm not such a low creature. I'm 
 capable of gratitude, I'm capable of affection. One may live 
 in paint and tinsel, but one isn't absolutely without a soul. 
 Yes, I've got one," the girl went on, " though I do paint my 
 face and practise my intonations. If what you are going to 
 do is good for you I'm very glad. If it leads to good things, 
 to honour and fortune and greatness, I'm enchanted. If it 
 means your being away always, forever and ever, of course 
 that's serious. You know it I needn't tell you I regard 
 you as I really don't regard any one else. I have a confidence 
 in you ah, it's a luxury. You're a gentleman, mon bon 
 ah, you're a gentleman ! It's just that. And then you see, 
 you understand, and that's a luxury too. You're a luxury 
 altogether, Mr. Sherringham. Your being where I shall never 
 see you is not a thing I shall enjoy ; I know that from the 
 separation of these last months after our beautiful life in 
 Paris, the best thing that ever happened to me or that ever 
 will. But if it's your career, if it's your happiness, I can miss 
 you and hold my tongue. I can be disinterested I can ! " 
 
 "What did you desire me to come for?" Sherringham 
 asked, attentive and motionless. The same impression, the
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 377 
 
 old impression was with him again ; the sense that if she was 
 sincere it was sincerity of execution, if she was genuine it was 
 the genuineness of doing it well. She did it so well now that 
 this very fact was charming and touching. When she asked 
 him at the theatre to grant her the hour in the afternoon, 
 she wanted candidly (the more as she had not seen him at 
 home for several days) to go over with him once again, on the 
 eve of the great night (it would be for her second attempt the 
 critics would lie so in wait the first success might have been 
 a fluke), some of her recurrent doubts : knowing from experi- 
 ence what good ideas he often had, how he could give a 
 worrying alternative its quietus at the last. Then she had 
 heard from Dashwood of the change in his situation, and that 
 had really from one moment to the other made her think 
 sympathetically of his preoccupations led her open-handedly 
 to drop her own. She was sorry to lose him and eager to let 
 him know how good a friend she was conscious that he had 
 been to her. But the expression of this was already, at the 
 end of a minute, a strange bedevilment : she began to listen 
 to herself, to speak dramatically, to represent. She uttered 
 the things she felt as if they were snatches of old play-books, 
 and really felt them the more because they sounded so well. 
 This however didn't prevent them from being as good feelings 
 as those of anybody else, and at the moment Sherringham, to 
 still a rising emotion which he knew he shouldn't still 
 articulated the challenge I have just recorded, she seemed 
 to him to have at any rate the truth of gentleness and 
 generosity. 
 
 "There's something the matter with you you're jealous," 
 said Miriam. " You're jealous of Mr. Dormer. That's an 
 example of the way you tangle everything up. Lord, he 
 won't hurt you, nor me either ! " 
 
 " He can't hurt me, my dear, and neither can you ; for I 
 have a nice little heart of stone and a smart new breast- 
 plate of iron. The interest I take in you is something 
 quite extraordinary ; but the most extraordinary thing in 
 it is that it's perfectly prepared to tolerate the interest of 
 others." 
 
 " The interest of others needn't trouble it much ! " Miriam 
 declared. " If Mr. Dormer had broken off his marriage to 
 such an awfully fine woman (for she is that, your swell of a 
 sister), it isn't for a loud wretch like me. He's kind to me 
 because that's his nature, and he notices me because that's his 
 business ; but he's away up in the clouds a thousand miles
 
 378 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 over my head. He has got something ' on,' as they say ; he's 
 in love with an idea. I think it's a shocking bad one, but 
 that's his own affair. He's quite exalte; living on nectar 
 and ambrosia what he has to spare for us poor crawling 
 things on earth is only a few dry crumbs. I didn't even ask 
 him to come to rehearsal. Besides, he thinks you're in love 
 with me and that it wouldn't be honourable to cut in. He's 
 capable of that isn't it charming?" 
 
 "If he were to relent and give up his scruples, would you 
 marry him?" asked Sherringham. 
 
 "Mercy, how you chatter about marrying!" the girl 
 laughed. "You've all got it on the brain." 
 
 "Why, I put it that way to please you, because you 
 complained to me last year precisely that this was not what 
 seemed generally to be wanted." 
 
 "Oh, last year!" Miriam murmured. Then, differently: 
 " Yes, it's very tiresome ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 "You told me moreover in Paris, more than once, that 
 you wouldn't listen to anything but that." 
 
 "Well, I won't, but I shall wait till I find a husband 
 who's bad enough. One who'll beat me and swindle me and 
 spend my money on other women that's the sort of man 
 for me. Mr. Dormer, delightful as he is, doesn't come up to 
 that." 
 
 " You'll marry Basil Dashwood," Sherringham replied. 
 
 " Oh, marry ? call it marry, if you like. That's what poor 
 mother says she lives in dread of it." 
 
 " To this hour," said Sherringham, " I haven't managed to 
 make out what your mother wants. She has so many ideas, 
 as Madame Carre said." 
 
 " She wants me to be a tremendous sort of creature all her 
 ideas are reducible to that. What makes the muddle is that 
 she isn't clear about the kind of creature she wants most. A 
 great actress or a great lady sometimes she inclines for one 
 and sometimes for the other ; but on the whole she persuades 
 herself that a great actress, if she'll cultivate the right people, 
 may be a great lady. When I tell her that won't do and 
 that a great actress can never be anything but a great vaga- 
 bond, then the dear old thing has tantrums and we have 
 scenes the most grotesque : they'd make the fortune, for a 
 subject, of some play- writ ing fellow, if he had the wit to 
 guess them ; which, luckily for us perhaps, he never will. 
 She usually winds up by protesting devinez un pen quoi ! " 
 Miriam added. And as her companion professed his complete
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 379 
 
 inability to divine : " By declaring that rather than take it 
 that way I must marry you." 
 
 " She's shrewder than I thought. It's the last of vanities to 
 talk about it, but I may mention in passing that if you would 
 marry me you should be the greatest of all possible ladies." 
 
 " Heavens, my dear fellow, what natural capacity have I 
 for that?" 
 
 "You're artist enough for anything. I shall be a great 
 diplomatist : my resolution is firmly taken. I'm infinitely 
 cleverer than you have the least idea of, and you shall be a 
 great diplomatist's wife." 
 
 " And the demon, the devil, the devourer and destroyer, 
 that you are so fond of talking about : what, in such a 
 position, do you do with that element of my nature ? Oil le 
 fourrez-vous ? " 
 
 "I'll look after it, I'll keep it under. Rather perhaps I 
 should say I'll bribe it and lull it I'll gorge it with earthly 
 grandeurs." 
 
 " That's better," said Miriam ; " for a demon that's kept 
 under is a shabby little demon. Don't let us be shabby." 
 Then she added : " Do you really go away the beginning of 
 next week 1 " 
 
 " Monday night, if possible." 
 
 "That's to Paris. Before you go to your new post they 
 must give you an interval here." 
 
 " I shan't take it I'm so tremendously keen for my duties. 
 I shall insist on going sooner. Oh, I shall be concentrated 
 now." 
 
 " I'll come and act there," said Miriam, with her handsome 
 smile. " I've already forgotten what it was I wanted to 
 discuss with you : it was some trumpery stuff. What I want 
 to say now is only one thing : that it's not in the least true 
 that because my life pitches me in every direction and mixes 
 me up with all sorts of people or rather with one sort 
 mainly, poor dears ! I haven't a decent character, I haven't 
 common honesty. Your sympathy, your generosity, your 
 patience, your precious suggestions, our dear, sweet days last 
 summer in Paris, I shall never forget. You're the best 
 you're different from all the others. Think of me as you 
 please and make profane jokes about my matrimonial pros- 
 pects I shall think of you only in one way. I have a great 
 respect for you. With all my heart I hope you'll be a great 
 diplomatist. God bless you ! " 
 
 Miriam got up as she spoke and in so doing she glanced at
 
 380 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 the clock a movement which somehow only added to the 
 noble gravity of her discourse : it was as if she were consider- 
 ing his time, not her own. Sherringham, at this, rising too, 
 took out his watch and stood a moment with his eyes bent 
 upon it, though without in the least perceiving what the 
 needles marked. 
 
 " You'll have to go, to reach the theatre at your usual hour, 
 won't you 1 Let me not keep you. That is, let me keep you 
 only long enough just to say this, once for all, as I shall never 
 speak of it again. I'm going away to save myself," Sherring- 
 ham went on deliberately, standing before her and soliciting 
 her eyes with his own. "I ought to go, no doubt, in silence, 
 in decorum, in virtuous submission to hard necessity without 
 asking for credit or sympathy, without provoking any sort of 
 scene or calling attention to my fortitude. But I can't upon 
 my soul I can't. I can go, I can see it through, but I can't 
 hold my tongue. I want you to know all about it, so that 
 over there, when I'm bored to death, I shall at least have the 
 exasperatingly vain consolation of feeling that you do know 
 and that it does neither you nor me any good ! " 
 
 He paused a moment, upon which Miriam asked : " That I 
 do know what ? " 
 
 "That I have a consuming passion for you and that it's 
 impossible." 
 
 " Ah, impossible, my friend ! " she sighed, but with a 
 quickness in her assent. 
 
 "Very good; it interferes, the gratification of it would 
 interfere fatally, with the ambition of each of us. Our 
 ambitions are odious, but we are tied fast to them." 
 
 " Ah, why ain't we simple I " Miriam quavered. " Why 
 ain't we of the people commie tout le monde just a man and 
 a girl liking each other 1 " 
 
 Sherringham hesitated a moment ; she was so tenderly 
 mocking, so sweetly ambiguous, as she said this. "Because 
 we are precious asses ! However, I'm simple enough, after all, 
 to care for you as I have never cared for any human creature. 
 You have, as it happens, a personal charm for me that no one 
 has ever approached, and from the top of your splendid head 
 to the sole of your theatrical shoe (I could go down on my 
 face there, abjectly and kiss it !) every inch of you is dear 
 and delightful to me. Therefore good-bye." 
 
 Miriam stared, at this, with wider eyes : he had put the 
 matter in a way that struck her. For a moment, all the same, 
 he was afraid she would reply as if she had often heard that
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 381 
 
 sort of thing before. But she was too much moved the pure 
 colour that had risen to her face showed it to have recourse 
 to this particular facility. She was moved even to the glimmer 
 of tears, though she gave him her hand with a smile. " I'm 
 so glad you've said all that ; for from you I know what it 
 means. Certainly it's better for you to go away. Of course 
 it's all wrong, isn't it ? but that's the only thing it can be : 
 therefore it's all right, isn't it 1 ? Some day when we're great 
 people we'll talk these things over; then we shall be quiet, 
 we shall be at peace let us hope so at least and better 
 friends than people will know." She paused a moment, 
 smiling still ; then she said while he held her hand : " Don't, 
 don't come to-morrow night." 
 
 With this she attempted to draw her hand away, as if 
 everything were settled and over; but the effect of her 
 movement was that, as he held her hand tight, he was simply 
 drawn toward her and close to her. The effect of this, in 
 turn, was that, releasing .her only to possess her more, he 
 seized her in his arms and breathing deeply "I love you!" 
 clasped her in a long embrace. It was so long that it gave 
 the door of the room time to open before either of them had 
 taken notice. Mrs. Rooth, who had not peeped in before, 
 peeped in now, becoming in this matter witness of an incident 
 she could scarcely have expected. The unexpected indeed, 
 for Mrs. Rooth, had never been an insuperable element in 
 things ; it was her system, in general, to be too much in 
 harmony to be surprised. As the others turned round they 
 saw her standing there and smiling at them, and heard her 
 ejaculate with wise indulgence : 
 
 " Oh, you extravagant children ! " 
 
 Miriam brushed off her tears, quickly but unconfusedly; 
 " He's going away he's bidding us farewell." 
 
 Sherringham it was perhaps a result of his general agita- 
 tion laughed out at the " us " (he had already laughed at the 
 charge of puerility), and Mrs. Rooth returned : " Going away ] 
 Ah, then I must have one too ! " And she held out both 
 her hands. Sherringham stepped forward and, taking them, 
 kissed her respectfully on each cheek, in the foreign manner, 
 while she continued : " Our dear old friend our kind, gallant 
 gentleman ! " 
 
 " The gallant gentleman has been promoted to a great post 
 the proper reward of his gallantry," Miriam said. " He's 
 going out as minister to some impossible place where is it?" 
 
 " As minister how very charming ! We are getting on."
 
 382 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 And the old woman gave him a curious little upward interro- 
 gative leer. ^ 
 
 "Oh, well enough. One must take what one can get," he 
 answered. 
 
 " You'll get everything now, I'm sure, sha'n't you ? " Mrs. 
 Rooth asked, with an inflection that called back to him, 
 comically (the source was so different), the very vibrations he 
 had noted the day before in Lady Agnes' s voice. 
 
 " He's going to glory and he'll forget all about us forget 
 that he has ever known such people. So we shall never see 
 him again, and it's better so. Good-bye, good-bye," Miriam 
 repeated ; " the brougham must be there, but I won't take 
 you. I want to talk to mother about you, and we shall say 
 things not fit for you to hear. Oh, I'll let you know what we 
 lose don't be afraid," she added to Mrs. Rooth. " He's the 
 rising star of diplomacy." 
 
 " I knew it from the first I know how things turn out for 
 such people as you ! " cried the old woman, gazing fondly at 
 Sherringham. " But you don't mean to say you're not coming 
 to-morrow night ? " 
 
 "Don't don't; it's great folly," Miriam interposed; "and 
 it's quite needless, since you saw me to-day." 
 
 Sherringham stood looking from the mother to the daughter, 
 the former of whom broke out to the latter : " Oh, you dear 
 rogue, to say one has seen you yet ! You know how you'll 
 come up to it ; you'll be transcendent." 
 
 " Yes, I shall be there certainly," said Sherringham, at the 
 door, to Mrs. Rooth. 
 
 "Oh, you dreadful goose!" Miriam called after him. But 
 he went out without looking round at her. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 NICK DORMER had for the hour quite taken up his abode at 
 his studio, where Biddy usually arrived after breakfast to give 
 him news of the state of affairs in Calcutta Gardens and where 
 many letters and telegrams were now addressed to him. 
 Among such missives, on the morning of the Saturday on 
 which Peter Sherringham had promised to dine at the other 
 house, was a note from Miriam Rooth, informing Nick that if 
 he should not telegraph to put her off she would turn up about
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 383 
 
 half -past eleven, probably with her mother, for just one more 
 sitting. She added that it -was a nervous day for her and that 
 she couldn't keep still, so that it would really be very kind to 
 let her come to him as a refuge. She wished to stay away 
 from the theatre, where everything was now settled (or so 
 much the worse for the others if it wasn't), till the evening, 
 but if she were left to herself should be sure to go there. It 
 would keep her quiet and soothe her to sit he could keep her 
 quiet (he was such a blessing that way !) at any time. There- 
 fore she would give him two or three hours or rather she 
 would ask him for them if he didn't positively turn her from 
 the door. 
 
 It had not been definite to Nick that he wanted another 
 sitting at all for the slight work, as he held it to be, that 
 Miriam had already helped him to achieve. He regarded this 
 work as a kind of pictorial obiter dictum : he had made what 
 he could of it and would have been at a loss to see how he 
 could make more. If it was not finished, this was because it 
 was not finishable ; at any rate he had said all he had to say 
 in that particular phrase. Nick Dormer, as it happened, was 
 not just now in the highest spirits ; his imagination had 
 within two or three days become conscious of a check which 
 he tried to explain by the idea of a natural reaction. Any 
 important change, any new selection in one's life was exciting, 
 and exaggerate that importance and one's own as little as one 
 would, there was ah inevitable strong emotion in renouncing, 
 in the face of considerable opposition, one sort of responsibility 
 for another sort. That made life not perhaps necessarily 
 joyous, but decidedly thrilling, for the hour ; and it was all 
 very well till the thrill abated. When this occurred, as it 
 inevitably would, the romance and the poetry of the thing 
 would be exchanged for the flatness and the prose. It was to 
 these latter elements that Nick Dormer had waked up pretty 
 wide on this particular morning; and the prospect was not 
 appreciably more blooming from the fact that he had warned 
 himself in advance that it would be dull. He had known how 
 dull it would be, but now he would have time to learn that 
 even better. A reaction was a reaction, but it was not after 
 all a catastrophe. A part of its privilege would be to make 
 him ask himself if he had not committed a great mistake ; 
 that privilege would doubtless even remain within the limits 
 of its nature in leading him to reply to this question in the 
 affirmative. But he would live to withdraw such a concession 
 this was the first thing to bear in mind.
 
 384 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 He was occupied, even while he dressed, in the effort to get 
 forward mentally with some such retractation when, by the 
 first post, Miriam's note arrived. At first it did little to help 
 him in his effort, for it made him contrast her eagerness with 
 his own want of alacrity and ask himself what the deuce he 
 should do with her. Ambition, with her, was always on the 
 charge, and she was not a person to conceive that others might 
 in bad moments listen for the trumpet in vain. It would 
 never have occurred -to her that only the day before he had 
 spent a portion of the afternoon quite at the bottom of the 
 hill. He had in fact turned into the National Gallery and 
 had wandered about there for more than one hour, and it was 
 just while he did so that the immitigable recoil had begun 
 perversely to set in. And the perversity was all the greater 
 from the circumstance that if the experience was depressing it 
 was not because he had been discouraged beyond measure by 
 the sight of the grand things that had been done things so 
 much grander than any that would ever bear his signature. 
 That variation he was duly acquainted with and should taste 
 in abundance again. What had happened to him, as he passed 
 on this occasion from Titian to Rubens and from Gainsborough 
 to Rembrandt, was that he found himself calling the whole 
 art literally into question. What was it after all, at the best, 
 and why had people given it so high a place ? Its weakness, 
 its narrowness appeared to him ; tacitly blaspheming he 
 looked at several world-famous performances with a lustreless 
 eye. That is he blasphemed if it were blasphemy to say to 
 himself that, with all respect, they were a poor business, only 
 well enough in their small way. The force that produced 
 them was not one of the greatest forces in human affairs ; their 
 place was inferior and their connection with the life of man 
 casual and slight. They represented so inadequately the idea, 
 and it was the idea that won the race, that in the long run 
 came in first. He had incontestably been in much closer 
 relation to the idea a few months before than he was to-day : 
 it made up a great deal for the bad side of politics that they 
 were after all a clumsy system for applying and propagating 
 the idea. The love of it had really been at certain hours at 
 the bottom of his disposition to follow them up ; though this 
 had not been what he used to talk of most with his political 
 comrades or even with Julia. Certainly, political as Julia 
 was, he had not conferred with her much about the idea. 
 However, this might have been his own fault quite as much as 
 hers, and she probably took such an enthusiasm for granted
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 385 
 
 she took such a tremendous lot of things for granted. On 
 the other hand he had put this enthusiasm forward frequently 
 in his many discussions with Gabriel Nash, with the effect, it 
 is true, of making that worthy scoff transcendentally at what 
 he was pleased to term his hypocrisy. Gabriel maintained 
 precisely that there were more ideas, more of those that man 
 lived by, in a single room of the National Gallery than in all 
 the statutes of Parliament. Nick had replied to this more 
 than once that the determination of what man did live by 
 was required ; to which Nash had retorted (and it was very 
 rarely that he quoted Scripture) that it was at any rate not 
 by bread-and-butter alone. The statutes of Parliament gave 
 him bread-and-butter tout au plus. 
 
 Nick Dormer at present had no pretension of trying this 
 question over again ; he reminded himself that his ambiguity 
 was subjective, as the philosophers said ; the result of a mood 
 which in due course would be at the mercy of another mood. 
 It made him curse, and cursing, as a finality, was shaky ; so 
 he would throw out a platform beyond it. The time far 
 beyond others to do one's work was Avhen it didn't seem worth 
 doing, for then one gave it a brilliant chance, that of resisting 
 the stiffest test of all the test of striking one as very bad. 
 To do the most when there would be the least to be got by it 
 was to be most in the true spirit of production. One thing 
 at any rate was very certain, Nick reflected : nothing on 
 earth would induce him to change back again ; not even if 
 this twilight of the soul should last for the rest of his days. He 
 hardened himself in his posture with a good conscience which, 
 had they had a glimpse of it, would have made him still more 
 diverting to those who already thought him so ; but now by 
 good fortune Miriam suddenly knocked together the little 
 bridge that was wanted to carry him over to more elastic 
 ground. If he had made his sketch it was a proof that he 
 had done her, and that he had done her flashed upon him as a 
 sign that she would be still more feasible. He found his 
 platform, as I have called it, and for a moment in his relief 
 he danced upon it. He sent out a telegram to Balaklava 
 Place requesting his beautiful sitter by no manner of means 
 to fail him. When his servant came back it was to usher 
 into the studio Peter Sherringham, whom the man had 
 apparently found at the door. 
 
 The hour was so early for social intercourse that Nick 
 immediately guessed his visitor had come on some rare errand ; 
 but this inference was instantly followed by the reflection 
 
 C G
 
 386 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 that Peter might after all only wish to make up by present 
 zeal for not having been near him before. He forgot that, as 
 as he had subsequently learned from Biddy, their foreign or 
 all but foreign cousin had spent an hour in Rosedale Road, 
 missing him there but pulling out Miriam's portrait, the day 
 of his own hurried visit to Beauclere. These young men were 
 not on a ceremonious footing and it was not in Nick's nature 
 to keep a record of civilities rendered or omitted ; neverthe- 
 less he had been vaguely conscious that during a stay in 
 London, on Peter's part, which apparently was stretching 
 itself out, he and his kinsman had foregathered less than of 
 yore. It was indeed an absorbing moment in the career of 
 each, but at the same time that he recognized this truth Nick 
 remembered that it was not impossible Peter might have 
 taken upon himself to resent some supposititious failure of 
 consideration for Julia ; though this would have been stupid, 
 and the newly-appointed minister (to he had forgotten where) 
 cultivated a finer habit. Nick held that as he had treated 
 Julia with studious generosity she had nothing whatever to 
 reproach him with ; so her brother had therefore still less. It 
 was at any rate none of her brother's business. There were only 
 two things that would have made Nick lukewarm about dispos- 
 ing in a few frank words of all this : one of them his general 
 hatred of talking of his private affairs (a reluctance in which 
 he and Peter were well matched) ; and the other a particular 
 sentiment which would have involved more of a confession and 
 which could not be otherwise described than as a perception 
 that the most definite and even most pleasant consequence of 
 the collapse of his engagement was, as it happened, an extreme 
 consciousness of freedom. Nick Dormer's observation was of a 
 different sort from his cousin's ; he noted much less the signs 
 of the hour and kept altogether a looser register of life. Never- 
 theless, just as one of our young men had during these days in 
 London found the air peopled with personal influences, the con- 
 cussion of human atoms, so the other, though only asking to 
 live without too many questions and work without too many dis- 
 asters, to be glad and sorry in short on easy terms, had become 
 aware of a certain social tightness, of the fact that life is crowded 
 and passion is restless, accident frequent and community 
 inevitable. Everybody with whom one had relations had other 
 relations too, and even optimism was a mixture and peace an 
 embroilment. The only chance was to let everything be 
 embroiled but one's temper and everything spoiled but one's 
 work. It must be added that Nick sometimes took precau*
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 387 
 
 tions against irritation which were in excess of the danger, as 
 departing travellers, about to whiz through foreign countries, 
 study phrase-books for combinations of words they will never 
 use. He was at home in the brightness of things his longest 
 excursions across the border were short. He had a dim sense 
 that Peter considered that he made him uncomfortable and 
 might have come now to tell him so ; in which case he should 
 be sorry for Peter in various ways. But as soon as his visitor 
 began to speak Nick felt suspicion fade into old friendliness, 
 and this in spite of the fact that Peter's speech had a slightly 
 exaggerated promptitude, like the promptitude of business, 
 which might have denoted self-consciousness. To Nick it 
 quickly appeared better to be glad than to be sorry : this 
 simple argument was more than sufficient to make him glad 
 Peter was there. 
 
 " My dear Nick, it's an unpardonable hour, isn't it ? I 
 wasn't even sure you'd be up, and yet I had to risk it because 
 my hours are numbered. I'm going away to-morrow," Peter 
 went on ; " I've a thousand things to do. I've had no talk 
 with you this time such as we used to have of old (it's an 
 irreparable loss, but it's your fault, you know), and as I've 
 got to rush about all day I thought I'd just catch you before 
 any one else does." 
 
 " Some one has already caught me, but there's plenty of 
 time," Nick returned. 
 
 Peter stared a moment, as if he were going to ask a 
 question ; then he thought better of this and said : "I see, I 
 see. I'm sorry to say I've only a few minutes at best." 
 
 " Man of crushing responsibilities, you've come to humiliate 
 me ! " Nick exclaimed. " I know all about it." 
 
 " It's more than I do then. That's not what I've come for, 
 but I shall be delighted if I humiliate you a little by the way. 
 I've two things in mind, and I'll mention the most difficult first. 
 I came here the other day the day after my arrival in town." 
 
 " Ah, yes, so you did ; it was very good of you," Nick 
 interrupted, as if he remembered. "I ought to have returned 
 your visit, or left a card or written my name or something, 
 in Great Stanhope Street, oughtn't I? You hadn't got this 
 new thing then, or I would have done so." 
 
 Peter eyed him a moment. " I say, what's the matter with 
 you? Am I really unforgivable for having taken that 
 liberty 1" 
 
 " What liberty 1 " Nick looked now as if there were 
 nothing whatever the matter with him, and indeed his visitor's
 
 388 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 allusion was not clear to him. He was thinking only for the 
 instant of Biddy, of whom and whose secret inclinations Grace 
 had insisted on talking to him. They were none of his 
 business, and if he would not for the world have let the girl 
 herself suspect that he had violent lights on what was most 
 screened and curtained in her, much less would he have made 
 Peter a clumsy present of this knowledge. Grace had a queer 
 theory that Peter treated Biddy badly treated them all, 
 somehow, badly ; but Grace's zeal (she had plenty of it, 
 though she affected all sorts of fine indifference) almost always 
 took the form of being wrong. Nick wanted to do only what 
 Biddy would thank him for, and he knew very well what she 
 wouldn't. She wished him and Peter to be great friends, and 
 the only obstacle to this was that Peter was too much of a 
 diplomatist. Peter made him for an instant think of her 
 and of the hour they had lately spent together in the studio 
 in his absence an hour of which Biddy had given him a 
 history full of detail and of omissions ; and this in turn 
 brought Nick's imagination back to his visitor's own side of 
 the matter. That complexity of things of which the sense had 
 lately increased with him, and to which it was owing that any 
 thread one might take hold of would probably lead one to 
 something discomfortable, was illustrated by the fact that 
 while poor Biddy was thinking of Peter it was ten to one that 
 poor Peter was thinking of Miriam Booth. All this danced 
 before Nick's intellectual vision for a space briefer than my 
 too numerous words. 
 
 " I pitched into your treasures I rummaged among your 
 canvases," Peter said. "Biddy had nothing whatever to do 
 with it she maintained an attitude of irreproachable reserve. 
 It has been on my conscience all these days, and I ought to 
 have done penance before. I have been putting it off partly 
 because I am so ashamed of my indiscretion. Que voulez-vous, 
 my dear Nick 1 My provocation was great. I heard you had 
 been painting Miss Booth, so that I couldn't restrain my 
 curiosity. I simply went into that corner and struck out 
 there a trifle wildly, no doubt. I dragged the young lady 
 to the light your sister turned pale as she saw me. It was 
 a good deal like breaking open one of your letters, wasn't it? 
 However, I assure you it's all right, for I congratulate you 
 both on your style and on your correspondent." 
 
 " You're as clever, as witty, as humorous as ever, old boy," 
 Nick rejoined, going himself into the corner designated by his 
 companion and laying his hands on the same canvas. " Your
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 389 
 
 curiosity is the highest possible tribute to my little attempt, 
 and your sympathy sets me right with myself. There is she 
 again," Nick went on, thrusting the picture into an empty 
 frame ; "you shall see her whether you wish to or not." 
 
 " Eight with yourself ? You don't mean to say you've been 
 wrong ! " Sherringham returned, standing opposite the portrait. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know ; I've been kicking up such a row ; 
 anything is better than a row." 
 
 " She's awfully good she's awfully true," said Sherringham. 
 " You've done more to it, since the other day ; you've put in 
 several things." 
 
 " Yes, but I've worked distractedly. I've not altogether 
 conformed to the celebrated recommendation about being off 
 with the old love." 
 
 " With the old love ? " Sherringham repeated, looking hard 
 at the picture. 
 
 "Before you are on with the new!" Nick had no sooner 
 uttered these words than he coloured ; it occurred to him that 
 Peter would probably think he was alluding to Julia. He 
 therefore added quickly : " It isn't so easy to cease to repre- 
 sent an affectionate constituency. Really, most of my time 
 for a fortnight has been giving up to letter-writing. They've 
 all been unexpectedly charming. I should have thought they 
 would have loathed and despised me. But not a bit of it ; 
 they cling to me fondly they struggle with me tenderly. 
 I've been down to talk with them about it, and we've passed 
 the most sociable, delightful hours. I've designated my 
 successor ; I've felt a good deal like the Emperor Charles the 
 Fifth when about to retire to the monastery of Yuste. The 
 more I've seen of them in this way the more I've liked them, 
 and they declare it has been the same with themselves as 
 regards me. We spend our time in assuring each other that 
 we haven't begun to know each other till now. In short, it's 
 all wonderfully jolly, but it isn't business. C'est magnifique, 
 metis ce n'est pas la guerre." 
 
 " They're not so charming as they might be if they don't 
 offer to keep you and let you paint." 
 
 " They do, almost; it's fantastic," said Nick. "Remember 
 they haven't seen any of my painting yet." 
 
 " Well, I'm sorry for you ; we live in too enlightened an 
 age," Peter declared. " You can't suffer for art. Your experi- 
 ence is interesting ; it seems to show that, at the tremendous 
 pitch of civilization we've reached, you can't suffer from 
 anything but hunger."
 
 390 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " I shall doubtless do that in abundance." 
 
 " Never, never, when you paint as well as this." 
 
 " Oh, come, you're too good to be true," Nick replied. 
 " But where did you learn that one's larder is full in proportion 
 as one's work is fine ? " 
 
 Peter gave him no satisfaction on this curious point he 
 only continued to look at the picture ; after which, in a 
 moment, he said : " I'll give you your price for it on the spot." 
 
 " Dear boy, you're so magnanimous that you shall have it 
 for nothing ! " Nick exclaimed, passing his arm into his 
 companion's. 
 
 Peter was silent at first. " "Why do you call me magnani- 
 mous ? " 
 
 " Oh, bless my soul, it's hers I forget ! " laughed Nick, 
 failing in his turn to answer the other's inquiry. " But you 
 shall have another." 
 
 "Another? Are you going to do another? " 
 
 " This very morning. That is I shall begin it. I've heard 
 from her ; she's coming to sit a short time hence." 
 
 Peter turned away a little at this, releasing himself, and, as 
 if the movement had been an effect of Nick's words, looked at 
 his watch earnestly, to dissipate that appearance. He fell 
 back, to consider the picture from further off. "The more 
 you do her the better ; she has all the qualities of a great 
 model. From that point of view it's a pity she has another 
 trade : she might make so good a thing of this one. But how 
 shall you do her again ? " Sherringham continued, ingenuously. 
 
 "Oh, I can scarcely say; we'll arrange something; we'll 
 talk it over. It's extraordinary how well she enters into 
 what one wants : she knows more than one does one's self. 
 She isn't the first comer. However, you know all about that, 
 since you invented her, didn't you ? That's what she says ; 
 she's awfully sweet on you," Nick pursued. " What I ought 
 to do is to try something as different as possible from that 
 thing ; not the sibyl, the muse, the tremendous creature, but 
 the charming woman, the person one knows, in different gear, 
 as she appears en ville, as she calls it. I'll do something really 
 serious and send it to you out there with my respects. It will 
 remind you of home, and perhaps a little even of me. If she 
 knows it's for you she'll throw herself into it in the right 
 spirit. Leave it to us, my dear fellow ; we'll turn out 
 something good." 
 
 " It's jolly to hear you ; but I shall send you a cheque," said 
 Peter,
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 391 
 
 " I suppose it's all right in your position, but you're too 
 proud," his kinsman answered. 
 
 " What do you mean by my position ? " 
 
 " Your exaltation, your high connection with the country, 
 your treating with sovereign powers as the representative 
 of a sovereign power. Isn't that what they call 'em 1 " 
 
 Sherringham, who had turned again toward his companion, 
 listened to this with his eyes fixed on Nick's face, while at the 
 same time he once more drew forth his watch. " Brute ! " he 
 exclaimed familiarly, at the same time dropping his eyes on 
 the watch. " At what time did you say you expected your 
 sitter ? " 
 
 " Oh, we've plenty of time ; don't be afraid of letting me 
 see you agitated by her presence." 
 
 " Brute ! " Sherringham again ejaculated. 
 
 This friendly personal note cleared the air, made the com- 
 munication between the two men closer. " Stay with me and 
 talk to me," said Nick ; " I dare say it's good for me. 
 Heaven knows when I shall see you so independently again." 
 
 "Have you got something more to show me, then some 
 other work 1 " Sherringham asked. 
 
 " Must I bribe you by setting my signboards in a row ? 
 You know what I've done ; by which I mean of course you 
 know what I haven't done. My work, as you are so good 
 as to call it, has hitherto been horrible rot. I've had no time, 
 no opportunity, no continuity. I must go and sit down in a 
 corner and learn my alphabet. That thing isn't good; what 
 I shall do for you won't be good. Don't protest, my dear 
 fellow ; nothing will be fit to look at for a long time. And 
 think of my ridiculous age. As the populace say (or don't 
 they say it?) it's a rum go. It won't be amusing." 
 
 " Oh, you're so clever you'll get on fast," Sherringham 
 replied, trying to think how he could most directly disobey 
 his companion's injunction not to protest. 
 
 "I mean it won't be amusing for others," said Nick, unper- 
 turbed by this violation. "They want results, and small 
 blame to them." 
 
 " Well, whatever you do, don't talk like Mr. Gabriel Nash," 
 Peter went on. " Sometimes I think you're just going to." 
 
 Nick stared a moment. " Why, he never would have said 
 that. ' They want results, the damned fools ' that would 
 have been more in his key." 
 
 " It's the difference of a nuance. And are you extraor- 
 dinarily happy 1 " Peter added, as Nick now obliged him by
 
 392 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 arranging half a dozen canvases so that he could look at 
 them. 
 
 " Not so much so, doubtless, as the artistic life ought to 
 make one ; because all one's people are not so infatuated as 
 one's electors. But little by little I'm learning the beauty of 
 obstinacy." 
 
 " Your mother's very bad ; I lunched with her the day 
 before yesterday." 
 
 " Yes, I know I know," said Nick hastily ; " but it's too 
 late it's too late. I must just peg away here and not mind. 
 I've after all a great advantage in my life." 
 
 Sherringham hesitated. " And that would be ] " 
 
 " Oh, I mean knowing what I want to do : that's everything, 
 you know." 
 
 " It's an advantage however that you've only just come in 
 for, isn't it 1 " 
 
 " Yes, but having waited only makes me prize it the more. 
 I've got it now ; and it makes up, for the present, for the 
 absence of some other things." 
 
 Again Sherringham was silent awhile. " That sounds a 
 little flat," he remarked at last. 
 
 " It depends upon what you compare it with. It's rather 
 more pointed than the House of Commons." 
 
 " Oh, I never thought I should like that." 
 
 There was another pause, during which Nick moved about 
 the room, turning up old sketches to see if he had anything 
 more to show his visitor, while Sherringham continued to look 
 at the unfinished and in some cases, as it seemed to him, 
 unpromising productions already submitted to his attention. 
 They were much less interesting than the portrait of Miriam 
 Rooth and, it would have appeared, much less significant of 
 ability. For that particular effort Nick's talent had taken 
 an unprecedented spring. This was the reflection that Peter 
 made, as he had made it intensely before ; but the words he 
 presently uttered had no visible connection with it. They 
 only consisted of the abrupt inquiry : " Have you heard 
 anything from Julia 1 ?" 
 
 " Not a syllable. Have you ? " 
 
 " Dear, no ; she never writes to me." 
 
 " But won't she on the occasion of your promotion 1 " 
 
 " I dare say not," said Peter : and this was the only 
 reference to Mrs. Dallow that passed between her brother and 
 her late intended. It left a slight agitation of the atmosphere, 
 which Sherringham proceeded to allay by an allusion com-
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 393 
 
 paratively speaking more relevant. He expressed disappoint- 
 ment that Biddy should not have come in ; having had an 
 idea that she was always in Rosedale Road of a morning. 
 That was the other moiety of his present errand the wish 
 to see her and give her a message for Lady Agnes, upon 
 whom at so early an hour he had not presumed to intrude in 
 Calcutta Gardens. Nick replied that Biddy did in point of 
 fact almost always turn up, and for the most part early ; she 
 came to wish him good morning and start him for the day. 
 She was a devoted Electra, laying a cool, healing hand on a 
 distracted Orestes. He reminded Peter however that he 
 would have a chance of seeing her that evening, and of seeing 
 Lady Agnes ; for wasn't he to do them the honour of dining 
 in Calcutta Gardens ] Biddy, the day before, had arrived full 
 of that excitement. Peter explained that this was exactly the 
 sad subject of his actual demarche : the project of the dinner 
 in Calcutta Gardens had, to his exceeding regret, fallen to 
 pieees. The fact was (didn't Nick know it ?) the night had 
 been suddenly and perversely fixed for Miriam's premiere, and 
 he was under a definite engagement with her not to stay 
 away from it. To add to the bore of the thing he was obliged 
 to return to Paris the very next morning. He was quite 
 awfully sorry, for he had promised Lady Agnes : he didn't 
 understand then about Miriam's affair, in regard to which he 
 had given a previous pledge. He was more sorry than he 
 could say, but he could never fail Miss Booth : he had pro- 
 fessed from the first an interest in her which he must live up 
 to a little more. This was his last chance he hadn't been 
 near her at the trying time she first produced herself. And 
 the second night of the play wouldn't do it must be the first 
 or nothing. Besides, he couldn't wait over till Monday. 
 
 While Peter enumerated these complications his companion 
 was occupied in polishing with a cloth a palette that he had 
 just been scraping. "I see what you mean I'm very sorry 
 too," said Nick. "I'm sorry you can't give my mother this 
 joy I give her so little." 
 
 " My dear fellow, you might give her a little more. It's 
 rather too much to expect me to make up for your omissions!" 
 
 Nick looked at Peter with a moment's fixedness while he 
 rubbed his palette ; and for that moment he felt the temptation 
 to reply : "There's a way you could do that, to a considerable 
 extent I think you guess it ! which wouldn't be intrinsically 
 disagreeable." But the impulse passed, without expressing 
 itself in speech, and he simply answered : " You can make this
 
 394 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 all clear to Biddy when she comes, and she'll make it clear to 
 my mother." 
 
 "Poor little Biddy!" Sherringham mentally exclaimed, 
 thinking of the girl with that job before her ; but what he 
 articulated was that this was exactly why he had come to the 
 studio. He had inflicted his company on Lady Agnes on 
 Thursday and had partaken of a meal with her, but he had 
 not seen Biddy, though he had waited for her, hoping she 
 would come in. Now he would wait for her again she was 
 thoroughly worth it. 
 
 " Patience, patience, you've always me," said Nick ; to 
 which he subjoined : " If it's a question of going to the play 
 I scarcely see why you shouldn't dine at my mother's all the 
 same. People go to the play after dinner." 
 
 " Yes, but it wouldn't be fair, it wouldn't be decent : it's a 
 case when I must be in my seat from the rise of the curtain. 
 I should force your mother to dine an hour earlier than usual, 
 and then, in return for this courtesy, go off to my entertain- 
 ment at eight o'clock, leaving her and Grace and Biddy 
 languishing there. I wish I had proposed in time that they 
 should go with me," Peter continued, not very ingenuously. 
 
 " You might do that still," Nick suggested. 
 
 " Oh, at this time of day it would be impossible to get a 
 box." 
 
 "I'll speak to Miss Eooth about it, if you like, when she 
 comes," smiled Nick. 
 
 " No, it wouldn't do," said Peter, turning away and looking 
 once more at his watch. He made tacitly the addition that 
 still less than asking Lady Agnes, for his convenience, to dine 
 early, would this be decent, would it be fair. His taking 
 Biddy the night he dined with her and with Miss Tressilian 
 had been something very like a violation of those proprieties. 
 He couldn't say this to Nick, who remarked in a moment 
 that it was all right, for Peter's action left him his own 
 freedom. 
 
 " Your own freedom 1 " Peter echoed interrogatively, turning 
 round. 
 
 " Why, you see now I can go to the theatre myself." 
 
 " Certainly ; I hadn't thought of that. You would have 
 been going." 
 
 "I gave it up for the prospect of your company." 
 
 " Upon my word, you're too good I don't deserve such 
 sacrifices," said Sherringham, who saw from Nick's face that 
 this was not a figure of speech but the absolute truth. " Didn't
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 395 
 
 it however occur to you that, as it would turn out, I might 
 that I even naturally would myself be going ? " he added. 
 
 Nick broke into a laugh. "It would have occurred to 
 me if I understood a little better " And he paused, still 
 laughing. 
 
 " If you understood a little better what ? " Peter demanded. 
 
 " Your situation, simply." 
 
 Peter looked at him a moment. " Dine with me to-night 
 independently ; we'll go to the theatre together, and then 
 you'll understand it." 
 
 " With pleasure, with pleasure : we'll have a jolly evening," 
 said Nick. 
 
 " Call it jolly if you like. When did you say she was 
 coming?" Peter asked. 
 
 " Biddy? Oh, probably, as I tell you, at any moment." 
 
 " I mean the great Miriam," Peter replied. 
 
 " The great Miriam, if she's punctual, will be here in about 
 forty minutes." 
 
 " And will she be likely to find your sister? " 
 
 " My dear fellow, that will depend on whether my sister 
 i-emains to see her." 
 
 " Exactly ; but the point is whether you'll allow her to 
 remain, isn't it?" 
 
 Nick looked slightly mystified. " Why shouldn't she do as 
 she likes?" 
 
 " In that case she'll probably go." 
 
 " Yes, unless she stays." 
 
 " Don't let her," Peter dropped ; " send her away." And 
 to explain this he added : " It doesn't seem exactly the right 
 sort of thing, young girls meeting actresses." His explanation 
 in turn struck him as requiring another clause ; so he went 
 on : " At least it isn't thought the right sort of thing abroad, 
 and even in England my foreign ideas stick to me." 
 
 Even with this amplification however his proposition 
 evidently still appeared to his companion to have a flaw 
 which, after he had considered it a moment, Nick exposed in 
 the simple words : " Why, you originally introduced them, in 
 Paris Biddy and Miss Rooth. Didn't they meet at your 
 rooms and fraternize, and wasn't that much more abroad than 
 this?" 
 
 " So they did, but she didn't like it," Peter answered, sus- 
 pecting that for a diplomatist he looked foolish. 
 
 " Miss Rooth didn't like it? " Nick persisted. 
 
 *' That I confess I've forgotten. Besides, she was not an.
 
 396 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 actress then. What I remember is that Biddy wasn't particu- 
 larly pleased with her." 
 
 "Why, she thought her wonderful praised her to the 
 skies. I remember too." 
 
 "She didn't like her as a woman ; she praised her as an 
 actress." 
 
 " I thought you said she wasn't an actress then," Nick 
 rejoined. 
 
 Peter hesitated. " Oh, Biddy thought so. She has seen 
 her since, moreover. I took her the other night, and her 
 curiosity's satisfied." 
 
 " It's not of any consequence, and if there's a reason for it 
 I'll bundle her off directly. But the great Miriam seems such 
 a kind, good woman." 
 
 " So she is, charming charming," said Peter, looking hard 
 at Nick. 
 
 " Here comes Biddy now," this young man went on. " I 
 hear her at the door ; you can warn her yourself." 
 
 "It isn't a question of 'warning' that's not in the least 
 my idea. But I'll take Biddy away," said Peter. 
 
 " That will be still more energetic." 
 
 " Oh, it's simply selfish I like her company." Peter had 
 turned as if to go to the door to meet the girl ; but he quickly 
 checked himself, lingering in the middle of the room, and the 
 next instant Biddy had come in. When she saw him there 
 she also stopped. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 " ARRIVE, arrive, my child," said Nick. " Peter's weary of 
 waiting for you." 
 
 " Ah, he's come to say he won't dine with us to-night ! " 
 Biddy stood with her hand on the latch. 
 
 " I leave town to-morrow ; I've everything to do ; I'm 
 broken-hearted ; it's impossible," Peter pleaded. " Please 
 make my peace with your mother ; I'm ashamed of not having 
 written to her last night." 
 
 Biddy closed the door and came in, while her brother said 
 to her : " How in the world did you guess it 1 " 
 
 " I saw it in the Morning Post," Biddy answered, looking 
 at Peter.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 397 
 
 ' In the Morning Post ? " her cousin repeated. 
 
 " I saw there's to be a first night at that theatre, the one 
 you took us to. So I said : ' Oh, he'll go there.' " 
 
 " Yes, I've got to do that too," Peter admitted. 
 
 " She's going to sit to me again this morning, the wonderful 
 actress of that theatre she has made an appointment : so you 
 see I'm getting on," Nick announced to Biddy. 
 
 "Oh, I'm so glad she's so splendid!" The girl looked 
 away from Peter now, but not, though it seemed to fill the 
 place, at the triumphant portrait of Miriam Rooth. 
 
 " I'm delighted you've come in. I have waited for you," 
 Peter hastened to declare to Biddy, though he was conscious 
 that this was under the circumstances meagre. 
 
 "Aren't you coming to see us again?" 
 
 " I'm in despair, but I shall really not have time. Therefore 
 it's a blessing not to have missed you here." 
 
 "I'm very glad," said Biddy. Then she added: "And 
 you're going to America to stay a long time 1 " 
 
 " Till I'm sent to some better place." 
 
 " And will that better place be as far away 1 " 
 
 " Oh Biddy, it wouldn't be better then," said Peter. 
 
 " Do you mean they'll give you something to do at home?" 
 
 " Hardly that. But I've got a tremendous lot to do at 
 home to-day." For the twentieth time Peter referred to his. 
 watch. 
 
 Biddy turned to her brother, who murmured to her : " You 
 might bid me good morning." She kissed him, and he asked 
 what the news might be in Calcutta Gardens ; to which she 
 replied : 
 
 " The only news is, of course, that, poor dears ! they're 
 making great preparations for Peter. Mamma thinks you 
 must have had such a nasty dinner the other day," the girl 
 continued, to the guest of that romantic occasion. 
 
 "Faithless Peter ! " said Nick, beginning to whistle and to 
 arrange a canvas in anticipation of Miriam's arrival. 
 
 " Dear Biddy, thank your stars you are not in my horrid 
 profession," protested the personage thus designated. " One 
 is bowled about like a cricket-ball, unable to answer for one's 
 freedom or one's comfort from one moment to another." 
 
 " Oh, ours is the true profession Biddy's and mine," Nick 
 broke out, setting up his canvas ; " the career of liberty and 
 peace, of charming long mornings, spent in a still north light, 
 in the contemplation, and I may even say in the company, of 
 the amiable and the beautiful."
 
 398 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " That certainly is the case when Biddy comes to see you," 
 Peter returned. 
 
 Biddy smiled at him. " I come every day. Anch' io soil 
 pittore ! I encourage Nick awfully." 
 
 "It's a pity I'm not a martyr ; she would bravely perish 
 with me," Nick said. 
 
 " You are you are a martyr when* people say such odious 
 things ! " the girl cried. " They do say them. I've heard 
 many more than I've repeated to you." 
 
 " It's you yourself then, indignant and sympathetic, who 
 are the martyr," observed Peter, who wanted greatly to be 
 kind to her. 
 
 " Oh, I don't care ! " she answered, colouring in response to 
 this ; and she continued, to Peter : " Don't you think one can 
 do as much good by painting great works of art as by as by 
 what papa used to do \ Don't you think art is necessary to 
 the happiness, to the greatness of a people ? Don't you think 
 it's manly and honourable ? Do you think a passion for it is 
 a thing to be ashamed of ? Don't you think the artist the 
 conscientious, the serious one is as distinguished a member 
 of society as any one else ] " 
 
 Peter and Nick looked at each other and laughed at the 
 way she had got up her subject, and Nick asked his visitor if 
 she didn't express it all in perfection. " I delight in general 
 in artists, but I delight still more in their defenders," Peter 
 jested, to Biddy. 
 
 " Ah, don't attack me, if you are wise," Nick said. 
 
 " One is tempted to, when it makes Biddy so fine." 
 
 " Well, that's the way she encourages me ; it's meat and 
 drink to me," Nick went on. " At the same time I'm bound 
 to say there is a little whistling in the dark in it." 
 
 " In the dark 1 " his sister demanded. 
 
 " The obscurity, my dear child, of your own aspirations, 
 your mysterious ambitions and plastic visions. Aren't there 
 some heavyish shadows there?" 
 
 " Why, I never cared for politics." 
 
 " No, but you cared for life, you cared for society, and you 
 have chosen the path of solitude and concentration." 
 
 " You horrid boy ! " said Biddy. 
 
 " Give it up, that arduous steep give it up and come out 
 with me," Peter interposed. 
 
 " Come out with you 1 ? " 
 
 " Let us walk a little, or even drive a little. Let us at any 
 rate talk a little."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 399 
 
 " I thought you had so much to do," Biddy candidly 
 objected. 
 
 " So I have, but why shouldn't you do a part of it with 
 me? Would there be any harm? I'm going to some tire- 
 some shops you'll cheer the economical hour." 
 
 The girl hesitated ; then she turned to Nick. " "Would 
 there be any harm ? " 
 
 "Oh, it's none of his business ! " Peter protested. 
 
 " He had better take you home to your mother." 
 
 " I'm going home I sha'n't stay here to-day," said Biddy. 
 Then to Peter : "I came in a hansom, but I shall walk back. 
 Come that way with me." 
 
 " With singular pleasure... But I shall not be able to go in," 
 Sherringham added. 
 
 " Oh, that's no matter," said Biddy. " Good-bye, Nick." 
 
 " You understand then that we dine together at seven 
 sharp. Wouldn't a club be best?" Peter, before going, in- 
 quired of Nick. He suggested further which club it should 
 be ; and his words led Biddy, who had directed her steps 
 toward the door, to turn a moment, as if she were on the 
 point of asking reproachfully whether it was for this Peter 
 had given up Calcutta Gardens. But this impulse, if impulse 
 it was, had no sequel except so far as it was a sequel that 
 Peter spontaneously explained to her, after Nick had assented 
 to his conditions, that her brother too had a desire to go to 
 Miss Booth's first night and had already promised to accom- 
 pany him. 
 
 " Oh, that's perfect ; it will be so good for him won't it 1 
 if he's going to paint her again," Biddy responded. 
 
 " I think there's nothing so good for him as that he happens 
 to have such a sister as you," Peter observed as they went 
 out. As he spoke he heard outside the sound of a carriage 
 stopping ; and before Biddy, who was in front of him, opened 
 the door of the house he had time to say to himself : " What a 
 bore there's Miriam ! " The opened door showed him that 
 he was right this young lady was in the act of alighting 
 from the brougham provided by Basil Dashwood's thrifty 
 zeal. Her mother followed her, and both the new visitors 
 exclaimed and rejoiced, in their demonstrative way, as their 
 eyes fell upon their valued friend. The door had closed behind 
 Peter, but he instantly and violently rang, so that they should 
 be admitted with as little delay as possible, while he remained 
 slightly disconcerted by the prompt occurrence of an encounter 
 he had sought to avert. It ministered moreover a little to
 
 400 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 this particular sensation that Miriam appeared to have como 
 somewhat before her time. The incident promised however 
 to pass off in the happiest way. Before he knew it both the 
 ladies had taken possession of Biddy, who looked at them with 
 comparative coldness, tempered indeed by a faint glow of 
 apprehension, and Miriam had broken out : 
 
 " We know you, we know you ; we saw you in Paris, and 
 you came to my theatre a short time ago with Mr. Sherringham." 
 
 " We know your mother, Lady Agnes Dormer. I hope her 
 ladyship is very well," said Mrs. Rooth, who had never struck 
 Sherringham as a more objectionable old woman. 
 
 " You offered to do a head of me, or something or other : 
 didn't you tell me you work in clay ? I dare say you've for- 
 gotten all about it, but I should be delighted," Miriam pursued, 
 with the richest urbanity. 
 
 Peter was not concerned with her mother's pervasiveness, 
 though he didn't like Biddy to see even that ; but he hoped 
 his companion would take the overcharged benevolence of the 
 young actress in the spirit in which, rather to his surprise, it 
 evidently was offered. 
 
 " I've sat to your clever brother many times," said Miriam ; 
 " I'm going to sit again. I dare say you've seen what we've 
 done he's too delighful. Si voius saviez comme cela me repose ! " 
 she added, turning for a moment to Sherringham. Then she 
 continued, smiling, to Biddy : " Only he oughtn't to have 
 thrown up such prospects, you know. I have an idea I wasn't 
 nice to you that day in Paris I was nervous and scared and 
 perverse. I remember perfectly ; I was odious. But I'm 
 better now you'd see if you were to know me. I'm not a 
 bad girl really I'm not. But you must have your own 
 friends. Happy they you look so charming ! Immensely 
 like Mr. Dormer, especially about the eyes ; isn't she, mammal" 
 
 " She comes of a beautiful Norman #ace the finest, purest 
 strain," the old woman simpered. " Mr. Dormer is some- 
 times so good as to come and see us we are always at 
 home ^on Sunday ; and if some day you were so venturesome 
 as to come with him you might perhaps find it pleasant, 
 though very different of course from the circle in which 
 you habitually move." 
 
 Biddy murmured a vague recognition of these wonderful 
 civilities, and Miriam commented : " Different, yes ; but we're 
 all right, you know. Do come," she added. Then turning to 
 Sherringham : " Remember what I told you I don't expect 
 you to-night."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 401 
 
 " Oh, I understand ; I shall come," Peter answered, growing 
 red. 
 
 " It will be idiotic. Keep him, keep him away don't let 
 him," Miriam went on, to Biddy; with which, as Nick's 
 portals now were gaping, she drew her mother away. 
 
 Peter at this walked off briskly with Biddy, dropping as 
 he did so : " She's too fantastic ! " 
 
 " Yes, but so tremendously good-looking. I shall ask Nick 
 to take me there," the girl continued after a moment. 
 
 "Well, she'll do you no harm. They're all right, as she 
 says. It's the world of art you were standing up so for art 
 just now." 
 
 " Oh, I wasn't thinking so much of that kind," said 
 Biddy. 
 
 " There's only one kind it's all the same thing. If one 
 sort's good the other is." 
 
 Biddy walked along a moment. "Is she serious 1 ! Is she 
 conscientious ] " 
 
 " Oh, she has the makings of a great artist," said Peter. 
 
 " I'm glad to hear you think a woman can be one." 
 
 " In that line there has never been any doubt about it." 
 
 " And only in that line 1 " 
 
 " I mean on the stage in general, dramatic or lyric. It's 
 as the actress that the woman produces the most complete and 
 satisfactory artistic results." 
 
 " And only as the actress 1 " 
 
 " Yes, there's another art in which she's not bad." 
 
 " Which one do you mean ] " asked Biddy. 
 
 "That of being charming and good and indispensable to 
 man." 
 
 " Oh, that isn't an art." 
 
 " Then you leave her only the stage. Take it if you like 
 in the widest sense." 
 
 Biddy appeared to reflect a moment, as if to see what 
 sense this might be. But she found none that was wide 
 enough, for she cried the next minute : " Do you mean to say 
 there's nothing for a woman but to be an actress 1 " 
 
 " Never in my life. I only say that that's the best thing 
 for a woman to be who finds herself irresistibly carried into 
 the practice of the arts ; for there her capacity for them has 
 most application and her incapacity for them least. But at 
 the same time I strongly recommend her not to be an artist 
 if she can possibly help it. It's a devil of a life." 
 
 " Oh, I know ; men want women not to be anything." 
 
 D D
 
 402 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " It's a poor little refuge they try to take from the over- 
 whelming consciousness that you are in fact everything." 
 
 " Everything ? That's the kind of thing you say to keep 
 us quiet." 
 
 " Dear Biddy, you see how well we succeed ! " laughed 
 Sherrtngham ; to which the girl responded by inquiring 
 irrelevantly : 
 
 " Why is it so necessary for you to go to the theatre to-night, 
 if Miss Rooth doesn't want you to?" 
 
 " My dear child, she does. But that has nothing to do 
 with it." 
 
 "Why then did she say that she doesn't?" 
 
 " Oh, because she meant just the contrary." 
 
 " Is she so false then is she so vulgar 1 " 
 
 " She speaks a special language ; practically it isn't false, 
 because it renders her thought, and those who know her 
 understand it." 
 
 " But she doesn't use it only to those who know her, since 
 she asked me, who have so little the honour of her acquaint- 
 ance, to keep you away to-night. How am I to know that she 
 meant by that that I'm to urge you on to go? " i 
 
 Sherringham was on the point of replying : " Because you 
 have my word for it ;" but he shrank in fact from giving his 
 word he had some fine scruples and endeavoured to get out 
 of his embarrassment by a general tribute. " Dear Biddy, 
 you're delightfully acute : you're quite as clever as Miss 
 Kooth." He felt however that this was scarcely adequate, 
 and he continued : " The truth is, its being important for me 
 to go is a matter quite independent of that young lady's 
 wishing it or not wishing it. There happens to be a definite, 
 intrinsic propriety in it which determines the matter and 
 which it would take me long to explain." 
 
 " I see. But fancy your ' explaining ' to me : you make me 
 feel so indiscreet ! " the girl cried quickly an exclamation 
 which touched him because he was not aware that, quick as it 
 had been, Biddy had still had time to be struck first (though 
 she wouldn't for the world have expressed it) with the oddity 
 of such a duty at such a time. In fact that oddity, during a 
 silence of some minutes, came back to Peter himself : the note 
 had been forced it sounded almost ignobly frivolous for a 
 man on the eve of proceeding to a high diplomatic post. The 
 effect of this however was not to make him break out with : 
 " Hang it, I will keep my engagement to your mother ! " but 
 to fill him with the wish that he could shorten his actual
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 403 
 
 excursion by taking Biddy the rest of the way in a cab. He 
 was uncomfortable, and there were hansoms about which he 
 looked at wistfully. While he was so occupied his companion 
 took up the talk by an abrupt interrogation. 
 
 " Why did she say that Nick oughtn't to have resigned his 
 seat ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know ; it struck her so. It doesn't matter 
 much." 
 
 " If she's an artist herself why doesn't she like people to go 
 in for art, especially when Nick has given his time to painting 
 her so beautifully ? Why does she come there so often if she 
 disapproves of what he has done ? " 
 
 " Oh, Miriam's disapproval it doesn't count ; it's a manner 
 of speaking." 
 
 " Of speaking untruths, do you mean 1 Does she think just 
 the reverse is that the way she talks about everything 1 ?" 
 
 " We always admire most what we can do least," Peter 
 replied ; " and Miriam of course isn't political. She ranks 
 painters more or less with her own profession, about which 
 already, new as she is to it, she has no illusions. They're all 
 artists ; it's the same general sort of thing. She prefers men 
 of the world men of action." 
 
 " Is that the reason she likes you 1 " Biddy mocked. 
 
 "Ah, she doesn't like me couldn't you see it?" 
 
 Biddy said nothing for a moment ; then she asked : " Is that 
 why she lets you call her ' Miriam ' i " 
 
 " Oh, I don't, to her face." 
 
 " Ah, only to mine ! " laughed Biddy. 
 
 " One says that as one says ' Rachel ' of her great 
 predecessor." 
 
 " Except that she isn't so great quite yet, is she? " 
 
 "Far from it; she's the freshest of novices she has scarcely 
 been four months on the stage. But no novice has ever been 
 such an adept. She'll go very fast, and I dare say that before 
 long she'll be magnificent." 
 
 " What a pity you'll not see that ! " Biddy remarked, after 
 a short interval. 
 
 "Not see it?" 
 
 " If you're thousands of miles away." 
 
 " It is a pity," Peter said ; " and since you mention it I 
 don't mind frankly telling you -throwing myself on your 
 mercy, as it were that that's why I make such a point of a 
 rare occasion like to-night. I've a weakness for the drama 
 that, as you perhaps know, I've never concealed, and this
 
 404 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 impression will probably have to last me, in some barren spot, 
 for many, many years." 
 
 " I understand I understand. I hope therefore it will be 
 charming." And Biddy walked faster. 
 
 "Just as some other charming impressions will have to 
 last," Peter added, conscious of a certain effort that he was 
 obliged to make to keep up with her. She seemed almost to 
 be running away from him, a circumstance which led him to 
 suggest, after they had proceeded a little further without more 
 words, that if she were in a hurry they had perhaps better 
 take a cab. Her face was strange and touching to him as she 
 turned it to reply quickly : 
 
 " Oh, I'm not in the least in a hurry, and I think, really, I 
 had better walk." 
 
 "We'll walk then, by all means!" Peter declared, with 
 slightly exaggerated gaiety ; in pursuance of which they went 
 on a hundred yards. Biddy kept the same pace ; yet it was 
 scarcely a surprise to Sherringham that she should suddenly 
 stop with the exclamation : 
 
 " After all, though I'm not in a hurry I'm tired ! I had better 
 have a cab ; please call that one," she added, looking about her. 
 
 They were in a straight, black, ugly street, where the small, 
 cheap, gray-faced houses had no expression save that of a 
 rueful, inconsolable consciousness of its want of identity. 
 They would have constituted a "terrace" if they could, but 
 they had given it up. Even a hansom which loitered across 
 the end of the vista turned a sceptical back upon it, so that 
 Sherringham had to lift his voice in a loud appeal. He stood 
 with Biddy watching the cab approach them. " This is one of 
 the charming things you'll remember," she said, turning her 
 eyes to the general dreariness from the particular figure of 
 the vehicle, which was antiquated and clumsy. Before he 
 could reply she had lightly stepped into the cab ; but as he 
 answered : " Most assuredly it is," and prepared to follow her 
 she quickly closed the apron. 
 
 "I must go alone; you've lots of things to do it's all 
 right ; " and through the aperture in the roof she gave the 
 driver her address. She had spoken with decision, and Peter 
 recognized that she wished to get away from him. Her eyes 
 betrayed it as well as her voice, in a look not a hard one 
 however which as he stood there with his hand on the cab 
 he had time to take from her. "Good-bye, Peter," she smiled ; 
 and as the cab began to rumble away he uttered the same 
 tepid, ridiculous farewell.
 
 XLIV. 
 
 WHEN Miriam and her mother went into the studio Nick 
 Dormer had stopped whistling, but he was still gay enough to 
 receive them with every demonstration of sociability. He 
 thought his studio a poor place, ungarnished, untapestried, a 
 mere seat of rude industry, with all its revelations and 
 honours still to come. But both his visitors smiled upon it 
 a good deal in the same way in which they had smiled on 
 Bridget Dormer when they met her at the door : Mrs. Rooth 
 because vague, prudent approbation was the habit of her 
 foolish little face it was ever the least danger ; and Miriam 
 because apparently she was genuinely glad to find herself 
 within the walls which she spoke of now as her asylum. She 
 broke out in this strain to her host almost as soon as she had 
 crossed the threshold, commending his circumstances, his con- 
 ditions of work as infinitely happier than her own. He was 
 quiet, independent, absolute, free to do what he liked as he 
 liked it, shut up in his little temple with his altar and his 
 divinity ; not hustled about in a mob of people, having to 
 posture and grin to pit and gallery, to square himself at every 
 step with insufferable conventions and with the ignorance and 
 vanity of others. He was blissfully alone. 
 
 " Mercy, how you do abuse your fine profession ! I'm sure 
 I never urged you to adopt it ! " Mrs. Rooth cried, in real 
 bewilderment, to her daughter. 
 
 " She was abusing mine still more, the other day," joked 
 Nick "telling me I ought to be ashamed of it and of 
 myself." 
 
 " Oh, I never know from one moment to the other I live 
 with my heart in my mouth," sighed the old woman. 
 
 "Aren't you quiet about the great thing about my be- 
 haviour 1 " Miriam smiled. " My only extravagances are 
 intellectual." 
 
 "I don't know what you call your behaviour." 
 
 " You would very soon if it were not what it is." 
 
 " And I don't know what you call intellectual," grumbled 
 Mrs. Rooth. 
 
 "Yes, but I don't see very well how I could make you 
 understand that. At any rate," Miriam went on, looking at 
 Nick, " I retract what I said the other day about Mr. Dormer.
 
 406 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 I've no wish to quarrel with him .about the way he has 
 determined to dispose of his life, because after all it does 
 suit me very well. It rests me, this little devoted corner ; 
 oh, it rests me. It's out of the tussle and the heat, it's 
 deliciously still, and they can't get at me. Ah, when art's 
 like this, a la bonne heure ! " And she looked round on such 
 a presentment of " art " with a splendid air that made Nick 
 burst out laughing at its contrast with the humble fact. 
 Miriam smiled at him as if she liked to be the cause of his 
 mirth, and went on appealing to him : " You'll always let 
 me come here for an hour, won't you, to take breath to let 
 the whirlwind pass ? You needn't trouble yourself about me ; 
 I don't mean to impose on you in the least the necessity of 
 painting me, though if that's a manner of helping you to get 
 on you may be sure it will always be open to you. Do what 
 you like with me in that respect ; only let me sit here on a 
 high stool, keeping well out of your way, and see what you 
 happen to be doing. I'll tell you my own adventures when 
 you want to hear them." 
 
 "The fewer adventures you have to tell, the better, my 
 dear," said Mrs. Rooth ; " and if Mr. Dormer keeps you quiet 
 he will add ten years to my life." 
 
 " This is an interesting comment on Mr. Dormer's own 
 quietus, on his independence and sweet solitude," Nick 
 observed. "Miss Rooth has to work with others, which is 
 after all only what Mr. Dormer has to do when he works 
 with Miss Rooth. What do you make of the inevitable 
 sitter?" 
 
 " Oh," answered Miriam, " you can say to the sitter : ' Hold 
 your tongue, you brute ! ' ' 
 
 " Isn't it a good deal in that manner that I've heard you 
 address your comrades at the theatre?" asked Mrs. Rooth. 
 "That's why my heart's in my mouth." 
 
 " Yes, but they hit me back ; they reply to me comme de 
 raison as I should never think of replying to Mr. Dormer. 
 It's a great advantage to him that when he's peremptory with 
 his model it only makes her better, adds to her expression of 
 gloomy grandeur." 
 
 " We did the gloomy grandeur in the other picture ; sup- 
 pose therefore we try something different in this," suggested 
 Nick. 
 
 "It is serious, it is grand," murmured Mrs. Rooth, who 
 had taken up a rapt attitude before the portrait of her 
 daughter. " It makes one wonder what she's thinking of.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 407 
 
 Beautiful, commendable things that's what it seems to 
 say." 
 
 ''What can I be thinking of but the tremendous \visdom of 
 my mother 1 " Miriam inquired. " I brought her this morning 
 to see that thing she had only seen it in its earliest stage 
 and not to presume to advise you about anything else you 
 may be so good as to embark on. She wanted, or she pro- 
 fessed that she wanted, terribly to know what you had finally 
 arrived at. She was too impatient to wait till you should 
 send it home." 
 
 " Ah, send it home send it home ; let us have it always 
 with us ! " Mrs. Rooth urged. " It will hold us up ; it will 
 keep us on the heights, near the stars be always for us a 
 symbol and a reminder ! " 
 
 " You see I was right," Miriam went on ; " for she appreci- 
 ates thoroughly, in her own way, and understands. But if 
 she worries or distracts you I'll send her directly home I've 
 kept the carriage there on purpose. I must add that I don't 
 feel quite safe to-day in letting her out of my sight. She's 
 liable to make dashes at the theatre and play unconscionable 
 tricks there. I shall never again accuse mamma of a want of 
 interest in my profession. Her interest to-day exceeds even 
 my own. She's all over the place and she has ideas ; ah, but 
 ideas ! She's capable of turning up at the theatre at five 
 o'clock this afternoon and demanding that the scenery of the 
 third act be repainted. For myself; I've not a word more to 
 say on the subject I've accepted the situation. Everything 
 is no doubt wrong ; but nothing can possibly be right. Let 
 us eat and drink, for to-night we die. If you like, mamma 
 shall go and sit in the carriage, and as there's no means of 
 fastening the doors (is there ?) your servant shall keep guard 
 over her." 
 
 " Just as you are now be so good as to remain so ; sitting 
 just that way leaning back, with a smile in your eyes and 
 one hand on the sofa beside you, supporting you a little. I 
 shall stick a flower into the other hand let it lie in your 
 lap, just as it is. Keep that thing on your head it's 
 admirably uncovered : do you call the construction a bonnet ? 
 and let your head fall back a little. There it is it's 
 found. This time I shall really do something, and it will be 
 as different as you like from that crazy job. Pazienza!" It 
 was in these irrelevant but earnest words that Nick responded 
 to his sitter's uttered vagaries, of which her charming tone 
 and countenance diminished the superficial acerbity. He
 
 408 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 held up his hands a moment, to fix her in her limits, and a 
 few minutes afterwards had a happy sense of having begun 
 to work. 
 
 " The smile in her eyes don't forget the smile in her 
 eyes ! " Mrs. Rooth exclaimed softly, turning away and creep- 
 ing about the room. "That will make it so different from 
 the other picture and show the two sides of her genius, with 
 the wonderful range between them. It will be a magnificent 
 pendant ; and though I dare say I shall strike you as greedy, 
 you must let me hope you will send it home too." 
 
 Mrs. Rooth explored the place discreetly, on tiptoe, gossip- 
 ing as she went and bending her head and her eyeglass over 
 various objects with an air of imperfect comprehension which 
 did not prevent Nick from being reminded of the story of her 
 underhand commercial habits told by Gabriel Nash at the 
 exhibition in Paris, the first time her name had fallen on his 
 ear. A queer old woman from whom, if you approached her 
 in the right way, you could buy old pots it was in this 
 character that she had originally been introduced to him. 
 He had lost sight of it afterwards, but it revived again as his 
 observant eyes, at the same time that they followed his active 
 hand, became aware of her instinctive appraising gestures. 
 There was a moment when he laughed out gaily there was 
 so little in his poor studio to appraise. Mrs. Rooth's vague, 
 polite, disappointed bent back and head made a subject, the 
 subject of a sketch, in an instant : they gave such a sudden 
 pictorial glimpse of the element of race. He found himself 
 seeing the immemorial Jewess in her, holding up a candle in 
 a crammed back-shop. There was no candle indeed, and his 
 studio was not crammed, and it had never occurred to him 
 before that she was of Hebrew strain, except on the general 
 theory, held with pertinacity by several clever people, that 
 most of us are more or less so. The late Rudolf Roth had 
 been, and his daughter was visibly her father's child ; so that, 
 flanked by such a pair, good Semitic reasons were surely not 
 wanting to the mother. Receiving Miriam's little satiric 
 shower without shaking her shoulders, she might at any rate 
 have been the descendant of a tribe long persecuted. Her 
 blandness was imperturbable she professed that she would 
 be as still as a mouse. Miriam, on the other side of the room, 
 in the tranquil beauty of her attitude (it was "found " indeed, 
 as Nick had said), watched her a little and then exclaimed 
 that she wished she had locked her up at home. Putting 
 aside her humorous account of the dangers to which she was
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 409 
 
 exposed from her mother, it was not whimsical to imagine 
 that, within the limits of that repose from which the Neville- 
 Nugents never wholly departed, Sirs. Rooth. might indeed be 
 a trifle fidgety and have something on her mind. Nick pre- 
 sently mentioned that it would not be possible for him to 
 " send home " this second performance ; and he added, in the 
 exuberance of having already got a little into relation with 
 his work, that perhaps that didn't matter, inasmuch as if 
 Miriam would give him his time, to say nothing of her own 
 a third masterpiece might also some day very well come off. 
 His model rose to this without conditions, assuring him that 
 he might count upon her till she grew too old and too ugly 
 and that nothing would make her so happy as that he should 
 paint her as often as Romney had painted the celebrated Lady 
 Hamilton. " Ah, Lady Hamilton ! " deprecated Mrs. Rooth ; 
 while Miriam, who had on occasion the candour of a fine 
 acquisitiveness, inquired what particular reason there might 
 be for his not letting them have the picture he was now 
 beginning. 
 
 "Why, I've promised it to Peter Sherringham he has 
 offered me money for it," Nick replied. " However, he's 
 welcome to it for nothing, poor fellow, and I shall be delighted 
 to do the best I can for him." 
 
 Mrs. Rooth, still prowling, stopped in the middle of the 
 room at this, and Miriam exclaimed : " He offered you money 
 just as we came in 1 " 
 
 " You met him, then, at the door, with my sister ? I 
 supposed you had he's taking her home," said Nick. 
 
 " Your sister's a lovely girl such an aristocratic type ! " 
 breathed Mrs. Rooth. Then she added : " I've a tremendous 
 confession to make to you." 
 
 " Mamma's confessions have to be tremendous to correspond 
 with her crimes," said Miriam. " She asked Miss Dormer to 
 come and see us suggested even that you might bring her 
 some Sunday. I don't like the way mamma does such things 
 too much humility, too many simagrees, after all ; but I 
 also said what I could to be nice to her. Your sister is 
 charming awfully pretty and modest. If you were to press 
 me I should tell you frankly that it seems to me rather a 
 social muddle, this rubbing shoulders of ' nice girls ' and fiUes 
 de theatre ; I shouldn't think it would do your young ladies 
 much good. However, it's their own affair, and no doubt 
 there's no more need of their thinking we're worse than we 
 are than of their thinking we're better. The people they live
 
 410 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 with don't seem to know the difference I sometimes make 
 my reflections about the public one works for." 
 
 "Ah, if you go in for the public's knowing differences 
 you're far too particular," Nick laughed. " D'ou tombez-vous ? 
 as you affected French people say. If you have anything at 
 stake on that, you had simply better not play." 
 
 " Dear Mr. Dormer, don't encourage her to be so dreadful ; 
 for it is dreadful, the way she talks," Mrs. Rooth broke in. 
 " One would think we were not respectable one would think 
 I had never known what I have known and been what I have 
 been." 
 
 " What one would think, beloved mother, is that you are a 
 still greater humbug than you are. It's you, on the contrary, 
 who go down on your knees, who pour forth apologies about 
 our being vagabonds." 
 
 " Vagabonds listen to her ! after the education I've given 
 her and our magnificent prospects ! " wailed Mrs. Eooth, 
 sinking, with clasped hands, upon the nearest ottoman. 
 
 " Not after our prospects, if prospects they are : a good deal 
 before them. Yes, you've taught me tongues, and I'm greatly 
 obliged to you they no doubt impart variety, as well as 
 incoherency, to my conversation ; and that of people in our 
 line is for the most part notoriously monotonous and shoppy. 
 The gift of tongues is in general the sign of your genuine 
 adventurer. Dear mamma, I've no low standard that's the 
 last thing," Miriam went on. " My weakness is my exalted 
 conception of respectability. Ah, parlez-moi de $a and of the 
 way I understand it ! Oh, if I were to go in for being 
 respectable you'd see something fine. I'm awfully conservative 
 and I know what respectability is, even when I meet people 
 of society on the accidental middle ground of glowering or 
 smirking. I know also what it isn't it isn't the sweet union 
 of little girls and actresses. I should carry it much further 
 than any of these people : I should never look at the likes 
 of us ! Every hour I live I see that the wisdom of the ages 
 was in the experience of dear old Madame Carre was in a 
 hundred things she told me. She's founded a rock. After 
 that," Miriam went on, to her host, " I can assure you that 
 if you were so good as to bring Miss Dormer to see us we 
 should be angelically careful of her and surround her with 
 every attention and precaution." 
 
 "The likes of us the likes of us!" Mrs. Rooth repeated 
 plaintively, with ineffectual, theoretical resentment. " I don't 
 know what you are talking about, and I decline to be turned
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 411 
 
 upside down. I have my ideas as well as you, and I repudiate 
 the charge of false humility. I've been through too many 
 troubles to be proud, and a pleasant, polite manner was the 
 rule of my life even in the days when, God knows, I had 
 everything. I've never changed, and if, with God's help, 
 I had a civil tongue then, I have a civil tongue now. It's 
 more than you always have, my poor perverse and passionate 
 child. Once a lady always a lady -all the footlights in the 
 world, turn them up as high as you will, won't make a 
 difference. And I think people know it, people who know 
 anything (if I may use such an expression), and it's because 
 they know it that I'm not afraid to address them courteously. 
 And I must say and I call Mr. Dormer to witness, for if he 
 could reason with you a bit about it he might render several 
 people a service your conduct to Mr. Sherringham simply 
 breaks my heart," Mrs. Booth concluded, with a jump of 
 several steps in the fine modern avenue of her argument. 
 
 Nick was appealed to, but he hesitated a moment, and while 
 he hesitated Miriam remarked : " Mother is good mother is 
 very good ; but it is only little by little that you discover how 
 good she is." This seemed to leave Nick free to ask Mrs, 
 Booth, with the preliminary intimation that what she had just 
 said was very striking, what she meant by her daughter's con- 
 duct to Peter Sherringham. Before Mrs. Booth could answer 
 this question, however, Miriam interposed irrelevantly with 
 one of her own. " Do you mind telling me if you made your 
 sister go off with Mr. Sherringham because you knew it was 
 about time for me to turn up ? Poor Mr. Dormer, I get you 
 into trouble, don't I?" she added sympathetically. 
 
 " Into trouble 1 " echoed Nick, looking at her head but not 
 at her eyes. 
 
 " Well, we won't talk about that ! " Miriam exclaimed, with 
 a rich laugh. 
 
 Nick now hastened to say that he had nothing to do with 
 his sister's leaving the studio she had only come, as it 
 happened, for a moment. She had walked away with Peter 
 Sherringham because they were cousins and old friends : he 
 was to leave England immediately, for a long time, and he 
 had offered her his company going home. Mrs. Booth shook 
 her head very knowingly over the " long time " that Mr. 
 Sherringham would be absent she plainly had her ideas 
 about that ; and she conscientiously related that in the 
 course of the short conversation they had all had at the door 
 of the house her daughter had reminded Miss Dormer of
 
 412 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 something that had passed between them in Paris in regard 
 to the charming young lady's modelling her head. 
 
 " I did it to make the question of our meeting less absurd 
 to put it on the footing of our both being ai-tists. I don't 
 ask you if she has talent," said Miriam. 
 
 " Then I needn't tell you," answered Nick. 
 
 " I'm sure she has talent and a very refined inspiration. I 
 see something in that corner, covered with a mysterious veil," 
 Mrs. Rooth insinuated ; which led Miriam to ask immediately : 
 
 " Has she been trying her hand at Mr. Sherringham ? " 
 
 " When should she try her hand, poor dear young lady ? 
 He's always sitting with us," said Mrs. Rooth. 
 
 "Dear mamma, you exaggerate. He has his moments, 
 when he seems to say his prayers to me ; but we've had some 
 success in cutting them down. II s'est lien dvtache ces-jours-ci, 
 and I'm very happy for him. Of course it's an impertinent 
 allusion for me to make ; but I should be so delighted if I 
 could think of him as a little in love with Miss Dormer," the 
 girl pursued, addressing Nick. 
 
 " He is, I think, just a little just a tiny bit," said Nick, 
 working away ; while Mrs. Rooth ejaculated, to her daughter, 
 simultaneously : 
 
 " How can you ask such fantastic questions when you know 
 that he's dying for you 1 ? " 
 
 " Oh, dying ! he's dying very hard ! " cried Miriam. " Mr. 
 Sherringham's a man of whom I can't speak with too much 
 esteem and affection, who may be destined to perish by some 
 horrid fever (which God forbid !) in the unpleasant country 
 he's going to. But he won't have caught his fever from your 
 humble servant." 
 
 "You may kill him even while you remain in perfect health 
 yourself," said Nick; "and since we're talking of the matter 
 I don't see the harm in my confessing that he strikes me as 
 bad oh, as very bad indeed." 
 
 " And yet he's in love with your sister? je riy suis plus." 
 
 " He tries to be, for he sees that as regards you there are 
 difficulties. He would like to put his hand on some nice girl 
 who would be an antidote to his poison." 
 
 " Difficulties are a mild name for them ; poison even is a 
 mild name for the ill he suffers from. The principal difficulty 
 is that he doesn't know what he wants. The next is that I 
 don't either or what I want myself. I only know what I 
 don't want," said Miriam brightly, as if she were uttering 
 some happy, beneficent truth. " I don't want a person who
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 413 
 
 takes things even less simply than I do myself. Mr. Sher- 
 ringham, poor man, must be very uncomfortable, for one side 
 of him is perpetually fighting against the other side. He's 
 trying to serve God and Mammon, and I don't know how God 
 will come off. What I like in you is that you have definitely 
 let Mammon go it's the only way. That's my earnest con- 
 viction, and yet they call us people light. Poor Mr. Sherring- 
 ham has tremendous ambitions tremendous riguardi, as we 
 used to say in Italy. He wants to enjoy every comfort and 
 to save every appearance, and all without making a sacrifice. 
 He expects others me, for instance to make all the sacrifices. 
 Merci, much as I esteem him and much as I owe him ! I 
 don't know how he ever came to stray at all into our bold, 
 bad Bohemia : it was a cruel trick for fortune to play him. 
 He can't keep out of it, he's perpetually making dashes across 
 the border, and yet he's not in the least at home there. 
 There's another in whose position (if I were in it) I wouldn't 
 look at the likes of us ! " 
 
 " I don't know much about the matter, but I have an idea 
 Peter thinks he has made, or at least is making, sacrifices." 
 
 " So much the better you must encourage him, you must 
 help him." 
 
 " I don't know what my daughter's talking about she's 
 much too clever for me," Mrs. Rooth put in. " But there's 
 one way you can encourage Mr. Sherringham there's one 
 way you can help him ; and perhaps it won't make it any 
 worse for a gentleman of your good-nature that it will help 
 me at the same time. Can't I look to you, dear Mr. Dormer, 
 to see that he does come to the theatre to-night that he 
 doesn't feel himself obliged to stay away 1 " 
 
 "What danger is there of his staying away?" Nick 
 asked. 
 
 " If he's bent on sacrifices, that's a very good one to begin 
 with," Miriam observed. 
 
 "That's the mad, bad way she talks to him she has for- 
 bidden the dear unhappy gentleman the house ! " her mother 
 cried. " She brought it up to him just now, at the door, 
 before Miss Dormer : such very odd form ! She pretends to 
 impose her commands upon him." 
 
 "Oh, he'll be there we're going to dine together," said 
 Nick. And when Miriam asked him what that had to do 
 with it he went on : " Why, we've arranged it ; I'm going, 
 and he won't let me go alone." 
 
 " You're going? I sent you no places," Miriam objected.
 
 414 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 "Yes, but I've got one. Why didn't you, after all I've 
 done for you?" 
 
 She hesitated a moment. "Because I'm so good. No 
 matter," she added : "if Mr. Sherringham comes I won't act." 
 
 " Won't you act for me 1 " 
 
 " She'll act like an angel," Mrs. Rooth protested. " She 
 might do, she might be anything in the world ; but she won't 
 take common pains." 
 
 "Of one thing there's no doubt," said Miriam: "that 
 compared with the rest of us poor passionless creatures 
 mamma does know what she wants." 
 
 " And what is that 1 " inquired Nick, chalking away. 
 
 " She wants everything." 
 
 " Never, never I'm much more humble," retorted the old 
 woman ; upon which her daughter requested her to give then 
 to Mr. Dormer, who was a reasonable man and an excellent 
 judge, a general idea of the scope of her desires. 
 
 As however, Mrs. Rooth, sighing and deprecating, was not 
 quick to comply with the injunction, the girl attempted a 
 short cut to the truth with the abrupt inquiry : " Do you 
 believe for a single moment he'd marry me ? " 
 
 " Why he has proposed to you you've told me yourself a 
 dozen times." 
 
 " Proposed what to me ? I've told you that neither a dozen 
 times nor once, because I've never understood. He has made 
 wonderful speeches, but he has never been serious." 
 
 " You told me he had been in the seventh heaven of devo- 
 tion, especially that night we went to the foyer of the Franais," 
 Mrs. Rooth insisted. 
 
 " Do you call the seventh heaven of devotion serious 1 He's 
 in love with me je veux bien; he's so poisoned, as Mr. 
 Dormer vividly says, as to require an antidote ; but he has 
 never spoken to me as if he really expected me to listen to 
 him, and he's the more of a gentleman from that fact. He 
 knows we haven't a common ground that a grasshopper can't 
 mate with a fish. So he has taken care to say to me only 
 more than he can possibly mean. That makes it just nothing." 
 
 " Did he say more than he can possibly mean when he took 
 formal leave of you yesterday forever and ever ? " 
 
 " Pray don't you call that a sacrifice 1 " Nick asked. 
 
 "Oh, he took it all back, his sacrifice, before he left the 
 house." 
 
 " Then has that no meaning 1 ?" demanded Mrs. Rooth. 
 
 " None that I can make out."
 
 THE TRAGIC MDSE. 415 
 
 " Oh, I've no patience with you : you can be stupid when you 
 will as well as clever when you will ! " the old woman groaned. 
 
 " What mamma wishes me to understand and to practise 
 is the particular way to be clever with Mr. Sherringham," 
 said Miriam. " There are doubtless depths of wisdom and 
 virtue in it. But I can only see one way ; namely, to be 
 perfectly honest." 
 
 "I like to hear you talk it makes you live, brings you 
 out," Nick mentioned. " And you sit beautifully still. All 
 I want to say is, please continue to do so ; remain exactly as 
 you are it's rather important for the next ten minutes." 
 
 " We're washing our dirty linen before you, but it's all 
 right," Miriam answered, "because it shows you what sort of 
 people we are, and that's what you need to know. Don't 
 make me vague and arranged and fine, in this new thing," 
 she continued : " make me characteristic and real ; make life, 
 with all its horrid facts and truths, stick out of me. I wish 
 you could put mother in too ; make us live there side by side 
 and tell our little story. ' The wonderful actress and her still 
 more wonderful mamma ' don't you think that's an awfully 
 good subject? " 
 
 Mrs. Rooth, at this, cried shame on her daughter's wanton 
 humours, professing that she herself would never accept so 
 much from Nick's good-nature, and Miriam settled it that at 
 any rate he was some day and in some way to do her mother 
 and sail very near the wind. 
 
 " She doesn't believe he wants to marry me, any more than 
 you do," the girl, taking up her dispute again after a moment, 
 represented to Nick; "but she believes how indeed can I 
 tell you what she believes ? that I can work it (that's about 
 it), so that in the fulness of time I shall hold him in a vice. 
 I'm to keep him along for the present, but not to listen to him, 
 for if I listen to him I shall lose him. It's ingenious, it's 
 complicated ; but I dare say you follow me." 
 
 "Don't move don't move," said Nick. "Excuse a 
 beginner." 
 
 "No, I shall explain quietly. Somehow (here it's very 
 complicated and you mustn't lose the thread), I shall be an 
 actress and make a tremendous lot of money, and somehow, 
 too (I suppose a little later), I shall become an ambassadress 
 and be the favourite of courts. So you see it will all be 
 delightful. Only I shall have to go straight ! Mamma 
 reminds me of a story I once heard about the mother of a 
 young lady who was in receipt of much civility from the
 
 416 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 pretender to a crown, which indeed he, and the young lady too, 
 afterwards more or less wore. The old countess watched the 
 course of events and gave her daughter the cleverest advice : 
 ' Tiens bon, mafille, and you shall sit upon a throne.' Mamma 
 wishes me to tenir bon (she apparently thinks there's a danger 
 I may not), so that if I don't sit upon a throne I shall at 
 least parade at the foot of one. And if before that for ten 
 years I pile up the money they'll forgive me the way I've 
 made it. I should hope so, if I've tenu bon! Only ten years 
 is a good while to hold out, isn't it ? If it isn't Mr. Sherring- 
 ham it will be some one else. Mr. Sherringham has the great 
 merit of being a bird in the hand. I'm to keep him along, 
 I'm to be still more diplomatic than even he can be." 
 
 Mrs. Rooth listened to her daughter with an air of assumed 
 reprobation which melted, before the girl had done, into a 
 diverted, complacent smile the gratification of finding herself 
 the -proprietress of so much wit and irony and grace. Miriam's 
 account of her mother's views was a scene of comedy, and 
 there was instinctive art in the way she added touch to touch 
 and made point upon point. She was so quiet, to oblige her 
 painter, that only her fine lips moved all her expression was 
 in their charming utterance. Mrs. Rooth, after the first 
 flutter of a less cynical spirit, consented to be sacrificed to an 
 effect of an order she had now been educated to recognize ; 
 so that she hesitated only for a moment, when Miriam had 
 ceased speaking, before she broke out endearingly with a 
 little titter and " Comedienne f " She looked at Nick Dormer 
 as if to say : " Ain't she fascinating ? That's the way she 
 does for you ! " 
 
 "It's rather cruel, isn't it," said Miriam, " to deprive people 
 of the luxury of calling one an actress as they'd call one a 
 liar ? I represent, but I represent truly." 
 
 " Mr. Sherringham would marry you to-morrow there's no 
 question of ten years ! " cried Mrs. Rooth, with a comicality 
 of plainness. 
 
 Miriam smiled at Nick, appealing for a sort of pity for her 
 mother. " Isn't it droll, the way she can't get it out of her 
 head 1 ?" Then turning almost coaxingly to the old woman: 
 " Voyons, look about you : they don't marry us like that." 
 
 " But they do cela se voit tons les jours. Ask Mr. Dormer." 
 
 " Oh, never ! " said Miriam : "it would be as if I asked 
 him to give us a practical illustration." 
 
 " I shall never give any illustration of matrimony ; for me 
 that question's over," said Nick.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 417 
 
 Miriam rested kind eyes on him. " Dear me, how you 
 must hate me ! " And before he had time to reply she went 
 on, to her mother : " People marry them to make them leave 
 the stage ; which proves exactly what I say." 
 
 " Ah, they offer them the finest positions," reasoned Mrs. 
 Rooth. 
 
 " Do you want me to leave it then ? " 
 
 " Oh, you can manage if you will ! " 
 
 " The only managing I know anything about is to do my 
 work. If I manage that, I shall pull through." 
 
 " But, dearest, may our work not be of many sorts ? " 
 
 " I only know one," said Miriam. 
 
 At this Mrs. Rooth got up with a sigh. " I see you do 
 wish to drive me into the street." 
 
 " Mamma's bewildered there are so many paths she wants 
 to follow, there are so many bundles of hay. As I told you, 
 she wishes to gobble them all," Miriam went on. Then she 
 added : " Yes, go and take the carriage ; take a turn round 
 the Park you always delight in that and come back for me 
 in an hour." 
 
 " I'm too vexed with you ; the air will do me good," said 
 Mrs. Rooth. But before she went she added, to Nick : " I 
 have your assurance that you will bring him then to-night 1 " 
 
 "Bring Peter 1 ? I don't think I shall have to drag him," 
 said Nick. " But you must do me the justice to remember 
 that if I should resort to force I should do something that's 
 not particularly in my interest I should be magnanimous." 
 
 " We must always be that, mustn't we ? " moralized Mrs. 
 Rooth. 
 
 " How could it affect your interest 1 " Miriam inquired, less 
 abstractly, of Nick. 
 
 "Yes, as you say," her mother reminded him, "the question 
 of marriage has ceased to exist for you." 
 
 " Mamma goes straight at it ! " laughed the girl, getting 
 up while Nick rubbed his canvas before answering. Miriam 
 went to Mrs. Rooth and settled her bonnet and mantle in 
 preparation for her drive ; then stood for a moment with a 
 filial arm about her, as if they were waiting for their host's 
 explanation. This however when it came halted visibly. 
 
 "Why, you said awhile ago that if Peter was there you 
 wouldn't act." 
 
 " I'll act for him," smiled Miriam, encircling her mother. 
 
 "It doesn't matter whom it's for!" Mrs. Rooth declared 
 sagaciouslv.
 
 418 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 'Take your drive and relax your mind," said the girl, 
 kissing her. " Come for me in an hour ; not later, but not 
 sooner." She went with her to the door, bundled her out, 
 closed it behind her and came back to the position she had 
 quitted. " This is the peace I want ! " she exclaimed, with 
 relief, as she settled into it. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 PETEK SHERRINGHAM said so little during the performance 
 that his companion was struck by his dumbness, especially as 
 Miriam's acting seemed to Nick Dormer magnificent. He 
 held his breath while she was on the stage she gave the 
 whole thing, including the spectator's emotion, such a lift. 
 She had not carried out her fantastic menace of not exerting 
 herself, and, as Mrs. Rooth had said, it little mattered for 
 whom she acted. Nick was conscious as he watched her that 
 she went through it all for herself, for the idea that possessed 
 her and that she rendered with extraordinary breadth. She 
 could not open the door a part of the way to it and let it 
 simply peep in ; if it entered at all it must enter in full 
 procession and occupy the premises in state. i 
 
 This was what had happened on an occasion which, as Nick 
 noted in his stall, grew larger with each throb of the responsive 
 house ; till by the time the play was half over it appeared to 
 stretch out wide arms to the future. Nick had often heard 
 more applause but he had never heard more attention ; for 
 they were all charmed and hushed together and success 
 seemed to be sitting down with them. There had been of 
 course plenty of announcement the newspapers had abounded 
 and the arts of the manager had taken the freest license ; but 
 it was easy to feel a fine universal consensus and to recognize 
 the intrinsic buoyancy of the evening. People snatched their 
 eyes from the stage for an instant to look at each other, and 
 a sense of intelligence deepened and spread. It was a part of 
 the impression that the actress was only now really showing, 
 for this time she had verse to deal with and she made it 
 unexpectedly exquisite. She was beauty, she was music, she 
 was truth ; she was passion and persuasion and tenderness. 
 She caught up the obstreperous play in soothing, entwining 
 arms and carried it into the high places of poetry, of style.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 419 
 
 And she had such tones of nature, such concealments of art, 
 such effusions of life, that the whole scene glowed with the 
 colour she communicated, and the house, as if pervaded 
 with rosy fire, glowed back at the scene. Nick looked round 
 in the intervals ; he felt excited and flushed the night had 
 turned into a feast of fraternity and he expected to see people 
 embrace each other. The crowd, the flutter, the triumph, 
 the surprise, the signals and rumours, the heated air, his 
 associates, near him, pointing out other figures, who pre- 
 sumably were celebrated but whom he had never heard of, 
 all amused him and banished every impulse of criticism. 
 Miriam was as satisfactory as some right sensation she 
 would feed the memory with the ineffaceable. 
 
 One of the things that amused Nick, or at least helped to 
 fill his attention, was Peter's attitude, which apparently did 
 not exclude criticism ; rather indeed mainly implied it. 
 Sherringham never took his eyes off the actress, but he made 
 no remark about her and he never stirred out of his chair. 
 Nick had from the first a plan of going round to speak to 
 her, but as his companion evidently meant not to move he 
 felt a delicacy in regard to being more forward. During 
 their brief dinner together (they made a rigid point of not 
 being late), Peter had been silent and irremediably serious, 
 but also, his kinsman judged, full of the wish to make it 
 plain that he was calm. In his seat he was calmer than 
 ever ; had an air even of trying to suggest to Nick that his 
 attendance, preoccupied as he was with deeper solemnities, 
 was slightly mechanical, the result of a conception of duty, a 
 habit of courtesy. When during a scene in the second act 
 a scene from which Miriam was absent Nick observed to 
 him that from his inexpressiveness one might gather he was 
 not pleased, he replied after a moment : " I've been looking 
 for her mistakes." And when Nick rejoined to this that he 
 certainly wouldn't find them he said again, in an odd tone : 
 "No, I sha'n't find them I sh'a'nt find them." It might 
 have seemed that since the girl's performance was a dazzling 
 success he regarded his evening as rather a failure. 
 
 After the third act Nick said candidly : " My dear fellow, 
 how can you sit here 1 ? Aren't you going to speak to her 1 ?" 
 
 To which Peter replied inscrutably : " Lord, no, never 
 again; I bade her good-bye yesterday. She knows what I 
 think of her form. It's very good, but she carries it a little 
 too far. Besides, she didn't want me to come, and it's there- 
 fore more discreet to keep away from her."
 
 420 THE TRAGIC MtfSE. 
 
 " Surely it isn't an hour for discretion ! " cried Nick. 
 " Excuse me, at any rate, for five minutes." 
 
 He went behind and reappeared only as the curtain was 
 rising on the fourth act ; and in the interval between the 
 fourth and the fifth he went again for a shorter time. Peter 
 was personally detached, but he consented to listen to his 
 companion's vivid account of the state of things on the stage, 
 where the elation of victory had made every one merry. The 
 strain was over, the ship was in port, and they were all 
 wiping their faces and grinning. Miriam yes, positively 
 was grinning too, and she hadn't asked a question about 
 Peter nor sent him a message. They were kissing all round 
 and dancing for joy. They were on the eve, worse luck, of a 
 tremendous run. Peter groaned, irrepressibly, at this ; it 
 was, save for a slight manifestation a moment later, the only 
 sign of emotion that Nick's report elicited from him. There 
 was but one voice of regret that they hadn't put on the piece 
 earlier, as the end of the season would interrupt the run. 
 There was but one voice too about the fourth act it was 
 believed that all London would rush to see the fourth act. 
 There was a wonderful lot of people, and Miriam was charm- 
 ing ; she was receiving there, in the ugly place, like a kind 
 of royalty, with a smile and a word for each. She was like 
 a young queen on her accession. When she saw him, Nick, 
 she had kissed her hand to him over the heads of the courtiers. 
 Nick's artless comment on this was that she had such pretty 
 manners. It made Sherringham laugh, apparently at his 
 companion's conception of the manners of a young queen. 
 Mrs. Rooth, with a dozen shawls on her arm, was as red as a 
 turkey ; but you couldn't tell whether Miriam was red or 
 pale : she was so cleverly, awfully cleverly, painted perhaps 
 a little too much. Dashwood of course was greatly to the 
 fore, but you didn't have to mention his own performance to 
 him : he was magnanimous and would use nothing but the 
 feminine pronoun. He didn't say much, indeed, but he 
 evidently had ideas ; he nodded significant things and whistled 
 inimitable sounds " heuh, heuh ! " He was perfectly satis- 
 fied ; moreover he looked further ahead than any one. 
 
 It was on coming back to his place after the fourth act that 
 Nick put in, for Sherringham's benefit, most of these touches 
 in his sketch of the situation. If Peter had continued to look 
 for Miriam's mistakes he had not yet found them : the fourth 
 act, bristling with dangers, putting a premium on every sort 
 of cheap effect, had rounded itself without a flaw. Sitting
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 421 
 
 there alone while Nick was away he had leisure to meditate 
 on the wonder of this on the art with which the girl had 
 separated passion from violence, filling the whole place and 
 never screaming ; for it had seemed to him in London some- 
 times of old that the yell of theatrical emotion rang through 
 the shrinking night like a fatal warning. Miriam had never 
 been more present to him than at this hour ; but she was 
 inextricably transmuted present essentially as the romantic 
 heroine she represented. His state of mind was of the 
 strangest, and he was conscious of its strangeness ; just as 
 he was conscious, in his person, of a cessation of resistance 
 which identified itself absurdly with liberation. He felt weak 
 at the same time that he felt excited, and he felt excited at 
 the same time that he knew or believed he knew that his 
 face was a blank. He saw things as a shining confusion, and 
 yet somehow something monstrously definite kept surging out 
 of them. Miriam was a beautiful, actual, fictive, impossible 
 young woman, of a past age and undiscoverable country, who 
 spoke in blank verse and overflowed with metaphor, who was 
 exalted and heroic beyond all human convenience, and who 
 yet was irresistibly real and related to one's own affairs. But 
 that reality was a part of her spectator's joy, and she was 
 not changed back to the common by his perception of the 
 magnificent trick of art with which it was connected. Before 
 Nick Dormer rejoined him Sherringham, taking a visiting-card 
 from his pocket, wrote on it in pencil a few words in a foreign 
 tongue ; but as at that moment he saw Nick coming in he 
 immediately put it out of view. 
 
 The last thing before the curtain rose on the fifth act Nick 
 mentioned that he had brought him a message from Basil 
 Dashwood, who hoped they both, on leaving the theatre, 
 would come to supper with him, in company with Miriam and 
 her mother and several others : he had prepared a little 
 informal banquet in honour of so famous a night. At this, 
 while the curtain was rising, Peter immediately took out his 
 card again and added something he wrote the finest small 
 hand you could see. Nick asked him what he was doing, and 
 after an hesitation he replied : 
 
 " It's a word to say I can't come." 
 
 "To Dashwood 1 Oh, I shall go," said Nick. 
 
 "Well, I hope you'll enjoy it ! " his companion replied in a 
 tone which came back to him afterwards. 
 
 When the curtain fell on the last act the people stayed, 
 standing up in their places for the most part. The applause
 
 422 THE THAGIC MUSE. 
 
 shook the house the recall became a clamour, the relief from 
 a long tension. This was a moment, in any performance, that 
 Sherringham detested, but he stood for an instant beside 
 Nick, who clapped like a school-boy. There was a veritable 
 roar and the curtain drew back at the side most removed 
 from them. Sherringham could see that Basil D#shwood was 
 holding it, making a passage for the male "juvenile lead," 
 who had Miriam in tow. Nick redoubled his efforts ; heard 
 the plaudits swell ; saw the bows of the leading gentleman, 
 who was hot and fat ; saw Miriam, personally conducted and 
 closer to the footlights, grow brighter and bigger and more 
 swaying ; and then became aware that Sherringham had with 
 extreme agility slipped out of the stalls. Nick had already 
 lost sight of him he had apparently taken but a minute to 
 escape from the house. Nick wondered at his quitting him 
 without a farewell, if he was to leave England on the morrow 
 and they were not to meet at the hospitable Dashwood's. He 
 wondered even what Peter was " up to," since, as he had 
 assured him, there was no question of his going round to 
 Miriam. He waited to see this young lady reappear three 
 times, dragging Dashwood behind her at the second with a 
 friendly arm, to whom, in turn, was hooked Miss Fanny 
 Rover, the actress entrusted, in the piece, with the inevitable 
 comic relief. He went out slowly, with the crowd, and at the 
 door looked again for Peter, who struck him as deficient for 
 once in finish. He couldn't know that, in another direction 
 and while he was helping the house to "rise" at Miriam, his 
 kinsman had been particularly explicit. 
 
 On reaching the lobby Sherringham had pounced upon a 
 small boy in buttons, who appeared to be superfluously con- 
 nected with a desolate refreshment-room and was peeping, 
 on tiptoe, at the stage, through the glazed hole in the door 
 of a box. Into one of the child's hands he thrust the card he 
 had drawn again from his waistcoat, and into the other the 
 largest silver coin he could find in the same receptacle, while 
 he bent over him with words of adjuration words which the 
 little page tried to help himself to apprehend by instantly 
 attempting to peruse the other words written on the card. 
 
 "That's no use it's Italian," said Peter; "only carry it 
 round to Miss Rooth without a minute's delay. Place it in 
 her hand and she'll give you some object a bracelet, a glove 
 or a flower to bring me back as a sign that she has received 
 it. I shall be outside ; bring me there what she gives you 
 and you shall have another shilling only fly ! "
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 423 
 
 Sherringham's small messenger sounded him a moment with 
 the sharp face of London wage-earning, and still more of 
 London tip-earning, infancy, and vanished as swiftly as a 
 slave of the Arabian Nights. While his patron waited in the 
 lobby the audience began to pour out, and before the urchin 
 had come back to him Peter was clapped on the shoulder by 
 Nick Dormer. 
 
 " I'm glad I haven't lost you," said Nick ; " but why didn't 
 you stay to give her a hand ? " 
 
 " Give her a hand ? I hated it." 
 
 " My dear fellow, I don't follow you," Nick rejoined. " If 
 you won't come to Dash wood's supper I fear our ways don't 
 lie together." 
 
 " Thank him very much ; say I have to get up at an 
 unnatural hour." To this Peter added : " I think I ought to 
 tell you she may not be there." 
 
 " Miss Booth ? Why, it's for her." 
 
 " I'm waiting for a word from her she may change her 
 mind." 
 
 Nick stared at his companion. " For you ? Why, what 
 have you proposed 1 " 
 
 " I've proposed marriage," said Peter in a strange voice. 
 
 "I say !" Nick broke out; and at the same moment 
 Peter's messenger squeezed through the press and stood 
 before him. 
 
 " She has given me nothing, sir," the boy announced; "but 
 she says I'm to say ' All right ! ' ' 
 
 Nick marvelled a moment. " You've proposed through 
 him ? " 
 
 " Ay, and she accepts. Good-night ! " Peter exclaimed ; 
 and, turning away, he bounded into a hansom. He said 
 something to the driver through the roof, and Nick's eyes 
 followed the cab as it started off. Nick was mystified, was 
 even amused ; especially when the youth in buttons, planted 
 there and wondering too, remarked to him : 
 
 " Please, sir, he told me he'd give me a shilling, and he've 
 forgot it." 
 
 "Oh, I can't pay you for that!" Nick laughed. He was 
 vexed about the supper.
 
 XLYI. 
 
 PETER SHERRINGHAM rolled away through the summer night 
 to St. John's Wood. He had put the pressure of strong words 
 upon Miriam, entreating her to drive home immediately, 
 without any one, without even her mother. He wished to 
 see her alone, for a purpose that he would fully and satis- 
 factorily explain couldn't she trust him 1 He implored her 
 to remember his own situation and throw over her supper, 
 throw over everything. He would wait for her with 
 unspeakable impatience in Balaklava Place. 
 
 He did so when he got there, but it took half an hour. 
 Interminable seemed his lonely vigil in Miss Lumley's draw- 
 ing-room, where the character of the original proprietress came 
 out to him more than before in a kind of after-glow of old 
 sociabilities, a vulgar ghostly vibration. The numerous 
 candles had been lighted for him, and Mrs. Rooth's familiar 
 fictions were lying about ; but his nerves forbade him the 
 solace of taking a chair and a book. He walked up and 
 down, thinking and listening, and as the long window, the 
 balmy air permitting, stood open into the garden he passed 
 several times in and out. A carriage appeared to stop at the 
 gate then there was nothing ; he heard the rare rattle of 
 wheels and the far-off hum of London. His impatience was 
 unreasonable, and though he knew this it persisted ; it would 
 have been no easy matter for Miriam to break away from the 
 flock of her felicitators. Still less simple was it doubtless for 
 her to leave poor Dashwood with his supper on his hands. 
 Perhaps she would bring Dashwood with her to time her ; she 
 was capable of playing him that is playing Sherringham 
 or even playing them both, that trick. Perhaps the little 
 wretch in buttons (Peter remembered now the omitted 
 shilling) had only pretended to go round with his card, had 
 come back with an invented answer. But how could he know, 
 since presumably he couldn't read Italian, that his answer 
 would fit the message ? Peter was sorry now that he himself 
 had not gone round, not snatched Miriam bodily away, made 
 sure of her and of what he wanted of her. 
 
 When half an hour had elapsed he regarded it as proved 
 that she wouldn't come, and, asking himself what he should do, 
 determined to drive off again and seize her at Basil Dash-
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 425 
 
 wood's feast. Then he remembered Nick had mentioned that 
 this entertainment was not to be held at the young actor's 
 lodgings, but at some tavern or restaurant, the name of which 
 he had not heeded. Suddenly however Sherringham became 
 aware with joy that this name didn't matter, for there was 
 something at the garden-door at last. He rushed out before 
 Miriam had had time to ring, and saw as she stepped out of 
 the carriage that she was alone. Now that she was there, 
 that he had this evidence she had listened to him and trusted 
 him, all his impatience and exasperation melted away and a 
 flood of pleading tenderness came out in the first words he 
 spoke to her. It was far "dearer" of her than he had any 
 right to dream, but she was the best and kindest creature 
 this showed it as well as the most wonderful. He was really 
 not off his head with his contradictory ways ; no, before 
 heaven, he wasn't, -and he would explain, he would make 
 everything clear. Everything was changed. 
 
 Miriam stopped short, in the little dusky garden, looking at 
 him in the light of the open window. Then she called back 
 to the coachman they had left the garden-door open : " Wait 
 for me, mind; I shall want you again." 
 
 " "What's the matter won't you stay ] " Peter asked. 
 " Are you going out again at this absurd hour 1 I won't hurt 
 you," he urged gently. And he went back and closed the 
 garden-door. He wanted to say to the coachman : "It's no 
 matter ; please drive away." At the same time he wouldn't 
 for the world have done anything offensive to Miriam. 
 
 " I've come because I thought it better to-night, as things 
 have turned out, to do the thing you ask me, whatever it may 
 be. That's probably what you calculated I would think, eh ? 
 What this evening has been you've seen, and I must allow 
 that your hand's in it. That you know for yourself that 
 you doubtless felt as you sat there. But I confess I don't 
 imagine what you want of me here, now," Miriam added. 
 She had remained standing in the path. 
 
 Peter felt the irony of her " now," and how it made a fool 
 of him, but he had been prepared for it and for much worse. 
 He had begged her not to think him a fool, but in truth at 
 present he cared little if she did. Yery likely he was, in 
 spite of his plea that everything was changed he cared little 
 even himself. However, he spoke in the tone of intense 
 reason and of the fullest disposition to satisfy her. This 
 lucidity only took still more from the dignity of his tergivers- 
 ation : his separation from her the day before had had such
 
 426 THE TRAGIC -MUSE. 
 
 pretensions to being lucid. But the explanation, the justifi- 
 cation, were in the very fact, and the fact had complete 
 possession of him. He named it when he replied to Miriam : 
 " I've simply overrated my strength." 
 
 " Oh, I knew I knew ! That's why I entreated you not 
 to come ! " she groaned. She turned away impatiently, and 
 for a moment he thought she would retreat to her carriage. 
 But he passed his hand into her arm, to draw her forward, 
 and after an instant he felt her yield. 
 
 " The fact is we must have this thing out," he said. Then 
 he added, as he made her go into the house, bending over her : 
 " The failure of my strength that was just the reason of my 
 coming." 
 
 She burst out laughing at these words, as she entered the 
 drawing-room, and her laugh made them sound pompous in 
 their false wisdom. She flung off, as a good-natured tribute 
 to the image of their having the thing out, a white shawl that 
 had been wrapped round her. She was still painted and 
 bedizened, in the splendid dress of her fifth act, so that she 
 seemed protected and alienated by the character she had been 
 representing. " Whatever it is you want (when I under- 
 stand), you'll be very brief, won't you ? Do you know I've 
 given up a charming supper for you ? Mamma has gone 
 there. I've promised to go back to them." 
 
 " You're an angel not to have let her come with you. I'm 
 sure she wanted to," said Sherringham. 
 
 " Oh, she's all right, but she's nervous," Miriam rejoined. 
 Then she added quickly : " Couldn't she keep you away after 
 all?" 
 
 " Whom are you talking about 1 " Biddy Dormer was as 
 absent from Sherringham' s mind as if she had never existed. 
 
 " The charming girl you were with this morning. Is she so 
 afraid of obliging me? Oh, she'd be so good for you ! " 
 
 " Don't speak of that," said Peter, gravely. " I was in 
 perfect good faith yesterday when I took leave of you. I was 
 I was. But I can't I can't : you are too unutterably dear 
 to me." 
 
 " Oh, don't please don't," moaned Miriam. She stood 
 before the fireless chimney-piece with one of her hands upon 
 it. " If it's only to say that, don't you know, what's the 
 use ? " 
 
 " It isn't only to say that. I've a plan, a perfect plan : the 
 whole thing lies clear before me." 
 
 " And what is the whole thing 1 "
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 427 
 
 He hesitated a moment. " You say your mother's nervous. 
 Ah, if you knew how nervous I am ! " 
 
 " Well, I'm not. Go on." 
 
 " Give it up give it up ! " stammered Sherringham. 
 
 " Give it up ? " Miriam fixed him like a mild Medusa. 
 
 "I'll marry you to-morrow if you'll renounce; and in return 
 for the sacrifice you make for me I'll do more for you than 
 ever was done for a woman before." 
 
 " Renounce, after to-night 1 Do you call that a plan ? " 
 asked Miriam. " Those are old words and very foolish ones : 
 you wanted something of the sort a year ago." 
 
 " Oh, I fluttered round the idea then ; we were talking in 
 the air. I didn't really believe I could make you see it then, 
 and certainly you didn't see it. My own future moreover 
 wasn't definite to me. I didn't know what I could offer you. 
 But these last months have made a difference, and I do know 
 now. Now what I say is deliberate, it's deeply meditated. I 
 simply can't live without you, and I hold that together we may 
 do great things." 
 
 " What sort of things ? " Miriam inquired. 
 
 " The things of my profession of my life the things one 
 does for one's country, the responsibility and the honour of 
 great affairs ; deeply fascinating when one's immersed in 
 them, and more exciting than the excitements of the theatre. 
 Care for me only a little and you'll see what they are, they'll 
 take hold of you. Believe me, believe me," Sherringham 
 pleaded, "every fibre of my being trembles in what I say 
 to you." 
 
 "You admitted yesterday it wouldn't do," said Miriam. 
 "Where were the fibres of your being then?" 
 
 "They trembled even more than now, and I was trying, like 
 an ass, not to feel them. Where was this evening, yesterday 
 where were the maddening hours I've just spent? Ah, 
 you're the perfection of perfections, and as I sat there to-night 
 you taught me what I really want." 
 
 "The perfection of perfections?" the girl repeated inter- 
 rogatively, with the strangest smile. 
 
 " I needn't try to tell you : you must have felt to-night, 
 with such rapture, what you are, what you can do. How can 
 I give that up?" Sherringham asked. 
 
 " How can /, my poor friend ? I like your plans and your 
 responsibilities and your great affairs, as you call them. 
 Voyons, they're infantile. I've just shown that I'm a per- 
 fection of perfections : therefore it's just the moment to
 
 428 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 renounce, as you gracefully say 1 Oh, I was sure, I was 
 sure ! " And Miriam paused, resting solicitous, pitying eyes 
 upon her visitor, as if she were trying to think of some 
 arrangement that would help him out of his absurdity. " I 
 was sure, I mean, that if you did come your poor dear doating 
 brain would be quite addled," she presently went on. "I can't 
 be a muff in public just for you, poiwtant. Dear me, why do 
 you like xis so much ? " 
 
 " Like you ? I loathe you ! " 
 
 " Je le vois parbleu bien ! I mean, why do you feel us, judge 
 us, understand us so well 1 ? I please you because you see, 
 because you know ; and because I please you, you must adapt 
 me to your convenience, you must take me over, as they say. 
 You admire me as an artist and therefore you wish to put me 
 into a box in which the artist will breathe her last. Ah, be 
 reasonable ; you must let her live ! " 
 
 " Let her live \ As if I could prevent her living ! " Peter 
 cried, with unmistakable conviction. " Even if I wanted, how 
 could I prevent a spirit like yours from expressing itself 1 
 Don't talk about my putting you in a box, for, dearest child, 
 I'm taking you out of one. The artist is irrepressible, eternal ; 
 she'll be in everything you are and in everything you do, and 
 you'll go about with her triumphantly, exerting your powers, 
 charming the world, carrying everything before you." 
 
 Miriam's colour rose, through her paint, at this vivid 
 picture, and she asked whimsically : " Shall you like that 1 " 
 
 " Like my wife to be the most brilliant woman in Europe ? 
 I think I can do with it." 
 
 "Aren't you afraid of me?" 
 
 "Not a bit." 
 
 " Bravely said. How little you know me after all ! " sighed 
 the girl. 
 
 "I tell the truth," Peter went on; ''and you must do me 
 the justice to admit that I have taken the time to dig deep 
 into my feelings. I'm not an infatuated boy ; I've lived, I've 
 had experience, I've observed ; in short I know what I'm 
 about. It isn't a thing to reason about ; it's simply a need 
 that consumes me. I've put it on starvation diet, but it's no 
 use really it's no use, Miriam," poor Sherringham pursued, 
 with a soft quaver that betrayed all his sincerity. " It isn't a 
 question of my trusting you ; it's simply a question of your 
 trusting me. You're all right, as I've heard you say yourself ; 
 you're frank, spontaneous, generous ; you're a magnificent 
 creature. Just quietly marry me, and I'll manage you,"
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 429 
 
 "Manage me?" The girl's inflection was droll; it made 
 Sherringham change colour. 
 
 " I mean I'll give you a larger life than the largest you can 
 get in any other way. The stage is great, no doubt, but the 
 world is greater. It's a bigger theatre than any of those 
 places in the Strand. We'll go in for realities instead of 
 fables, and you'll do them far better than you do the fables." 
 
 Miriam had listened to him attentively, but her face showed 
 her despair at his perverted ingenuity. " Excuse me for 
 saying so, after your delightful tributes to my worth," she 
 returned in a moment, "but I've never listened to such a 
 flood of determined sophistry. You think so well of me that 
 humility itself ought to keep me silent ; nevertheless I must 
 utter a few shabby words of sense. I'm a magnificent 
 creature on the stage well and good ; it's what I want to be 
 and it's charming to see such evidence that I succeed. .But 
 off the stage come, come : I should lose all my advantages. 
 The fact is so patent that it seems to me I'm very good-natured 
 even to discuss it with you." 
 
 " Are you on the stage now, pray ? Ah, Miriam, if it were 
 not for the respect I owe you ! " her companion murmured. 
 
 " If it were not for that I shoxildn't have come here to meet 
 you. My talent is the thing that takes you : could there 
 be a better proof than that it's to-night's exhibition of it that 
 has settled you? It's indeed a misfortune that you're so 
 sensitive to this particular kind of talent, since it plays such 
 tricks with your power to see things as they are. Without it 
 I should be a dull, ignorant, third-rate woman, and yet that's 
 the fate you ask me to face and insanely pretend you are 
 ready to face yourself." 
 
 "Without it without it?" Sherringham cried. "Your 
 own sophistry is infinitely worse than mine. I should like to 
 see you without it for the fiftieth part of a second. What I 
 ask you to give up is the dusty boards of the playhouse and 
 the flaring footlights, but not the very essence of your being. 
 Your talent is yourself, and it's because it's yourself that I 
 yearn for you. If it had been a thing you could leave behind 
 by the easy dodge of stepping off the stage I would never have 
 looked at you a second time. Don't talk to me as if I were 
 a simpleton, with your false simplifications ! You were made 
 to charm and console, to represent beauty and harmony and 
 variety to miserable human beings ; and the daily life of man 
 is the theatre for that not a vulgar shop with a turnstile, 
 that's open only once in the twenty-four hours. Without it,
 
 430 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 verily 1" Sherringham went ou, with rising scorn and 
 exasperated passion. " Please let me know the first time 
 you're without your face, without your voice, your step, your 
 exquisite spirit, the turn of your head and the wonder of 
 your eye ! " 
 
 Miriam, at this, moved away from him with a port that 
 resembled what she sometimes showed on the stage when she 
 turned her young back upon the footlights and then, after 
 a few steps, grandly swept round again. This evolution she 
 performed (it was over in an instant) on the present occasion ; 
 even to stopping short with her eyes upon him and her head 
 erect. " Surely it's strange," she said, " the way the other 
 solution never occurs to you." 
 " The other solution ? " 
 " That you should stay on the stage." 
 " I don't understand you," Sherringham confessed. 
 " Stay on my stage ; come off your own." 
 Sherringham hesitated a moment. " You mean that if I'll 
 do that you'll have me 1 " 
 
 " I mean that if it were to occur to you to offer me a little 
 sacrifice on your own side, it might place the matter in a 
 slightly more attractive light." 
 
 "Continue to let you act as my wife 1 ?" Sherringham 
 demanded. " Is it a real condition 1 Am I to understand 
 that those are your terms ? " 
 
 "I may say so without fear, because you'll never accept 
 them." 
 
 " Would you accept them, from me accept the sacrifice, 
 see me throw up my work, my prospects (of course I should 
 have to do that), and simply become your appendage ? " 
 
 " My dear fellow, you invite me with the best conscience in 
 the world to become yours." 
 
 "The cases are not equal. You would make of me the 
 husband of an actress. I should make of you the wife of an 
 ambassador." 
 
 "The husband of an actress, c'est bientot dit, in that tone of 
 scorn ! If you're consistent," said Miriam, " it ought to be 
 a proud position for you." 
 
 "What do you mean, if I'm consistent?" 
 " Haven't you always insisted on the beauty and interest 
 of our art and the greatness of our mission? Haven't you 
 almost come to blows with poor Gabriel Nash about it? 
 What did all that mean if you won't face the first consequences 
 of your theory ? Either it was an enlightened conviction or
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 431 
 
 it was an empty pretence. If it was heartless humbug I'm 
 glad to know it," Miriam rolled out, with a darkening eye. 
 " The better the cause, it seems to me, the better the deed ; 
 and if the theatre is important to the ' human spirit,' as you 
 used to say so charmingly, and if into the bargain you have 
 the pull of being so fond of me, I don't see why it should be 
 monstrous to give us your services in an intelligent indirect 
 way. Of course if you're not serious we needn't talk at all ; 
 but if you are, with your conception of what the actor can do, 
 why is it so base to come to the actor's aid, taking one devotion 
 with another? If I'm so fine I'm worth looking after a bit, 
 and the place where I'm finest is the place to look after me ! " 
 
 " You were never finer than at this minute, in the deepest 
 domesticity of private life," Sherringham returned. " I have 
 no conception whatever of what the actor can do, and no 
 theory whatever about the importance of the theatre. Any 
 infatuation of that sort has completely quitted me, and for 
 all I care the theatre may go to the dogs." 
 
 " You're dishonest, you're ungrateful, you're false ! " Miriam 
 flashed. " It was the theatre that brought you here ; if it 
 hadn't been for the theatre I never would have looked at you. 
 It was in the name of the theatre you first made love to me ; 
 it is to the theatre that you owe every advantage that, so far 
 as I'm concerned, you possess.'' 
 
 " I seem to possess a great many ! " groaned Sherringham. 
 
 " You might certainly make more of those you have ! You 
 make me angry, but I want to be fair," said the glowing girl, 
 " and I can't be unless you will. You are not fair, nor 
 candid, nor honourable, when you swallow your words and 
 abjure your faith, when you throw over old friends and old 
 memories for a selfish purpose." 
 
 " ' Selfish purpose ' is in your own convenient idiom, bientot 
 dit," Sherringham answered. "I suppose you consider that 
 if I truly esteemed you I should be ashamed to deprive the 
 world of the light of your genius. Perhaps my esteem isn't 
 of the right quality : there are different kinds, aren't there 1 
 At any rate I've explained that I propose to deprive the world 
 of nothing at all. You shall be celebrated, allez/" 
 
 " Rubbish rubbish ! " Miriam mocked, turning away again. 
 " I know of course," she added quickly, "that to befool your- 
 self with such platitudes you must be pretty bad." 
 
 "Yes, I'm pretty bad," Sherringham admitted, looking at 
 her dismally. " What do you do with the declaration you 
 made me the other day the day I found my cousin here
 
 432 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 that you'd take me if I should come to you as one who had 
 risen high?" 
 
 Miriam reflected a moment. "I remember the chaff 
 about the orders, the stars and garters. My poor dear friend, 
 don't be so painfully literal. Don't you know a joke when 
 you see it 1 It was to worry your cousin, wasn't it ? But it 
 didn't in the least succeed." 
 
 "Why should you wish to worry my cousin? " 
 
 "Because he's so provoking. And surely I had my freedom 
 no less than I have it now. Pray, what explanations should 
 I have owed you and in what fear of you should I have gone ? 
 However, that has nothing to do with it. Say I did tell you 
 that we might arrange it on the day that you should come to 
 me covered with glory in the shape of little tinkling medals : 
 why should you anticipate that transaction by so many years 
 and knock me down such a long time in advance ? Where is 
 the glory, please, and where are the medals ? " 
 
 " Dearest girl, am I not going to America (a capital pro- 
 motion) next month," Sherringham argued, "and can't you 
 trust me enough to believe that I speak with a real appreci- 
 ation of the facts that I'm not lying to you, in short when 
 I tell you that I've my foot in the stirrup? The glory's 
 dawning. I'm all right too." 
 
 " What you propose to me then is to accompany you tout 
 bonnement to your new post." 
 
 " You put it in a nutshell," smiled Sherringham. 
 
 " You're touching ; it has its charm. But you can't get 
 anything in America, you know. I'm assured there are no 
 medals to be picked up there. That's why the diplomatic 
 body hate it." 
 
 " It's on the way it's on the way," Sherringham hammered, 
 feverishly. " They don't keep us long in disagreeable places 
 unless we want to stay. There's one thing you can get 
 anywhere if you're clever, and nowhere if you're not, and in 
 the disagreeable places generally more than in the others : 
 and that (since it's the element of the question we're dis- 
 cussing) is simply success. It's odious to be put on one's 
 swagger, but I protest against being treated as if I had 
 nothing to offer to offer to a person who has such glories 
 of her own. I'm not a little presumptuous ass ; I'm a man 
 accomplished and determined, and the omens are on my side." 
 Peter faltered a moment, and then with a queer expression 
 he went on : " Remember, after all, that, strictly speaking, 
 your glories are also still in the future." An exclamation, at
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 433 
 
 these words, burst from Miriam's lips, but her companion 
 resumed quickly : " Ask my official superiors, ask any of my 
 colleagues if they consider that I've nothing to offer." 
 
 Peter Sherringham had an idea, as he ceased speaking, that 
 Miriam was on the point of breaking out with some strong 
 word of resentment at his allusion to the contingent nature 
 of her prospects. But it only twisted the weapon in his 
 wound to hear her saying with extraordinary mildness : " It's 
 perfectly true that my glories are still to come, that I may 
 fizzle out and that my little success of to-day is perhaps a 
 mere flash in the pan. Stranger things have been something 
 of that sort happens every day. But don't we talk too much 
 of that part of it 1 " she asked, with a weary tolerance that 
 was noble in its effect. " Surely it's vulgar to consider only 
 the noise one's going to make ; especially when one remembers 
 how unintelligent nine-tenths of it will be. It isn't to my 
 glories that I cling ; it's simply to my idea, even if it's 
 destined to sink me into obscurity. I like it better than 
 anything else a thousand times better (I'm sorry to have to 
 put it in such a way) than tossing up my head as the fine 
 lady of a little coterie." 
 
 " A little coterie ? I don't know what you're talking 
 about ! " Peter retorted, with considerable heat. 
 
 " A big coterie, then ! It's only that, at the best. A 
 nasty, prim ' official ' woman, who is perched on her little 
 local pedestal and thinks she's a queen for ever because she's 
 ridiculous for an hour ! Oh, you needn't tell me. I've seen 
 them abroad, I could imitate them here. I could do one for 
 you on the spot if I were not so tired. It's scarcely worth 
 mentioning perhaps, but I'm ready to drop." Miriam picked 
 up the white mantle she had tossed off, flinging it round her 
 with her usual amplitude of gesture. "They're waiting for 
 me, and I confess I'm hungry. If I don't hurry they'll eat 
 up all the nice things. Don't say I haven't been obliging, 
 and come back when you're better. Good-night." 
 
 "I quite agree with you that we've talked too much about 
 the vulgar side of our question," Peter responded, walking 
 round to get between her and the French window, by which 
 she apparently had a view of- leaving the room. "That's 
 because I've wanted to bribe you. Bribery is almost always 
 vulgar." 
 
 " Yes, you should do better. Herd! There's a cab ; some 
 of them have come for me. I must go," Miriam added, 
 listening for a sound that reached her from the road. 
 
 F F
 
 434 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 Sherringham listened too, making out no cab. " Believe 
 me, it isn't wise to turn your back on such an affection as 
 mine and on such a confidence," he went on, speaking almost 
 in a warning tone (there was a touch of superior sternness in 
 it, as of a rebuke for real folly, but it was meant to be tender), 
 and stopping her within a few feet of the window. " Such 
 things are the most precious that life has to give us," he 
 added, all but didactically. 
 
 Miriam had listened again for a moment ; then she appeared 
 to give up the idea of the cab. The reader need hardly be 
 told, at this stage of her youthful history, that the right way 
 for her lover to soothe her was not to represent himself as 
 acting for her highest good. "I like your calling it con- 
 fidence," she presently said ; and the deep note of the few 
 words had something of the distant mutter of thunder. 
 
 "What is it, then, when I offer you everything I am, 
 everything I have, everything I shall achieve?" 
 
 She seemed to measure him for a moment, as if she were 
 thinking whether she should try to pass him. But she 
 remained where she was and she returned : " I'm sorry for 
 you, yes, but I'm also rather ashamed of you." 
 
 " Ashamed of me 1 " 
 
 " A brave offer to see me through that's what I should 
 call confidence. You say to-day that you hate the theatre; 
 and do you know what has made you do it ? The fact that 
 it has too large a place in your mind to let you repudiate it 
 and throw it over with a good conscience. It has a deep 
 fascination for you, and yet you're not strong enough to make 
 the concession of taking up with it publicly, in my person. 
 You're ashamed of yourself for that, as all your constant high 
 claims for it are on record ; so you blaspheme against it, to 
 try and cover your retreat and your treachery and straighten 
 out your personal situation. But it won't do, my dear fellow 
 it won't do at all," Miriam proceeded, with a triumphant, 
 almost judicial lucidity which made her companion stare ; 
 "you haven't the smallest excuse of stupidity, and your 
 perversity is no excuse at all. Leave her alone altogether 
 a poor girl who's making her way or else come frankly to 
 help her, to give her the benefit of your wisdom. Don't lock 
 her up for life under the pretence of doing her good. What 
 does one most good is to see a little honesty. You're the 
 best judge, the best critic, the best observer, the best believer, 
 that I've ever come across ; you're committed to it by every- 
 thing you've said to me for a twelvemonth, by the whole turn
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 435 
 
 of your mind, by the way you've followed up this business of 
 ours. If an art is noble and beneficent, one shouldn't be 
 afraid to offer it one's arm. Your cousin isn't : he can make 
 sacrifices." 
 
 " My cousin ? " shouted Peter. " Why, wasn't it only the 
 other day that you were throwing his sacrifices in his 
 teeth?" 
 
 Under this imputation upon her consistency Miriam flinched 
 but for an instant. " I did that to worry you," she smiled. 
 
 " Why should you wish to worry me if you care so little 
 about me?" 
 
 ''Care little about you? Haven't I told you often, didn't 
 I tell you yesterday, how much I care? Ain't I showing it 
 now by spending half the night here with you (giving myself 
 away to all those cynics), taking all this trouble to persuade 
 you to hold up your head and have the courage of your 
 opinions 1 " 
 
 " You invent my opinions for your convenience," said Peter. 
 " As long ago as the night I introduced you, in Paris, to 
 Mademoiselle Yoisin, you accused me of looking down on 
 those who practise your art. I remember you almost scratched 
 my eyes out because I didn't kootoo enough to your friend 
 Dashwood. Perhaps I didn't; but if already at that time 
 I was so wide of the mark you can scarcely accuse me of 
 treachery now." 
 
 " I don't remember, but I dare say you're right," Miriam 
 meditated. " What I accused you of then was probably 
 simply what I reproach you with now : the germ at least of 
 your deplorable weakness. You consider that we do awfully 
 valuable work, and yet you wouldn't for the world let people 
 suppose that you really take our side. If your position was 
 even at that time so false, so much the worse for you, that's 
 all. Oh, it's refreshing," the girl exclaimed, after a pause 
 during which Sherringham seemed to himself to taste the full 
 bitterness of despair, so baffled and derided he felt ' : oh, it's 
 refreshing to see a man burn his ships in a cause that appeals 
 to him, give up something for it and break with hideous 
 timidities and snobberies ! It's the most beautiful sight in 
 the world." 
 
 Sherringham, sore as he was and angry and exasperated, 
 nevertheless burst out laughing at this. " You're magnificent, 
 you give me at this moment the finest possible illustration of 
 what you mean by burning one's ships. Verily, verily, there's 
 no one like yeu : talk of timidity, talk of refreshment ! If I
 
 436 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 had any talent for it I'd go on the stage to-morrow, to spend 
 my life with you the better." 
 
 " If you'll do that I'll be your wife the day after your first 
 appearance. That would be really respectable," said Miriam. 
 
 "Unfortunately I've no talent." 
 
 " That would only make it the more respectable." 
 
 " You're just like Nick," Peter rejoined : "you've taken to 
 imitating Gabriel Nash. Don't you see that it's only if it 
 were a question of my going on the stage myself that there 
 would be a certain fitness in your contrasting me invidiously 
 with Nick Dormer and in my giving up one career for another ? 
 But simply to stand in the wing and hold your shawl and 
 your smelling-bottle ! " Peter concluded mournfully, as if he 
 had ceased to debate. 
 
 " Holding my shawl and my smelling-bottle is a mere 
 detail, representing a very small part of the various precious 
 services, the protection and encouragement for which a woman 
 in my position might be indebted to a man interested in her 
 work and accomplished and determined, as you very justly 
 describe yourself." 
 
 " And would it be your idea that such a man should live on 
 the money earned by an exhibition of the person of his still 
 more accomplished and still more determined wife?" 
 
 " Why not, if they work together if there's something of 
 his spirit and his support in everything she does?" Miriam 
 demanded. " Je vous attendais, with the famous 'person;' 
 of course that's the great stick they beat us with. Yes, we 
 show it for money, those of us who have anything to show, 
 and some no doubt who haven't, which is the real scandal. 
 What will you have? It's only the envelope of the idea, it's 
 only our machinery, which ought to be conceded to us ; and 
 in proportion as the idea takes hold of us do we become 
 unconscious of the clumsy body. Poor old ' person ' if you 
 knew what we think of it ! If you don't forget it, that's 
 your own affair : it shows that you're dense before the idea." 
 
 "That I'm dense?" 
 
 " I mean the public is the public who pays us. After all, 
 they expect us to look at them too, who are not half so well 
 worth it. If you should see some of the creatures who have 
 the face to plant themselves there in the stalls, before one, 
 for three mortal hours ! I dare say it would be simpler to 
 have no bodies, but we're all in the same box, and it would be 
 a great injustice to the idea, and we're all showing ourselves 
 all the while ; only some of us are not worth paying."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 437 
 
 "You're extraordinarily droll, but somehow I can't laugh 
 at you," said Peter, his handsome face lengthened to a point 
 that sufficiently attested the fact. " Do you remember the 
 second time I ever saw you the day you recited at my 
 place?" he abruptly inquired, a good deal as if he were 
 drawing from his quiver an arrow which, if it was the last, 
 was also one of the most pointed. 
 
 "Perfectly, and what an idiot I was, though it was only 
 yesterday ! " 
 
 " You expressed to me then a deep detestation of the sort 
 of self-exposure to which the profession you were seeking 
 to enter would commit you. If you compared yourself to 
 a contortionist at a country fair I'm only taking my cue 
 from you." 
 
 " I don't know what I may have said then," replied Miriam, 
 whose steady flight was not arrested by this ineffectual bolt ; 
 " I was, no doubt, already wonderful for talking of things I 
 know nothing about. I was only on the brink of the stream 
 and I perhaps thought the water colder than it is. One 
 warms it a bit one's self, when once one is in. Of course I'm 
 a contortionist and of course there's a hateful side ; but don't 
 you see how that very fact puts a price on every compens- 
 ation, on the help of those who are ready to insist on the 
 other side, the grand one, and especially on the sympathy of 
 the person who is ready to insist most and to keep before us 
 the great thing, the element that makes up for everything?" 
 
 "The element?" Peter questioned, with a vagueness which 
 was pardonably exaggerated. " Do you mean your success ? " 
 
 " I mean what you've so often been eloquent about," the 
 girl returned, with an indulgent shrug " the way we simply 
 stir people's souls. Ah, there's where life can help us," she 
 broke out, with a change of tone, " there's where human 
 relations and affections can help us ; love and faith and joy 
 and suffering and experience I don't know what to call 'em ! 
 They suggest things, they light them up and sanctify them, as 
 you may say ; they make them appear worth doing." She 
 became radiant for a moment, as if with a splendid vision ; 
 then melting into still another accent, which seemed all nature 
 and harmony, she proceeded : " I must tell you that in the 
 matter of what we can do for each other I have a tremendously 
 high ideal. I go in for closeness of union, for identity of 
 interest. A true marriage, as they call it, must do one a lot 
 of good ! " 
 
 Sherringham stood there looking at her a minute, during
 
 438 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 which her eyes sustained the rummage of his gaze without a 
 relenting gleam of the sense of cruelty or of paradox. With 
 a passionate but inarticulate ejaculation he turned away from 
 her and remained, on the edge of the window, his hands in 
 his pockets, gazing defeatedly, doggedly, into the featureless 
 night, into the little black garden which had nothing to give 
 him but a familiar smell of damp. The warm darkness had 
 no relief for him, and Miriam's histrionic hardness flung him 
 back against a fifth-rate world, against a bedimmed, star- 
 punctured nature which had no consolation the bleared, irre- 
 sponsive eyes of the London heaven. For the brief space that 
 he glared at these things he dumbly and helplessly raged. 
 What he wanted was something that was not in that thick 
 prospect. What was the meaning of this sudden offensive 
 importunity of " art," this senseless mocking catch, like some 
 irritating chorus of conspirators in a bad opera, in which 
 Miriam's voice was so incongruously conjoined with Nick's 
 and in which Biddy's sweet little pipe had not scrupled still 
 more bewilderingly to mingle ? Art be damned : what com- 
 mission, after all, had he ever given it to better him or bother 
 him ? If the pointless groan in which Peter exhaled a part of 
 his humiliation had been translated into words, these words 
 would have been as heavily charged with the genuine British 
 mistrust of the bothersome principle as if the poor fellow 
 speaking them had never quitted his island. Several acquired 
 perceptions had struck a deep root in him, but there was an 
 immemorial compact formation which lay deeper still. He 
 tried at the present hour to rest upon it spiritually, but found 
 it inelastic ; and at the very moment when he was most con- 
 scious of this absence of the rebound or of any tolerable ease 
 his vision was solicited by an object which, as he immediately 
 guessed, could only add to the complication of things. 
 
 An undefined shape hovered before him in the garden, half- 
 way between the gate and the house ; it remained outside of 
 the broad shaft of lamplight projected from the window. It 
 wavered for a moment after it had become aware of Peter's 
 observation, and then whisked round the corner of the little 
 villa. This characteristic movement so effectually dispelled 
 the mystery (it could only be Mrs. Rooth who resorted to such 
 conspicuous secrecies) that, to feel that the game was up and 
 his interview over, Sherringham had no need of seeing the 
 figure reappear on second thoughts and dodge about in the 
 dusk with a vexatious sportive imbecility. Evidently Miriam's 
 warning of a few minutes before had been founded : a cab had
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 439 
 
 deposited her anxious mother at the garden-door. Mrs. Rooth 
 had entered with precautions ; she had approached the house 
 and retreated ; she had effaced herself had peered and waited 
 and listened. Maternal solicitude and muddled calculations 
 had drawn her away from a festival as yet only imperfectly 
 commemorative. The heroine of the occasion of course had 
 been intolerably missed, so that the old woman had both 
 obliged the company and quieted her own nerves by jumping 
 insistently into a hansom and rattling up to St. John's Wood 
 to reclaim the absentee. But if she had wished to be in time 
 she had also desired not to be abrupt ; she would have been 
 still more embarrassed to say what she aspired to promote 
 than to phrase what she had proposed to hinder. She wanted 
 to abstain tastefully, to interfere felicitously, and, more gener- 
 ally and justifiably (the small hours had come), to see what her 
 young charges were doing. She would probably have gathered 
 that they were quarrelling, and she appeared now to be tele- 
 graphing to Sherringham to know if it were over. He took 
 no notice of her signals, if signals they were ; he only felt that 
 before he made way for the odious old woman there was one 
 faint little spark he might strike from Miriam's flint. 
 
 Without letting her guess that her mother was on the 
 premises he turned again to his companion, half expecting that 
 she would have taken her chance to regard their discussion as 
 more than terminated and by the other egress flit away from 
 him in silence. But she was still there ; she was in the act 
 of approaching him with a manifest intention of kindness, and 
 she looked indeed, to his surprise, like an angel of mercy. 
 
 " Don't let us part so disagreeably," she said, " with your 
 trying to make me feel as if I were merely disobliging. It's 
 no use talking we only hurt each other. Let us hold our 
 tongues like decent people and go about our business. It 
 isn't as if you hadn't any cure when you have such a capital 
 one. Try it, try it, my dear friend you'll see ! I wish you 
 the highest promotion and the quickest every success and 
 every reward. When you've got them all, some day, and I've 
 become a great swell too, we'll meet on that solid basis and 
 you'll be glad I've been nasty now." 
 
 " Surely before I leave you I've a right to ask you this," 
 Sherringham answered, holding fast in both his own the cool 
 hand of farewell that she had finally tormented him with. 
 " Are you ready to follow up by a definite promise your implied 
 assurance that I have a remedy ? " 
 
 "A definite promise?" Miriam benignly gazed, with the
 
 440 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 perfection of evasion. " I don't ' imply ' that you have a 
 remedy. I declare it on the housetops. That delightful girl 
 
 "I'm not talking of any delightful girl but you!" Peter 
 broke in with a voice which, as he afterwards learned, struck 
 Mrs. Booth's ears, in the garden, with affright. " I simply hold 
 you, under pain of being convicted of the grossest prevarication, 
 to the strict sense of what you said a quarter of an hour ago." 
 
 " Ah, I've said so many things ; one has to do that to get 
 rid of you. You rather hurt my hand," she added, jerking it 
 away in a manner that showed that if she was an angel of 
 mercy her mercy was partly for herself. 
 
 " As I understand you, then, I may have some hope if I do 
 renounce my profession ? " Peter pursued. " If I break with 
 everything, my prospects, my studies, my training, my emolu- 
 ments, my past and my future, the service of my country and 
 the ambition of my life, and engage to take up instead the 
 business of watching your interests so far as I may learn how 
 and ministering to your triumphs so far as may in me lie if 
 after further reflection I decide to go through these prelimi- 
 naries, have I your word that I may definitely look to you to 
 reward me with your precious hand 1 " 
 
 " I don't think you have any right to put the question to 
 me now," said Miriam, with a promptitude partly produced 
 perhaps by the clear-cut form Peter's solemn speech had given 
 (it was a charm to hear it) to each item of his enumeration. 
 ."The case is so very contingent, so dependent on what you 
 ingeniously call your further reflection. While you reserve 
 yourself you ask me to commit myself. If it's a question of 
 further reflection, why did you drag me up here ? And then," 
 she added, " I'm so far from wishing you to take any such 
 monstrous step." 
 
 " Monstrous, you call it 1 Just now you said it would be 
 sublime." 
 
 " Sublime if it's done with spontaneity, Avith passion ; 
 ridiculous if it's done after further reflection. As you said 
 perfectly a while ago, it isn't a thing to reason about." 
 
 " Ah, what a help you'd be to me in diplomacy ! " Sherring- 
 ham cried. " Will you give me a year to consider 1 " 
 
 " Would you trust me for a year ? " 
 
 " Why not, if I'm ready to trust you for life 1 " 
 
 " Oh, I shouldn't be free then, worse luck. And how much 
 you seem to take for granted one must like you ! " 
 
 " Remember that you've made a great point of your liking 
 me. Wouldn't you do so still more if I were heroic 1 "
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 441 
 
 Miriam looked at him a moment. " I think I should pity 
 you, in such a cause. Give it all to her ; don't throw away a 
 real happiness ! " 
 
 "Ah, you can't back out of your position with a few vague 
 and even rather impertinent words ! " Sherringham declared. 
 " You accuse me of swallowing my protestations, but you 
 swallow yours. You've painted in heavenly colours the sacrifice 
 I'm talking of, and now you must take the consequences." 
 
 " The consequences." 
 
 "Why, my coming back in a year to square you." 
 
 " Ah, you're tiresome ! " cried Miriam. " Come back when 
 you like. I don't wonder you've grown desperate, but fancy 
 me then ! " she added, looking past him at a new interlocutor. 
 
 " Yes, but if he'll square you ! " Peter heard Mrs. Booth's 
 voice respond conciliatingly behind him. She had stolen up 
 to the window now, she had passed 'the threshold, she was in 
 the room, but her daughter had not been startled. " What is 
 it he wants to do, dear?" she continued, to Miriam. 
 
 " To induce me to marry him if he'll go upon the stage. 
 He'll practise over there, where he's going, and then he'll 
 come back and appear. Isn't it too dreadful 1 Talk him out of 
 it, stay with him, soothe him ! " the girl hurried on. " You'll 
 find some bibite and some biscuits in the cupboard keep him 
 with you, pacify him, give him his little supper. Meanwhile 
 I'll go to mine ; I'll take the brougham ; don't follow ! " 
 
 With these words Miriam bounded into the garden, and 
 her white drapery shone for an instant in the darkness before 
 she disappeared. Peter looked about him, to pick up his hat, 
 and while he did so he heard the bang of the gate and the 
 quick carriage getting into motion. Mrs. Booth appeared to 
 sway excitedly for a moment in opposed directions : that of 
 the impulse to rush after Miriam and that of the extraordinary 
 possibility to which the young lady had alluded. She seemed 
 in doubt, but at a venture, detaining him with a maternal 
 touch, she twinkled up at their visitor like an insinuating 
 glow-worm. 
 
 " I'm so glad you came." 
 
 " I'm not. I've got nothing by it," he said, finding his hat. 
 
 " Oh, it was so beautiful ! " she coaxed. 
 
 " The play yes, wonderful. I'm afraid it's too late for me 
 to avail myself of the privilege your daughter offers me. 
 Good-night." 
 
 "Oh, it's a pity; won't you take anything'/" asked Mrs. 
 Rooth. " When I heard your voice so high I was scared and
 
 442 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 I hung back." But before he could reply she added : " Are 
 you really thinking of the stage? " 
 
 " It comes to the same thing." 
 
 " Do you mean you've proposed ? " 
 
 " Oh, unmistakably." 
 
 " And what does she say? " 
 
 " Why, you heard : she says I'm an ass." 
 
 " Ah, the little rascal ! " laughed Mrs. Rooth. " Leave her 
 to me. I'll help you. But you are mad. Give up nothing 
 least of all your advantages." 
 
 ' " I won't give up your daughter," said Peter, reflecting that 
 if this was cheap it was at any rate good enough for Mrs. 
 Rooth. He mended it a little indeed by adding darkly : " But 
 you can't make her take me." 
 
 " I can prevent her taking any one else." 
 
 " Oh, can you ! " Peter ejaculated, with more scepticism 
 than ceremony. 
 
 " You'll see you'll see." He passed into the garden, but, 
 after she had blown out the candles and drawn the window 
 to, Mrs. Rooth went with him. " All you've got to do is to 
 be yourself to be true to your fine position," she explained 
 as they proceeded. " Trust me with the rest trust me and 
 be quiet." 
 
 " How can one be quiet after this magnificent evening ? " 
 
 "Yes, but it's just that!" panted the eager old woman. 
 " It has launched her so, on this sea of dangers, that to make 
 up for the loss of the old security (don't you know ?) we must 
 take a still firmer hold." 
 
 "Ay, of what ? " asked Sherringham, as Mrs.Rooth's comfort 
 became vague while she stopped with him at the garden-door. 
 
 " Ah, you know : of the real life, of the true anchor ! " 
 Her hansom was waiting for her, and she added : " I kept it, 
 you see ; but a little' extravagance, on the night one's fortune 
 has come ! " 
 
 Peter stared. Yes, there were people whose fortune had 
 come ; but he managed to stammer : " Are you following her 
 again? " 
 
 " For you for you ! " And Mrs. Rooth clambered into the 
 vehicle. From the seat, enticingly, she offered him the place 
 beside her. " Won't you come too? I know he asked you." 
 Peter declined with a quick gesture, and as he turned away he 
 heard her call after him, to cheer him on his lonely walk : " I 
 shall keep this up ; I shall never lose sight of her ! "
 
 XL VII. 
 
 WHEN Mrs. Dallow returned to London, just before London 
 broke up, the fact was immediately known in Calcutta 
 Gardens and was promptly communicated to Nick Dormer by 
 his sister Bridget. He had learnt it in no other way he 
 had had no correspondence with Julia during her absence. 
 He gathered that his mother and sisters were not ignorant 
 of her whereabouts (he never mentioned her name to them) ; 
 but as to this he was not sure whether the source of their 
 information was the Morning Post or a casual letter received 
 by the inscrutable Biddy. He knew that Biddy had some 
 epistolary commerce with Julia, and he had an impression 
 that Grace occasionally exchanged letters with Mrs. Gresham. 
 Biddy, however, who, as he was well aware, was always 
 studying what he would like, forbore to talk to him about the 
 absent mistress of Harsh, beyond once dropping the remark 
 that she had gone from Florence to Venice and was enjoying 
 gondolas and sunsets too much to leave them. Nick's com- 
 ment on this was that she was a happy woman to have such a 
 go at Titian and Tintoret : as he spoke and for some time 
 afterwards the sense of how he himself should enjoy a similar 
 "go" made him ache with ineffectual longing. 
 
 He had forbidden himself for the present to think of 
 absence, not only because it would be inconvenient and 
 expensive, but because it would be a kind of retreat from 
 the enemy, a concession to difficulty. The enemy was no 
 particular person and no particular body of persons : not his 
 mother ; not Mr. Carteret, who, as Nick heard from the 
 doctor at Beauclere, lingered on, sinking and sinking till his 
 vitality appeared to have the vertical depth of a gold-mine ; 
 not his pacified constituents, who had found a healthy diver- 
 sion in returning another Liberal, wholly without Mrs. Dallow' s 
 aid (she had not participated even to the extent of a responsive 
 telegram in the election) ; not his late colleagues in the House, 
 nor the biting satirists of the newspapers, nor the brilliant 
 women he took down at dinner-parties (there was only one 
 sense in which he ever took them down), nor his friends, nor 
 his foes, nor his private thoughts, nor the periodical phantom of 
 his shocked father : it was simply the general awkwardness of 
 his situation. This awkwardness was connected with the sense
 
 444 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 of responsibility that Gabriel Nash so greatly deprecated 
 ceasing to roam, of late, on purpose to miss as few scenes as 
 possible of the drama, rapidly growing dull, alas, of his 
 friend's destiny ; but that compromising relation scarcely 
 drew the soreness from it. The public flurry produced by 
 Nick's collapse had only been large enough to mark the 
 flatness of his position when it was over. To have had a few 
 jokes cracked audibly at one's expense was not an ordeal 
 worth talking of ; the hardest thing about it was merely that 
 there had not been enough of them to yield a proportion of 
 good ones. Nick had felt, in short, the benefit of living in 
 an age and in a society where number and pressure have, for 
 the individual figure, especially when it's a zero, compensations 
 almost equal to their cruelties. 
 
 No, the pinch, for our young man's conscience, after a feAV 
 weeks had passed, was simply an acute mistrust of the super- 
 ficiality of performance into which the desire to justify himself 
 might hurry him. That desire was passionate as regards 
 Julia Dallow ; it was ardent also as regards his mother ; and, 
 to make it absolutely uncomfortable it was complicated with 
 the conviction that neither of them would recognize his justi- 
 fication even when they should see it. They probably couldn't 
 if they would, and very likely they wouldn't if they could. 
 He assured himself however that this limitation wouldn't 
 matter ; it was their affair his own was simply to have the 
 right sort of thing to show. The work he was now attempt- 
 ing was not the right sort of thing ; though doubtless Julia 
 for instance would dislike it almost as much as if it were. 
 The two portraits of Miriam, after the first exhilaration of his 
 finding himself at large, filled him with no private glee : they 
 were not in the direction in which for the present he wished 
 really to move. There were moments when he felt almost 
 angry, though of course he held his tongue, when by the few 
 persons who saw them they were pronounced wonderfully 
 clever. That they were wonderfully clever was just the 
 detestable thing in them, so active had that cleverness been in 
 making them seem better than they were. There were people 
 to whom he would have been ashamed to show them, and 
 these were the people whom it would give him most pleasure 
 some day to please. Not only had he many an hour of disgust 
 with his actual work, but he thought he saw, as in an ugly 
 revelation, that nature had cursed him with an odious facility 
 and that the lesson of his life, the sternest and wholesomest, 
 would be to keep out of the trap it had laid for him. He
 
 THE TKAGIC MUSE. 445 
 
 had fallen into this trap on the threshold and he had only 
 scrambled out with his honour. He had a talent for appear- 
 ance, and that was the fatal thing ; he had a damnable supple- 
 ness and a gift of immediate response, a readiness to oblige, 
 that made him seem to take up causes which he really left 
 lying, enabled him to learn enough about them in an hour to 
 have all the air of having made them his own. Many people 
 call them their own who had taken them in much less. He 
 was too clever by half, since this pernicious overflow had been 
 at the bottom of deep disappointments and heart-burnings. 
 He had assumed a virtue and enjoyed assuming it, and the 
 assumption had cheated his father and his mother and his 
 affianced wife and his rich benefactor and the candid burgesses 
 of Harsh and the cynical reporters of the newspapers. His 
 enthusiasms had been but young curiosity, his speeches had 
 been young agility, his professions and adhesions had been 
 like postage-stamps without glue : the head was all right, but 
 they wouldn't stick. He stood ready now to wring the neck 
 of the irrepressible vice which certainly would like nothing 
 better than to get him into further trouble. His only real 
 justification would be to turn patience (his .own, of course) 
 inside ou<; ; yet if there should be a way to misread that recipe 
 his humbugging genius could be trusted infallibly to discover 
 it. Cheap and easy results would dangle before him, little 
 amateurish conspicuities, helped by his history, at exhibitions ; 
 putting it in his power to triumph with a quick "What do 
 you say to that ? " over those he had wounded. The fear of 
 this danger was corrosive ; it poisoned even legitimate joys. 
 If he should have a striking picture at the Academy next 
 year it wouldn't be a crime : yet he couldn't help suspecting 
 any conditions that would enable him to be striking so soon. 
 In this way he felt quite enough how Gabriel Nash " had " 
 him whenever he railed at his fever for proof, and how 
 inferior as a productive force the desire to win over the ill- 
 disposed might be to the principle of quiet growth. Nash had 
 a foreign manner of lifting up his finger and waving it before 
 him, as if to put an end to everything, whenever it became, 
 in conversation or discussion, to any extent a question whether 
 any one would like anything. 
 
 It was presumably, in some degree at least, a due respect 
 for the principle of quiet growth that kept Nick on the spot 
 at present, made him stick fast to Rosedale Road and Calcutta 
 Gardens and deny himself the simplifications of absence. Do 
 what he would he could not despoil himself of the impression
 
 446 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 that the disagreeable was somehow connected with the salu- 
 tary and the " quiet " with the disagreeable, when stubbornly 
 borne ; so he resisted a hundred impulses to run away to Paris 
 or to Florence and the temptation to persuade himself by 
 material motion that he was launched. He stayed in London 
 because it seemed to him that he was more conscious of what 
 he had undertaken, and he had a horror of shirking that con- 
 sciousness. One element in it indeed was the perception that 
 he would have found no great convenience in a foreign journey, 
 even had his judgment approved such a subterfuge. The 
 stoppage of his supplies from Beauclere had now become an 
 historic fact, with something "of the majesty of its class about 
 it : he had had time to see what a difference this would make 
 in his life. His means were small and he had several old 
 debts, the number of which, as he believed, loomed large to 
 his mother's imagination. He could never tell her that she 
 exaggerated, because he told her nothing of that sort now : 
 they had no intimate talk, for an impenetrable partition, a 
 tall bristling hedge of untrimmed misconceptions had sprung 
 up between them. Poor Biddy had made a hole in it, through 
 which she squeezed, from side to side, to keep up communica- 
 tions, at the cost of many rents and scratches ; Jbut Lady 
 Agnes walked straight and stiff, never turning her head, never 
 stopping to pluck the least little daisy of consolation. It was 
 in this manner she wished to signify that she had accepted her 
 wrongs. She draped herself in them as in a kind of Roman 
 mantle, and she had never looked so proud and wasted and 
 handsome as now that her eyes rested only upon ruins. 
 
 Nick was extremely sorry for her, though he thought there 
 was a dreadful want of grace in her never setting a foot in 
 Rosedale Road (she mentioned his studio no more than if it 
 had been a private gambling- house, or something worse) ; sorry 
 because he was well aware that for the hour everything must 
 appear to her to have crumbled. The luxury of Broad wood 
 would have to crumble : his mind was very clear about that. 
 Biddy's prospects had withered to the finest, dreariest dust, 
 and Biddy indeed, taking a lesson from her brother's per- 
 versities, seemed little disposed to better a bad business. She 
 professed the most peacemaking sentiments, but when it came 
 really to doing something to brighten up the scene she showed 
 herself portentously corrupted. After Peter Sherringham's 
 heartless flight she had wantonly slighted an excellent oppor- 
 tunity to repair her misfortune. Lady Agnes had reason to 
 know, about the end of June, that young Mr, Grindon, the
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 447 
 
 only son (the other children were girls) of an immensely rich 
 industrial and political baronet in the north, was literally wait- 
 ing for the faintest sign. This reason she promptly imparted 
 to her younger daughter, whose intelligence had to take it in 
 but who had shown it no other consideration. Biddy had set 
 her charming face as a stone ; she would have nothing to do 
 with signs, and she, practically speaking, wilfully, wickedly 
 refused a magnificent offer, so that the young man carried his 
 noble expectations elsewhere. How much in earnest he had 
 been was proved by the fact that before Goodwood had come 
 and gone he was captured by Lady Muriel Macpherson. It 
 was superfluous to insist on the frantic determination to get 
 married revealed by such an accident as that. Nick knew of 
 this episode only through Grace, and he deplored its having 
 occurred in the midst of other disasters. 
 
 He knew or he suspected something more as well some- 
 thing about his brother Percival which, if it should come to 
 light, no season would be genial enough to gloss over. It had 
 visually been supposed that Percy's store of comfort against 
 the ills of life was confined to the infallibility of his rifle. He 
 was not sensitive, but he had always the consolation of killing 
 something. It had suddenly come to Nick's ears however 
 that he had another resource as well, in the person of a robust 
 countrywoman, housed in an ivied corner of Warwickshire, in 
 whom he had long been interested and whom, without any 
 nourish of magnanimity, he had ended by making his wife. 
 The situation of the latest born of the pledges of this affection, 
 a blooming boy (there had been two or three previously), was 
 therefore perfectly regular and of a nature to make a difference 
 in the worldly position, as the phrase is, of his moneyless uncle. 
 If there be degrees in the absolute and Percy had an heir 
 (others, moreover, would supposably come), Nick would have 
 to regard himself as still more moneyless than before. His 
 brother's last step was doubtless, under the circumstances, to 
 be commended ; but such discoveries were enlivening only 
 when they were made in other families, and Lady Agnes 
 would scarcely enjoy learning to what tune she had become a 
 grandmother. 
 
 Nick forbore from delicacy to intimate to Biddy that he 
 thought it a pity she couldn't care for Mr. Grindon ; but he 
 had a private sense that if she had been capable of such an 
 achievement it would have lightened a little the weight he 
 himself had to carry. He bore her a slight grudge, which 
 lasted until Julia Dallow came back : when the circumstance
 
 448 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 of the girl's being summoned immediately down to Harsh 
 created a diversion that was perhaps after all only fanciful. 
 Biddy, as we know, entertained a theory, which Nick had 
 found occasion to combat, that Mrs. Dallow had not treated 
 him perfectly well ; therefore in going to Harsh the very first 
 time Julia held out a hand to her, so jealous a little sister must 
 have recognized a special inducement. The inducement might 
 have been that Julia had comfort for her, that she was acting 
 by the direct advice of this acute lady, that they were still in 
 close communion on the question of the offers Biddy was not 
 to accept, that in short Peter Sherringham's sister had taken 
 upon herself to see that Biddy should remain free until the 
 day of the fugitive's inevitable return. Once or twice indeed 
 Nick wondered whether Mrs. Dallow herself was visited, in a 
 larger sense, by the thought of retracing her steps whether 
 she wished to draw out her young friend's opinion as to how 
 she might do so gracefully. During the few days she was in 
 town Nick had seen her twice, ia Great Stanhope Street, but 
 not alone. She had said to him on one of these occasions, in 
 her odd, explosive way : " I should have thought you'd have 
 gone away somewhere it must be such a bore." Of course 
 she firmly believed he was staying for Miriam, which he really 
 was not ; and probably she had written this false impression 
 off to Peter, who still more probably would prefer to regard 
 it as just, Nick was staying for Miriam only in the sense that 
 he should be very glad of the money he might receive for the 
 portrait he was engaged in painting. That money would be a 
 great convenience to him, in spite of the obstructive ground 
 Miriam had taken in pretending (she had blown half a gale 
 about it) that he had had no right to dispose of such a pro- 
 duction without her consent. His answer to this was simply 
 that the purchaser was so little of a stranger that it didn't go, 
 as it were, out of the family, out of hers. It didn't matter 
 that Miriam should protest that if Mr. Sherringham had for- 
 merly been no stranger he was now utterly one, so that there 
 could be nothing less soothing to him than to see her hated 
 image on his wall. He would back out of the bargain, and 
 Nick would be left with his work on his hands. Nick jeered 
 at this shallow theory and, when she came to sit, the question 
 served as well as another to sprinkle their famih'ar silences 
 with chaff. Nick already knew something, as we have seen, 
 of the conditions in which his distracted kinsman had left 
 England ; and this connected itself in casual meditation with 
 some of the calculations that he attributed to Julia and Biddy.
 
 THE TKAGIC MUSE. 449 
 
 There had naturally been a sequel to the queer behaviour in 
 which Peter had indulged, at the theatre, on the eve of his 
 departure a sequel embodied in a remark dropped by Miriam 
 in the course of the first sitting she gave Nick after her great 
 night. " Fancy " so this observation ran " fancy the dear 
 man finding time, in the press of all his last duties, to ask me 
 to marry him ! " 
 
 " He told me you had found time, in the press of all yours, 
 to say you would," Nick replied. And this was pretty much 
 all that had passed on the subject between them, save, of 
 course, that Miriam immediately made it clear that Peter had 
 grossly misinformed him. What had happened was that she 
 had said she would do nothing of the sort. She professed a 
 desire not to be confronted again with this trying theme, and 
 Nick easily fell in with it, from a definite preference he now 
 had not to handle that kind of subject with her. If Julia 
 had false ideas about him, and if Peter had them too, his part 
 of the business was to take the simplest course to establish 
 that falsity. There were difficulties indeed attached even to 
 the simplest course, but there would be a difficulty the less if, 
 in conversation, one should forbear to meddle with the general 
 suggestive topic of intimate unions. It is certain that in 
 these days Nick cultivated the practice of forbearances for 
 which he did not receive, for which perhaps he never would 
 receive, due credit. 
 
 He had been convinced for some time that one of the next 
 things he should hear would be that Mrs. Dallow had arranged 
 to marry Mr. Macgeorge or some such leader of multitudes. 
 He could think of that now, he found think of it with 
 resignation, even when Julia was before his eyes, looking so 
 handsomely forgetful that her air had to be taken as referring 
 still more to their original intimacy than to his comparatively 
 superficial offence. What made this accomplishment of his 
 own remarkable was that there was something else he thought 
 of quite as much the fact that he had only to see her again 
 to feel by how great a charm she had in the old days taken 
 possession of him. This charm operated apparently in a very 
 direct, primitive way : her presence diffused it and fully 
 established it, but her absence left comparatively little of it 
 behind. It dwelt in the very facts of her person it was 
 something that she happened physically to be ; yet (consider- 
 ing that the question was of something very like loveliness) 
 its envelope of associations, of memories and recurrences, had 
 no great density. She packed it up and took it away with 
 
 G G
 
 450 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 her, as if she had been a woman who l^ad come to sell a set 
 of laces. The laces were as wonderful as ever when they were 
 taken out of the box, but to get another look at them you had 
 to send for the woman. What was above all remarkable was 
 that Miriam Rooth was much less irresistible to our young 
 man than Mrs. Dallow could be when Mrs. Dallow was on the 
 spot. He could paint Miriam, day after day, without any 
 agitating blur of vision ; in fact the more he saw of her the 
 clearer grew the atmosphere through which she blazed, the 
 more her richness became one with that of the flowering 
 picture. There are reciprocities and special sympathies in 
 such relations ; mysterious affinities they used to be called, 
 divinations of private congruity. Nick had an unexpressed 
 conviction that if, as he had often wanted and proposed, he 
 had embarked with Mrs. Dallow in this particular quest of a 
 great prize, disaster would have overtaken them on the deep 
 waters. Even with the limited risk, indeed, disaster had 
 come ; but it was of a different kind and it had the advantage 
 for him that now she couldn't reproach and accuse him as the 
 cause of it couldn't do so at least on any ground he was 
 obliged to recognize. She would never know how much he 
 had cared for her, how much he cared for her still ; inasmuch 
 as the conclusive proof, for himself, was his conscious reluct- 
 ance to care for another woman, which she positively misread. 
 Some day he would doubtless try to do that ; but such a day 
 seemed as yet far off, and he had no spite, no vindictive 
 impulse to help him. The soreness that was mingled with 
 his liberation, the sense of indignity even, as of a full cup 
 suddenly dashed by a blundering hand from his lips, demanded 
 certainly a balm ; but it found it for a time in another passion, 
 not in a rancorous exercise of the same a passion strong 
 enough to make him forget what a pity it was that he was 
 not made to care for two women at once. 
 
 As soon as Mrs. Dallow returned to England he broke 
 ground to his mother on the subject of her making Julia 
 understand that she and the girls now regarded their occupancy 
 of Broadwood as absolutely terminated. He had already, 
 several weeks before, picked a little at this arid tract, but in 
 the interval the soil appeared to have formed again. It was 
 disagreeable to him to impose such a renunciation on Lady 
 Agnes, and it was especially disagreeable to have to phrase it 
 and discuss it and perhaps insist upon it. He would have 
 liked the whole business to be tacit a little triumph of silent 
 delicacy. But he found reasons to suspect that what in fact
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 451 
 
 would be most tacit was Julia's certain endurance of any 
 chance indelicacy. Lady Agnes had a theory that they had 
 virtually " practically," as she said given up the place, so 
 that there was no need of making a splash about it ; but Nick 
 discovered, in the course of a conversation with Biddy more 
 rigorous perhaps than any to which he had ever subjected her, 
 that none of their property had been removed from her 
 delightful house none of the things (there were ever so many 
 things) that Lady Agnes had caused to be conveyed there 
 when they took possession. Her ladyship was the proprietor 
 of innumerable articles of furniture, relics and survivals of 
 her former greatness, and moved about the world with a train 
 of heterogeneous baggage ; so that her quiet overflow into the 
 spaciousness of Broadwood had had all the luxury of a final 
 subsidence. What Nick had to propose to her now was a 
 dreadful combination, a relapse into all the things she most 
 hated seaside lodgings, bald storehouses in the Marylebone 
 Road, little London rooms crammed with things that caught 
 the dirt and made them stuffy. He was afraid he should 
 really finish her, and he himself was surprised in a degree at 
 his insistence. He wouldn't have supposed that he should 
 have cared so much, but he found he did care intensely. He 
 cared enough it says everything to explain to his mother 
 that practically her retention of Broadwood would be the 
 violation of an agreement. Julia had given them the place on 
 the understanding that he was to marry her, and since he was 
 not to marry her they had no right to keep the place.- " Yes, 
 you make the mess and we pay the penalty ! " Lady Agnes 
 flashed out ; but this was the only overt protest that she 
 made, except indeed to contend that their withdrawal would 
 be an act ungracious and offensive to Julia. She looked as 
 she had looked during the months that succeeded his father's 
 death, but she gave a general grim assent to the proposition 
 that, let Julia take it as she would, their own duty was 
 unmistakably clear. 
 
 It was Grace who was the principal representative of the 
 idea that Julia would be outraged by such a step ; she never 
 ceased to repeat that she had never heard of anything so 
 " nasty." Nick would have expected this of Grace, but he 
 felt rather deserted and betrayed when Biddy murmured to 
 him that she knew that there was really no need of their 
 sacrificing their mother's comfort to a mere fancy. She 
 intimated that if Nick would only consent to their going on 
 with Broadwood as if nothing had happened (or rather as if
 
 452 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 everything had happened), she would answer for Julia. For 
 almost the first time in his life Nick disliked what Biddy said 
 to him, and he gave her a sharp rejoinder, embodying the 
 general opinion that they all had enough to do to answer for 
 themselves. He remembered afterwards the way she looked 
 at him, startled, even frightened, with rising tears, before 
 turning away. He held that it would be time enough to judge 
 how Julia would take it after they had thrown up the place ; 
 and he made it his duty to see that his mother should address 
 to Mrs. Dallow by letter a formal notification of their retire- 
 ment. Mrs. Dallow could protest then if she liked. Nick was 
 aware that in general he was not practical ; he could imagine 
 why, from his early years, people should have joked him about 
 it. But this time he was determined that his behaviour should 
 be founded on a rigid view of things as they were. He didn't 
 see his mother's letter to Julia, but he knew that it went. 
 He thought she would have been more loyal if she had shown 
 it to him, though of course there could be but little question 
 of loyalty now. That it had really been written however, 
 very much on the lines he dictated, was clear to him from the 
 subsequent surprise which Lady Agnes's blankness did not 
 prevent him from divining. 
 
 Julia answered her letter, but in unexpected terms : she 
 had apparently neither resisted nor protested ; she had simply 
 been very glad to get her house back again and had not 
 accused any of them of nastiness. Nick saw no more of her 
 letter than he had seen of his mother's, but he was able to 
 say to Grace (to Lady Agnes he was studiously mute) : " My 
 poor child, you see, after all, that we haven't kicked up such 
 a row." Grace shook her head and looked gloomy and deeply 
 wise, replying that he had no cause to triumph they were so 
 far from having seen the end of it yet. Then he guessed that 
 his mother had complied with his wish on the calculation that 
 it would be a mere form, that Julia would entreat them not 
 to be so fantastic, and that he would then, in the presence of 
 her wounded surprise, consent to a quiet continuance, so much 
 in the interest (the air of Broadwood had a purity !) of the 
 health of all of them. But since Julia jumped at their relin- 
 quishment he had no chance to be mollified : he had only to 
 persist in having been right. 
 
 At bottom, probably, he himself was a little surprised at 
 her eagerness. Literally speaking, it was not perfectly grace- 
 ful. He was sorry his mother had been so deceived, but he 
 was sorrier still for Biddy's mistake it showed she might be
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 453 
 
 mistaken about other things. Nothing was left now but for 
 Lady Agnes to say, as she did, substantially, whenever she 
 saw him : " We are to prepare to spend the autumn at 
 Worthing then, or some other horrible place 1 ? I don't know 
 their names : it's the only thing we can afford." There was 
 an implication in this that if he expected her to drag her girls 
 about to country-houses, in a continuance of the fidgety effort 
 to work them off, he must understand at once that she was 
 now too weary and too sad and too sick. She had done her 
 best for them, and it had all been vain and cruel, and now the 
 poor creatures must look out for themselves. To the grossness 
 of Biddy's misconduct she needn't refer, nor to the golden 
 opportunity this young lady had forfeited by her odious treat- 
 ment of Mr. Grindon. It was clear that this time Lady Agnes 
 was incurably discouraged ; so much so as to fail to glean the 
 dimmest light from the fact that the girl was really making a 
 long stay at Harsh. Biddy went to and fro two or three 
 times and then, in August, fairly settled there ; and what her 
 mother mainly saw in her absence was the desire to keep out 
 of the way of household reminders of her depravity. In fact, 
 as it turned out, Lady Agnes and Grace, in the first days of 
 August, gathered themselves together for another visit to the 
 old lady who had been Sir Nicholas's godmother ; after which 
 they went somewhere else, so that the question of Worthing 
 had not to be immediately faced. 
 
 Nick stayed on in London with a passion of work fairly 
 humming in his ears ; he was conscious with joy that for 
 three or four months, in the empty Babylon, he would have 
 generous days. But toward the end of August he got a letter 
 from Grace in which she spoke of her situation, and her 
 mother's, in a manner that made him feel he ought to do 
 something tactful. They were paying a third visit (he knew 
 that in Calcutta Gardens lady's-maids had been to and fro 
 with boxes, replenishments of wardrobes), and yet somehow 
 the outlook for the autumn was dark. Grace didn't say it in 
 so many words, but what he read between the lines was that 
 they had no more invitations. What therefore was to become 
 of them 1 ? People liked them well enough when Biddy was 
 with them, but they didn't care for her mother and her, tout 
 pur, and Biddy was cooped up indefinitely with Julia. This 
 was not the manner in which Grace used to allude to her 
 sister's happy visits to Mrs. Dallow, and the change of tone 
 made Nick wince with a sense of all that had collapsed. 
 Biddy was a little fish worth landing, in short, scantily as she
 
 454 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 seemed disposed to bite, and Grace's rude probity could admit 
 that she herself was not. 
 
 Nick had an inspiration : by way of doing something tactful 
 he went down to Brighton and took lodgings for the three 
 ladies, for several weeks, the quietest and sunniest he could 
 find. This he intended as a kindly surprise, a reminder of 
 how he had his mother's comfort at heart, how he could exert 
 himself and save her trouble. But he had no sooner concluded 
 his bargain (it was a more costly one than he had at first 
 calculated) than he was bewildered, as he privately phrased it 
 quite "stumped," at learning that the three ladies were to 
 pass the autumn at Broadwood with Julia. Mrs. Dallow had 
 taken the place into familiar use again and she was now 
 correcting their former surprise at her crude concurrence (this 
 was infinitely characteristic of Julia) by inviting them to 
 share it with her. Nick wondered vaguely what she was " up 
 to ; " but when his mother treated herself to the fine irony of 
 addressing him an elaborately humble inquiry as to whether 
 he would consent to their accepting the merciful refuge (she 
 repeated this expression three times), he replied that she 
 might do exactly as she liked : he would only mention that he 
 should not feel himself at liberty to come and see her at 
 Broadwood. This condition proved, apparently, to Lady 
 Agnes' s mind, no hindrance, and she and her daughters were 
 presently reinstalled in the very apartments they had learned 
 to love. This time it was even better than before ; they had 
 still fewer expenses. The expenses were Nick's : he had to 
 pay a forfeit to the landlady at Brighton for backing out of 
 his contract. He said nothing to his mother about this 
 bungled business he was literally afraid ; but an event that 
 befell at the same moment reminded him afresh that it was 
 not the time to choose to squander money. Mr. Carteret drew 
 his last breath ; quite painlessly it seemed, as the closing scene 
 was described at Beauclere when our young man went down 
 to the funeral. Two or three weeks afterwards the contents 
 of his will were made public in the Illustrated London News, 
 where it definitely appeared that he had left a very large 
 fortune, not a penny of which was to go to Nick. The 
 provision for Mr. Chayter's declining years was very handsome.
 
 XLYIII. 
 
 MIRIAM had mounted at a bound, in her new part, several 
 steps in the ladder of fame, and at the climax of the London 
 season this fact was brought home to her from hour to hour. 
 It produced a thousand solicitations and entanglements, so 
 that she rapidly learned that to be celebrated takes up almost 
 as much of one's own time as of other people's. Even though, 
 as she boasted, she had reduced to a science the practice of 
 " working " her mother (she made use of the good lady socially 
 to the utmost, pushing her perpetually into the breach), there 
 were many occasions on which it was represented to her that 
 she could not be disobliging without damaging her cause. She 
 made almost an income out of the photographers (their 
 appreciation of her as a subject knew no bounds), and she 
 supplied the newspapers with columns of irreducible copy. To 
 the gentlemen who sought speech of her on behalf of these 
 organs she poured forth, vindictively, floods of unscrupulous 
 romance ; she told them all different tales, and as her mother 
 told them others yet more marvellous publicity was cleverly 
 caught by rival versions, surpassing each other in authenticity. 
 The whole case was remarkable, was unique ; for if the girl 
 was advertised by the bewilderment of her readers, she seemed 
 to every sceptic, when he went to see her, as fine as if he had 
 discovered her for himself. She was still accommodating 
 enough however, from time to time, to find an hour to come 
 and sit to Nick Dormer, and he helped himself further by 
 going to her theatre whenever he could. He was conscious 
 that Julia Dallow would probably hear of that and triumph 
 with a fresh sense of how right she had been ; but this re- 
 flection only made him sigh resignedly, so true it struck him 
 as being that there are some things explanation can never 
 better, can never touch. 
 
 Miriam brought Basil Dashwood once to see her portrait, 
 and Basil, who commended it in general, directed his criticism 
 mainly to two points its not yet being finished and its not 
 having gone into that year's Academy. The young actor was 
 visibly fidgety : he felt the contagion of Miriam's rapid pace, 
 the quick beat of her success, and, looking at everything now 
 from the standpoint of that speculation, could scarcely contain 
 his impatience at the painter's clumsy slowness. He thought
 
 456 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 the second picture much better than the other one, but some- 
 how it ought by that time to be before the public. Having 
 a great deal of familiar proverbial wisdom, he put forth with 
 vehemence the idea that in every great crisis there is nothing 
 like striking while the iron is hot. He even betrayed a sort 
 of impression that with a little good-will Nick might wind up 
 the job and still get the Academy people to take him in. 
 Basil knew some of them ; he all but offered to speak to them 
 the case was so exceptional ; he had no doubt he could get 
 something done. Against the appropriation of the work by 
 Peter Sherringham he explicitly and loudly protested, in spite 
 of the homeliest recommendations of silence from Miriam ; 
 and it was indeed easy to guess how such an arrangement 
 would interfere with his own conception of the eventual right 
 place for the two portraits the vestibule of the theatre, 
 where every one going in and out would see them, suspended 
 face to face and surrounded by photographs, artistically dis- 
 , posed, of the young actress in a variety of characters. Dash- 
 wood showed a largeness of view in the way he jumped to the 
 conviction that in this position the pictures would really help 
 to draw. Considering the virtue he attributed to Miriam the 
 idea was exempt from narrow prejudice. 
 
 Moreover, though a trifle feverish, he was really genial ; he 
 repeated more than once : " Yes, my dear sir, you've done it 
 this time." This was a favourite formula with him ; when 
 some allusion was made to the girl's success he greeted it also 
 with a comfortable "This time she has done it." There was 
 a hint of knowledge and far calculation in his tone. It 
 appeared before he went that this time even he himself had 
 done it he had taken up something that would really answer. 
 He told Nick more about Miriam, more about her affairs at 
 that moment at least, than she herself had communicated, 
 contributing strongly to our young man's impression that one 
 by one every element of a great destiny was being dropped 
 into her cup. Nick himself tasted of success vicariously for 
 the hour. Miriam let Dashwood talk only to contradict him, 
 and contradicted him only to show how indifferently she could 
 do it. She treated him as if she had nothing more to learn 
 about his folly, but as if it had taken intimate friendship to 
 reveal to her the full extent of it. Nick didn't mind her 
 intimate friendships, but he ended by disliking Dashwood, who 
 irritated him a circumstance in Avhich poor Julia, if it had 
 come to her knowledge, would doubtless have found a damning 
 eloquence. Miriam Avas more pleased with herself than ever :
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 457 
 
 she now made no scruple of admitting that she enjoyed all her 
 advantages. She was beginning to have a fuller vision of 
 how successful success could be ; she took everything as it 
 came dined out every Sunday, and even went into the 
 country till the Monday morning ; she had a hundred distin- 
 guished names on her lips and wonderful tales about 'the people 
 who were making up to her. She struck Nick as less serious 
 than she had been hitherto, as making even an aggressive 
 show of frivolity ; but he was conscious of no obligation to 
 reprehend her for it the less as he had a dim vision that some 
 effect of that sort, some irritation of his curiosity, was what 
 she desired to produce. She would perhaps have liked, for 
 reasons best known to herself, to look as if she were throwing 
 herself away, not being able to do anything else. He couldn't 
 talk to her as if he took an immense interest in her career, 
 because in fact he didn't ; she remained to him primarily and 
 essentially a pictorial subject, with the nature of whose 
 vicissitudes he was concerned (putting common charity and 
 his personal good-nature of course aside) only so far as they 
 had something to say in her face. How could he know in 
 advance what twist of her life would say most ? so possible 
 was it even that complete failure or some incalculable per- 
 version would only make her, for his particular purpose, more 
 magnificent. 
 
 After she had left him, at any rate, the day she came with 
 Basil Dashwood, and still more on a later occasion, as he 
 turned back to his work when he had put her into her 
 carriage, the last time, for that year, that he saw her after 
 she had left him it occurred to him, in the light of her quick 
 distinction, that there were mighty differences in the famous 
 artistic life. Miriam was already in the glow of a glory which 
 moreover was probably but a faint spark in relation to the 
 blaze to come ; and as he closed the door upon her and took 
 up his palette to rub it with a dirty cloth the little room in 
 which his own battle was practically to be fought looked 
 wofully cold and gray and mean. It was lonely, and yet it 
 peopled with unfriendly shadows (so thick he saw them 
 gathering in winter twilights to come) the duller conditions, 
 the longer patiences, the less immediate and less personal joys. 
 His late beginning was there, and his wasted youth, the 
 mistakes that would still bring forth children after their 
 image, the sedentary solitude, the clumsy obscurity, the poor 
 explanations, the foolishness that he foresaw in having to ask 
 people to wait, and wait longer, and wait again, for a fruition
 
 458 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 which, to their sense at least, would be an anti-climax. He 
 cared enough for it, whatever it would be, to feel that his 
 pertinacity might enter into comparison even with such a 
 productive force as Miriam's. This was, after all, in his bare 
 studio, the most collective dim presence, the one that was 
 most sociable to him as he sat there and that made it the 
 right place however wrong it was the sense that it was to 
 the thing in itself ho was attached. This was Miriam's case, 
 but the contrast, which she showed him she also felt, was in 
 the number of other things that she got with the thing in 
 itself. 
 
 I hasten to add that our young man had hours when this 
 fine substance struck him as requiring, for a complete appeal, 
 no adjunct whatever as being in its own splendour a sum- 
 mary of all adjuncts and apologies. I have related that the 
 great collections, the National Gallery and the Museum were 
 sometimes rather a series of dead surfaces to him ; but the 
 sketch I have attempted of him will have been inadequate if 
 it fails to suggest that there were other days when, as he 
 strolled through them, he plucked right and left perfect nose- 
 gays of reassurance. Bent as he was on working in the 
 modern, which spoke to him with a thousand voices, he judged 
 it better, for long periods, not to haunt the earlier masters, 
 whose conditions had been so different (later he came to see 
 that it didn't matter much, especially if one didn't go) ; but 
 he was liable to accidental deflections from this theory liable 
 in particular to want to take a look at one of the r great 
 portraits of the past. These were the things that were the 
 most inspiring, in the sense that they were the things that, 
 while generations, while worlds had come and gone, seemed 
 most to survive and testify. As he stood before them some- 
 times the perfection of their survival struck him as the 
 supreme eloquence, the reason that included all others, thanks 
 to the language of art, the richest and most universal. Em- 
 pires and systems and conquests had rolled over the globe and 
 every kind of greatness had risen and passed away ; but the 
 beauty of the great pictures had known nothing of death or 
 change, and the ages had only sweetened their freshness. 
 The same faces, the same figures looked out at different cen- 
 turies, knowing a deal the century didn't, and when they 
 joined hands they made the indestructible thread on which 
 the pearls of history were strung. 
 
 Miriam notified her artist that her theatre was to close on 
 the 10th of August, immediately after which she was to start,
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 459 
 
 with the company, on a tremendous tour of the provinces. 
 They were to make a lot of money, but they were to have no 
 holiday and she didn't want one ; she only wanted to keep at 
 it and make the most of her limited opportunities for practice ; 
 inasmuch as, at that rate, playing but two parts a year (and 
 such parts she despised them !) she shouldn't have mastered 
 the rudiments of her trade before decrepitude would compel 
 her to lay it by. The first time she came to the studio after 
 her visit with Dashwood she sprang up abruptly, at the end 
 of half an hour, saying she could sit no more she had had 
 enough of it. She was visibly restless and preoccupied, and 
 though Nick had not waited till now to discover that she had 
 more moods than he had tints on his palette, he had never yet 
 seen her fitfulness at this particular angle. It was a trifle 
 unbecoming and he was ready to let her go. She looked 
 round the place as if she were suddenly tired of it, and then 
 she said mechanically, in a heartless London way, while she 
 smoothed down her gloves : " So you're just going to stay on ? " 
 After he had confessed that this was his dark purpose she 
 continued in the same casual, talk-making manner : " I dare 
 say it's the best thing for you. You're just going to grind, eh ? " 
 
 " I see before me an eternity of grinding." 
 
 "All alone, by yourself, in this dull little hole? You will 
 be conscientious, you will be virtuous." 
 
 " Oh, my solitude will be mitigated I shall have models 
 and people." 
 
 "What people what models'?" Miriam asked, before the 
 glass, arranging her hat. 
 
 " Well, no one so good as you." 
 
 "That's a prospect ! " the girl laughed ; "for all the good 
 you've got out of me ! " 
 
 " You're no judge of that quantity," said Nick, " and even 
 I can't measure it just yet. Have I been rather a brute 1 I 
 can easily believe it ; I haven't talked to you I haven't 
 amused you as I might. The truth is, painting people is a 
 very absorbing, exclusive occupation. You can't do much to 
 them besides." 
 
 " Yes, it's a cruel honour." 
 
 " Cruel that's too much," Nick objected. 
 
 "I mean it's one you shouldn't confer on people you like, 
 for when it's over it's over : it kills your interest in them and 
 after you've finished them you don't like them any more." 
 
 " Surely I like you," Nick returned, sitting tilted back, 
 before his picture, with his hands in his pockets.
 
 460 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " We've done very well : it's something not to have 
 quarrelled," said Miriam, smiling at him now and seeming 
 more in it. " I wouldn't have had you slight your work I 
 wouldn't have had you do it badly. But there's no fear of 
 that for you," she went on. " You're the real thing and the 
 rare bird. I haven't lived with you this way without seeing 
 that : you're the sincere artist so much more than I. No, no, 
 don't protest," she added, with one of her sudden fine tran- 
 sitions to a deeper tone. " You'll do things that will hand on 
 your name when my screeching is happily over. Only you do 
 seem to me, I confess, rather high and dry here I speak from 
 the point of view of your comfort and of my personal interest 
 in you. You strike me as kind of lonely, as the Americans 
 say rather cut off and isolated in your grandeur. Haven't 
 you any confreres fellow-artists and people of that sort 1 
 Don't they come near you? " 
 
 " I don't know them much, I've always been afraid of them, 
 and how can they take me seriously 1 " 
 
 " Well, I've got confreres, and sometimes I wish I hadn't ! 
 But does your sister never come near you any more, or is it 
 only the fear of meeting me 1 " 
 
 Nick was aware that his mother had a theory that Biddy 
 was constantly bundled home from Rosedale Road at the ap- 
 proach of improper persons : she was as angry at this as if 
 she wouldn't have been more so if the child had been suffered 
 to stay ; but the explanation he gave his present visitor was 
 nearer the truth. He reminded Miriam that he had already 
 told her (he had been careful to do this, so as not to let it 
 appear she was avoided) that her sister was now most of the 
 time in the country, staying with an hospitable relation. 
 
 "Oh yes," the girl rejoined to this, "with Mr. Sherringham's 
 
 sister, Mrs. what's her name ? I always forget it." 
 
 And when Nick had pronounced the word with a reluctance he 
 doubtless failed sufficiently to conceal (he hated to talk about 
 Mrs. Dallow ; he didn't know what business Miriam had with 
 her), she exclaimed : " That's the one the beauty, the wonder- 
 ful beauty. I shall never forget how handsome she looked 
 the day she found me here. I don't in the least resemble 
 her, but I should like to have a try at that type, some day, in 
 a comedy of manners. But who will write me a comedy of 
 manners ] There it is ! The trouble would be, no doubt, 
 that I should push her a la, charge." 
 
 Nick listened to these remarks in silence, saying to himself 
 that if Miriam should have the bad taste (she seemed trembling
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 461 
 
 on the brink of it) to make an allusion to what had passed 
 between the lady in question and himself, he should dislike 
 her utterly. It would show him she was a coarse creature 
 after all. Her good genius interposed however, as against 
 this hard penalty, and she quickly, for the moment at least, 
 whisked away from the topic, demanding, apropos of comrades 
 and visitors, what had become of Gabriel Nash, whom she had 
 not encountered for so many days. 
 
 " I think he's tired of me," said Nick ; " he hasn't been 
 near me, either. But, after all, it's natural he has seen me 
 through." 
 
 " Seen you through 1 Why, you've only just begun." 
 
 " Precisely, and at bottom he doesn't like to see me begin. 
 He's afraid I'll do something." 
 
 " Do you mean he's jealous 1 " 
 
 " Not in the least, for from the moment one does anything 
 one ceases to compete with him. It leaves him the field more 
 clear. But that's just the discomfort, for him he feels, as you 
 said just now, kind of lonely ; he feels rather abandoned and 
 even, I think, a little betrayed. So far from being jealous he 
 yearns for me and regrets me. The only thing he really -takes 
 seriously is to speculate and understand, to talk about the 
 reasons and the essence of things : the people who do that are 
 the highest. The applications, the consequences, the vulgar 
 little effects belong to a lower plane, to which one must doubt- 
 less be tolerant and indulgent, but which is after all an affair 
 of comparative accidents and trifles. Indeed he'll probably 
 tell me frankly, the next time I see him, that he can't but feel 
 that to come down to the little questions of action the little 
 prudences and compromises and simplifications of practice is 
 for the superior person a really fatal descent. One may be 
 inoffensive and even commendable after it, but one can scarcely 
 pretend to be interesting. II enfant comme qa, but one doesn't 
 haunt them. He'll do his best for me ; he'll come back again, 
 but he'll come back sad, and finally he'll fade away altogether. 
 He'll go off to Granada, or somewhere." 
 
 " The simplifications of practice 1 " cried Miriam. " Why, 
 they are just precisely the most blessed things on earth. What 
 should we do without them ] " 
 
 "What indeed 1 ?" Nick echoed. "But if we need them 
 it's because we're not superior persons. We're awful 
 Philistines." 
 
 " I'll be one with you," the girl smiled. " Poor Nash isn't 
 worth talking about. What was it but a little question of
 
 462 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 action when he preached to you, as I know he did, to give up 
 your seat"? " 
 
 "Yes, he has a weakness for giving up he'll go with you 
 as far as that. But I'm not giving up any more, you see. I'm 
 pegging away, and that's gross." 
 
 "He's an idiot n'en parlons plus/" Miriam dropped, 
 gathering up her parasol, but lingering. 
 
 " Ah, never for me ! He helped me at a difficult time." 
 
 " You ought to be ashamed to confess it." 
 
 " Oh, you are a Philistine," said Nick. 
 
 " Certainly I am," Miriam returned going toward the door, 
 "if it makes me one to be sorry, awfully sorry and even rather 
 angry, that I haven't before me a period of the same sort of 
 unsociable pegging away that you have. For want of it I shall 
 never really be good. However, if you don't tell people I've 
 said so, they'll never know. Your conditions are far better 
 than mine and far more respectable : you can do as many 
 things as you like, in patient obscurity, while I'm pitchforked 
 into the melee, and into the most improbable fame, upon the 
 back of a solitary cheval de bataille, a poor broken-winded 
 screw. I foresee that I shall be condemned for the greater 
 part of the rest of my days (do you see that ?) to play the stuff 
 I'm acting now. I'm studying Juliet and I want awfully to 
 do her, but really I'm mortally afraid lest, if I should succeed, 
 I should find myself in such a box. Perhaps they'd want 
 Juliet for ever, instead of my present part. You see amid 
 what delightful alternatives one moves. What I want most I 
 never shall have had five quiet years of hard, all-round work, 
 in a perfect company, with a manager more perfect still, play- 
 ing five hundred parts and never being heard of. I may be 
 too particular, but that's what I should have liked. I think 
 I'm disgusting, with my successful crudities. It's discouraging ; 
 it makes one not care much what happens. "What's the use, 
 in such an age, of being good ? " 
 
 " Good 1 Your haughty claim is that you're bad." 
 
 " I mean good, you know there are other ways. Don't be 
 stupid." And Nick's visitor tapped him he was at the door 
 with her with her parasol. 
 
 "I scarcely know what to say to you, for certainly it's your 
 fault if you get on so fast." 
 
 " I'm too clever I'm a humbug." 
 
 " That's the way I used to be," said Nick. 
 
 Miriam rested her wonderful eyes on him ; then she turned 
 them over the room, slowly, after which she attached them
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 463 
 
 again, kindly, musingly, on his own. " Ah, the pride of that 
 the sense of purification ! He ' used ' to be, forsooth ! Poor 
 me ! Of course you'll say : ' Look at the sort of thing I've 
 undertaken to produce, compared with what you have.' So it's 
 all right. Become great in the proper way and don't expose 
 me." She glanced back once more into the studio, as if she 
 were leaving it for ever, and gave another last look at the un- 
 finished canvas on the easel. She shook her head sadly. " Poor 
 Mr. Sherringham with that ! " she murmured. 
 
 "Oh, I'll finish it it will be very decent," said Nick. 
 
 " Finish it by yourself ? " 
 
 " Not necessarily. You'll come back and sit when you 
 return to London." 
 
 "Never, never, never again." 
 
 Nick stared. " Why, you've made me the most profuse 
 offers and promises." 
 
 " Yes, but they were made in ignorance, and I've backed 
 out of them. I'm capricious too -faites la part de $a. I see 
 it wouldn't do I didn't know it then. We're too far apart 
 I am, as you say, a Philistine." And as Nick protested with 
 vehemence against this unscrupulous bad faith, she added : 
 " You'll find other models ; paint Gabriel Nash." 
 
 " Gabriel Nash as a substitute for you ? " 
 
 " It will be a good way to get rid of him. Paint Mrs. 
 Dallow too," Miriam went on as she passed out of the door 
 which Nick had opened for her " paint Mrs. Dallow if you 
 wish to eradicate the last possibility of a throb." 
 
 It was strange that since only a moment before Nick had 
 been in a state of mind to which the superfluity of this refer- 
 ence would have been the clearest thing about it, he should 
 now have been moved to receive it, quickly, naturally, irre- 
 flectively, with the question : " The last possibility 1 Do you 
 mean in her or in me ] " 
 
 "Oh, in you. I don't know anything about her." 
 
 " But that wouldn't be the effect," rejoined Nick, with the 
 same supervening candour. " I believe that if she were to sit 
 to me' the usual law would be reversed." 
 
 "The usual law?" 
 
 "Which you cited awhile since and of which I recognize 
 the general truth. In the case you speak of I should probably 
 make a frightful picture." 
 
 " And fall in love with her again 1 Then, for God's sake, 
 risk the daub 1 " Miriam laughed out, floating away to her 
 victoria.
 
 XLIX. 
 
 MIRIAM had guessed happily in saying to Nick that to offer 
 to paint Gabriel Nash would be the way to get rid of him. 
 It was with no such invidious purpose indeed that our young 
 man proposed to his intermittent friend to sit ; rather, as 
 August was dusty in the London streets, he had too little 
 hope that Nash would remain in town at such a time to oblige 
 him. Nick had no wish to get rid of his private philosopher ; 
 he liked his philosophy, and though of course premeditated 
 paradox was the light to read him by, yet he had frequently, 
 in detail, an inspired unexpectedness. He remained, in Rose- 
 dale Road, the man in the world who had most the quality of 
 company. All the other men of Nick's acquaintance, all his 
 political friends, represented, often very communicatively, 
 their own affairs, and their own affairs alone ; which, when 
 they did it well, was the most their host could ask them. 
 But Nash had the rare distinction that he seemed somehow to 
 stand for his affairs, the said host's, with an interest in them 
 unaffected by the ordinary social limitations of capacity. This 
 relegated him to the class of high luxuries, and Nick was well 
 aware that we hold our luxuries by a fitful and precarious 
 tenure. If a friend without personal eagerness was one of the 
 greatest of these it would be evident to the simplest mind 
 that by the law of distribution of earthly boons such a con- 
 venience should be expected to forfeit in duration what it dis- 
 played in intensity. He had never been without a suspicion 
 that Nash was too good to last, though for that matter 
 nothing had happened to confirm a vague apprehension that the 
 particular way he would break up, or break down, would be 
 by wishing to put Nick in relation with his other disciples. 
 
 That would practically amount to a catastrophe, Nick felt ; 
 for it was odd that one could both have a great kindness for 
 him and not in the least, when it came to the point, yearn 
 for a view of his belongings. His originality had always been 
 that he appeared to have none ; and if in the first instance he 
 had introduced Nick to Miriam and her mother, that was an 
 exception for which Peter Sherringham's interference had 
 been in a great measure responsible. All the same however 
 it was some time before Nick ceased to think it might eventu- 
 ally very well happen that to complete his education, as it
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 465 
 
 were, Gabriel would wish him to foregather a little with 
 minds formed by the same mystical influence. Nick had an 
 instinct, in which there was no consciousness of detriment to 
 Nash, that the pupils, perhaps even the imitators of such a 
 genius would be, as he mentally phrased it, something awful. 
 He could be sure, even Gabriel himself could be sure, of his 
 own reservations, but how could either of them be sure of 
 those of others 1 Imitation is a fortunate homage only in 
 proportion as it is delicate, and there was an indefinable 
 something in Nash's doctrine that would have been discredited 
 by exaggeration or by zeal. Providence happily appeared 
 to have spared it this probation ; so that, after months, Nick 
 had to remind himself that his friend had never pressed upon 
 his attention the least little group of fellow-mystics, nor 
 offered to produce them for his edification. It scarcely 
 mattered now that he was just the man to whom the super- 
 ficial would attribute that sort of tail ; it would probably have 
 been hard, for example, to persuade Lady Agnes, or Julia 
 Dallow, or Peter Sherringham, that he was not most at home 
 in some dusky, untidy, dimly-imagined suburb of "culture," 
 peopled by unpleasant phrasemongers who thought him a 
 gentleman and who had no human use but to be held up in 
 the comic press, which was probably restrained by decorum 
 from touching upon the worst of their aberrations. 
 
 Nick, at any rate, never discovered his academy, nor the 
 suburb in question ; never caught, from the impenetrable 
 background of his life, the least reverberation of flitting or 
 flirting, the smallest aesthetic ululation. There were moments 
 when he was even moved to a degree of pity by the silence 
 that poor Gabriel's own faculty of sound made around him 
 when at least it qualified with thinness the mystery he could 
 never wholly dissociate from him, the sense of the transient 
 and occasional, the likeness to vapour or murmuring wind or 
 shifting light. It was for instance a symbol of this un- 
 elassified condition, the lack of all position as a name in well- 
 kept books, that Nick in point of fact had no idea where he 
 lived, would not have known how to go and see him or send 
 him a doctor if he had heard he was ill. He had never walked 
 with him to any door of Gabriel's own, even to pause at the 
 threshold, though indeed Nash had a club, the Anonymous, in 
 some improbable square, of which Nick suspected him of 
 being the only member he had never heard of another- 
 where it was vaguely understood that letters would some day 
 or other find him. Fortunately it was not necessary to worry 
 
 H H
 
 466 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 about him, so comfortably his whole aspect seemed to imply 
 that he could never be ill. And this was not perhaps because 
 his bloom was healthy, but because it was morbid, as if he had 
 been universally inoculated. 
 
 He turned up in Rosedale Road one day after Miriam had 
 left London ; he had just come back from a fortnight in 
 Brittany, where he had drawn unusual refreshment from the 
 subtle sadness of the landscape. He was on his way some- 
 where else ; he was going abroad for the autumn, but he was 
 not particular what he did, professing that he had returned to 
 London on purpose to take one last superintending look at 
 Nick. " It's very nice, it's very nice ; yes, yes, I see," he 
 remarked, giving a little general assenting sigh as his eyes 
 wandered over the simple scene a sigh which, to a suspicious 
 ear, would have testified to an insidious reaction. 
 
 Nick's ear, as we know, was already suspicious; a fact 
 which would sufficiently account for the expectant smile (it 
 indicated the pleasant apprehension of a theory confirmed) 
 with which he inquired : " Do you mean my pictures are nice ? " 
 " Yes, yes, your pictures and the whole thing." 
 " The whole thing ? " 
 
 " Your existence here, in this little remote independent 
 corner of the great city. The disinterestedness of your 
 attitude, the persistence of your effort, the piety, the beauty, 
 in short the example, of the whole spectacle." 
 
 Nick broke into a laugh. " How near to having had 
 enough of me you must be when you talk of my example ! " 
 Nash changed colour slightly at this ; it was the first time in 
 Nick's remembrance that he had given a sign of embarrass- 
 ment. " Vous allez me lacker, I see it coming ; and who can 
 blame you 1 ? for I've ceased to be in the least spectacular. 
 I had my little hour; it was a great deal, for some people 
 don't even have that. I've given you your curious case and 
 I've been generous ; I made the drama last for you as long 
 as I could. You'll ' slope,' my dear fellow you'll quietly 
 slope ; and it will be all right and inevitable, though I shall 
 miss you greatly at first. Who knows whether, without you, 
 I shouldn't still have been representing Harsh, heaven help 
 me 1 You rescued me ; you converted me from a repre- 
 sentative into an example -that's a shade better. But don't 
 I know where you must be when you're reduced to praising 
 my piety 1 " 
 
 " Don't turn mo away," said Nash plaintively ; '' give me a 
 cigarette."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 467 
 
 "I shall never dream of turning you away; I shall cherish 
 you till the latest possible hour. I'm only trying to keep 
 myself in tune with the logic of things. The proof of how I 
 cling is that, precisely, I want you to sit to me." 
 
 " To sit to you ? " Nick thought his visitor looked a little 
 blank. 
 
 " Certainly, for after all it isn't much to ask. Here we are, 
 and the hour is peculiarly propitious long light days, with no 
 one coming near me, so that I have plenty of time. I had a 
 hope I should have some orders : my younger sister, whom 
 you know and who is a great optimist, plied me with that 
 vision. In fact we invented together a charming sordid little 
 theory that there might be rather a ' run ' on me, from the 
 chatter (such as it was) produced by my taking up this line. 
 My sister struck out the idea that a good many of the pretty 
 ladies would think me interesting, would want to be done. 
 Perhaps they do, but they've controlled themselves, for I can't 
 say the run has commenced. They haven't even come to 
 look, but I dare say they don't yet quite take it in. Of course 
 it's a bad time, with every one out of town ; though you know 
 they might send for me to come and do them at home. 
 Perhaps they will, when they settle down. A portrait-tour 
 of a dozen country-houses, for the autumn and winter what 
 do you say to that for a superior programme? I know I 
 excruciate you," Nick added, " but don't you see how it's my 
 interest to try how much you'll still stand 1" 
 
 Gabriel puffed his cigarette with a serenity so perfect that 
 it^ might have been assumed to falsify Nick's words. " Mrs. 
 Dallow will send for you vous allez voir $a," he said in a 
 moment, brushing aside all vagueness. 
 
 "She'll send for me?" 
 
 " To paint her portrait ; she'll recapture you on that basis. 
 She'll get you down to one of the country-houses, and it will 
 all go off as charmingly with sketching in the morning, on 
 days you can't hunt, and anything you like in the afternoon, 
 and fifteen courses in the evening ; there'll be bishops and 
 ambassadors staying as if you were a ' well-known ' awfully 
 clever amateur. Take care, take care, for, fickle as you may 
 think me, I can read the future : don't imagine you've come 
 to the end of me yet. Mrs. Dallow and your sister, of both 
 of whom I speak with the greatest respect, are capable of 
 hatching together the most conscientious, delightful plan for 
 you. Your differences with the beautiful lady will be patched 
 up, and you'll each come round a little and meet the other
 
 468 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 half-way. Mrs. Dallow will swallow your profession if you'll 
 swallow hers. She'll put up with the palette if you'll put up 
 with the country-house. It will be a very unusual one in 
 which you won't find a good north room where you can paint. 
 You'll go about with her and do all her friends, all the bishops 
 and ambassadors, and you'll eat your cake and have it, and 
 every one, beginning with your wife, will forget there is 
 anything queer about you, and everything will be for the best 
 in the best of worlds ; so that, together you and she you'll 
 become a great social institution, and every one will think she 
 has a delightful husband ; to say nothing of course of your 
 having a delightful wife. Ah, my dear fellow, you turn pale, 
 and with reason ! " Nash went on : " that's to pay you for 
 having tried to make me let you have it. You have it, then, 
 there ! I may be a bore " the emphasis of this, though a 
 mere shade, testified to the first personal resentment Nick had 
 ever heard his visitor express " I may be a bore, but once 
 in a while I strike a light, I make things out. Then I venture 
 to repeat, ' Take care, take care.' If, as I say, I respect those 
 ladies infinitely, it is because they will be acting according to 
 the highest wisdom of their sex. That's the sort of thing 
 women invent when they're exceptionally good and clever. 
 When they're not, they don't do so well ; but it's not for 
 want of trying. There's only one thing in the world that's 
 better than their charm : it's their conscience. That indeed 
 is a part of their charm. And when they club together, when 
 they earnestly consider, as in the case we're supposing," Nash 
 continued, "then the whole thing takes a lift; for it's no 
 longer the conscience of the individual, it's that of the sex." 
 
 " You're so remarkable that, more than ever, I must paint 
 you," Nick returned, " though I'm so agitated by your pro- 
 phetic words that my hand trembles and I shall doubtless 
 scarcely be able to hold my brush. Look how I rattle my 
 easel trying to put it into position. I see it all there, just as 
 you say it. Yes, it will be a droll day, and more modern 
 than anything yet, when the conscience of women perceives 
 objections to men's being in love with them. You talk of 
 their goodness and cleverness, and it's much to the point. I 
 don't know what else they themselves might do with these 
 things, but I don't see what men can do with them but be 
 fond of them." 
 
 " Oh, you'll do it you'll do it ! " cried Nash, brightly 
 jubilant. 
 
 "What is it I shall do?"
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 469 
 
 " Exactly what I just said ; if not next year, then the year 
 after, or the year after that. You'll go half-way to meet her, 
 and she'll drag you about and pass you off. You'll paint the 
 bishops and become a social institution. That is, you will if 
 you don't take great care." 
 
 " I shall, no doubt, and that's why I cling to you. You 
 must still look after me ; don't melt away into a mere 
 improbable reminiscence, a delightful symbolic fable don't, 
 if you can possibly help it. The trouble is, you see, that you 
 can't really keep hold very tight, because at bottom it will 
 amuse you much more to see me in another pickle than to find 
 me simply jogging down the vista of the years on the straight 
 course. Let me at any rate have some sort of sketch of you, 
 as a kind of feather from the angel's wing, or a photograph 
 of the ghost, to prove to me in the future that you were once 
 a solid, sociable fact, that I didn't utterly fabricate you. 
 Of course I shall be able to say to myself that you can't have 
 been a fable otherwise you would have had a moral; but 
 that won't be enough, because I'm not sure you won't have 
 had one. Some day you'll peep in here languidly and find me 
 in such an attitude of piety presenting my bent back to you 
 as I niggle over some interminable botch that I shall give 
 cruelly on your nerves, and you'll draw away, closing the door 
 softly (for you'll be gentle and considerate about it and spare 
 me -you won't even make me look round), and steal off on 
 tiptoe, never, never to return." 
 
 Gabriel consented to sit ; he professed he should enjoy it 
 and be glad to give up for it his immediate Continental 
 projects, so vague to Nick, so definite apparently to himself ; 
 and he came back three times for the purpose. Nick promised 
 himself a great deal of interest from this experiment ; for 
 from the first hour he began to feel that really, as yet, com- 
 pared to the scrutiny to which he now subjected him, he had 
 never with any intensity looked at his friend. His impres- 
 sion had been that Nash had a head quite fine enough to be a 
 challenge, and that as he sat there, day by day, all sorts of 
 pleasant and paintable things would come out in his face. 
 This impression was not falsified, but the whole problem 
 became more complicated. It struck our young man that he 
 had never seen his subject before, and yet somehow this reve- 
 lation was not produced by the sense of actually seeing it. 
 What was revealed was the difficulty what he saw was the 
 indefinite and the elusive. He had taken things for granted 
 Avhich literally were not there, and he found things there
 
 470 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 (except that he couldn't catch them) which he had not hitherto 
 counted in. This baffling effect, being eminently in Nash's line, 
 might have been the result of his whimsical volition, had it 
 not appeared to Nick, after a few hours of the job, that his 
 sitter was not the one who enjoyed it most. He was uncom- 
 fortable, at first vaguely and then definitely so silent, restless, 
 gloomy, dim, as if, when it came to the test, it proved less of 
 a pleasure to him than he could have had an idea of in 
 advance to be infinitely examined and handled, sounded and 
 sifted. He had been willing to try it, in good faith ; but 
 frankly he didn't like it. He was not cross, but he was 
 clearly unhappy, and Nick had never heard him say so little, 
 seen him give so little. 
 
 Nick felt, accordingly, as if he had laid a trap for him : he 
 asked himself if it were really fair. At the same time there 
 was something fascinating in the oddity of such a relation 
 between the subject and the artist, and Nick was disposed to 
 go on until he should have to stop for very pity. He caught 
 eventually a glimmer of the truth that lay at the bottom of 
 this anomaly ; guessed that what made his friend uncomfort- 
 able was simply the reversal, in such a combination, of his 
 usual terms of intercourse. He was so accustomed to living 
 upon irony and the interpretation of things that it was 
 strange to him to be himself interpreted, and (as a gentleman 
 who sits for his portrait is always liable to be) interpreted 
 ironically. From being outside of the universe he was sud- 
 denly brought into it, and from the position of a free com- 
 mentator and critic, a sort of amateurish editor of the whole 
 affair, reduced to that of humble ingredient and contributor. 
 It occurred afterwards to Nick that he had perhaps brought 
 on a catastrophe by having happened to say to his companion, 
 in the course of their disjointed pauses, and not only without 
 any cruel intention but with an impulse of genuine solicitude : 
 " But, my dear fellow, what will you do when you're old 1 ? " 
 
 " Old 1 What do you call old ? " Nash had replied bravely 
 enough, but with another perceptible tinge of irritation. 
 " Must I really inform you, at this time of day, that that 
 term has no application to such a condition as mine ? It only 
 belongs to you wretched people who have the incurable super- 
 stition of ' doing : ' it's the ignoble collapse you prepare for 
 yourselves when you cease to be able to do. For me there'll 
 be no collapse, no transition, no clumsy readjustment of 
 attitude ; for I shall only be, more and more, with all the 
 accumulations of experience, the longer I live."
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 471 
 
 "Oh, I'm not particular about the term," said Nick. "If 
 you don't call it old, the ultimate state, call it weary call it 
 exhausted. The accumulations of experience are practically 
 accumulative of fatigue." 
 
 " I don't know anything about weariness. I live easily it 
 doesn't fatigue me." 
 
 "Then you need never die," rejoined Nick. 
 
 " Certainly ; I dare say I'm eternal." 
 
 Nick laughed out at this- it would be such fine news to 
 some people. But it was uttered with perfect gravity, and it 
 might very well have been in the spirit of that gravity that 
 Nash failed to observe his agreement to sit again the next 
 day. The next, and the next, and the next passed, but he 
 never came back. 
 
 True enough, punctuality was not important for a man who 
 felt that he had the command of all time. Nevertheless, his 
 disappearance, " without a trace," like a personage in a fairy- 
 tale or a melodrama, made a considerable impression on his 
 friend, as the months went on ; so that, though he had never 
 before had 'the least difficulty about entering into the play of 
 Gabriel's humour, Nick now recalled with a certain fanciful 
 awe the unusual seriousness with which he had ranked himself 
 among imperishable things. He wondered a little whether he 
 had at last gone quite mad. He had never before had such a 
 literal air, and he would have had to be mad to be so common- 
 place. Perhaps indeed he was acting only more than usual in 
 his customary spirit thoughtfully contributing, for Nick's 
 enlivenment, a mystery to an horizon now grown unromantic. 
 The mystery at any rate remained ; another too came near 
 being added to it. Nick had the prospect, for the future, of 
 the harmless excitement of waiting to see when Nash would 
 turn up, if ever, and the further diversion (it almost consoled 
 him for the annoyance of being left with a second unfinished 
 portrait] on his hands) of imagining that the picture he had 
 begun had a singular air of gradually fading from the canvas. 
 He couldn't catch it in the act, but he could have a suspicion, 
 when he glanced at it, that the hand of time was rubbing it 
 away little by little (for all the world as in some delicate 
 Hawthorne tale), making the surface indistinct and bare 
 bare of all resemblance to the model. Of course the moral of 
 the Hawthorne tale would be that this personage would come 
 back on the day when the last adumbration should have 
 vanished.
 
 L. 
 
 ONE day, toward the end of March of the following year, 
 or in other words more than six months after the incident 1 
 have last had occasion to narrate, Bridget Dormer came into 
 her brother's studio and greeted him with the effusion that 
 accompanies a return from an absence. She had been staying 
 at Broadwood she had been staying at Harsh. She had 
 various things to tell him about these episodes, about his 
 mother, about Grace, about herself, and about Percy's having 
 come, just before, over to Broadwood for two days; the longest 
 visit with which, almost since they could remember, the head 
 of the family had honoured Lady Agnes. Nick noted how- 
 ever that it had apparently been taken as a great favour, and 
 Biddy loyally testified to the fact that her elder brother was 
 awfully jolly and that his presence had been a pretext for 
 tremendous fun. Nick asked her what had passed about his 
 marriage what their mother had said to him. 
 
 " Oh, nothing," Biddy replied ; and he had said nothing to 
 Lady Agnes and not a word to herself. This partly explained, 
 for Nick, the awful jollity and the tremendous fun none but 
 cheerful topics had been produced ; but he questioned his 
 sister further, to a point which led her to say : " Oh, I dare 
 say that before long she'll write to her." 
 
 " Who will write to whom ? " 
 
 " Mamma '11 write to his wife. I'm sure he'd like it. Of 
 course we shall end by going to see her. He was awfully 
 disappointed at what he found in Spain he didn't find 
 anything." 
 
 Biddy spoke of his disappointment almost with commiser- 
 ation, for she was evidently inclined this morning to a fresh 
 and kindly view of things. Nick could share her feeling only 
 so far as was permitted by a recognition merely general of 
 what his brother must have looked for. It might have been 
 snipe and it might have been bristling boars. Biddy was 
 indeed brief, at first, about everything, in spite of the two 
 months that had intervened since their last meeting ; for he 
 saw in a few minutes that she had something behind some- 
 thing that made her gay and that she wanted to come to 
 quickly. Nick was vaguely vexed at her being, fresh from 
 Broadwood, so gay as that ; for (it was impossible to shut
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 473 
 
 one's eyes to it) what had come to pass, in practice, in regard 
 to that rural retreat, was exactly what he had desired to 
 avert. All winter, while it had been taken for granted that 
 his mother and sisters were doing what he wished, they had 
 been doing the precise contrary. He held Biddy perhaps 
 least responsible, and there was no one he could exclusively 
 blame. He washed his hands of the matter and succeeded 
 fairly well for the most part in forgetting that he was not 
 pleased. Julia Dallow herself in fact appeared to have been 
 the most active member of the little group united to make 
 light of his scruples. There had been a formal restitution of 
 the place, but the three ladies were there more than ever, with 
 the slight difference that they were mainly there with its 
 mistress. Mahomet had declined to go any more to the 
 mountain, so the mountain had virtually come to Mahomet. 
 After their long visit in the autumn Lady Agnes and her 
 girls had come back to town ; but they had gone down again 
 for Christmas, and Julia had taken this occasion to write to 
 Nick that she hoped very much he wouldn't refuse them all 
 his own company for just a little scrap of the supremely 
 sociable time. Nick, after reflection, judged it best not to 
 refuse, and he spent three days under Mrs. Dallow' s roof. 
 The " all " proved a great many people, for she had taken care 
 to fill the house. She was a magnificent entertainer, and Nick 
 had never seen her so splendid, so free-handed, so gracefully 
 practical. She was a perfect mistress of the revels ; she had 
 organized something festive for every day and for every night. 
 The Dormers were so much in it, as the phrase was, that after 
 all their discomfiture their fortune seemed in an hour to have 
 come back. There had been a moment when, in extemporized 
 charades, Lady Agnes, an elderly figure being required, 
 appeared on the point of undertaking the part of the house- 
 keeper at a castle, who, dropping her /A'S, showed sheeplike 
 tourists about ; but she waived the opportunity in favour of 
 her daughter Grace. Even Grace had a great success. Nick 
 of course was in the charades and in everything, but Julia 
 was not ; she only invented, directed, led the applause. When 
 nothing else was going on Nick " sketched " the whole com- 
 pany : they followed him about, they waylaid him on stair- 
 cases, clamouring to be allowed to sit. He obliged them, so 
 far as he could, all save Julia, who didn't clamour ; and, 
 growing rather red, he thought of Gabriel Nash while he bent 
 over the paper. Early in the new year he went abroad for six 
 weeks, but only as far as Paris. It was a new Paris for him
 
 474 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 then : a Paris of the Rue Bonaparte and three, or four pro- 
 fessional friends (he had more of these there than in London) ; 
 a Paris of studios and studies and models, of researches and 
 revelations, comparisons and contrasts, of strong impressions 
 and long discussions and rather uncomfortable economies, 
 small cafes and bad fires and the general sense of being 
 twenty again. 
 
 While he was away his mother and sisters (Lady Agnes 
 now sometimes wrote to him) returned to London for a month, 
 and before he was again established in Rosedale Road they 
 went back for a third period to Broadwood. After they had 
 been there five days and this was the salt of the whole dish 
 Julia took herself off to Harsh, leaving them in- undisturbed 
 possession. They had remained so ; they would not come up 
 to town till after Easter. The trick was played, and Biddy, 
 as I have mentioned, was now very content. Her brother 
 presently learned however that the reason of this was not 
 wholly the success of the trick ; unless indeed her further 
 ground was only a continuation of it. She was not in London 
 as a forerunner of her mother ; she was not even as yet in 
 Calcutta Gardens. She had come to spend a week with 
 Florence Tressilian, who had lately taken the dearest little 
 flat in a charming new place, just put up, on the other side of 
 the Park, with all kinds of lifts and tubes and electricities. 
 Florence had been awfully nice to her she had been with 
 them ever so long at Broadwood, while the flat was being 
 painted and prepared and mamma had then let her, let 
 Biddy, promise to come to her, when everything was ready, so 
 that they might have a kind of old maids' house-warming 
 together. If Florence could do without a chaperon now (she 
 had two latch-keys and went alone on the top of omnibuses, 
 and her name was in the Red Book), she was enough of a 
 duenna for another girl. Biddy alluded, with sweet and 
 cynical eyes, to the fine, happy stride she had thus taken in 
 the direction of enlightened spinsterhood ; and Nick hung 
 his head, somewhat abashed and humiliated, for, modern as 
 he had supposed himself, there were evidently currents more 
 modern yet. 
 
 It so happened on this particular morning Nick had drawn 
 out of a corner his interrupted study of Gabriel Nash ; for no 
 purpose more definite (he had only been looking round the 
 room in a rummaging spirit) than to see curiously how much 
 or how little of it remained. It had become to his apprehen- 
 sion such a shadowy affair (he was sure of this, and it made
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 475 
 
 him laugh) that it didn't seem worth putting away, and he left 
 it leaning against a table, as if it had been a blank canvas 
 or a "preparation" to be painted over. In this attitude it 
 attracted Biddy's attention, for to her, on a second glance, it 
 had distinguishable features. She had not seen it before and 
 she asked whom it might represent, remarking also that she 
 could almost guess, but not quite : she had known the original, 
 but she couldn't name him. 
 
 " Six months ago, for a few days, it represented Gabriel 
 Nash," Nick replied. " But it doesn't represent anybody or 
 anything now." 
 
 "Six months ago? What's the matter with it and why 
 don't you go on ? " 
 
 " What's the matter with it is more than I can tell you. 
 But I can't go on, because I've lost my model." 
 
 Biddy stared an instant. " Is he dead ? " 
 
 Her brother laughed out at the candid cheerfulness, hopeful- 
 ness almost, with which this inquiry broke from her. " He's 
 only dead to me. He has gone away." 
 
 " Where has he gone 1 " 
 
 " I haven't the least idea." 
 
 " Why, have you quarrelled 1 " Biddy asked. 
 
 " Quarrelled 1 For what do you take us 1 Does the night- 
 ingale quarrel with the moon 1 " 
 
 " I needn't ask which of you is the moon," said Biddy. 
 
 " Of course I'm the nightingale. But, more literally," Nick 
 continued, " Nash has melted back into the elements he is 
 part of the ambient air." Then, as even with this literalness 
 he saw that his sister was mystified, he added : "I have a 
 notion he has gone to India, and at the present moment is 
 reclining on a bank of flowers in the vale of Cashmere." 
 
 Biddy was silent a minute, after which she dropped : " Julia 
 will be glad she dislikes him so." 
 
 " If she dislikes him, why should she be glad he's in such a 
 delightful situation ? " 
 
 " I mean about his going away ; she'll be glad of that." 
 
 " My poor child, what has Julia to do with it ? " 
 
 " She has more to do with things than you think," Biddy 
 replied, with some eagerness ; but she had no sooner uttered 
 the words than she perceptibly blushed. Hereupon, to attenu- 
 ate the foolishness of her blush (only it had the opposite effect), 
 she added : " She thinks he has been a bad element in your 
 life." 
 
 Nick shook his head, smiling. " She thinks, perhaps, but
 
 476 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 she doesn't think enough ; otherwise, she would arrive at 
 this thought that she knows nothing whatever about my 
 life." 
 
 " Ah, Nick," the girl pleaded, with solemn eyes, " you don't 
 imagine what an interest she takes in it. She has told me, 
 many times she has talked lots to me about it." Biddy 
 paused and then went on, with an anxious little smile shining 
 through her gravity, as if she were trying cautiously how 
 much her brother would take : " She has a conviction that it 
 was Mr. Nash who made trouble between you." 
 
 "My dear Biddy," Nick rejoined, "those are thoroughly 
 second-rate ideas, the result of a perfectly superficial view. 
 Excuse my possibly priggish tone, but they really attribute to 
 Nash a part he's quite incapable of playing. He can neither 
 make trouble nor take trouble ; no trouble could ever either 
 have come out of him or have gone into him. Moreover," 
 our young man continued, " if Julia has talked to you so much 
 about the matter, there's no harm in my talking to you a 
 little. "When she threw me over in an hour, it was on a per- 
 fectly definite occasion. That occasion was the presence in 
 my studio of a dishevelled actress." 
 
 " Oh Nick, she has not thrown you over ! " Biddy protested. 
 " She has not I have the proof." 
 
 Nick felt, at this direct denial, a certain stir of indignation, 
 and he looked at his sister with momentary sternness. " Has 
 she sent you here to tell me this 1 What do you mean by the 
 proof ? " 
 
 Biddy's eyes, at these questions, met her brother's with a 
 strange expression, and for a few seconds, while she looked 
 entreatingly into his own, she wavered there, with parted lips, 
 vaguely stretching out her hands. The next minute she had 
 burst into tears she was sobbing on his breast. He said 
 " Hallo ! " and soothed her ; but it was very quickly over. 
 Then she told him what she meant by her " proof," and what 
 she had had on her mind ever since she came into the room. 
 It was a message from Julia, but not to say not to say what 
 he had asked her just before if she meant ; though indeed 
 Biddy, more familiar now, since her brother had had his arm 
 round her, boldly expressed the hope that it might in the end 
 come to the same thing. Julia simply wanted to know (she 
 had instructed Biddy to sound him discreetly) if Nick would 
 undertake her portrait ; and the girl wound up this experi- 
 ment in " sounding" by the statement that their beautiful 
 kinswoman was dying to sit.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 477 
 
 "Dying to sit?" repeated Nick, whose turn it was, this 
 time, to feel his colour rise. 
 
 " Any time you like after Easter, when she comes up to 
 town. She wants a full-length, and your very best, your most 
 splendid work." 
 
 Nick stared, not caring that he had blushed. " Is she 
 serious? " 
 
 " Ah, Nick serious ! " Biddy reasoned tenderly. She came 
 nearer to him, and he thought she was going to weep again. 
 He took her by the shoulders, looking into her eyes. 
 
 " It's all right, if she knows L am. But why doesn't she 
 come like any one else 1 I don't refuse people ! " 
 
 " Nick, dearest Nick ! " she went on, with her eyes conscious 
 and pleading. He looked into them intently as well as she, 
 he could play at sounding and for a moment, between these 
 young persons, the air was lighted by the glimmer of mutual 
 searchings and suppressed confessions. Nick read deep, and 
 then, suddenly releasing his sister, he turned away. She 
 didn't see his face in that movement, but an observer to whom 
 it had been presented might have fancied that it denoted a 
 foreboding which was not exactly a dread, yet was not 
 exclusively a joy. 
 
 The first thing Nick made out in the room, when he could 
 distinguish, was Gabriel Nash's portrait, which immediately 
 filled him with an unreasoning resentment. He seized it and 
 turned it about ; he jammed it back into its corner, with its 
 face against the wall. This bustling transaction might have 
 served to carry off the embarrassment with which he had 
 finally averted himself from Biddy. The embarrassment how- 
 ever was all his own ; none of it was reflected in the way 
 Biddy resumed, after a silence in which she had followed his 
 disposal of the picture : 
 
 " If she's so eager to come here (for it's here that she wants 
 to sit, not in Great Stanhope Street never !) how can she 
 prove better that she doesn't care a bit if she meets Miss 
 Rooth ? " 
 
 "She won't meet Miss Rooth," Nick replied, rather dryly. 
 
 'Oh, I'm sorry ! " said Biddy. She was as frank as if she 
 had achieved a sort of victory over her companion ; and she 
 seemed to regret the loss of a chance for Mrs. Dallow to show 
 magnanimity. Her tone made her brother laugh, but she 
 went on, with confidence : " She thought it was Mr. Nash 
 who made Miss Rooth come." 
 
 "So he did, by the way," said Nick.
 
 478 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 " Well, then, wasn't that making trouble ? " 
 
 " I thought you admitted there was no harm in her being 
 here." 
 
 " Yes, but he hoped there would be." 
 
 " Poor Nash's hopes ! " Nick laughed. " My dear child, it 
 would take a cleverer head than you or me, or even Julia, who 
 must have invented that wise theory, to say what they were. 
 However, let us agree, that even if they were perfectly 
 devilish my good sense has been a match for them." 
 
 11 Oh, Nick, that's delightful ! " chanted Biddy. Then she 
 added, " Do you mean she doesn't come any more? " 
 
 "The dishevelled actress? She hasn't been near me for 
 months." 
 
 " But she's in London she's always acting ] I've been 
 away so much I've scarcely observed," Biddy explained, with 
 a slight change of note. 
 
 " The same part, poor creature, for nearly a year. It 
 appears that that's success, in her profession. I saw her in 
 the character several times last summer, but I haven't set foot 
 in her theatre since." 
 
 Biddy was silent a moment ; then she suggested : " Peter 
 wouldn't have liked that." 
 
 " Oh, Peter's likes ! " sighed Nick, at his easel, beginning 
 to work. 
 
 " I mean her acting the same part for a year." 
 
 " I'm sure I don't know ; he has never Avritten me a word." 
 
 " Nor me either," Biddy returned. 
 
 There was another short silence, during which Nick brushed 
 at a panel. It was terminated by his presently saying : 
 " There's one thing, certainly, Peter would like that is simply 
 to be here to-night. It's a great night another great night 
 for the dishevelled one. She's to act Juliet for the first time." 
 
 " Ah, how I should like to see her ! " the girl cried. 
 
 Nick glanced at her; she sat watching him. "She has sent 
 me a stall ; I wish she had sent me two. I should have been 
 delighted to take you." 
 
 "Don't you think you could get another? " asked Biddy. 
 
 "They must be in tremendous demand. But Avho knows, 
 after all]" Nick added, at the same moment, looking round. 
 "Here's a chance here's a quite extraordinary chance ! " 
 
 His servant had opened the door and was ushering in a lady 
 whose identity was indeed justly indicated in those words. 
 " Miss Rooth ! " the man announced ; but he was caught up 
 by a gentleman who came next and who exclaimed, laughing
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 479 
 
 and with a gesture gracefully corrective : " No, no no longer 
 Miss Booth ! " 
 
 Miriam entered the place with her charming familiar 
 grandeur, as she might have appeared, as she appeared every 
 night, early in her first act, at the back of the stage, by the 
 immemorial central door, presenting herself to the house, 
 taking easy possession, repeating old movements, looking from 
 one to the other of the actors before the footlights. The rich 
 " Good morning " that she threw into the air, holding out her 
 hand to Biddy Dormer and then giving her left to Nick (as 
 she might have given it to her own brother), had nothing to 
 tell of intervals or alienations. She struck Biddy as still more 
 terrible, in her splendid practice, than when she had seen her 
 before the practice and the splendour had now something 
 almost royal. The girl had had occasion to make her courtesy 
 to majesties and highnesses, but the nutter those effigies pro- 
 duced was nothing to the way in which, at the approach of 
 this young lady, the agitated air seemed to recognize some- 
 thing supreme. So the deep, mild eyes that she bent upon 
 Biddy were not soothing, though they were evidently intended 
 to soothe. The girl wondered that Nick could have got so 
 used to her (he joked at her as she came), and later in the day, 
 still under the great impression of this incident, she even 
 wondered that Peter could. It was true that Peter apparently 
 hadn't. 
 
 " You never came you never came," said Miriam to Biddy, 
 kindly, sadly ; and Biddy recognizing the allusion, the invita- 
 tion to visit the actress at home, had to explain how much she 
 had been absent from London, and then even that her brother 
 hadn't proposed to take her. " Very true he hasn't come 
 himself. What is he doing now?" Miriam asked, standing 
 near Biddy, but looking at Nick, who had immediately 
 engaged in conversation with his other visitor, a gentleman 
 whose face came back to the girl. She had seen this gentle- 
 man on the stage with Miss Rooth that was it, the night 
 Peter took her to the theatre with Florence Tressilian. Oh, 
 that Nick would only do something of that sort now ! This 
 desire, quickened by the presence of the strange, expressive 
 woman, by the way she scattered sweet syllables as if she were 
 touching the piano-keys, combined with other things to make 
 Biddy's head swim other things too mingled to name, admir- 
 ation and fear and dim divination and purposeless pride and 
 curiosity and resistance, the impulse to go away and the 
 determination not to go. The actress courted her with her
 
 480 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 voice (what was the matter with her and Avhat did she want ]) 
 and Biddy tried in return to give an idea of what Nick was 
 doing. Not succeeding very well she was going to appeal to 
 her brother, but Miriam stopped her, saying it didn't matter ; 
 besides, Dashwood was telling Nick something something 
 they wanted him to know. " We're in a great excitement 
 he has taken a theatre," Miriam added. 
 " Taken a theatre ? " Biddy was vague. 
 " We're going to set up for ourselves. He's going to do 
 for me altogether. It has all been arranged only within a 
 day or two. It remains to be seen how it will answer," 
 Miriam smiled. Biddy murmured some friendly hope, and 
 her interlocurtess went on : " Do you know why I've broken 
 in here to-day, after a long absence interrupting your poor 
 brother, taking up his precious time ! It's because I'm so 
 nervous." 
 
 " About your first night ? " Biddy risked. 
 "Do you know about that are you coming?" Miriam 
 asked, quickly. 
 
 "No, I'm not coming I haven't a place." 
 " Will you come if I send you one ? " 
 
 "Oh, but really, it's too beautiful of you," stammered the 
 girl. 
 
 " You shall have a box ; your brother shall bring you. 
 You can't squeeze in a pin, I'm told ; but I've kept a box, 
 I'll manage it. Only, if I do, you know, mind you come ! " 
 Miriam exclaimed, in suppliance, resting her hand on 
 Biddy's. 
 
 " Don't be afraid ! And may I bring a friend the friend 
 with whom I'm staying? " 
 
 Miriam looked at her. " Do you mean Mrs. Dallow?" 
 " No, no Miss Tressilian. She puts me up, she has got a 
 flat. Did you ever see a flat 1 ?" asked Biddy, expansively. 
 " My cousin's not in London." Miriam replied that she might 
 bring whom she liked, and Biddy broke out, to her brother : 
 "Fancy what kindness, Nick: we're to have a box to-night, 
 and you're to take me ! " 
 
 Nick turned to her, smiling, with an expression in his face 
 which struck her even at the time as odd, but which she 
 understood when the sense of it recurred to her later. Mr. 
 Dashwood interposed with the remark that it was all very 
 well to talk about boxes, but that he didn't see where at that 
 time of day any such luxury was to come from. 
 
 " You haven't kept one, as I told you? " Miriam demanded.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 481 
 
 " As you told me, my dear ? Tell the lamb to keep its 
 tender mutton from the wolves ! " 
 
 " You shall have one : we'll arrange it," Miriam went on, 
 to Biddy. 
 
 "Let me qualify that statement a little, Miss Dormer," 
 said Basil Dash wood. " We'll arrange if it's humanly 
 possible." 
 
 " We'll arrange it even if it's inhumanly impossible that's 
 just the point," Miriam declared, to -the girl. "Don't talk 
 about trouble what's he meant for but to take it 1 ? Cela 
 s'annonce bien, you see," she continued, to Nick: "doesn't it 
 look as if we should pull beautifully together?" And as he 
 replied that he heartily congratulated her he was immensely 
 interested in what he had been told she exclaimed, after 
 resting her eyes on him a moment : " What will you have 1 
 It seemed simpler ! It was clear there had to be some one." 
 She explained further to Nick what had led her to come in 
 at that moment, while Dashwood approached Biddy with civil 
 assurances that they would see, they would leave no stone 
 unturned, though he would not have taken it upon himself 
 to promise. 
 
 Miriam reminded Nick of the blessing he had been to her 
 nearly a year before, on her other first night, when she was 
 fidgety and impatient : how he had let her come and sit there 
 for hours helped her to possess her soul till the evening and 
 keep out of harm's way. The case was the same at present, 
 with the aggravation indeed that he would understand 
 Dashwood's nerves as well as her own : they were a great 
 deal worse than hers. Everything was ready for Juliet ; 
 they had been rehearsing for five months (it had kept her 
 from going mad, with the eternity of the other piece), and he 
 had occurred to her again in the last intolerable hours as the 
 friend in need, the salutary stop-gap, no matter how much 
 she bothered him. She shouldn't be turned out ? Biddy 
 broke away from Basil Dashwood : she must go, she must 
 hurry off to Miss Tressilian with her news. Florence might 
 make some stupid engagement for the evening : she must be 
 warned in time. The girl took a flushed, excited leave, after 
 having received a renewal of Miriam's pledge and even heard 
 her say to Nick that he must now give back the stall that 
 had been sent him they would be sure to have another use 
 for it. 
 
 I I
 
 LI. 
 
 THAT night, at the theatre, in the box (the miracle had 
 been wrought, the treasure was found), Nick Dormer pointed 
 out to his two companions the stall he had relinquished, which 
 was close in front noting how oddly, during the whole of 
 the first act, it remained vacant. The house was magnificent, 
 the actress was magnificent, everything was magnificent. To 
 describe again so famous an occasion (it has been described 
 repeatedly by other reporters) is not in the compass of the 
 closing words of a history already too sustained. It is enough 
 to say that this great night marked an era in contemporary 
 art, and that for those who had a spectator's share in it 
 the word "triumph" acquired a new illustration. Miriam's 
 Juliet was an exquisite image of young passion and young 
 despair, expressed in the divinest, truest music that had ever 
 poured from tragic lips. The great childish audience, gaping at 
 her points, expanded there before her like a lap to catch flowers. 
 
 During the first interval our three friends in the box had 
 plenty to talk about, and they were so occupied with it that 
 for some time they failed to observe that a gentleman had at 
 last come into the empty stall near the front. This discovery 
 was presently formulated by Miss Tressilian, in the cheerful 
 exclamation : " Only fancy there's Mr. Sherringham ! " This 
 of course immediately became a high wonder a wonder for 
 Nick and Biddy, who had not heard of his return ; and the 
 marvel was increased by the fact that he gave no sign of look- 
 ing for them, or even at them. Having taken possession of 
 his place he sat very still in it, staring straight before him 
 at the curtain. His abrupt reappearance contained mystify- 
 ing elements both for Biddy and for Nick, so that it was 
 mainly Miss Tressilian who had freedom of mind to throw off 
 the theory that he had come back that very hour had arrived 
 from a long journey. Couldn't they see how strange he was 
 and how brown, how burnt and how red, how tired and how 
 worn ] They all inspected him, though Biddy declined Miss 
 Tressilian' s glass ; but he was evidently unconscious of observ- 
 ation, and finally Biddy, leaning back in her chair, dropped 
 the fantastic words : " He has come home to marry Juliet." 
 
 Nick glanced at her ; then he replied : " What a disaster 
 to make such a journey as that and to be late for the fair 1 "
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 483 
 
 'Late for the fair!" 
 
 " Why, she's married these three days. They did it very 
 ^uietly ; Miriam says because her mother hated it and hopes it 
 won't be much known. All the same she's Basil Dashwood's 
 wedded wife he has come in just in time to take the receipts 
 for Juliet. It's a good thing, no doubt, for there are at least 
 two fortunes to be made out of her, and he'll give up the stage." 
 Nick explained to Miss Tressilian, who had inquired, that 
 the gentleman in question was the actor who was playing 
 Mercutio, and he asked Biddy if she had not known that this 
 was what they were telling him in Rosedale Road in the morn- 
 ing. She replied that she had not understood, and she sank 
 considerably behind the drapery of the box. From this cover 
 she was able to launch creditably enough the exclamation 
 
 " Poor Peter ! " 
 
 Nick got up and stood looking at poor Peter. " He ought 
 to come round and speak to us, but if he doesn't see us I 
 suppose he doesn't." Nick quitted the box as if to go to the 
 restored exile. I may add that as soon as he had done so 
 Florence Tressilian bounded over to the dusky corner in which 
 Biddy had nestled. What passed immediately between these 
 young ladies need not concern us : it is sufficient to mention 
 that two minutes later Miss Tressilian broke out 
 
 " Look at him, dearest ; he's turning his head this way ! " 
 
 "Thank you, I don't care to look at him," said Biddy; and 
 she doubtless demeaned herself in the high spirit of these 
 words. It nevertheless happened that directly afterwards she 
 became aware that he had glanced at his watch, as if to judge 
 how soon the curtain would rise again, and then had jumped 
 up and passed quickly out of his place. The curtain had risen 
 again without his coming back and without Nick's reappearing 
 in the box. Indeed by the time Nick slipped in a good deal 
 of the third act was over; and even then, even when the 
 curtain descended, Peter Sherringham had not returned. Nick 
 sat down in silence, to watch the stage, to which the breath- 
 less attention of his companions seemed to be attached, though 
 Biddy after a moment threw back at him a single quick look. 
 At the end of the act they were all occupied with the recalls, 
 the applause and the responsive loveliness of Juliet as she was 
 led out (Mercutio had to give her up to Romeo), and even for 
 a few minutes after the uproar had subsided nothing was said 
 among the three. At last Nick began : 
 
 " It's quite true, he has just arrived ; he's in Great Stanhope 
 Street. They've given him several weeks, to make up for the
 
 484 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 uncomfortable way they bundled him off (to arrive in time for 
 some special business that had suddenly tp be gone into) when 
 he first went out : he tells me they promised that at the time. 
 He got into Southampton only a few hours ago, rushed up by 
 the first train he could catch and came off here without any 
 dinner." 
 
 " Fancy ! " said Miss Tressilian ; while Biddy asked if Peter 
 might be in good health and had been happy. Nick replied 
 that he said it was a beastly place, but he appeared all right. 
 He was to be in England probably a month, he was awfully 
 brown, he sent his love to Biddy. Miss Tressilian looked at 
 his empty stall and was of the opinion that it would be more 
 to the point for him to come in to see her. 
 
 "Oh, he'll turn up; we had a goodish talk in the lobby, 
 where he met me. I think he went out somewhere." 
 
 " How odd to come so many thousand miles for this, and 
 then not to stay ! " Biddy reflected. 
 
 " Did he come on purpose for this 1 ? " Miss Tressilian asked. 
 
 " Perhaps he's gone out to get his dinner ! " joked Biddy. 
 
 Her friend suggested that he might be behind the scenes, 
 but Nick expressed a doubt of this ; and Biddy asked her 
 brother if he himself were not going round. At this moment 
 the curtain rose : Nick said he would go in the next interval. 
 As soon as it came he quitted the box, remaining absent while 
 it lasted. 
 
 All this time, in the house, there was no sign of Peter. 
 Nick reappeared only as the fourth act was beginning, and 
 uttered no word to his companions till it was over. Then, 
 after a further delay produced by renewed evidences of the 
 actress's victory, he described his visit to the stage and the 
 wonderful spectacle of Miriam on the field of battle. Miss 
 Tressilian inquired if he had found Mr. Sherringham with her ; 
 to which he replied that, save across the footlights, she had 
 not seen him. At this a soft exclamation broke from Biddy : 
 
 " Poor Peter ! Where is he, then 1 " 
 
 Nick hesitated a moment. ' " He's walking the streets." 
 
 " Walking the streets ? " 
 
 " I don't know I give it up ! " Nick replied ; and his tone, 
 for some minutes, reduced his companions to silence. But a 
 little later Biddy said : 
 
 " Was it for him, this morning, she wanted that place, when 
 she asked you to give yours back ? " 
 
 " For him, exactly. It's very odd that she just managed to 
 keep it, for all the use he makes of it ! She told me just now
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 485 
 
 that she heard from him, at his post, a short time ago, to the 
 effect that he had seen in a newspaper a statement she was 
 going to do Juliet and that he firmly intended, though the 
 ways and means were not clear to him (his leave of absence 
 hadn't yet come out, and he couldn't be sure when it would 
 come), to be present on her first night : therefore she must do 
 him the service to keep a seat for him. She thought this a 
 speech rather in the air, so that in the midst of all her cares 
 she took no particular pains about the matter. She had an 
 idea she had really done with him for a long time. But this 
 afternoon what does he do but telegraph her from Southampton 
 that he keeps his appointment and counts upon her for a stall 1 
 Unless she had got back mine she wouldn't have been able to 
 accommodate him. "When she was in Rosedale Road this 
 morning she hadn't received his telegram ; but his promise, his 
 threat, whatever it was, came back to her ; she had a sort of 
 foreboding and thought that, on the chance, she had better 
 have something ready. When she got home she found his 
 telegram, and she told me that he was the first person she saw 
 in the house, through her fright, when she came on in the 
 second act. It appears she was terrified this time, and it 
 lasted half through the play." 
 
 " She must be rather annoyed at his having gone away," 
 Miss Tressilian observed. 
 
 " Annoyed 1 I'm not so sure ! " laughed Nick. 
 
 " Ah, here he comes back ! " cried Biddy, behind her fan, as 
 the absentee edged into his seat in time for the fifth act. lie 
 stood there a moment, first looking round the theatre ; then 
 he turned his eyes upon the box occupied by his relatives, 
 smiling and waving his hand. 
 
 "After that he'll surely come and see you," said Miss 
 Tressilian. 
 
 " We shall see him as we go out," Biddy replied : " he must 
 lose no more time." 
 
 Nick looked at him with a glass ; then he exclaimed : " Well, 
 I'm glad he has pulled himself together ! " 
 
 " Why, what's the matter with him, since he wasn't dis- 
 appointed in his seat ? " Miss Tressilian demanded. 
 
 " The matter 'with him is that a couple of hours ago he had 
 a great shock." 
 
 " A great shock ? " 
 
 " I may as well mention it at last," Nick went on. " I had 
 to say something to him in the lobby there, when we met- 
 something I was pretty sure he couldn't like. I let him have
 
 486 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 it full in the face it seemed to me better and wiser. I told 
 him Juliet's married." 
 
 " Didn't he know it ? " asked Biddy, who, with her face 
 raised, had listened in deep stillness to every word that fell 
 from her brother. 
 
 " How should he have known it ? It has only just happened, 
 and they've been so clever, for reasons of their own (those 
 people move among a lot of considerations that are absolutely 
 foreign to us), about keeping it out of the papers. They put 
 in a lot of lies, and they leave out the real things." 
 
 " You don't mean to say Mr. Sherringham wanted to 
 marry her ! " Miss Tressilian ejaculated. 
 
 "Don't ask me what he wanted I dare say we shall never 
 know. One thing is very certain : that he didn't like my 
 news and that I sha'n't soon forget the look in his face as he 
 turned away from me, slipping out into the street. He was 
 too much upset he couldn't trust himself to come back ; he 
 had to walk about he tried to walk it off." 
 
 " Let us hope he has walked it off ! " 
 
 " Ah, poor fellow he couldn't hold out to the end ; he has 
 had to come back and look at her once more. He knows 
 she'll be sublime in these last scenes." 
 
 " Is he so much in love with her as that ? What difference 
 does it make, with an actress, if she is mar ? " But in this 
 rash inquiry Miss Tressilian suddenly checked herself. 
 
 " We shall probably never know how much he has been in 
 love with her nor what difference it makes. We shall never 
 know exactly what he came back for, nor why he couldn't 
 stand it out there any longer without relief, nor why he 
 scrambled down here all but straight from the station, nor 
 why, after all, for the last two hours, he has been roaming the 
 streets. And it doesn't matter, for it's none of our business. 
 But I'm sorry for him she is going to be sublime," Nick 
 added. The curtain was rising on the tragic climax of the play. 
 
 Miriam Rooth was sublime ; yet it may be confided to the 
 reader that during these supreme scenes Bridget Dormer 
 directed her eyes less to the inspired actress than to a figure 
 in the stalls who sat with his own gaze fastened to the stage. 
 It may further be intimated that Peter Sherringham, though 
 he saw but a fragment of the performance, read clear at the 
 last, in the intense light of genius that this fragment shed, 
 that even so, after all, he had been rewarded for his for- 
 midable journey. The great trouble of his infatuation 
 subsided, leaving behind it something tolerably deep and pure.
 
 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 487 
 
 This assuagement was far from being immediate, but it was 
 helped on, unexpectedly to him, it began to dawn at least, the 
 very next night he saw the play, when he sat through the 
 whole of it. Then he felt somehow recalled to reality by the 
 very perfection of the representation. He began to come back 
 to it from a period of miserable madness. He had been baffled, 
 he had got his answer ; it must last him that was plain. 
 He didn't fully accept it the first week or the second ; but he 
 accepted it sooner than he would have supposed had he known 
 what it was to be when he paced at night, under the southern 
 sters, the deck of the ship that was bringing him to England. ' 
 
 It had been, as we know, Miss Tressilian's view,, and even 
 Biddy's, that evening, that Peter Sherringham would join 
 them as they left the theatre. This view however was not 
 confirmed by the event, for the gentleman in question vanished 
 utterly (disappointingly crude behaviour on the part of a 
 young diplomatist who had distinguished himself), before any 
 one could put a hand on him. And he failed to make up for 
 his crudity by coming to see any one the next day, or even 
 the next. Indeed many days elapsed, and very little would 
 have been known about him had it not been that, in the 
 country, Mrs. Dallow knew. What Mrs. Dallow knew was 
 eventually known to Biddy Dormer ; and in this way it could 
 be established in his favour that he had remained some extra- 
 ordinarily small number of days in London, had almost 
 directly gone over to Paris to see his old chief. He came 
 back from Paris Biddy knew this not from Mrs. Dallow, but 
 in a much more immediate way : she knew it by his pressing 
 the little electric button at the door of Florence Tressilian's 
 flat, one day when the good Florence was out and she herself 
 was at home. He made on this occasion a very long visit. 
 The good Florence knew it not much later, you may be sure 
 (and how he had got their address from Nick), and she took 
 an extravagant satisfaction in it. Mi. Sherringham had never 
 been to see her the like of her in his life : therefore it was 
 clear what had made him begin. "When he had once begun 
 he kept it up, and Miss Tressilian's satisfaction increased. 
 
 Good as she was she could remember without the slightest 
 relenting what Nick Dormer had repeated to them at the 
 theatre about Peter's present post's being a beastly place. 
 However, she was not bound to make a stand at this if persons 
 more nearly concerned, Lady Agnes and the girl herself, didn't 
 mind it. How little they minded it, and Grace, and Julia 
 Dallow, and even Nick, was proved in the course of a meeting
 
 488 THE TRAGIC MUSE. 
 
 that took place at Harsh during the Easter holidays. Mrs. 
 Dallow had a small and intimate party to celebrate her 
 brother's betrothal. The two ladies came over from Broad- 
 wood ; even Nick, for two days, went back to his old hunting- 
 ground, and Miss Tressilian relinquished for as long a time 
 the delights of her newly-arranged flat. Peter Sherringham 
 obtained an extension of leave, so that he might go back to 
 his legation with a wife. Fortunately, as it turned out, Biddy's 
 ordeal, in the more or less torrid zone, was not cruelly 
 prolonged, for the pair have already received a superior 
 appointment. It is Lady Agnes's proud opinion that her 
 daughter is even now shaping their destiny. I say " even 
 now," for these facts bring me very close to contemporary 
 history. During those two days at Harsh Nick arranged 
 with Julia Dallow the conditions, as they might be called, 
 under which she should sit to him ; and every one will 
 remember in how recent an exhibition general attention was 
 attracted, as the newspapers said in describing the private 
 view, to the noble portrait of a lady which was the final 
 outcome of that arrangement. Gabriel Nash had been at 
 many a private view, but he was not at that one. 
 
 These matters are highly recent however, as I say ; so that 
 in glancing about the little circle of the interests I have tried 
 to evoke I am suddenly warned by a sharp sense of modern- 
 ness. This renders it difficult for me, for example, in taking 
 leave of our wonderful Miriam, to do much more than allude 
 to the general impression that her remarkable career is even 
 yet only in its early prime. Basil Dashwood has got his 
 theatre, and his wife (people know now she is his wife) has 
 added three or four new parts to her repertory ; but every one 
 is agreed that both in public and in private she has a great 
 deal more to show. This is equally true of Nick Dormer, in 
 regard to whom I may finally say that his friend Nash's 
 predictions about his reunion with Mrs. Dallow have not up 
 to this time been justified. On the other hand, I must not 
 omit to add, this lady has not, at the latest accounts, married 
 Mr. Macgeorge. It is very true there has been a rumour 
 that Mr. Macgeorge is worried about her has even ceased 
 to believe in her. 
 
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