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THE TRAGIC MUSE
Nick wondered, but didn’t conclude. “I wanted to go on with her
now I can’t.”
Nash himself, however, jumped straight to what really mattered.
“My dear fellow, it only makes her handsomer. I wondered what
happy turn she had taken.”
“Oh, that’s twaddle,” said Nick, turning away. “Besides, has she
told you?”
“No, but her mother has.”
“Has she told her mother?”
“Mrs. Rooth says not. But I’ve known Mrs. Rooth to say that
which isn’t.”
“Apply that rule then to the information you speak of.”
“Well, since you press me, I know more,” Gabriel said. “Miriam knows you’re engaged to a wonderful, rich lady; she told me as
much, told me she had seen her here. That was enough to set her off
she likes forbidden fruit.”
“I’m not engaged to any lady whatever. I was,” Nick handsomely
conceded, “but we’ve altered our minds.”
“Ah, what a pity!” his friend wailed.
“Méphistophélès!” and he stopped again with the point of this.
“Pray then whom do you call Margaret? May I ask if your failure
of interest in the political situation is the cause of this change in
your personal one?” Nash went on. Nick signifi ed that he mightn’t;
whereupon he added: “I’m not in the least devilish I only mean it’s
a pity you’ve altered your minds, since Miriam may in consequence
alter hers. She goes from one thing to another. However, I won’t
tell her.”
“I will then!” Nick declared between jest and earnest.
“Would that really be prudent?” his companion asked more
completely in the frolic key.
471
HENRY JAMES
“At any rate,” he resumed, “nothing would induce me to interfere with Peter Sherringham. That sounds fatuous, but to you I don’t
mind appearing an ass.”
“The thing would be to get Sherringham, out of spite,” Nash
threw off, “to entangle himself with another woman.”
“What good would that do?”
“Ah, Miriam would then begin to think of him.”
“Spite surely isn’t a conceivable motive for a healthy man.”
The plea, however, found Gabriel ready. “Sherringham’s just
precisely not a healthy man. He’s too much in love.”
“Then he won’t care for another woman.”
“He would try to, and that would produce its effect its effect on
Miriam.”
“You talk like an American novel. Let him try, and God keep
us all straight.” Nick adverted in extreme silence to his poor little
Biddy and greatly hoped he would have to see to it a little that Peter wouldn’t “try” on her. He changed the subject and before Nash
withdrew took occasion to remark the occasion was offered by some
new allusion of the visitor’s to the sport he hoped to extract from
seeing Nick carry out everything to which he stood committed that
the comedy of the matter would fall fl at and the incident pass unnoticed.
But Nash lost no heart. “Oh, if you’ll simply do your part I’ll take
care of the rest.”
“If you mean by doing my part minding my business and working like a beaver I shall easily satisfy you,” Nick replied.
“Ah, you reprobate, you’ll become another Sir Joshua, a mere
P.R.A.!” his companion railed, getting up to go.
When he had gone Nick threw himself back on the cushions
of the divan and, with his hands locked above his head, sat a long
time lost in thought. He had sent his servant to bed; he was unmo-
472
THE TRAGIC MUSE
lested. He gazed before him into the gloom produced by the unheeded burning-out of the last candle. The vague outer light came
in through the tall studio window and the painted images, ranged
about, looked confused in the dusk. If his mother had seen him she
might have thought he was staring at his father’s ghost.
XXXVI
The night Peter Sherringham walked away from Balaklava Place
with Gabriel Nash the talk of the two men directed itself, as was
natural at the time, to the question of Miriam’s future fame and
the pace, as Nash called it, at which she would go. Critical spirits
as they both were, and one of them as dissimulative in passion as
the other was paradoxical in the absence of it, they yet took her
career for granted as completely as the simple-minded, a pair of
hot spectators in the pit, might have done, and exchanged observations on the assumption that the only uncertain element would be
the pace. This was a proof of general subjugation. Peter wished not
to show, yet wished to know, and in the restlessness of his anxiety
was ready even to risk exposure, great as the sacrifi ce might be of
the imperturbable, urbane scepticism most appropriate to a secretary of embassy. He couldn’t rid himself of the sense that Nash had
got up earlier than he, had had opportunities of contact in days
already distant, the days of Mrs. Rooth’s hungry foreign rambles.
Something of authority and privilege stuck to him from this, and
it made Sherringham still more uncomfortable when he was most
conscious that, at the best, even the trained diplomatic mind would
never get a grasp of Miriam as a whole. She was constructed to revolve like the terraqueous globe; some part or other of her was always out of sight or in shadow.
Peter talked to conceal his feelings, and, like many a man practising that indirectness, rather lost himself in the wood. They agreed
that, putting strange accidents aside, the girl would go further than
474
THE TRAGIC MUSE
any one had gone in England within the memory of man; and that
it was a pity, as regards marking the comparison, that for so long no
one had gone any distance worth speaking of. They further agreed
that it would naturally seem absurd to any one who didn’t know,
their prophesying such big things on such small evidence; and they
agreed lastly that the absurdity quite vanished as soon as the prophets knew as they knew. Their knowledge they quite recognised this
was simply confi dence raised to a high point, the communication
of their young friend’s own confi dence. The conditions were enormously to make, but it was of the very essence of Miriam’s confi dence that she would make them. The parts, the plays, the theatres,
the “support,” the audiences, the critics, the money were all to be
found, but she cast a spell that prevented this from seeming a serious hitch. One mightn’t see from one day to the other what she
would do or how she would do it, but this wouldn’t stay her steps
she would none the less go on. She would have to construct her own
road, as it were, but at the worst there would only be delays in making it. These delays would depend on the hardness of the stones she
had to break.
As Peter had noted, you never knew where to “have” Gabriel
Nash; a truth exemplifi ed in his unexpected delight at the prospect
of Miriam’s drawing forth the modernness of the age. You might
have thought he would loathe that modernness; but he had a joyous,
amused, amusing vision of it saw it as something huge and fantastically vulgar. Its vulgarity would rise to the grand style, like that of
a London railway station, and the publicity achieved by their charming charge be as big as the globe itself. All the machinery was ready,
the platform laid; the facilities, the wires and bells and trumpets, the
roaring, deafening newspaperism of the period its most distinctive
sign were waiting for her, their predestined mistress, to press her
foot on the spring and set them all in motion. Gabriel brushed in
475
HENRY JAMES
a large, bright picture of her progress through the time and round
the world, round it and round it again, from continent to continent
and clime to clime; with populations and deputations, reporters and
photographers, placards and interviews and banquets, steamers,
railways, dollars, diamonds, speeches and artistic ruin all jumbled
into her train. Regardless of expense the spectacle would be and
thrilling, though somewhat monotonous, the drama a drama more
bustling than any she would put on the stage and a spectacle that
would beat everything for scenery. In the end her divine voice would
crack, screaming to foreign ears and antipodal barbarians, and her
clever manner would lose all quality, simplifi ed to a few unmistakable knock-down dodges. Then she would be at the fi ne climax of
life and glory, still young and insatiate, but already coarse, hard, and
raddled, with nothing left to do and nothing left to do it with, the
remaining years all before her and the raison d’etre all behind. It
would be splendid, dreadful, grotesque.
“Oh, she’ll have some good years they’ll be worth having,” Peter
insisted as they went. “Besides, you see her too much as a humbug
and too little as a real producer. She has ideas great ones; she loves
the thing for itself. That may keep a woman serious.”
“Her greatest idea must always be to show herself, and fortunately she has a great quantity of that treasure to show. I think of
her absolutely as a real producer, but as a producer whose production is her own person. No ‘person,’ even as fi ne a one as hers, will
stand that for more than an hour, so that humbuggery has very soon
to lend a hand. However,” Nash continued, “if she’s a fi ne humbug
it will do as well, it will perfectly suit the time. We can all be saved
by vulgarity; that’s the solvent of all diffi culties and the blessing of
this delightful age. One doesn’t die of it save in soul and sense: one
dies only of minding it. Therefore let no man despair a new hope
has dawned.”
476
THE TRAGIC MUSE
“She’ll do her work like any other worker, with the advantage
over many that her talent’s rare,” Peter obliquely answered. “Compared with the life of many women that’s security and sanity of the
highest order. Then she can’t help her beauty. You can’t vulgarise
that.”
“Oh, can’t you?” Gabriel cried.
“It will abide with her till the day of her death. It isn’t a mere
superfi cial freshness. She’s very noble.”
“Yes, that’s the pity of it,” said Nash. “She’s a big more or less directed force, and I quite admit that she’ll do for a while a lot of good.
She’ll have brightened up the world for a great many people have
brought the ideal nearer to them and held it fast for an hour with its
feet on earth and its great wings trembling. That’s always something,
for blest is he who has dropped even the smallest coin into the little iron box that contains the precious savings of mankind. Miriam
will doubtless have dropped a big gold-piece. It will be found in the
general scramble on the day the race goes bankrupt. And then for
herself she’ll have had a great go at life.”
“Oh yes, she’ll have got out of her hole she won’t have vegetated,” Peter concurred. “That makes her touching to me it adds to the
many good reasons for which one may want to help her. She’s tackling a big job, and tackling it by herself; throwing herself upon the
world in good faith and dealing with it as she can; meeting alone, in
her youth, her beauty, her generosity, all the embarrassments of notoriety and all the diffi culties of a profession of which, if one half’s
what’s called brilliant the other’s frankly odious.”
“She has great courage, but you speak of her as solitary with such
a lot of us all round her?” Nash candidly inquired.
“She’s a great thing for you and me, but we’re a small thing for
her.”
477
HENRY JAMES
“Well, a good many small things, if they but stick together, may
make up a mass,” Gabriel said. “There must always be the man, you
see. He’s the indispensable element in such a life, and he’ll be the
last thing she’ll ever lack.”
“What man are you talking about?” Peter asked with imperfect
ease.
“The man of the hour, whoever he is. She’ll inspire innumerable
devotions.”
“Of course she will, and they’ll be precisely a part of the insufferable side of her life.”
“Insufferable to whom?” Nash demanded. “Don’t forget that
the insufferable side of her life will be just the side she’ll thrive
on. You can’t eat your cake and have it, and you can’t make om-
elettes without breaking eggs. You can’t at once sit by the fi re and parade about the world, and you can’t take all chances without having
some adventures. You can’t be a great actress without the luxury of
nerves. Without a plentiful supply or without the right ones you’ll
only be second fi ddle. If you’ve all the tense strings you may take life
for your fi ddlestick. Your nerves and your adventures, your eggs and
your cake, are part of the cost of the most expensive of professions.
You play with human passions, with exaltations and ecstasies and
terrors, and if you trade on the fury of the elements you must know
how to ride the storm.”
Well, Peter thought it over. “Those are the fi ne old commonplaces about the artistic temperament, but I usually fi nd the artist
a very meek, decent, little person.”
“You never fi nd the artist you only fi nd his work, and that’s all
you need fi nd. When the artist’s a woman, and the woman’s an actress, meekness and decency will doubtless be there in the right proportions,” Nash went on. “Miriam will represent them for you, if you
give her her cue, with the utmost charm.”
478
THE TRAGIC MUSE
“Of course she’ll inspire devotions that’s all right,” said Peter
with a wild cheerfulness.
“And of course they’ll inspire responses, and with that consequence don’t you see? they’ll mitigate her solitude, they’ll even enliven it,” Nash set forth.
“She’ll probably box a good many ears: that’ll be lively!” Peter
returned with some grimness.
“Oh magnifi cent! it will be a merry life. Yet with its tragic passages, its distracted or its pathetic hours,” Gabriel insisted. “In short,
a little of everything.”
They walked on without further speech till at last Peter resumed:
“The best thing for a woman in her situation is to marry some decent care-taking man.”
“Oh I daresay she’ll do that too!” Nash laughed; a remark as a result of which his companion lapsed afresh into silence. Gabriel left
him a little to enjoy this; after which he added: “There’s somebody
she’d marry to-morrow.”
Peter wondered. “Do you mean her friend Dashwood?”
“No, no, I mean Nick Dormer.”
“She’d marry him?” Peter gasped.
“I mean her head’s full of him. But she’ll hardly get the chance.”
Peter watched himself. “Does she like him as much as that?”
“I don’t quite know how much you mean, but enough for all
practical ends.”
“Marrying a fashionable actress is hardly a practical end.”
“Certainly not, but I’m not speaking from his point of view.”
Nash was perfectly lucid. “Moreover, I thought you just now said it
would be such a good thing for her.”
“To marry Nick Dormer?”
“You said a good decent man, and he’s one of the very decentest.”
479
HENRY JAMES
“I wasn’t thinking of the individual, but of the protection.
It would fence her about, settle certain questions, or appear to; it
would make things safe and comfortable for her and keep a lot of
cads and blackguards away.”
“She ought to marry the prompter or the box-keeper,” said Nash.
“Then it would be all right. I think indeed they generally do, don’t
they?”
Peter felt for a moment a strong disposition to drop his friend
on the spot, to cross to the other side of the street and walk away
without him. But there was a different impulse which struggled with
this one and after a minute overcame it, the impulse that led to his
saying presently: “Has she told you she’s a she’s in love with Nick?”
“No, no that’s not the way I know it.”
“Has Nick told you then?”
“On the contrary, I’ve told him.”
“You’ve rendered him a questionable service if you’ve no proof,”
Peter pronounced.
“My proof’s only that I’ve seen her with him. She’s charming,
poor dear thing.”
“But surely she isn’t in love with every man she’s charming to.”
“I mean she’s charming to me,” Nash returned. “I see her that
way. I see her interested and what it does to her, with her, for her.
But judge for yourself the fi rst time you get a chance.”
“When shall I get a chance? Nick doesn’t come near her.”
“Oh he’ll come, he’ll come; his picture isn’t fi nished.”
“You mean he’ll be the box-keeper, then?”
“My dear fellow, I shall never allow it,” said Gabriel Nash. “It
would be idiotic and quite unnecessary. He’s beautifully arranged in
quite a different line. Fancy his taking that sort of job on his hands!
Besides, she’d never expect it; she’s not such a goose. They’re very
good friends it will go on that way. She’s an excellent person for him
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