IV

Peter's meeting with Nick was of the friendliest on both sides,

involving a great many "dear fellows" and "old boys," and his salutation

to the younger of the Miss Dormers consisted of the frankest "Delighted

to see you, my dear Bid!" There was no kissing, but there was cousinship

in the air, of a conscious, living kind, as Gabriel Nash doubtless

quickly noted, hovering for a moment outside the group. Biddy said

nothing to Peter Sherringham, but there was no flatness in a silence

which heaved, as it were, with the fairest physiognomic portents. Nick

introduced Gabriel Nash to his mother and to the other two as "a

delightful old friend" whom he had just come across, and Sherringham

acknowledged the act by saying to Mr. Nash, but as if rather less for

his sake than for that of the presenter: "I've seen you very often

before."

"Ah repetition--recurrence: we haven't yet, in the study of how to live,

abolished that clumsiness, have we?" Mr. Nash genially inquired. "It's a

poverty in the supernumeraries of our stage that we don't pass once for

all, but come round and cross again like a procession or an army at the

theatre. It's a sordid economy that ought to have been managed better.

The right thing would be just _one_ appearance, and the procession,

regardless of expense, for ever and for ever different." The company was

occupied in placing itself at table, so that the only disengaged

attention for the moment was Grace's, to whom, as her eyes rested on

him, the young man addressed these last words with a smile. "Alas, it's

a very shabby idea, isn't it? The world isn't got up regardless of

expense!"

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

Pinks is dead."

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

sit.

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

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

cheerfully, still unseated.

"Julia wants me? I'm much obliged to her!" Nick absently said. "Nash,

please sit by my mother, with Peter on her other side."

"My dear, it isn't Julia"--Lady Agnes spoke earnestly. "Every one wants

you. Haven't you heard from your people? Didn't you know the seat was

vacant?"

Nick was looking round the table to see what was on it. "Upon my word I

don't remember. What else have you ordered, mother?"

"There's some _boeuf braise_, my dear, and afterwards some galantine.

Here's a dish of eggs with asparagus-tips."

"I advise you to go in for it, Nick," said Peter Sherringham, to whom

the preparation in question was presented.

"Into the eggs with asparagus-tips? _Donnez m'en s'il vous plait_. My

dear fellow, how can I stand? how can I sit? Where's the money to come

from?"

"The money? Why from Jul----!" Grace began, but immediately caught her

mother's eye.

"Poor Julia, how you do work her!" Nick exclaimed. "Nash, I recommend

you the asparagus-tips. Mother, he's my best friend--do look after him."

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

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

"The money can be managed; the expenses are very small and the seat's

certain," Lady Agnes pursued, not apparently heeding her son's

injunction in respect to Nash.

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

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

Biddy was seated next to Mr. Nash, so that she could take occasion to

ask, "Who are the beautiful ladies?" as if she failed to recognise her

brother's allusion. In reality this was an innocent trick: she was more

curious than she could have given a suitable reason for about the odd

women from whom her neighbour had lately separated.

"Deluded, misguided, infatuated persons!" Mr. Nash replied,

understanding that she had asked for a description. "Strange eccentric,

almost romantic, types. Predestined victims, simple-minded sacrificial

lambs!"

This was copious, yet it was vague, so that Biddy could only respond:

"Oh all that?" But meanwhile Peter Sherringham said to Nick: "Julia's

here, you know. You must go and see her."

Nick looked at him an instant rather hard, as if to say: "You too?" But

Peter's eyes appeared to answer, "No, no, not I"; upon which his cousin

rejoined: "Of course I'll go and see her. I'll go immediately. Please to

thank her for thinking of me."

"Thinking of you? There are plenty to think of you!" Lady Agnes said.

"There are sure to be telegrams at home. We must go back--we must go

back!"

"We must go back to England?" Nick Dormer asked; and as his mother made

no answer he continued: "Do you mean I must go to Harsh?"

Her ladyship evaded this question, inquiring of Mr. Nash if he would

have a morsel of fish; but her gain was small, for this gentleman,

struck again by the unhappy name of the bereaved constituency, only

broke out: "Ah what a place to represent! How can you--how can you?"

"It's an excellent place," said Lady Agnes coldly. "I imagine you've

never been there. It's a very good place indeed. It belongs very largely

to my cousin, Mrs. Dallow."

Gabriel partook of the fish, listening with interest. "But I thought we

had no more pocket-boroughs."

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

Harshes," Nick Dormer observed.

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

majesty.

Peter Sherringham also addressed him with an "Oh it's all right; they

come down on you like a shot!" and the young man continued ingenuously:

"Do you mean to say you've to pay money to get into that awful

place--that it's not _you_ who are paid?"

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

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

"My dear Nash, you're delightful: don't leave me--don't leave me!" Nick

cried; while his mother looked at him with an eye that demanded: "Who in

the world's this extraordinary person?"

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

Mr. Nash's facial radiance rested on him. "Why, boroughs that filled

your pocket. To do that sort of thing without a bribe--_c'est trop

fort!_"

"He lives at Samarcand," Nick Dormer explained to his mother, who

flushed perceptibly. "What do you advise me? I'll do whatever you say,"

he went on to his old acquaintance.

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

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

counsel," said Peter Sherringham.

Mr. Nash smiled across the table at his host. "The lady first--the lady

first! I've not a word to suggest as against any idea of hers."

"We mustn't sit here too long, there'll be so much to do," said Lady

Agnes anxiously, perceiving a certain slowness in the service of the

_boeuf braise_.

Biddy had been up to this moment mainly occupied in looking, covertly

and in snatches, at Peter Sherringham; as was perfectly lawful in a

young lady with a handsome cousin whom she had not seen for more than a

year. But her sweet voice now took license to throw in the words: "We

know what Mr. Nash thinks of politics: he told us just now he thinks

them dreadful."

"No, not dreadful--only inferior," the personage impugned protested.

"Everything's relative."

"Inferior to what?" Lady Agnes demanded.

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

question."

"Nothing else is in question!" said her ladyship in a tone that would

have been triumphant if it had not been so dry.

"Ah then!" And her neighbour shook his head sadly. He turned after this

to Biddy. "The ladies whom I was with just now and in whom you were so

good as to express an interest?" Biddy gave a sign of assent and he went

on: "They're persons theatrical. The younger one's trying to go upon the

stage."

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

nearly right.

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

of the arts."

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

this.

"Dear no, I won't say that. I think the Theatre Francais a greater

institution than the House of Commons."

"I agree with you there!" laughed Sherringham; "all the more that I

don't consider the dramatic art a low one. It seems to me on the

contrary to include all the others."

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

"Of your friends?"

"Two ladies--old acquaintances--whom I met in Paris a week ago and whom

I've just been spending an hour with in this place."

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

cousin.

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

theatre."

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

Nash.

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

Before Nash had had time to answer Biddy had interposed with a sigh.

"How I wish I could go--but in Paris I can't!"

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

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

than the pictures."

"Oh, we'll arrange that: they shall do one at the Francais on purpose

for a delightful little yearning English girl."

"Can you make them?"

"I can make them do anything I choose."

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

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

Sherringham gaily opined.

Lady Agnes had withdrawn herself from between him and her other guest

and, to signify that she at least had finished eating, had gone to sit

by her son, whom she held, with some importunity, in conversation. But

hearing the theatre talked of she threw across an impersonal challenge

to the paradoxical young man. "Pray should you think it better for a

gentleman to be an actor?"

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

actor more honest?"

Lady Agnes turned to her son and brought forth with spirit: "Think of

your great father, Nicholas!"

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

stand it."

Peter Sherringham judged the colloquy to have taken an uncomfortable

twist, though not wholly, as it seemed to him, by the act of Nick's

queer comrade. To draw it back to safer ground he said to this

personage: "May I ask if the ladies you just spoke of are English--Mrs.

and Miss Rooth: isn't that the rather odd name?"

"The very same. Only the daughter, according to her kind, desires to be

known by some _nom de guerre_ before she has even been able to enlist."

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

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

sort."

"What then is her own name?"

"Miriam--Miriam Rooth. It would do very well and would give her the

benefit of the prepossessing fact that--to the best of my belief at

least--she's more than half a Jewess."

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

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

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

laughed.

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

Miriam Rooth.

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

"Ah you may judge for yourself," Nash rejoined, "if you'll come

to-morrow afternoon to Madame Carre, Rue de Constantinople, _a

l'entresol_."

"Madame Carre? Why, I've already a note from her--I found it this

morning on my return to Paris--asking me to look in at five o'clock and

listen to a _jeune Anglaise_."

"That's my arrangement--I obtained the favour. The ladies want an

opinion, and dear old Carre has consented to see them and to give one.

Maud Vavasour will recite, and the venerable artist will pass

judgement."

Sherringham remembered he had his note in his pocket and took it out to

look it over. "She wishes to make her a little audience--she says she'll

do better with that--and she asks me because I'm English. I shall make a

point of going."

"And bring Dormer if you can: the audience will be better. Will you

come, Dormer?" Mr. Nash continued, appealing to his friend--"will you

come with me to hear an English amateur recite and an old French actress

pitch into her?"

Nick looked round from his talk with his mother and Grace. "I'll go

anywhere with you so that, as I've told you, I mayn't lose sight of

you--may keep hold of you."

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

inquire.

"He steadies me, mother."

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

cousin.

"To spend an hour with an old French actress? Do _you_ want to go upon

the stage?" the young man asked.

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

"Madame Carre's wonderful in her way, but she's hardly company for a

little English girl."

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

of."

"For a professional purpose and with her good mother," smiled Mr. Nash.

"I think Lady Agnes would hardly venture----!"

"Oh I've seen her good mother!" said Biddy as if she had her impression

of what the worth of that protection might be.

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

Biddy was wistful still. "Is it the famous Honorine Carre, the great

celebrity?"

"Honorine in person: the incomparable, the perfect!" said Peter

Sherringham. "The first artist of our time, taking her altogether. She

and I are old pals; she has been so good as to come and 'say'

things--which she does sometimes still _dans le monde_ as no one else

_can_--- in my rooms."

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

"One of these days!"

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

Sherringham looked at Nash and the latter was bland. "Oh you'll have no

difficulty. She'll jump at it!"

"Very good. I'll give a little artistic tea--with Julia too of course.

And you must come, Mr. Nash." This gentleman promised with an

inclination, and Peter continued: "But if, as you say, you're not for

helping the young lady, how came you to arrange this interview with the

great model?"

"Precisely to stop her short. The great model will find her very bad.

Her judgements, as you probably know, are Rhadamanthine."

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

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

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

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

Peter declared.

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

Gabriel Nash.

"Then she isn't stupid."

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

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

them all."

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

"She has spent her life on the Continent; she has wandered about with

her mother; she has picked up things."

"And is she a lady?" Biddy asked.

"Oh tremendous! The great ones of the earth on the mother's side. On the

father's, on the other hand, I imagine, only a Jew stockbroker in the

City."

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

"Ought to be--ah there's the bitterness! The stockbroker had too short a

go--he was carried off in his flower. However, he left his wife a

certain property, which she appears to have muddled away, not having the

safeguard of being herself a Hebrew. This is what she has lived on till

to-day--this and another resource. Her husband, as she has often told

me, had the artistic temperament: that's common, as you know, among _ces

messieurs_. He made the most of his little opportunities and collected

various pictures, tapestries, enamels, porcelains, and similar gewgaws.

He parted with them also, I gather, at a profit; in short he carried on

a neat little business as a _brocanteur_. It was nipped in the bud, but

Mrs. Rooth was left with a certain number of these articles in her

hands; indeed they must have formed her only capital. She was not a

woman of business; she turned them, no doubt, to indifferent account;

but she sold them piece by piece, and they kept her going while her

daughter grew up. It was to this precarious traffic, conducted with

extraordinary mystery and delicacy, that, five years ago, in Florence, I

was indebted for my acquaintance with her. In those days I used to

collect--heaven help me!--I used to pick up rubbish which I could ill

afford. It was a little phase--we have our little phases, haven't we?"

Mr. Nash asked with childlike trust--"and I've come out on the other

side. Mrs. Rooth had an old green pot and I heard of her old green pot.

To hear of it was to long for it, so that I went to see it under cover

of night. I bought it and a couple of years ago I overturned and smashed

it. It was the last of the little phase. It was not, however, as you've

seen, the last of Mrs. Rooth. I met her afterwards in London, and I

found her a year or two ago in Venice. She appears to be a great

wanderer. She had other old pots, of other colours, red, yellow, black,

or blue--she could produce them of any complexion you liked. I don't

know whether she carried them about with her or whether she had little

secret stores in the principal cities of Europe. To-day at any rate they

seem all gone. On the other hand she has her daughter, who has grown up

and who's a precious vase of another kind--less fragile I hope than the

rest. May she not be overturned and smashed!"

Peter Sherringham and Biddy Dormer listened with attention to this

history, and the girl testified to the interest with which she had

followed it by saying when Mr. Nash had ceased speaking: "A Jewish

stockbroker, a dealer in curiosities: what an odd person to marry--for a

person who was well born! I daresay he was a German."

"His name must have been simply Roth, and the poor lady, to smarten it

up, has put in another _o_," Sherringham ingeniously suggested.

"You're both very clever," said Gabriel, "and Rudolf Roth, as I happen

to know, was indeed the designation of Maud Vavasour's papa. But so far

as the question of derogation goes one might as well drown as

starve--for what connexion is _not_ a misalliance when one happens to

have the unaccommodating, the crushing honour of being a Neville-Nugent

of Castle Nugent? That's the high lineage of Maud's mamma. I seem to

have heard it mentioned that Rudolf Roth was very versatile and, like

most of his species, not unacquainted with the practice of music. He had

been employed to teach the harmonium to Miss Neville-Nugent and she had

profited by his lessons. If his daughter's like him--and she's not like

her mother--he was darkly and dangerously handsome. So I venture rapidly

to reconstruct the situation."

A silence, for the moment, had fallen on Lady Agnes and her other two

children, so that Mr. Nash, with his universal urbanity, practically

addressed these last remarks to them as well as to his other auditors.

Lady Agnes looked as if she wondered whom he was talking about, and

having caught the name of a noble residence she inquired: "Castle

Nugent--where in the world's that?"

"It's a domain of immeasurable extent and almost inconceivable

splendour, but I fear not to be found in any prosaic earthly geography!"

Lady Agnes rested her eyes on the tablecloth as if she weren't sure a

liberty had not been taken with her, or at least with her "order," and

while Mr. Nash continued to abound in descriptive suppositions--"It must

be on the banks of the Manzanares or the Guadalquivir"--Peter

Sherringham, whose imagination had seemingly been kindled by the sketch

of Miriam Rooth, took up the argument and reminded him that he had a

short time before assigned a low place to the dramatic art and had not

yet answered the question as to whether he believed in the theatre.

Which gave the speaker a further chance. "I don't know that I understand

your question; there are different ways of taking it. Do I think it's

important? Is that what you mean? Important certainly to managers and

stage-carpenters who want to make money, to ladies and gentlemen who

want to produce themselves in public by limelight, and to other ladies

and gentlemen who are bored and stupid and don't know what to do with

their evening. It's a commercial and social convenience which may be

infinitely worked. But important artistically, intellectually? How _can_

it be--so poor, so limited a form?"

"Upon my honour it strikes me as rich and various! Do _you_ think it's a

poor and limited form, Nick?" Sherringham added, appealing to his

kinsman.

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

This answer of the hope of the Dormers drew the eyes of his mother and

sisters to him and caused his friend to exclaim that he wasn't used to

such responsibilities--so few people had ever tested his presence of

mind by agreeing with him. "Oh I used to be of your way of feeling,"

Nash went on to Sherringham. "I understand you perfectly. It's a phase

like another. I've been through it--_j'ai ete comme ca._"

"And you went then very often to the Theatre Francais, and it was there

I saw you. I place you now."

"I'm afraid I noticed none of the other spectators," Nash explained. "I

had no attention but for the great Carre--she was still on the stage.

Judge of my infatuation, and how I can allow for yours, when I tell you

that I sought her acquaintance, that I couldn't rest till I had told her

how I hung upon her lips."

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

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

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

"And we've remained very good friends."

"So have we!" laughed Sherringham. "And such perfect art as hers--do you

mean to say you don't consider _that_ important, such a rare dramatic

intelligence?"

"I'm afraid you read the _feuilletons_. You catch their phrases"--Nash

spoke with pity. "Dramatic intelligence is never rare; nothing's more

common."

"Then why have we so many shocking actors?"

"Have we? I thought they were mostly good; succeeding more easily and

more completely in that business than in anything else. What could they

do--those people generally--if they didn't do that poor thing? And

reflect that the poor thing enables them to succeed! Of course, always,

there are numbers of people on the stage who are no actors at all, for

it's even easier to our poor humanity to be ineffectively stupid and

vulgar than to bring down the house."

"It's not easy, by what I can see, to produce, completely, any artistic

effect," Sherringham declared; "and those the actor produces are among

the most momentous we know. You'll not persuade me that to watch such an

actress as Madame Carre wasn't an education of the taste, an enlargement

of one's knowledge."

"She did what she could, poor woman, but in what belittling, coarsening

conditions! She had to interpret a character in a play, and a character

in a play--not to say the whole piece: I speak more particularly of

modern pieces--is such a wretchedly small peg to hang anything on! The

dramatist shows us so little, is so hampered by his audience, is

restricted to so poor an analysis."

"I know the complaint. It's all the fashion now. The _raffines_ despise

the theatre," said Peter Sherringham in the manner of a man abreast with

the culture of his age and not to be captured by a surprise. "_Connu,

connu_!"

"It will be known better yet, won't it? when the essentially brutal

nature of the modern audience is still more perceived, when it has been

properly analysed: the _omnium gatherum_ of the population of a big

commercial city at the hour of the day when their taste is at its

lowest, flocking out of hideous hotels and restaurants, gorged with

food, stultified with buying and selling and with all the other sordid

preoccupations of the age, squeezed together in a sweltering mass,

disappointed in their seats, timing the author, timing the actor,

wishing to get their money back on the spot--all before eleven o'clock.

Fancy putting the exquisite before such a tribunal as that! There's not

even a question of it. The dramatist wouldn't if he could, and in nine

cases out of ten he couldn't if he would. He has to make the basest

concessions. One of his principal canons is that he must enable his

spectators to catch the suburban trains, which stop at 11.30. What would

you think of any other artist--the painter or the novelist--whose

governing forces should be the dinner and the suburban trains? The old

dramatists didn't defer to them--not so much at least--and that's why

they're less and less actable. If they're touched--the large loose

men--it's only to be mutilated and trivialised. Besides, they had a

simpler civilisation to represent--societies in which the life of man

was in action, in passion, in immediate and violent expression. Those

things could be put upon the playhouse boards with comparatively little

sacrifice of their completeness and their truth. To-day we're so

infinitely more reflective and complicated and diffuse that it makes all

the difference. What can you do with a character, with an idea, with a

feeling, between dinner and the suburban trains? You can give a gross,

rough sketch of them, but how little you touch them, how bald you leave

them! What crudity compared with what the novelist does!"

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

"No, but I read them when they're extraordinarily good, and I don't go

to plays. I read Balzac for instance--I encounter the admirable portrait

of Valerie Marneffe in _La Cousine Bette_."

"And you contrast it with the poverty of Emile Augier's Seraphine in

_Les Lionnes Pauvres_? I was awaiting you there. That's the _cheval de

bataille_ of you fellows."

"What an extraordinary discussion! What dreadful authors!" Lady Agnes

murmured to her son. But he was listening so attentively to the other

young men that he made no response, and Peter Sherringham went on:

"I've seen Madame Carre in things of the modern repertory, which she has

made as vivid to me, caused to abide as ineffaceably in my memory, as

Valerie Marneffe. She's the Balzac, as one may say, of actresses."

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

substitute.

It might have been guessed that Sherringham resented his damned freedom,

yet could but emulate his easy form. "You'd be magnanimous if you

thought the young lady you've introduced to our old friend would be

important."

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

will be."

Lady Agnes, however, got up to terminate the scene and even to signify

that enough had been said about people and questions she had never so

much as heard of. Every one else rose, the waiter brought Nicholas the

receipt of the bill, and Sherringham went on, to his interlocutor:

"Perhaps she'll be more so than you think."

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

"A mystic voice seems to exhort me to do so, to whisper that though I've

never seen her I shall find something in her." On which Peter appealed.

"What do you say, Biddy--shall I take an interest in her?"

The girl faltered, coloured a little, felt a certain embarrassment in

being publicly treated as an oracle. "If she's not nice I don't advise

it."

"And if she _is_ nice?"

"You advise it still less!" her brother exclaimed, laughing and putting

his arm round her.

Lady Agnes looked sombre--she might have been saying to herself: "Heaven

help us, what chance has a girl of mine with a man who's so agog about

actresses?" She was disconcerted and distressed; a multitude of

incongruous things, all the morning, had been forced upon her

attention--displeasing pictures and still more displeasing theories

about them, vague portents of perversity on Nick's part and a strange

eagerness on Peter's, learned apparently in Paris, to discuss, with a

person who had a tone she never had been exposed to, topics irrelevant

and uninteresting, almost disgusting, the practical effect of which was

to make light of her presence. "Let us leave this--let us leave this!"

she grimly said. The party moved together toward the door of departure,

and her ruffled spirit was not soothed by hearing her son remark to his

terrible friend: "You know you don't escape me; I stick to you!"

At this Lady Agnes broke out and interposed. "Pardon my reminding you

that you're going to call on Julia."

"Well, can't Nash also come to call on Julia? That's just what I

want--that she should see him."

Peter Sherringham came humanely to his kinswoman's assistance. "A better

way perhaps will be for them to meet under my auspices at my 'dramatic

tea.' This will enable me to return one favour for another. If Mr. Nash

is so good as to introduce me to this aspirant for honours we estimate

so differently, I'll introduce him to my sister, a much more positive

quantity."

"It's easy to see who'll have the best of it!" Grace Dormer declared;

while Nash stood there serenely, impartially, in a graceful detached way

which seemed characteristic of him, assenting to any decision that

relieved him of the grossness of choice and generally confident that

things would turn out well for him. He was cheerfully helpless and

sociably indifferent; ready to preside with a smile even at a

discussion of his own admissibility.

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

continued.

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

Constantinople."

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

"Oh dear!" Biddy wailed as they went on again and Lady Agnes, seizing

his arm, marched off more quickly with her son. When they came out into

the Champs Elysees Nick Dormer, looking round, saw his friend had

disappeared. Biddy had attached herself to Peter, and Grace couldn't

have encouraged Mr. Nash.

V

Lady Agnes's idea had been that her son should go straight from the

Palais de l'Industrie to the Hotel de Hollande, with or without his

mother and his sisters as his humour should seem to recommend. Much as

she desired to see their valued Julia, and as she knew her daughters

desired it, she was quite ready to put off their visit if this sacrifice

should contribute to a speedy confrontation for Nick. She was anxious he

should talk with Mrs. Dallow, and anxious he should be anxious himself;

but it presently appeared that he was conscious of no pressure of

eagerness. His view was that she and the girls should go to their cousin

without delay and should, if they liked, spend the rest of the day in

her society. He would go later; he would go in the evening. There were

lots of things he wanted to do meanwhile.

This question was discussed with some intensity, though not at length,

while the little party stood on the edge of the Place de la Concorde, to

which they had proceeded on foot; and Lady Agnes noticed that the "lots

of things" to which he proposed to give precedence over an urgent duty,

a conference with a person who held out full hands to him, were implied

somehow in the friendly glance with which he covered the great square,

the opposite bank of the Seine, the steep blue roofs of the quay, the

bright immensity of Paris. What in the world could be more important

than making sure of his seat?--so quickly did the good lady's

imagination travel. And now that idea appealed to him less than a ramble

in search of old books and prints--since she was sure this was what he

had in his head. Julia would be flattered should she know it, but of

course she mustn't know it. Lady Agnes was already thinking of the least

injurious account she could give of the young man's want of

precipitation. She would have liked to represent him as tremendously

occupied, in his room at their own hotel, in getting off political

letters to every one it should concern, and particularly in drawing up

his address to the electors of Harsh. Fortunately she was a woman of

innumerable discretions, and a part of the worn look that sat in her

face came from her having schooled herself for years, in commerce with

her husband and her sons, not to insist unduly. She would have liked to

insist, nature had formed her to insist, and the self-control had told

in more ways than one. Even now it was powerless to prevent her

suggesting that before doing anything else Nick should at least repair

to the inn and see if there weren't some telegrams.

He freely consented to do as much as this, and, having called a cab that

she might go her way with the girls, kissed her again as he had done at

the exhibition. This was an attention that could never displease her,

but somehow when he kissed her she was really the more worried: she had

come to recognise it as a sign that he was slipping away from her, and

she wished she might frankly take it as his clutch at her to save him.

She drove off with a vague sense that at any rate she and the girls

might do something toward keeping the place warm for him. She had been a

little vexed that Peter had not administered more of a push toward the

Hotel de Hollande, clear as it had become to her now that there was a

foreignness in Peter which was not to be counted on and which made him

speak of English affairs and even of English domestic politics as local

and even "funny." They were very grandly local, and if one recalled, in

public life, an occasional droll incident wasn't that, liberally viewed,

just the warm human comfort of them? As she left the two young men

standing together in the middle of the Place de la Concorde, the grand

composition of which Nick, as she looked back, appeared to have paused

to admire--as if he hadn't seen it a thousand times!--she wished she

might have thought of Peter's influence with her son as exerted a little

more in favour of localism. She had a fear he wouldn't abbreviate the

boy's ill-timed _flanerie_. However, he had been very nice: he had

invited them all to dine with him that evening at a convenient cafe,

promising to bring Julia and one of his colleagues. So much as this he

had been willing to do to make sure Nick and his sister should meet. His

want of localism, moreover, was not so great as that if it should turn

out that there _was_ anything beneath his manner toward Biddy--! The

upshot of this reflexion might have been represented by the circumstance

of her ladyship's remarking after a minute to her younger daughter, who

sat opposite her in the _voiture de place_, that it would do no harm if

she should get a new hat and that the search might be instituted that

afternoon.

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

"I think they're really prettier here, you know," Biddy opined; and Lady

Agnes said simply: "I daresay they're cheaper." What was in her mind in

fact was: "I daresay Peter thinks them becoming." It will be seen she

had plenty of inward occupation, the sum of which was not lessened by

her learning when she reached the top of the Rue de la Paix that Mrs.

Dallow had gone out half an hour before and had left no message. She was

more disconcerted by this incident than she could have explained or than

she thought was right, as she had taken for granted Julia would be in a

manner waiting for them. How could she be sure Nick wasn't coming? When

people were in Paris a few days they didn't mope in the house, but she

might have waited a little longer or have left an explanation. Was she

then not so much in earnest about Nick's standing? Didn't she recognise

the importance of being there to see him about it? Lady Agnes wondered

if her behaviour were a sign of her being already tired of the way this

young gentleman treated her. Perhaps she had gone out because an

instinct told her that the great propriety of their meeting early would

make no difference with him--told her he wouldn't after all come. His

mother's heart sank as she glanced at this possibility that their

precious friend was already tired, she having on her side an intuition

that there were still harder things in store. She had disliked having to

tell Mrs. Dallow that Nick wouldn't see her till the evening, but now

she disliked still more her not being there to hear it. She even

resented a little her kinswoman's not having reasoned that she and the

girls would come in any event, and not thought them worth staying in

for. It came up indeed that she would perhaps have gone to their hotel,

which was a good way up the Rue de Rivoli, near the Palais Royal--on

which the cabman was directed to drive to that establishment.

As he jogged along she took in some degree the measure of what that

might mean, Julia's seeking a little to avoid them. Was she growing to

dislike them? Did she think they kept too sharp an eye on her, so that

the idea of their standing in a still closer relation wouldn't be

enticing? Her conduct up to this time had not worn such an appearance,

unless perhaps a little, just a very little, in the matter of her ways

with poor Grace. Lady Agnes knew she wasn't particularly fond of poor

Grace, and could even sufficiently guess the reason--the manner in which

Grace betrayed most how they wanted to make sure of her. She remembered

how long the girl had stayed the last time she had been at Harsh--going

for an acceptable week and dragging out her visit to a month. She took a

private heroic vow that Grace shouldn't go near the place again for a

year; not, that is, unless Nick and Julia were married within the time.

If that were to happen she shouldn't care. She recognised that it wasn't

absolutely everything Julia should be in love with Nick; it was also

better she should dislike his mother and sisters after a probable

pursuit of him than before. Lady Agnes did justice to the natural rule

in virtue of which it usually comes to pass that a woman doesn't get on

with her husband's female belongings, and was even willing to be

sacrificed to it in her disciplined degree. But she desired not to be

sacrificed for nothing: if she was to be objected to as a mother-in-law

she wished to be the mother-in-law first.

At the hotel in the Rue de Rivoli she had the disappointment of finding

that Mrs. Dallow had not called, and also that no telegrams had come.

She went in with the girls for half an hour and then straggled out with

them again. She was undetermined and dissatisfied and the afternoon was

rather a problem; of the kind, moreover, that she disliked most and was

least accustomed to: not a choice between different things to do--her

life had been full of that--but a want of anything to do at all. Nick

had said to her before they separated: "You can knock about with the

girls, you know; everything's amusing here." That was easily said while

he sauntered and gossiped with Peter Sherringham and perhaps went to

see more pictures like those in the Salon. He was usually, on such

occasions, very good-natured about spending his time with them; but this

episode had taken altogether a perverse, profane form. She had no desire

whatever to knock about and was far from finding everything in Paris

amusing. She had no aptitude for aimlessness, and moreover thought it

vulgar. If she had found Julia's card at the hotel--the sign of a hope

of catching them just as they came back from the Salon--she would have

made a second attempt to see her before the evening; but now certainly

they would leave her alone. Lady Agnes wandered joylessly with the girls

in the Palais Royal and the Rue de Richelieu, and emerged upon the

Boulevard, where they continued their frugal prowl, as Biddy rather

irritatingly called it. They went into five shops to buy a hat for

Biddy, and her ladyship's presumptions of cheapness were woefully

belied.

"Who in the world's your comic friend?" Peter Sherringham was meanwhile

asking of his kinsman as they walked together.

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

Gabriel Nash!"

"He sounds like an Elizabethan dramatist," Sherringham said. "But I

haven't lost him, since it appears now I shan't be able to have you

without him."

"Oh, as for that, wait a little. I'm going to try him again, but I don't

know how he wears. What I mean is that you've probably lost his

freshness, which was the great thing. I rather fear he's becoming

conventional, or at any rate serious."

"Bless me, do you call that serious?"

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

was a wonderful talker."

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

"Oh this is nothing. He had great flights of old, very great flights;

one saw him rise and rise and turn somersaults in the blue--one wondered

how far he could go. He's very intelligent, and I should think it might

be interesting to find out what it is that prevents the whole man from

being as good as his parts. I mean in case he isn't so good."

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

great an ass?"

"That would be the whole--I shall see in time--but it certainly isn't

one of the parts. It may be the effect, but it isn't the cause, and it's

for the cause I claim an interest. Do you think him an ass for what he

said about the theatre--his pronouncing it a coarse art?"

"To differ from you about him that reason would do," said Sherringham.

"The only bad one would be one that shouldn't preserve our difference.

You needn't tell me you agree with him, for frankly I don't care."

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

"My passion--?"

"I don't mean for any individual exponent of the equivocal art: mark the

guilty conscience, mark the rising blush, mark the confusion of mind! I

mean the old sign one knew you best by; your permanent stall at the

Francais, your inveterate attendance at _premieres_, the way you

'follow' the young talents and the old."

"Yes, it's still my little hobby, my little folly if you like,"

Sherringham said. "I don't find I get tired of it. What will you have?

Strong predilections are rather a blessing; they're simplifying. I'm

fond of representation--the representation of life: I like it better, I

think, than the real thing. You like it too, you'd be ready in other

conditions to go in for it, in your way--so you've no right to cast the

stone. You like it best done by one vehicle and I by another; and our

preference on either side has a deep root in us. There's a fascination

to me in the way the actor does it, when his talent--ah he must have

that!--has been highly trained. Ah it must _be_ that! The things he can

do in this effort at representation, with the dramatist to back him,

seem to me innumerable--he can carry it to a point!--and I take great

pleasure in observing them, in recognising and comparing them. It's an

amusement like another--I don't pretend to call it by any exalted name,

but in this vale of friction it will serve. One can lose one's self in

it, and it has the recommendation--in common, I suppose, with the study

of the other arts--that the further you go in it the more you find. So I

go rather far, if you will. But is it the principal sign one knows me

by?" Peter abruptly asked.

"Don't be ashamed of it," Nick returned--"else it will be ashamed of

you. I ought to discriminate. You're distinguished among my friends and

relations by your character of rising young diplomatist; but you know I

always want the final touch to the picture, the last fruit of analysis.

Therefore I make out that you're conspicuous among rising young

diplomatists for the infatuation you describe in such pretty terms."

"You evidently believe it will prevent my ever rising very high. But

pastime for pastime is it any idler than yours?"

"Than mine?"

"Why you've half-a-dozen while I only allow myself the luxury of one.

For the theatre's my sole vice, really. Is this more wanton, say, than

to devote weeks to the consideration of the particular way in which your

friend Mr. Nash may be most intensely a twaddler and a bore? That's not

my ideal of choice recreation, but I'd undertake to satisfy you about

him sooner. You're a young statesman--who happens to be an _en

disponibilite_ for the moment--but you spend not a little of your time

in besmearing canvas with bright-coloured pigments. The idea of

representation fascinates you, but in your case it's representation in

oils--or do you practise water-colours and pastel too? You even go much

further than I, for I study my art of predilection only in the works of

others. I don't aspire to leave works of my own. You're a painter,

possibly a great one; but I'm not an actor." Nick Dormer declared he

would certainly become one--he was so well on the way to it; and

Sherringham, without heeding this charge, went on: "Let me add that,

considering you _are_ a painter, your portrait of the complicated Nash

is lamentably dim."

"He's not at all complicated; he's only too simple to give an account

of. Most people have a lot of attributes and appendages that dress them

up and superscribe them, and what I like Gabriel for is that he hasn't

any at all. It makes him, it keeps him, so refreshingly cool."

"By Jove, you match him there! Isn't it an appendage and an attribute to

escape kicking? How does he manage that?" Sherringham asked.

"I haven't the least idea--I don't know that he doesn't rouse the

kicking impulse. Besides, he can kick back and I don't think any one has

ever seen him duck or dodge. His means, his profession, his belongings

have never anything to do with the question. He doesn't shade off into

other people; he's as neat as an outline cut out of paper with scissors.

I like him, therefore, because in dealing with him you know what you've

got hold of. With most men you don't: to pick the flower you must break

off the whole dusty, thorny, worldly branch; you find you're taking up

in your grasp all sorts of other people and things, dangling accidents

and conditions. Poor Nash has none of those encumbrances: he's the

solitary-fragrant blossom."

"My dear fellow, you'd be better for a little of the same pruning!"

Sherringham retorted; and the young men continued their walk and their

gossip, jerking each other this way and that, punching each other here

and there, with an amicable roughness consequent on their having, been

boys together. Intimacy had reigned of old between the little

Sherringhams and the little Dormers, united in the country by ease of

neighbouring and by the fact that there was first cousinship, not

neglected, among the parents, Lady Agnes standing in this plastic

relation to Lady Windrush, the mother of Peter and Julia as well as of

other daughters and of a maturer youth who was to inherit, and who since

then had inherited, the ancient barony. Many things had altered later

on, but not the good reasons for not explaining. One of our young men

had gone to Eton and the other to Harrow--the scattered school on the

hill was the tradition of the Dormers--and the divergence had rather

taken its course in university years. Bricket, however, had remained

accessible to Windrush, and Windrush to Bricket, to which estate

Percival Dormer had now succeeded, terminating the interchange a trifle

rudely by letting out that pleasant white house in the midlands--its

expropriated inhabitants, Lady Agnes and her daughters, adored it--to an

American reputed rich, who in the first flush of his sense of contrasts

considered that for twelve hundred a year he got it at a bargain.

Bricket had come to the late Sir Nicholas from his elder brother, dying

wifeless and childless. The new baronet, so different from his

father--though recalling at some points the uncle after whom he had

been named--that Nick had to make it up by cultivating conformity,

roamed about the world, taking shots which excited the enthusiasm of

society, when society heard of them, at the few legitimate creatures of

the chase the British rifle had up to that time spared. Lady Agnes

meanwhile settled with her girls in a gabled, latticed house in a

mentionable quarter, though it still required a little explaining, of

the temperate zone of London. It was not into her lap, poor woman, that

the revenues of Bricket were poured. There was no dower-house attached

to that moderate property, and the allowance with which the estate was

charged on her ladyship's behalf was not an incitement to grandeur.

Nick had a room under his mother's roof, which he mainly used to dress

for dinner when dining in Calcutta Gardens, and he had "kept on" his

chambers in the Temple; for to a young man in public life an independent

address was indispensable. Moreover, he was suspected of having a studio

in an out-of-the-way district, the indistinguishable parts of South

Kensington, incongruous as such a retreat might seem in the case of a

member of Parliament. It was an absurd place to see his constituents

unless he wanted to paint their portraits, a kind of "representation"

with which they would scarce have been satisfied; and in fact the only

question of portraiture had been when the wives and daughters of several

of them expressed a wish for the picture of their handsome young member.

Nick had not offered to paint it himself, and the studio was taken for

granted rather than much looked into by the ladies in Calcutta Gardens.

Too express a disposition to regard whims of this sort as extravagance

pure and simple was known by them to be open to correction; for they

were not oblivious that Mr. Carteret had humours which weighed against

them in the shape of convenient cheques nestling between the inside

pages of legible letters of advice. Mr. Carteret was Nick's providence,

just as Nick was looked to, in a general way, to be that of his mother

and sisters, especially since it had become so plain that Percy, who was

not subtly selfish, would operate, mainly with a "six-bore," quite out

of that sphere. It was not for studios certainly that Mr. Carteret sent

cheques; but they were an expression of general confidence in Nick, and

a little expansion was natural to a young man enjoying such a luxury as

that. It was sufficiently felt in Calcutta Gardens that he could be

looked to not to betray such confidence; for Mr. Carteret's behaviour

could have no name at all unless one were prepared to call it

encouraging. He had never promised anything, but he was one of the

delightful persons with whom the redemption precedes or dispenses with

the vow. He had been an early and lifelong friend of the late right

honourable gentleman, a political follower, a devoted admirer, a stanch

supporter in difficult hours. He had never married, espousing nothing

more reproductive than Sir Nicholas's views--he used to write letters to

the _Times_ in favour of them--and had, so far as was known, neither

chick nor child; nothing but an amiable little family of eccentricities,

the flower of which was his odd taste for living in a small, steep,

clean country town, all green gardens and red walls with a girdle of

hedge-rows, all clustered about an immense brown old abbey. When Lady

Agnes's imagination rested upon the future of her second son she liked

to remember that Mr. Carteret had nothing to "keep up": the inference

seemed so direct that he would keep up Nick.

The most important event in the life of this young man had been

incomparably his success, under his father's eyes, more than two years

before, in the sharp contest for Crockhurst--a victory which his

consecrated name, his extreme youth, his ardour in the fray, the marked

personal sympathy of the party, and the attention excited by the fresh

cleverness of his speeches, tinted with young idealism and yet sticking

sufficiently to the question--the burning question which has since

burned out--had made quite splendid. There had been leaders in the

newspapers about it, half in compliment to her husband, who was known to

be failing so prematurely--he was almost as young to die, and to die

famous, for Lady Agnes regarded it as famous, as his son had been to

stand--tributes the boy's mother religiously preserved, cut out and tied

together with a ribbon, in the innermost drawer of a favourite cabinet.

But it had been a barren, or almost a barren triumph, for in the order

of importance in Nick's history another incident had run it, as the

phrase is, very close: nothing less than the quick dissolution of the

Parliament in which he was so manifestly destined to give symptoms of a

future. He had not recovered his seat at the general election, for the

second contest was even sharper than the first and the Tories had put

forward a loud, vulgar, rattling, bullying, money-spending man. It was

to a certain extent a comfort that poor Sir Nicholas, who had been

witness of the bright hour, should have passed away before the darkness.

He died with all his hopes on his second son's head, unconscious of near

disappointment, handing on the torch and the tradition, after a long,

supreme interview with Nick at which Lady Agnes had not been present,

but which she knew to have been a thorough paternal dedication, an

august communication of ideas on the highest national questions (she had

reason to believe he had touched on those of external as well as of

domestic and of colonial policy) leaving on the boy's nature and manner

from that moment the most unmistakable traces. If his tendency to

reverie increased it was because he had so much to think over in what

his pale father had said to him in the hushed dim chamber, laying on him

the great mission that death had cut short, breathing into him with

unforgettable solemnity the very accents--Sir Nicholas's voice had been

wonderful for richness--that he was to sound again. It was work cut out

for a lifetime, and that "co-ordinating power in relation to detail"

which was one of the great characteristics of the lamented statesman's

high distinction--the most analytic of the weekly papers was always

talking about it--had enabled him to rescue the prospect from any shade

of vagueness or of ambiguity.

Five years before Nick Dormer went up to be questioned by the electors

of Crockhurst Peter Sherringham had appeared before a board of examiners

who let him off much less easily, though there were also some flattering

prejudices in his favour; such influences being a part of the copious,

light, unembarrassing baggage with which each of the young men began

life. Peter passed, however, passed high, and had his reward in prompt

assignment to small, subordinate, diplomatic duties in Germany. Since

then he had had his professional adventures, which need not arrest us,

inasmuch as they had all paled in the light of his appointment, nearly

three years previous to the moment of our making his acquaintance, to a

secretaryship of embassy in Paris. He had done well and had gone fast

and for the present could draw his breath at ease. It pleased him better

to remain in Paris as a subordinate than to go to Honduras as a

principal, and Nick Dormer had not put a false colour on the matter in

speaking of his stall at the Theatre Francais as a sedative to his

ambition. Nick's inferiority in age to his cousin sat on him more

lightly than when they had been in their teens; and indeed no one can

very well be much older than a young man who has figured for a year,

however imperceptibly, in the House of Commons. Separation and diversity

had made them reciprocally strange enough to give a price to what they

shared; they were friends without being particular friends; that further

degree could always hang before them as a suitable but not oppressive

contingency, and they were both conscious that it was in their interest

to keep certain differences to "chaff" each other about--so possible was

it that they might have quarrelled if they had had everything in common.

Peter, as being wide-minded, was a little irritated to find his cousin

always so intensely British, while Nick Dormer made him the object of

the same compassionate criticism, recognised in him a rare knack with

foreign tongues, but reflected, and even with extravagance declared,

that it was a pity to have gone so far from home only to remain so

homely. Moreover, Nick had his ideas about the diplomatic mind, finding

in it, for his own sympathy, always the wrong turn. Dry, narrow, barren,

poor he pronounced it in familiar conversation with the clever

secretary; wanting in imagination, in generosity, in the finest

perceptions and the highest courage. This served as well as anything

else to keep the peace between them; it was a necessity of their

friendly intercourse that they should scuffle a little, and it scarcely

mattered what they scuffled about. Nick Dormer's express enjoyment of

Paris, the shop-windows on the quays, the old books on the parapet, the

gaiety of the river, the grandeur of the Louvre, every fine feature of

that prodigious face, struck his companion as a sign of insularity; the

appreciation of such things having become with Sherringham an

unconscious habit, a contented assimilation. If poor Nick, for the

hour, was demonstrative and lyrical, it was because he had no other way

of sounding the note of farewell to the independent life of which the

term seemed now definitely in sight--the sense so pressed upon him that

these were the last moments of his freedom. He would waste time till

half-past seven, because half-past seven meant dinner, and dinner meant

his mother solemnly attended by the strenuous shade of his father and

re-enforced by Julia.