VI

When he arrived with the three members of his family at the restaurant

of their choice Peter Sherringham was already seated there by one of the

immaculate tables, but Mrs. Dallow was not yet on the scene, and they

had time for a sociable settlement--time to take their places and unfold

their napkins, crunch their rolls, breathe the savoury air, and watch

the door, before the usual raising of heads and suspension of forks, the

sort of stir that accompanied most of this lady's movements, announced

her entrance. The _dame de comptoir_ ducked and re-ducked, the people

looked round, Peter and Nick got up, there was a shuffling of

chairs--Julia had come. Peter was relating how he had stopped at her

hotel to bring her with him and had found her, according to her custom,

by no means ready; on which, fearing his guests would arrive first at

the rendezvous and find no proper welcome, he had come off without her,

leaving her to follow. He had not brought a friend, as he intended,

having divined that Julia would prefer a pure family party if she wanted

to talk about her candidate. Now she stood looking down at the table and

her expectant kinsfolk, drawing off her gloves, letting her brother draw

off her jacket, lifting her hands for some rearrangement of her hat. She

looked at Nick last, smiling, but only for a moment. She said to Peter:

"Are we going to dine here? Oh dear, why didn't you have a private

room?"

Nick had not seen her at all for several weeks and had seen her but

little for a year, but her off-hand cursory manner had not altered in

the interval. She spoke remarkably fast, as if speech were not in itself

a pleasure--to have it over as soon as possible; and her _brusquerie_

was of the dark shade friendly critics account for by pleading shyness.

Shyness had never appeared to him an ultimate quality or a real

explanation of anything; it only explained an effect by another effect,

neither with a cause to boast of. What he suspected in Julia was that

her mind was less pleasing than her person; an ugly, a really blighting

idea, which as yet he had but half accepted. It was a case in which she

was entitled to the benefit of every doubt and oughtn't to be judged

without a complete trial. Nick meanwhile was afraid of the trial--this

was partly why he had been of late to see her so little--because he was

afraid of the sentence, afraid of anything that might work to lessen the

charm it was actually in the power of her beauty to shed. There were

people who thought her rude, and he hated rude women. If he should

fasten on that view, or rather if that view should fasten on him, what

could still please and what he admired in her would lose too much of its

sweetness. If it be thought odd that he had not yet been able to read

the character of a woman he had known since childhood the answer is that

this character had grown faster than Nick's observation. The growth was

constant, whereas the observation was but occasional, though it had

begun early. If he had attempted inwardly to phrase the matter, as he

probably had not, he might have pronounced the effect she produced upon

him too much a compulsion; not the coercion of design, of importunity,

nor the vulgar pressure of family expectation, a betrayed desire he

should like her enough to marry her, but a mixture of divers urgent

things; of the sense that she was imperious and generous--probably more

the former than the latter--and of a certain prevision of doom, the

influence of the idea that he should come to it, that he was

predestined.

This had made him shrink from knowing the worst about her; not the wish

to get used to it in time, but what was more characteristic of him, the

wish to interpose a temporary illusion. Illusions and realities and

hopes and fears, however, fell into confusion whenever he met her after

a separation. The separation, so far as seeing her alone or as

continuous talk was concerned, had now been tolerably long; had lasted

really ever since his failure to regain his seat. An impression had come

to him that she judged that failure rather stiffly, had thought, and had

somewhat sharply said, that he ought to have done better. This was a

part of her imperious way, and a part not _all_ to be overlooked on a

mere present basis. If he were to marry her he should come to an

understanding with her: he should give her his own measure as well as

take hers. But the understanding might in the actual case suggest too

much that he _was_ to marry her. You could quarrel with your wife

because there were compensations--for her; but you mightn't be prepared

to offer these compensations as prepayment for the luxury of

quarrelling.

It was not that such a luxury wouldn't be considerable, our young man

none the less thought as Julia Dallow's fine head poised itself before

him again; a high spirit was of course better than a mawkish to be

mismated with, any day in the year. She had much the same colour as her

brother, but as nothing else in her face was the same the resemblance

was not striking. Her hair was of so dark a brown that it was commonly

regarded as black, and so abundant that a plain arrangement was required

to keep it in natural relation to the rest of her person. Her eyes were

of a grey sometimes pronounced too light, and were not sunken in her

face, but placed well on the surface. Her nose was perfect, but her

mouth was too small; and Nick Dormer, and doubtless other persons as

well, had sometimes wondered how with such a mouth her face could have

expressed decision. Her figure helped it, for she appeared tall--being

extremely slender--yet was not; and her head took turns and positions

which, though a matter of but half an inch out of the common this way or

that, somehow contributed to the air of resolution and temper. If it had

not been for her extreme delicacy of line and surface she might have

been called bold; but as it was she looked refined and quiet--refined by

tradition and quiet for a purpose. And altogether she was beautiful,

with the gravity of her elegant head, her hair like the depths of

darkness, her eyes like its earlier clearing, her mouth like a rare pink

flower.

Peter said he had not taken a private room because he knew Biddy's

tastes; she liked to see the world--she had told him so--the curious

people, the coming and going of Paris. "Oh anything for Biddy!" Julia

replied, smiling at the girl and taking her place. Lady Agnes and her

elder daughter exchanged one of their looks, and Nick exclaimed jocosely

that he didn't see why the whole party should be sacrificed to a

presumptuous child. The presumptuous child blushingly protested she had

never expressed any such wish to Peter, upon which Nick, with broader

humour, revealed that Peter had served them so out of stinginess: he had

pitchforked them together in the public room because he wouldn't go to

the expense of a _cabinet_. He had brought no guest, no foreigner of

distinction nor diplomatic swell, to honour them, and now they would see

what a paltry dinner he would give them. Peter stabbed him indignantly

with a long roll, and Lady Agnes, who seemed to be waiting for some

manifestation on Mrs. Dallow's part which didn't come, concluded, with a

certain coldness, that they quite sufficed to themselves for privacy as

well as for society. Nick called attention to this fine phrase of his

mother's and said it was awfully neat, while Grace and Biddy looked

harmoniously at Julia's clothes. Nick felt nervous and joked a good deal

to carry it off--a levity that didn't prevent Julia's saying to him

after a moment: "You might have come to see me to-day, you know. Didn't

you get my message from Peter?"

"Scold him, Julia--scold him well. I begged him to go," said Lady Agnes;

and to this Grace added her voice with an "Oh Julia, do give it to him!"

These words, however, had not the effect they suggested, since Mrs.

Dallow only threw off for answer, in her quick curt way, that that would

be making far too much of him. It was one of the things in her that Nick

mentally pronounced ungraceful, the perversity of pride or of shyness

that always made her disappoint you a little if she saw you expected a

thing. She snubbed effusiveness in a way that yet gave no interesting

hint of any wish to keep it herself in reserve. Effusiveness, however,

certainly, was the last thing of which Lady Agnes would have consented

to be accused; and Nick, while he replied to Julia that he was sure he

shouldn't have found her, was not unable to perceive the operation on

his mother of that shade of manner. "He ought to have gone; he owed you

that," she went on; "but it's very true he would have had the same luck

as we. I went with the girls directly after luncheon. I suppose you got

our card."

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

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

Nick returned.

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

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

serenely added.

"Well then, will you roam with me? Will you wander through Paris on my

arm?" Nick asked, smiling. "Will you take a drive with me?"

"Oh that would be perfection!" cried Grace.

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

said.

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

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

"Can't Peter take _us_?" demanded Grace. "Nick can take you home, mamma,

if Julia won't receive him, and I can look perfectly after Peter and

Biddy."

"Take them to something amusing; please take them," Mrs. Dallow said to

her brother. Her voice was kind, but had the expectation of assent in

it, and Nick observed both the good nature and the pressure. "You're

tired, poor dear," she continued to Lady Agnes. "Fancy your being

dragged about so! What did you come over for?"

"My mother came because I brought her," Nick said. "It's I who have

dragged her about. I brought her for a little change. I thought it would

do her good. I wanted to see the Salon."

"It isn't a bad time. I've a carriage and you must use it; you must use

nothing else. It shall take you everywhere. I'll drive you about

to-morrow." Julia dropped these words with all her air of being able

rather than of wanting; but Nick had already noted, and he noted now

afresh and with pleasure, that her lack of unction interfered not a bit

with her always acting. It was quite sufficiently manifest to him that

for the rest of the time she might be near his mother she would do for

her numberless good turns. She would give things to the girls--he had a

private adumbration of that; expensive Parisian, perhaps not perfectly

useful, things.

Lady Agnes was a woman who measured outlays and returns, but she was

both too acute and too just not to recognise the scantest offer from

which an advantage could proceed. "Dear Julia!" she exclaimed

responsively; and her tone made this brevity of acknowledgment adequate.

Julia's own few words were all she wanted. "It's so interesting about

Harsh," she added. "We're immensely excited."

"Yes, Nick looks it. _Merci, pas de vin_. It's just the thing for you,

you know," Julia said to him.

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

of you."

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

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

"We'll talk about it later. Of course there are lots of points," Nick

pursued. "At present let's be purely convivial. Somehow Harsh is such a

false note here. _Nous causerons de ca_."

"My dear fellow, you've caught exactly the tone of Mr. Gabriel Nash,"

Peter Sherringham declared on this.

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

"Nick, is he a gentleman? Biddy says so," Grace Dormer interposed before

this inquiry was answered.

"It's to be supposed that any one Nick brings to lunch with us--!" Lady

Agnes rather coldly sighed.

"Ah Grace, with your tremendous standard!" her son said; while Peter

Sherringham explained to his sister that Mr. Nash was Nick's new Mentor

or oracle--whom, moreover, she should see if she would come and have tea

with him.

"I haven't the least desire to see him," Julia made answer, "any more

than I have to talk about Harsh and bore poor Peter."

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

"One thing at a time then. Let us by all means be convivial. Only you

must show me how," Mrs. Dallow went on to Nick. "What does he mean,

Cousin Agnes? Does he want us to drain the wine-cup, to flash with

repartee?"

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

"Do go to Peter's, Julia, if you want something exciting. You'll see a

wonderful girl," Biddy broke in with her smile on Peter.

"Wonderful for what?"

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

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

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

"Home to the hotel?"

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

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

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

pursue.

"Who'll have whom?"

"Why, the local people and the party managers. I'm speaking of the

question of my son's standing."

"They'll have the person I want them to have, I daresay. There are so

many people in it, in one way or another--it's dreadful. I like the way

you sit there," Julia went on to Nick.

"So do I," he smiled back at her; and he thought she _was_ charming now,

because she was gay and easy and willing really, though she might plead

incompetence, to understand how jocose a dinner in a pothouse in a

foreign town might be. She was in good humour or was going to be, and

not grand nor stiff nor indifferent nor haughty nor any of the things

people who disliked her usually found her and sometimes even a little

made him believe her. The spirit of mirth in some cold natures manifests

itself not altogether happily, their effort of recreation resembles too

much the bath of the hippopotamus; but when Mrs. Dallow put her elbows

on the table one felt she could be trusted to get them safely off again.

For a family in mourning the dinner was lively; the more so that before

it was half over Julia had arranged that her brother, eschewing the

inferior spectacle, should take the girls to the Theatre Francais. It

was her idea, and Nick had a chance to observe how an idea was apt to be

not successfully controverted when it was Julia's. Even the programme

appeared to have been prearranged to suit it, just the thing for the

cheek of the young person--_Il ne Faut Jurer de Rien_ and _Mademoiselle

de la Seigliere_. Peter was all willingness, but it was Julia who

settled it, even to sending for the newspaper--he was by a rare accident

unconscious of the evening's bill--and to reassuring Biddy, who was

happy but anxious, on the article of their being too late for good

places. Peter could always get good places: a word from him and the best

box was at his disposal. She made him write the word on a card and saw a

messenger despatched with it to the Rue de Richelieu; and all this

without loudness or insistence, parenthetically and authoritatively. The

box was bespoken and the carriage, as soon as they had had their coffee,

found to be in attendance. Peter drove off in it with the girls,

understanding that he was to send it back, and Nick waited for it over

the finished repast with the two ladies. After this his mother was

escorted to it and conveyed to her apartments, and all the while it had

been Julia who governed the succession of events. "Do be nice to her,"

Lady Agnes breathed to him as he placed her in the vehicle at the door

of the cafe; and he guessed it gave her a comfort to have left him

sitting there with Mrs. Dallow.

He had every disposition to be nice to his charming cousin; if things

went as she liked them it was the proof of a certain fine force in

her--the force of assuming they would. Julia had her differences--some

of them were much for the better; and when she was in a mood like this

evening's, liberally dominant, he was ready to encourage most of what

she took for granted. While they waited for the return of the carriage,

which had rolled away with his mother, she sat opposite him with her

elbows on the table, playing first with one and then with another of the

objects that encumbered it; after five minutes of which she exclaimed,

"Oh I say, well go!" and got up abruptly, asking for her jacket. He said

something about the carriage and its order to come back for them, and

she replied, "Well, it can go away again. I don't want a carriage," she

added: "I want to walk"--and in a moment she was out of the place, with

the people at the tables turning round again and the _caissiere_ swaying

in her high seat. On the pavement of the boulevard she looked up and

down; there were people at little tables by the door; there were people

all over the broad expanse of the asphalt; there was a profusion of

light and a pervasion of sound; and everywhere, though the establishment

at which they had been dining was not in the thick of the fray, the

tokens of a great traffic of pleasure, that night-aspect of Paris which

represents it as a huge market for sensations. Beyond the Boulevard des

Capucines it flared through the warm evening like a vast bazaar, and

opposite the Cafe Durand the Madeleine rose theatrical, a high artful

_decor_ before the footlights of the Rue Royale. "Where shall we go,

what shall we do?" Mrs. Dallow asked, looking at her companion and

somewhat to his surprise, as he had supposed she wanted but to go home.

"Anywhere you like. It's so warm we might drive instead of going

indoors. We might go to the Bois. That would be agreeable."

"Yes, but it wouldn't be walking. However, that doesn't matter. It's

mild enough for anything--for sitting out like all these people. And

I've never walked in Paris at night. It would amuse me."

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

ladies."

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

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

Julia hesitated, on her side, still looking about. "It's too far; I'm

tired; we'll sit here." And she dropped beside an empty table on the

"terrace" of M. Durand. "This will do; it's amusing enough and we can

look at the Madeleine--that's respectable. If we must have something

we'll have a _madere_--is that respectable? Not particularly? So much

the better. What are those people having? _Bocks_? Couldn't we have

_bocks_? Are they very low? Then I shall have one. I've been so

wonderfully good--I've been staying at Versailles: _je me dois bien

cela_."

She insisted, but pronounced the thin liquid in the tall glass very

disgusting when it was brought. Nick was amazed, reflecting that it was

not for such a discussion as this that his mother had left him with

hands in his pockets. He had been looking out, but as his eloquence

flowed faster he turned to his friend, who had dropped upon a sofa with

her face to the window. She had given her jacket and gloves to her maid,

but had kept on her hat; and she leaned forward a little as she sat,

clasping her hands together in her lap and keeping her eyes on him. The

lamp, in a corner, was so thickly veiled that the room was in tempered

obscurity, lighted almost equally from the street and the brilliant

shop-fronts opposite. "Therefore why be sapient and solemn about it,

like an editorial in a newspaper?" Nick added with a smile.

She continued to look at him after he had spoken, then she said: "If you

don't want to stand you've only to say so. You needn't give your

reasons."

"It's too kind of you to let me off that! And then I'm a tremendous

fellow for reasons; that's my strong point, don't you know? I've a lot

more besides those I've mentioned, done up and ready for delivery. The

odd thing is that they don't always govern my behaviour. I rather think

I do want to stand."

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

"A speech?"

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

"No, those great truths remain, and a good many others. But an inner

voice tells me I'm in for it. And it will be much more graceful to

embrace this opportunity, accepting your co-operation, than to wait for

some other and forfeit that advantage."

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

"Thanks awfully," he returned, still standing there with his hands in

his pockets. "You'd do it best in your own place, and I've no right to

deny myself such a help."