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THE TRAGIC MUSE
call it, better? If I make you like me as well as I like you it will be
about enough, I think.”
“Oh I like you enough for your happiness. And I don’t throw
away a devotion,” Mrs. Dallow continued. “I shall be constantly kind
to you. I shall be beautiful to you.”
“You’ll make me lose a fortune,” Nick after a moment said.
It brought a slight convulsion, instantly repressed, into her face.
“Ah you may have all the money you want!”
“I don’t mean yours,” he answered with plenty of expression of
his own. He had determined on the instant, since it might serve, to
tell her what he had never breathed to her before. “Mr. Carteret last
year promised me a pot of money on the day we should be man and
wife. He has thoroughly set his heart on it.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint Mr. Carteret,” said Julia. “I’ll go and see
him. I’ll make it all right,” she went on. “Then your work, you know,
will bring you an income. The great men get a thousand just for
a head.”
“I’m only joking,” Nick returned with sombre eyes that contradicted this profession. “But what things you deserve I should do!”
“Do you mean striking likenesses?”
He watched her a moment. “You do hate it! Pushed to that point,
it’s curious,” he audibly mused.
“Do you mean you’re joking about Mr. Carteret’s promise?”
“No the promise is real, but I don’t seriously offer it as a reason.”
“I shall go to Beauclere,” Julia said. “You’re an hour late,” she
added in a different tone; for at that moment the door of the room
was thrown open and Mrs. Gresham, the butler pronouncing her
name, ushered in.
“Ah don’t impugn my punctuality it’s my character!” the useful
lady protested, putting a sixpence from the cabman into her purse.
Nick went off at this with a simplifi ed farewell went off foreseeing
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HENRY JAMES
exactly what he found the next day, that the useful lady would have
received orders not to budge from her hostess’s side. He called on
the morrow, late in the afternoon, and Julia saw him liberally, in
the spirit of her assurance that she would be “beautiful” to him, that
she had not thrown away his devotion; but Mrs. Gresham remained,
with whatever delicacies of deprecation, a spectator of her liberality.
Julia looked at him kindly, but her companion was more benignant
still; so that what Nick did with his own eyes was not to appeal to her
to see him a moment alone, but to solicit, in the name of this luxury,
the second occupant of the drawing-room. Mrs. Gresham seemed to
say, while Julia said so little, “I understand, my poor friend, I know
everything she has told me only her side, but I’m so competent that
I know yours too and I enter into the whole thing deeply. But it
would be as much as my place is worth to accommodate you.” Still,
she didn’t go so far as to give him an inkling of what he learned on
the third day and what he had not gone so far as to suspect that the
two ladies had made rapid arrangements for a scheme of foreign
travel. These arrangements had already been carried out when, at
the door of the house in Great Stanhope Street, the announcement
was made him that the subtle creatures had started that morning
for Paris.
XXVIII
They spent on their way to Florence several days in Paris, where
Peter Sherringham had as much free talk with his sister as it often
befell one member of their family to have with another. He enjoyed,
that is, on two different occasions, half an hour’s gossip with her in
her sitting-room at the hotel. On one of these he took the liberty
of asking her whether or no, decidedly, she meant to marry Nick
Dormer. Julia expressed to him that she appreciated his curiosity,
but that Nick and she were nothing more than relations and good
friends. “He tremendously wants it,” Peter none the less observed; to
which she simply made answer, “Well then, he may want!”
After this, for a while, they sat as silent as if the subject had been
quite threshed out between them. Peter felt no impulse to penetrate
further, for it was not a habit of the Sherringhams to talk with each
other of their love-affairs; and he was conscious of the particular deterrent that he and Julia entertained in general such different sentiments that they could never go far together in discussion. He liked
her and was sorry for her, thought her life lonely and wondered she
didn’t make a “great” marriage. Moreover he pitied her for being
without the interests and consolations he himself had found substantial: those of the intellectual, the studious order he considered
these to be, not knowing how much she supposed she refl ected and
studied and what an education she had found in her political aspirations, viewed by him as scarce more a personal part of her than
the livery of her servants or the jewels George Dallow’s money had
383
HENRY JAMES
bought. Her relations with Nick struck him as queer, but were fortunately none of his business. No business of Julia’s was suffi ciently his
to justify him in an attempt to understand it. That there should have
been a question of her marrying Nick was the funny thing rather
than that the question should have been dropped. He liked his clever cousin very well as he was enough for a vague sense that he might
be spoiled by alteration to a brother-in-law. Moreover, though not
perhaps distinctly conscious of this, Peter pressed lightly on Julia’s
doings from a tacit understanding that in this case she would let
him off as easily. He couldn’t have said exactly what it was he judged
it pertinent to be let off from: perhaps from irritating inquiry as to
whether he had given any more tea-parties for gross young women
connected with the theatre.
Peter’s forbearance, however, brought him not quite all the security he prefi gured. After an interval he indeed went so far as to
ask Julia if Nick had been wanting in respect to her; but this was an
appeal intended for sympathy, not for other intervention. She answered: “Dear no though he’s very provoking.” Thus Peter guessed
that they had had a quarrel in which it didn’t concern him to meddle: he added her epithet and her fl ight from England together, and
they made up to his perception one of the little magnifi ed embroilments which do duty for the real in superfi cial lives. It was worse
to provoke Julia than not, and Peter thought Nick’s doing so not
particularly characteristic of his versatility for good. He might wonder why she didn’t marry the member for Harsh if the subject had
pressingly come up between them; but he wondered still more why
Nick didn’t marry that gentleman’s great backer. Julia said nothing
again, as if to give him a chance to address her some challenge that
would save her from gushing; but as his impulse appeared to be to
change the subject, and as he changed it only by silence, she was
reduced to resuming presently:
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THE TRAGIC MUSE
“I should have thought you’d have come over to see your friend
the actress.”
“Which of my friends? I know so many actresses,” Peter pleaded.
“The woman you infl icted on us in this place a year ago the one
who’s in London now.”
“Oh Miriam Rooth? I should have liked to come over, but I’ve
been tied fast. Have you seen her there?”
“Yes, I’ve seen her.”
“Do you like her?”
“Not at all.”
“She has a lovely voice,” Peter hazarded after a moment.
“I don’t know anything about her voice I haven’t heard it.”
“But she doesn’t act in pantomime, does she?”
“I don’t know anything about her acting. I saw her in private at
Nick Dormer’s studio.”
“At Nick’s ?” He was interested now.
“What was she doing there?”
“She was sprawling over the room and rather insolently staring
at me.”
If Mrs. Dallow had wished to “draw” her brother she must at this
point have suspected she succeeded, in spite of his care to divest his
tone of all emotion. “Why, does he know her so well? I didn’t know.”
“She’s sitting to him for her portrait at least she was then.”
“Oh yes, I remember I put him up to that. I’m greatly interested.
Is the portrait good?”
“I haven’t the least idea I didn’t look at it. I daresay it’s like,”
Julia threw off.
“But how in the world” and Peter’s interest grew franker “does
Nick fi nd time to paint?”
“I don’t know. That horrid man brought her.”
“Which horrid man?” he spoke as if they had their choice.
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HENRY JAMES
“The one Nick thinks so clever the vulgar little man who was at
your place that day and tried to talk to me. I remember he abused
theatrical people to me as if I cared anything about them. But he has
apparently something to do with your girl.”
“Oh I recollect him I had a discussion with him,” Peter patiently
said.
“How could you? I must go and dress,” his sister went on more
importantly.
“He was clever, remarkably. Miss Rooth and her mother were old
friends of his, and he was the fi rst person to speak of them to me.”
“What a distinction! I thought him disgusting!” cried Julia, who
was pressed for time and who had now got up.
“Oh you’re severe,” said Peter, still bland; but when they separated she had given him something to think of.
That Nick was painting a beautiful actress was no doubt in part
at least the reason why he was provoking and why his most intimate
female friend had come abroad. The fact didn’t render him provoking to his kinsman: Peter had on the contrary been quite sincere
when he qualifi ed it as interesting. It became indeed on refl exion
so interesting that it had perhaps almost as much to do with Sherringham’s now prompt rush over to London as it had to do with Julia’s coming away. Refl exion taught him further that the matter was
altogether a delicate one and suggested that it was odd he should
be mixed up with it in fact when, as Julia’s own affair, he had but
wished to keep out of it. It might after all be his affair a little as well
there was somehow a still more pointed implication of that in his
sister’s saying to him the next day that she wished immensely he
would take a fancy to Biddy Dormer. She said more: she said there
had been a time when she believed he had done so believed too that
the poor child herself had believed the same. Biddy was far away the
nicest girl she knew the dearest, sweetest, cleverest, best, and one of
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THE TRAGIC MUSE
the prettiest creatures in England, which never spoiled anything.
She would make as charming a wife as ever a man had, suited to any
position, however high, and Julia didn’t mind mentioning it, since
her brother would believe it whether she mentioned it or no was
so predisposed in his favour that he would have no trouble at all.
In short she herself would see him through she’d answer for it that
he’d have but to speak. Biddy’s life at home was horrid; she was very
sorry for her the child was worthy of a better fate. Peter wondered
what constituted the horridness of Biddy’s life, and gathered that it
mainly arose from the fact of Julia’s disliking Lady Agnes and Grace
and of her profi ting comfortably by that freedom to do so which was
a fruit of her having given them a house she had perhaps not felt the
want of till they were in possession of it. He knew she had always
liked Biddy, but he asked himself this was the rest of his wonder why
she had taken to liking her so extraordinarily just now. He liked her
himself he even liked to be talked to about her and could believe
everything Julia said: the only thing that had mystifi ed him was her
motive for suddenly saying it. He had assured her he was perfectly
sensible of her goodness in so plotting out his future, but was also
sorry if he had put it into any one’s head most of all into the girl’s
own that he had ever looked at Biddy with a covetous eye. He wasn’t
in the least sure she would make a good wife, but liked her quite too
much to wish to put any such mystery to the test. She was certainly
not offered them for cruel experiments. As it happened, really, he
wasn’t thinking of marrying any one he had ever so many grounds
for neglecting that. Of course one was never safe against accidents,
but one could at least take precautions, and he didn’t mind telling
her that there were several he had taken.
“I don’t know what you mean, but it seems to me quite the best
precaution would be to care for a charming, steady girl like Biddy.
Then you’d be quite in shelter, you’d know the worst that can hap-
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HENRY JAMES
pen to you, and it wouldn’t be bad.” The objection he had made to
this plea is not important, especially as it was not quite candid; it
need only be mentioned that before the pair parted Julia said to
him, still in reference to their young friend: “Do go and see her and
be nice to her; she’ll save you disappointments.”
These last words reverberated for him there was a shade of
the portentous in them and they seemed to proceed from a larger
knowledge of the subject than he himself as yet possessed. They
were not absent from his memory when, in the beginning of May,
availing himself, to save time, of the night-service, he crossed from
Paris to London. He arrived before the breakfast-hour and went to
his sister’s house in Great Stanhope Street, where he always found
quarters, were she in town or not. When at home she welcomed him,
and in her absence the relaxed servants hailed him for the chance
he gave them to recover their “form.” In either case his allowance of
space was large and his independence complete. He had obtained
permission this year to take in scattered snatches rather than as
a single draught the quantum of holiday to which he was entitled;
and there was, moreover, a question of his being transferred to another capital in which event he believed he might count on a month
or two in England before proceeding to his new post.
He waited, after breakfast, but a very few minutes before jumping into a hansom and rattling away to the north. A part of his
waiting indeed consisted of a fi dgety walk up Bond Street, during
which he looked at his watch three or four times while he paused at
shop windows for fear of being a little early. In the cab, as he rolled
along, after having given an address Balaklava Place, Saint John’s
Wood the fear he might be too early took curiously at moments the
form of a fear that he should be too late: a symbol of the inconsistencies of which his spirit at present was full. Peter Sherringham
was nervously formed, too nervously for a diplomatist, and haunted
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THE TRAGIC MUSE
with inclinations and indeed with designs which contradicted each
other. He wanted to be out of it and yet dreaded not to be in it, and
on this particular occasion the sense of exclusion was an ache. At
the same time he was not unconscious of the impulse to stop his
cab and make it turn round and drive due south. He saw himself
launched in the breezy fact while morally speaking he was hauled
up on the hot sand of the principle, and he could easily note how
little these two faces of the same idea had in common. However, as
the consciousness of going helped him to refl ect, a principle was
a poor affair if it merely became a fact. Yet from the hour it did
turn to action the action had to be the particular one in which
he was engaged; so that he was in the absurd position of thinking
his conduct wiser for the reason that it was directly opposed to his
intentions.
He had kept away from London ever since Miriam Rooth came
over; resisting curiosity, sympathy, importunate haunting passion,
and considering that his resistance, founded, to be salutary, on
a general scheme of life, was the greatest success he had yet achieved.
He was deeply occupied with plucking up the feeling that attached
him to her, and he had already, by various little ingenuities, loosened some of its roots. He had suffered her to make her fi rst appearance on any stage without the comfort of his voice or the applause
of his hand; saying to himself that the man who could do the more
could do the less and that such an act of fortitude was a proof he
should keep straight. It was not exactly keeping straight to run over
to London three months later and, the hour he arrived, scramble off
to Balaklava Place; but after all he pretended only to be human and
aimed in behaviour only at the heroic, never at the monstrous. The
highest heroism was obviously three parts tact. He had not written
to his young friend that he was coming to England and would call
upon her at eleven o’clock in the morning, because it was his secret
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HENRY JAMES
pride that he had ceased to correspond with her. Sherringham took
his prudence where he could fi nd it, and in doing so was rather like
a drunkard who should fl atter himself he had forsworn liquor since
he didn’t touch lemonade.
It is a sign of how far he was drawn in different directions at
once that when, on reaching Balaklava Place and alighting at the
door of a small detached villa of the type of the “retreat,” he learned
that Miss Rooth had but a quarter of an hour before quitted the spot
with her mother they had gone to the theatre, to rehearsal, said the
maid who answered the bell he had set tinkling behind a stuccoed
garden-wall: when at the end of his pilgrimage he was greeted by
a disappointment he suddenly found himself relieved and for the
moment even saved. Providence was after all taking care of him and
he submitted to Providence. He would still be watched over doubtless, even should he follow the two ladies to the theatre, send in
his card and obtain admission to the scene of their experiments. All
his keen taste for these matters fl amed up again, and he wondered
what the girl was studying, was rehearsing, what she was to do next.
He got back into his hansom and drove down the Edgware Road.
By the time he reached the Marble Arch he had changed his mind
again, had determined to let Miriam alone for that day. It would
be over at eight in the evening he hardly played fair and then he
should consider himself free. Instead of pursuing his friends he directed himself upon a shop in Bond Street to take a place for their
performance. On fi rst coming out he had tried, at one of those establishments strangely denominated “libraries,” to get a stall, but
the people to whom he applied were unable to accommodate him
they hadn’t a single seat left. His actual attempt, at another library,
was more successful: there was no question of obtaining a stall, but
he might by a miracle still have a box. There was a wantonness in
paying for a box at a play on which he had already expended four
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