The Tragic Muse

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 correspondence, which was altogether on public affairs, and proud, in a manner, of the fact that he now dictated almost everything. That lmd more in it of the statesman in retirement, a character indeed not consciously assumed by Mr. Carteret, but always tacitly attributed to him by Nick, who took it rather from the pictorial point of view ; remembering, on each occasion, only afterwards that though he was in retirement he had not exactly been a statesman. A young man, a very sharp, bandy 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 honor of Nick’s visit — a fact the mention of which led Nick to make some not particularly sincere speech about his being ready to write anything if Mr. Carteret were at all pressed.

“Ah, but your own budget: what will become of that?” the old gentleman objected, glancing at Nick’s pockets as if 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 favorite doctrine that one should always be a little before ; and his own eminently regular respiration seemed to illustrate the idea. A man was certainly before who had so much in his rear.

This led to the bestowal of a good deal of general advice as to the mistakes to avoid at the beginning of a parliamentary career; as to which Mr. Carteret spoke with the experience of one who had sat for fifty years in the House of Commons. Nick was amused, but also mystified and even a little irritated, by his talk : it was founded on the idea of observation, and yet Nick was unable to regard Mr. Carteret as an observer. He does n’t observe me,” he said to himself; “ if he did he would see, he would n’t think ” — And the end of this private cogitation was a vague impatience of all the things his venerable host took for granted. He did n’t see any of the things that Nick saw. Some of these latter were the light touches that 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 would n’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 my abode at Harsh.”

“ In the measure of the convenient I should not be sorry to see you do it.”

“It ought to be rather convenient,” Nick replied, smiling. “ 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 is 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 gayety 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.

“Is n’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.

“ 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 revelation of a life intensely celibate, was for an instant infinitely touching. Nick 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 forever the commerce of woman. What remained in him of conscious renunciation gave a throb as he looked at his bright companion, who proposed to take the matter so much the other way. “ It is 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 have 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 have n’t the least idea,” said Nick.

Mr. Carteret was silent a moment. “ I see. It does n’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.”

“ Oh, I ’m so obliged to her for caring’ for me ! ”

“ That the rest does n’t count? Certainly it’s nice of her to like you. But why should n’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 ? ” be 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 does n’t exist. I should n’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.

“ All, 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 do you expect of me ? ” he pursued, with a grave face.

“It’s only what your father did. He so often spoke of you, I remember, at the last, just after you had been with him alone — you know I saw him then. He was greatly moved by his interview with you, and so was I by what he told me of it. He said he should live on in you — he should work in you. It has always given me a 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 gayly. “ 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. Has n’t she your affection ? ”

“ So much so that her delay makes me exceedingly unhappy.”

Mr. Carteret looked at his young friend as if he did n’t strike him as very unhappy; but he demanded, “ Then what more does she want ? ” 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 are engaged or you are not engaged.”

“ She is, but I am not. That’s what she says about it. The trouble is she does n’t believe in me.”

“ Does n’t she love you, then ? ”

“ That’s what I ask her. Her answer is that she loves me only too well. She ’s so afraid of being a burden to me that she gives me my freedom till I have 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.”

“ 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 does n’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 ? ”

“ 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,” said 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. “Certainly it will help me. If I say that we are engaged,” he went on, “ it’s because I consider it so. She gives me my liberty, but I don’t take it.”

“ Does she expect you to take back your word ? ”

“ That’s what I ask her. She never will. Therefore we are 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 ? ”

“ I have 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? ” 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 ? 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 does n’t marry me I think she 'll never marry again at all.”

“ What, then, does she gain by delay ? ”

“ Simply this, as I make it out — that she ’ll feel she has been very magnanimous. She won’t have to reproach herself with not having given me a chance to change.”

“ To change ? What does she think you liable to do ? ”

Nick 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 is 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 does n’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.”

“What on earth do you mean ? Are you deceiving me ? ”

“ I don’t know — it depends on what you think.”

“ I think you ’re flighty. " said Mr. Carteret, with the nearest approach to sternness 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 does n’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 ? ”

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 would n’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 continued to confess.

“ My view of the advantageous character of such an alliance has entirely coincided with hers.”

“ It was very good-natured of you to leave me to speak first,” Said Nick.

“ I should have been disappointed if you had n’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, oldfashioned watch.

XVIII.

At tirst Peter Sheningham thought of asking to be transferred 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 some dangers before which it is perfectly consistent with honor to flee, it was better for everyone 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 defense.

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 lawful to he 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 smooth 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 clear in advance about the occasion, the object, the victim. All that was tolerably definite was that the propitiatory offering would have to be some cherished enjoyment. Very likely, indeed, this en joyment 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 could n 't borrow you did n’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; hut if it was not, as they said, a serious field, was not the compensation just that you could not be seriously entangled in it ? Sherringham’s great advantage, as he regarded the matter, was that he had always kept his taste for the drama quite in its place. His facetious cousin was free to pretend that it sprawled through his life ; but this was nonsense, as any unprejudiced observer of that life would unhesitatingly attest. There had not been the least sprawling, and his 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. Sherringham 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 ? His little weaknesses were intellectual — they were a part of the life of the mind. All the same, on the day they showed a symptom of interfering they should be plucked off with a turn of the wrist.

Sherringham scented interference now, and interference in rather an invidious form. It might be a bore, from the point of view of the profession, to find one’s self, as a critic of the stage, in love with a coquine ; but it was a much greater bore to find one’s self in love with a young woman whose character remained to be estimated. Miriam Rooth was neither fish nor flesh : one had with her neither the guarantees of one’s own class nor the immunities of hers. What was hers, if one came to that? A 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 rigor of matrimony. An ambitious diplomatist would probably be wise to marry, but only with his eyes very much open. That was the fatal surprise — to be led to the altar in a dream. Sherringham’s view of the proprieties attached to such a step was high and strict; and if he held that a man in his position was, 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 it. She might be such a help and she might be such a blight that common prudence imposed a sharp scrutiny. 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. For him certainly she had no sentiment. 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 traveler 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 théâtre. 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 anything 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 ? So certain was that irrepressible deviltry to insist ever on its own.

Besides, could one make her deviate ? If she had no “ sentiment ” for him, what was his warrant for supposing that she could be corrupted into respectability? How could the 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 ? 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 conceited 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 Sherringham 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 art. Had not Madame Carré said at the last that she could “do anything ” ? It. was true that if Madame Carré had been mistaken in the first place she might also be mistaken in the second. But in this latter case she would be mistaken with him, and such an error would be too like a truth.

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 implication 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 did n’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 Rooth’s intended profession who would not have regarded it as a little too strong 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 ? Sherringham 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 compute the probabilities of a young lady’s misbehaving for his advantage (that seemed to him definitely base), and he would have thought himself a blackguard if, 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 Sherrigham’s final conviction was that it would never do for him to turn into that hypothetic personage. He asked for no removal and no extension of leave, and he proved to himself how well he knew what he was about by never addressing a line, during his absence, to the Hôtel de la Mayenne. 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 quite forsaken them. It was an illustration of the way in which her visitor had come to regard her that he rather disbelieved than believed this description of the crumpled papers lying on the table. He was not sure even that he believed that Miriam had just gone 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 engagement ! ” 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 impossible people, some of them. In short I knocked at every door, I went into the question exhaustively.”And he enumerated the things he had done, unparted some of the knowledge he had gathered. The difficulties were immense, and even with the influence he could command (such as it was) there was very little to be achieved in face of them. Still, he had gained ground : 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 really might have interested. From him he had extracted certain benevolent 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 could n’t go into the water unless you could swim, and you could n’t swim until you had been in the water. “ But new women 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.

“People gave it to them.”

“ Well, what people, now ?”

“ People who believe in them.”

“ As you believe in Miriam ?”

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.

“ 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 ? ”

“ 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 in the midst of things ! ” And the poor lady gave a significant but unexplanatory sigh, as if these things were beyond all speech.

“ The sooner you get away the better,” Sherringham went on.

“ I know why you say that.”

“ It’s just what I’m explaining.”

“ I could n’t have held out if I had n’t been so sure of Miriam,” said Mrs. Rooth.

“ Well, you need n’t hold out any longer.”

“ Don’t you trust her ? ” asked Sherringham’s hostess.

“ Trust her ? ”

“ You don’t trust yourself. That’s why you were silent, why we might have thought you were dead, why we might have perished ourselves.”

“ I don’t think I understand you ; I don’t know what you are talking about,” Sherringham said. “ But it does n’t matter.”

“ Does n’t it ? 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 did n’t like her tone. But he had his tongue under such control that he was able presently to say, instead of this — and it was a relief to him to give audible voice to the 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 ? ”

“ Idle, unprofitable.”

“ Surely, honest love is never unprofitable,’Mrs. Rooth rejoined, with soft reasonableness.

“ In such a ease how can it be honest ? ”

“ 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 is on the stage.”

Mrs. Rooth regarded him. “ Miriam is n’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 ? 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.

“ 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 did n’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.”

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 would n’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 ? 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 ? ”

“As I say, he wants us to go to London.”

“ I see, but even I can tell you that.

“ Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Rooth ; “ but he says he can help us.”

“ Keep hold of him, then, if he’s in the business.”

“ 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.

“ Why should I object ? ”

“ You don’t consider us as all your own ? ”

“ My own ? 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 need n’t hesitate, then, to tell you that it’s with Mr. Dashwood that Miriam has gone out.”

“ Why hesitate, gracious heaven ? ” But in the next breath Sherringham asked, “ Where has she gone ? ”

“ You don 't like it!" laughed Mrs. Rooth.

“ Why should it be a thing to be enthusiastic about? ”

“Well, he’s charming, and I trust him.”

“ So do I,” said Sherringham.

“ they ’ve gone to see Madame Carré.”

“ She has come back, then ? ”

“ She was expected back last week. Miriam wants to show her how she has improved.”

“ And has she improved ? ”

“ How can I tell — with my mother’s heart ? ” asked Mrs. Rooth. “ I don’t judge ; I only wait and pray. But Mr. Dashwood thinks she is 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 does n’t talk of his brother-in-law.”

“ I did n’t, that day, like 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 for a few days, and that she would tell him to come and see us. He arrived, she told him, and he came. Voilà!” said Mrs. Rooth.

“ So that now (so far as he is concerned) Miss Rooth has prospects ? ”

“ He is n’t a manager, unfortunately.”

“ Where does he act ? ”

“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 competitors there are for the glory of bringing her out, the better for her.”

“ Mr. Dashwood wants to take a theatre,”said Mrs. Rooth.

“ Then perhaps he’s our man.”

“Oh, if you ’d help him ! ” cried Mrs. Rooth.

“ Help him ? ”

“ Help him to help us.”

“We’ll all work together; it will he jolly,” said Sherringham gayly. “It’s a sacred cause, the love of art, and we shall be a happy band. Dashwood’s his name? ” he added in a moment. “ Mrs. Lovick wasn’t a Dashwood.”

“It’s his nom de théâtre — Basil Dashwood. Do you like it ? ” Mrs. Rooth inquired.

“ You say that as Miriam might do : her talent is catching.”

“She’s always practicing — 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 théâtre. He wants her to use her own ; he likes it so much. He says it will do so well—you can’t better it.”

“ He ’s a capital adviser,” said Sherringham, getting up. “ I 'll come back to-morrow.”

“ I won’t ask you to wait till they return, they may be so long,” Mrs. Rooth replied.

“ Will he come hack 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 Carré ?”

“ Ob. no, but be longed to be introduced to her; he besought 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. ”

“ And she also wanted him to see what she can do for the great critic,”Mrs. Rooth added.

“The great critic? ”

“I mean that terrible old woman, as she sits there.”

“ 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 Carré. Well, she has worked, worked, worked. That’s what Mr. Dashwood is pleased with even more than with other things.”

“ What do you mean by other things ? ”

“ Oh, her genius and her fine appearance.”

“ He approves of her fine appearance ? I ask because you think he knows what will take.”

“ I know why you ask,” said Mrs. Rooth. “ 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 is 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,” Sherringham declared ; “ and I can imagine nothing better than what you describe — if he is n’t an ass.”

“ Dear me, if he is n’t clever you must tell us : we can’t afford to he 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 of the Hôtel de la Mayenne; indeed, the desire which prompted it only quickened his pace. He had an hour to spare, and he too would go to see Madame Carré. If Miriam and her companion had proceeded to the Rue de Constantinople on foot, he would probably reach the house as soon as they. It was all quite logical: he was eager to see Miriam — that was natural enough; and he had admitted to Mrs. Rooth that he was keen on the subject of Mrs. Lovick’s theatrical brother, in whom such effective aid might perhaps reside. To catch Miriam really revealing herself to the old actress (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 Carré’s portress that her illustrious locataire was at home and that a lady and a gentleman had gone up some time before.

In the little antechamber, after 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 poetical drama —

He recognized one of the great tirades of Shakespeare’s Queen Constance, and saw she had just begun the magnificent scene at the beginning of the third act of King John, in which the passionate, injured mother and widow sweeps in wild organ-tones 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 manner in which she rendered her immense 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; they told him that she had leaped into possession of her means. He remained where he was till she arrived at —

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 Carré, 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 Carré, 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 experience like fine old brasses. The young man uttering the lines of the other speakers was attentive in another degree ; he followed Miriam, in his own copy of the play, to be sure not to miss the cue; but he was elated and expressive, was evidently even surprised ; he: colored 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 occasion, was that he looked remarkably like a gentleman. He carried this appearance, which proved inveterate and importunate, to a point that was almost a negation of its spirit ; that is, it might have been a question whether it could be gentlemanly, whether it were not indeed positively vulgar, 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 in especial 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 Dashwood), and even by his blue frock-coat, the recurrent, unvarying, imperturbable “good form” of his aspect. This unprofessional air ended by striking one 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 “ Bravo! ” 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 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 ? ” Sherringham wondered while his whole sense vibrated. “ She had n’t got hold of it when I went away.” And the assurance flowed over him again that she had found the key to her box of treasures. In the summer, during their weeks of frequent meeting, she had only fumbled with the lock. One October day, while he was away, the key had slipped in, had fitted, or her finger at last had touched the right spring, and the capricious casket had flown open.

It was during the present solemnity that 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, lucid 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 only, practically, on the side of those who hold that at the moment of production the ai’tist cannot have his wits too much about him. When Peter told her there were people who maintained that in such a crisis he must forget the question of effect, she stared with surprise, and then broke out, “ Ah, the idiots!” She eventually became, in her judgments, in impatience and the expression of contempt, very free and absolutely irreverent. On one occasion Sherringham said to her, in relation to this question of the emotion of the actor, that those who considered that he should lose sight of his effect did so because they held that he must think only of his cause. At this she stared even less receptively than before and asked, “What has the public got to do with a cause ? That’s none of their business ! ”

“ 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 Carré’s finger-tips; the old actress got up and held out her arms to Miriam. The girl never took her eyes off Sherringham while she passed into Madame Carré’s embrace and remained there. They were full of their usual sombre fire, and it was always the case that they expressed too much anything that they expressed at all; but they were not defiant nor even triumphant now — they were only deeply explicative; they seemed to say, “ That’s the sort of thing I meant; that’s what I had in mind when I asked you to try to do something for me.” Madame Carré’s folded her pupil to her bosom, holding her there as the old marquise in a comédie de mœurs might, in the last scene, have held her god-daughter the ingénue.

“ Have you got me an engagement?” Miriam asked of Sherringham. “ Yes, he has done something splendid for me,” she went on to Madame Carré, resting her hand caressingly on one of the actress’s, while the old woman discoursed with Mr. Dashwood, who was telling her, in very pretty French, that he was tremendously excited about Miss Rooth. Madame Carré looked at him as if she wondered how he appeared when he was calm and how, as a dramatic artist, lie expressed that condition.

“ Yes, yes, something splendid, for a beginning,” Sherringham 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 could n’t follow it; you would have liked it so much better,” Mr. Dashwood observed to his hostess.

“Could n’t follow it? Do you take me for a fool ? the celebrated artist cried. “I suspect I followed it. de plus pres que vous, monsieur ! ”

“ Ah, you see the language is so awfully fine,” Basil Dashwood replied, looking at his shoes.

“ The language ? Why, she rails like a fishwife. Is that what you call language ? 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 c’est très-fort. But who can tell if you really say it ?" Madame Carré demanded.

“ Ah, par exemple, I can ! ” Sherringham exclaimed.

“ Oh, you — you 're a Frenchman.” “Could n’t he tell if he were not?” asked Basil Dashwood.

The old woman shrugged her shoulders. “ He would n’t know.”

“ That’s flattering to me.”

“ Oh, you — don’t you pretend to complain,” Madame Carré said. “ I prefer our imprecations — those of Camille,” she went on. “ They have the beauty des plus belles choses

“ I can say them too, " Miriam broke in.

“ Insolente ! ” smiled Madame Carré.

“ Camille does n’t squat down on the floor in the middle of them.”

“ For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.

Miriam quickly declaimed. “ Ah, if you don’t feel the way she makes a throne of it! ”

“ It’s really tremendously fine, chère madame,” Sherringham said. “ There’s nothing like it.”

“ Vous êtes insupportables,” the old woman answered. “ Stay with us. I ’ll teach you Phèdre.”

“ Ah, Phædra — Phædra ! ” Basil Dashwood vaguely ejaculated, looking more gentlemanly than ever.

“You have learned all I have taught you, but where the devil have you learned what I have n’t taught you ? ” Madame Carré went on.

“ I’ve worked — I have ; you 'd call it work — all through the bright, late summer, all through the hot, dull, empty days. I’ve battered down the door —

I did hear it crash one day. But I 'm not so very good yet; I 'm only in the right direction.”

“ Malicieuse ! ” murmured Madame Carré.

“ Oh, I can beat that,” the girl went on.

“ Did you wake up one morning and find you had grown a pair of wings ? 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 kindly —

“ You know you read King John with me before you went away. I thought over immensely what you said. I did n’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 did n’t miss a vibration of my voice, a fold of my robe.

“ I did n’t see you looking,” Sherringham returned.

“ No one ever will. Do you think I would show it ? ”

“Ars celare artem,” Basil Dashwood jocosely dropped.

“ You must first have the art to hide,” said Sherringham. wondering a little why Miriam did n’t introduce her young friend to him. She was, however, both then and later, perfectly neglectful of such cares, never thinking or heeding how other people got on together. When she found they did n’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-humored 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 ot 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 would take.

“ If you have n’t got any art, it’s not quite the same as if you did n’t hide it, is it?” 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 termagant, to your public de là-bas, what will you do next? ” asked Madame Carré.

“ I 'll do Juliet— I 'll do Cleopatra.”

“ Rather a big bill, isn’t it?” Mr. Dashwood volunteered to Sherringham, in a friendly, 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-êtes 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 Carré. “ You must put those pieces on the stage : how will you do it ? ”

“ Oh, we know how to get up a play in London, Madame Carré,” Basil Dashwood responded, genially. “ They put money on it, you know.”

“On it? But what do they put in it ? W ho 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 ? ”

“ Oh, you 'll hear of a good deal when once she gets started,” Basil Dashwood contended, cheerfully.

Madame Carré 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 Carré, 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 could n’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, and I give you up. But it does n’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 would n’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 Carré added.

“ My mother will be happier chez 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.

“ Dear Mrs. Rooth — she’s great fun,”Mr. Dashwood dropped.

Miriam transferred the gloomy beauty of her gaze to him, as if she were practicing. “ You won’t upset her, at any rate.” Then she stood, with her fatal mask, before Madame Carré “ 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 ? ” 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 grande effets de voix, in the great style, or you ’re nothing.”

“ Be beautiful—be only that,” Sherringham urged. “ Be only what you can be so well — something that one may turn to for an illustration of perfect art, 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 Phædra, and hushed her companions on the instant. “ You 'll be the English Rachel,” said Basil Dashwood when she stopped.

“ Acting in French ! ” Madame Carré 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 today,” 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 1 ” And Madame Carré spun the sound to the finest satiric thread.

“ I shall he 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 ? ”

Sherringham looked at him a moment. “ Come and see me at the embassy and I 'll tell you.” Then he added, “ I know your sister, Mrs. Lovick.

“ So I supposed : that’s why I took the liberty of asking such a question.”

“ It’s no liberty ; but Mr. Sherringham does n’t appear to be able to tell you,” said Miriam.

“Well, you know it’s a very funny world, all those theatrical people over there,” Sherringham said.

“ Ah, don’t say anything against them, when I’m one of them,” Basil Dashwood 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 Carré observed them.

“ Tiens! you gentlemen meet here for the first time ? You do right to become friends—that’s the best thing. Live together in peace and mutual confidence. C’est de beaucoup le plus sage.”

“ Certainly, for yoke-fellows,” said Sherringham.

He began the next moment to repeat to his new acquaintance some of the things he had been told in London; but their hostess stopped him off, waving the talk away with charming overdone stage horror and the young hands of the heroines of Marivaux. “ Ah, wait till you go, for that! Do you suppose I care for news of your mountebanks’ booths? ”

Henry James.