The Tragic Muse

XXVIII.

ON their way to Florence, Julia Dallow and Mrs. Gresham spent three days in Paris, where Peter Sherringham had as much conversation with his sister as it often befell one member of that family to have with another. That is, on two different occasions he enjoyed half an hour’s gossip with her in her sitting-room at the hotel. On one of these occasions he took the liberty of asking her whether or no, definitely, she meant to marry Nick Dormer. Julia expressed to him that she was muck obliged for his interest, but that Nick and she were nothing more than relations and good friends. “ He wants to marry you, tremendously,” Peter remarked ; to which Mrs. Dallow simply made answer, “ Well, then, he may want.”

After this they sat silent for some moments, 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 had, in general, so different a way of feeling that they could never go far together in discussion. He liked her and was sorry for her, thought her life lonely, and wondered she did n’t make a “ great ” marriage. Moreover, he pitied her for being without the interests and consolations that he had found substantial: those of the intellectual, the studious order he considered these to be, not knowing how much she supposed that she reflected and studied, or what an education she had found in her political aspirations, regarded by him as scarcely more a personal part of her than the livery of her servants or the jewels George Dallow’s money had bought. Her relations with Nick were unfathomable to him ; but they were not his affair. No affair of Julia’s was sufficiently his to justify him in an attempt to understand it. That there should have been any question of her marrying Nick was the anomaly to him, rather than that the question should have been dropped. He liked his clever cousin very well as he was — enough to have a vague sense that he might be spoiled by being altered into a brother-in-law. Moreover, though he was 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 could not have said exactly what it was that he judged it pertinent to be let off from ; perhaps from irritating inquiry as to whether he had given any more tea-parties for young ladies connected with the theatre.

Peter’s forbearance, however, did not bring him all the security he prefigured. After an interval he indeed went so far as to ask Julia if Nick had been wanting in respect to her; but this was a question intended for sympathy, not for control. She answered, “ Dear, no — though he ’s very provoking.” Thus Peter guessed that they had had a quarrel, in which it did n’t concern him to interpose : he added the epithet and her flight from England together, and they made up, to his perception, one of the little magnified embroilments which do duty for the real in superficial 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 come up : hut he wondered still more why Nick did n’t marry her. Julia said nothing, again, as it’ to give him a chance to make some inquiry which would save her from gushing; but as his idea appeared to be to change the subject, and as he changed it only by silence, she was reduced to resuming presently —

“ I should have thought you would have come over to see your friend the actress.”

“ Which of my friends ? I know so many actresses,” Peter rejoined.

“The woman you inflicted on us in this place a year ago — the one who is in London now.”

“Oh. Miriam Rooth ? I should have liked to come over, but I have been tied fast. Have you seen her ? ”

“ Yes, I’ve seen her.”

“ Do yon like her? ”

“ Not at all.”

“ She has a lovely voice,” Peter hazarded, after a moment.

“ I don’t know anything about her voice — I have n’t heard it.”

“ But she does n’t act in pantomime, does she ? ”

“ I don’t know anything about her acting. I saw her in private — in Nick Dormer’s studio.”

“ In Nick Dormer’s studio ? What was she doing there ? ”

“She was sprawling over the room and staring at me.”

If Mrs. Dallow had wished to “ draw” her brother, it is probable that at this point she suspected she had succeeded, in spite of the care he took to divest his tone of everything like emotion in uttering the words : “ Why, does he know her so well ? I did n’t know,”

“ She is 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 have n’t the least idea — I did n’t look at it. I dare say it’s clever,” Julia added.

“ How in the world does Nick find time to paint ? ”

“ I don’t know. That horrid man brought her.”

“ What horrid man ? ” Peter demanded.

“The one Nick thinks so clever — the fat, vulgar 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 this girl.”

“Oh I recollect him — I had a discussion with him,” Peter said.

“ How could you ? I must go and dress,” Julia went on.

“ He was clever, remarkably. Miss Rooth and her mother were old friends of his, and he was the first person to speak of them to me.”

“ What a distinction ! I thought him disgusting! ” exclaimed Mrs, Dallow, who was pressed for time and who had now got up.

“ Oh, you ’re severe,” said Peter ; but as 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 did not render him provoking to Peter Sherringham : on the contrary, Peter had been quite sincere when he qualified it as interesting. It became, indeed, on reflection, so interesting that it had perhaps almost as much to do with Sherringham’s rush over to London as it had to do with Julia’s coming away. Reflection taught Peter, further, that the matter was altogether a delicate one, and suggested that it was odd he should he mixed up with it, in fact, when, as Julia’s business, he had wished only to keep out of it. It was his own business a little, too : 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 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 did n’t mind mentioning it, since Peter would believe it whether she mentioned it or no) was so predisposed in his favor that he would have no trouble at all. In short, she herself would see him through — she would answer for it that he would only have to speak. Biddy’s life at home was horrid : she was very sorry for her; she was worthy of a better fate. Peter Avondered what constituted the horridness of Biddy’s life, and perceived that it mainly arose from the fact that Julia disliked Lady Agnes and Grace ; profiting comfortably by the freedom to do so conferred upon her by her having given them a house of which she had perhaps not felt the want 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 he could believe everything Julia said : the only thing that mystified him was her motive for suddenly saying it. He assured her that he was infinitely indebted to her for her expenditure of imagination on his behalf, but that he was very sorry if he had ever put it into any one s head (most of all into the girl’s own) that he had looked at Biddy with a covetous eye. He knew not whether she would make a good wife, but he liked her quite too much to wish to put such a delicate matter to the test. She was surely not intended for rough experiments. As it happened, he was not thinking of marrying any one — he had ever so many reasons against it. Of course one was never safe against accidents, but one could at least take precautions, and he did n’t mind telling her that there Avere 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,” Mrs. Dallow replied. “ Then you would be quite in shelter, you Would know the worst that can happen to you, and it would n’t be bad.” The objection Peter had made to this argument is not important, especially as it was not remarkably candid ; it need only be mentioned that before he and Julia parted she said to him, still in reference to Bridget Dormer : “ Do go and see her, and be nice to her: she ’ll save yon disappointments.”

These last words reverberated in Sherringham’s mind ; 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, whether she were in town or not. If she were at home she welcomed him, and if she were not the unoccupied, bored servants hailed him as a godsend. In either case his allowance of space was large and his independence complete. He had obtained permission, this year, to take in fractions instead of as a single draught the leave of absence to which he was entitled ; and there was, moreover, a question of his being transferred to another embassy, in which event he believed that he might count upon 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 fidgety 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, St. John’s Wood —the fear that he should 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 nervous, too nervous for a diplomatist, and haunted with inclinations, and indeed with purposes, which contradicted each other. He wanted to be out of it and yet he dreaded not to be in it, and on this particular occasion the sense of exclusion made him sore. 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 fact while he sat morally ensconced in the theory, and he had the intelligence to perceive how little these two faces of the same idea had in common. However, as the sense of movement encouraged him to reflect, theory was a poor affair if it remained mere inaction. Yet from the moment it turned to action it manifestly could only be the particular action in which he was engaged ; so that he was in the absurd position of thinking his behavior more complete 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 suffered her to make her first appearance on any stage without the comfort of his voice or the applause of 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, hour he arrived, scramble off to Balaklava Place ; but, after all, he pretended only to be human, and aimed, in behavior, only at the heroic, not at the monstrous. The highest heroism was half tact. He had not written to Miriam that he was coming to England and would call upon her at eleven o’clock in the morning, because it was his secret pride that he had ceased to correspond with her. Sherringham took his prudence where he could find it, and in ing so was rather like a drunkard who should flatter himself that he had sworn liquor because he did n’t touch lemonade.

It is an example of how much he was drawn in different directions at once that when, on reaching Balaklava Place, and alighting at the door of a small much-ivied house which resembled a gate-lodge bereft of its park, he learned that Miss Rooth had only a quarter of an hour before quitted the spot with her mother (they had gone to the theatre, to a rehearsal, said the maid who answered the bell he had set tinkling behind a dingy plastered wall) — when at the end of his pilgrimage he was greeted by 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 if he should follow the two ladies to the theatre, send in his card, and obtain admission to the histrionic workshop. All his old technical interest in the girl’s development flamed up again, and he wondered what she 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 — he had determined to let Miriam alone for that day. The day would be over at eight o’clock in the evening (he hardly played fair), and then he should consider himself free. Instead of going to the theatre he drove to a shop in Bond Street, to take a place for the play. On first 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 had not a single seat left. His second attempt, at another “ library,” was more successful; he was unable to obtain a stall, but by a miracle he might have a box. There was a certain wantonness in paying for a box to see a play on which he had already expended four hundred pounds ; but while he was mentally measuring this abyss an idea came into his head which flushed the extravagance with a slight rose-tint.

Peter came out of the shop with the voucher for the box in his pocket, turned into Piccadilly, noted that the day was growing warm and fine, felt glad that this time he had no business, unless it were business to leave a card or two on official people, and asked himself where he should go if he did n’t go after Miriam. Then it was that it struck him as most acutely desirable, and even most important, that he should see Nick Dormer’s portrait of her. He wondered which would be the natural place at that hour of the day to look for the artist. The House of Commons was perhaps the nearest one, but Nick, incongruous as his proceedings certainly were, probably didn’t keep the picture there; and, moreover, it was not generally characteristic of him to be in the nearest place. The end of Peter’s debate was that he again entered a hansom and drove to

Calcutta Gardens. The hour was early for calling, but cousins with whom one’s intercourse was mainly conducted by chaff would accept it as a practical illustration of that method. And if Julia wanted him to be nice to Biddy (which was exactly, though with a different view, what he wanted himself), what could be nicer than to pay his visit to Lady Agnes (he would have, in decency, to go to see her some time), at a friendly, fraternizing hour, when they would all he likely to be at home ?

Unfortunately, as it turned out, they were not at home, and Peter was reduced to conversation with the butler, who was, however, more luckily, an old friend. Her ladyship and Miss Dormer were absent from town, paying a visit; and Mr. Dormer was also away, or was on the point of going away for the day. Miss Bridget was in London, but was out: Peter’s informant mentioned with earnest vagueness that he thought she had gone somewhere to take a lesson. On Peter’s asking what sort of lesson he meant, he replied, “ Oh, I think — a — the — a — sculpture, you know, sir.” Peter knew, but Biddy’s lesson in “ a — sculpture” (it sounded, on the butler’s lips, like a fashionable new art) struck him a little as a mockery of the benevolent spirit in which lie had come to look her up. The man had an air of participating respectfully in his disappointment, and, to make up for it, added that he might perhaps find Mr. Dormer at his other address. He had gone out early, and had directed his servant to come to Rosedale Road in an hour or two with a portmanteau ; he was going down to Beauclere in the course of the day, Mr. Carteret being ill—perhaps Mr. Sherringham did n’t know it. Perhaps, too. Mr. Sherringham would catch him in Rosedale Road before he took his train — he was to have been busy there for an hour. This was worth trying, and Peter immediately drove to Rosedale Road; where, in answer to his ring, the door was opened to him by Biddy Dormer.

XXIX.

When Biddy saw him her cheek exhibited the prettiest, pleased, surprised red that he had ever observed there, though he was not unacquainted with its fluctuations, and she stood still, smiling at him with the outer dazzle in her eyes, making no motion for him to enter. She only said, “ Oh, Peter ! ” And then, ‘"I ‘m all alone.”

“ So much the better, dear Biddy. Is that any reason I should n’t come in ? ”

“Dear, no—do come in. You’ve just missed Nick ; he has gone to the country — half an hour ago.” She had on a large apron, and in her hand she carried a small stick, besmeared, as his quick eye saw, with modeling-clay. She dropped the door and fled hack before him into the studio, where, when he followed her, she was in the act of flinging a cloth over a rough head, in clay, which, in the middle of the room, was supported on a high wooden stand. The effort, to hide what she had been doing before he caught a glimpse of it made her redder still, and led to her smiling more, to her laughing with a charming confusion of shyness and gladness. She rubbed her hands on her apron, she pulled it off, she looked delightfully awkward, not meeting Peter’s eye, and she said : “ I’m just scraping here a little — you must n’t mind me. What I do is awful, you know. Peter, please don’t look. I’ve been coming here lately to make my little mess, because mamma does n’t particularly like it at home. I’ve had a lesson from a lady who exhibits ; but you would n’t suppose it, to see what I do. Nick’s so kind ; he lets me come here ; he uses the studio so little ; I do what I please. What a pity he’s gone — he would have been so glad. I ’m really alone — I hope you don’t mind. Peter, please don’t look.”

Peter was not bent upon looking ; his eyes bad occupation enough in Biddy’s own agreeable aspect, which was full of an unusual element of domestication and responsibility. Though she had taken possession, by exception, of her brother’s quarters, she struck her visitor as more at home and more herself than he had ever seen her. It was the first time she had been, to his vision, so separate from her mother and sister. She seemed to know this herself, and to be a little frightened by it,—just enough to make him wish to be reassuring. At the same time, Peter also, on this occasion, found himself touched with diffidence, especially after he had gone back and closed the door and settled down to a, regular visit ; for he became acutely conscious of what Julia had said to him in Paris, and was unable to rid himself of the suspicion that it had been said with Biddy’s knowledge. It was not that he supposed his sister had told the girl that she meant to do what she could to make him propose to her : that would have been cruel to her (if she liked him enough to consent), in Julia’s uncertainty. But Biddy participated by imagination, by divination, by a clever girl’s secret tremulous instincts, in her good friend’s views about her, and this probability constituted, for Sherringham, a sort of embarrassing publicity. He had impressions, possibly gross and unjust, in regard to the way women move constantly together amid such considerations, and subtly intercommunicate, when they do not still more subtly dissemble, the hopes or fears of which persons of the opposite sex form the subject. Therefore poor Biddy would know that if she failed to strike him in the right light it would not be for want of his attention having been called to her claims. She would have been tacitly rejected, virtually condemned. Peter could not, without a slight sense of fatuity, endeavor to make up for this to her by kindness ; he was aware that if any one knew it a man would be ridiculous who should lake so much as that for granted. But no one would know it; oddly enough, in this calculation of security he left Biddy herself out. It did not occur to him that she might have a secret small irony to spare for his ingenious and magnanimous impulse to show her how much he liked her in order to make her forgive him for not liking her more. This magnanimity, at any rate, colored the whole of Sherringham’s visit to Rosedale Road, the whole of the pleasant, prolonged chat that kept him there for more than an hour. He begged the girl to go on with her work, not to let him interrupt it; and she obliged him at last, taking the cloth off the lump of clay, and giving him a chance to he delightful by guessing that the shapeless mass was intended, or would be intended after a while, for Nick. He saw that she was more comfortable when she began to smooth it and scrape it with her little stick again, to manipulate it with an ineffectual air of knowing how ; for this gave her something to do, relieved her nervousness, and permitted her to turn away from him when she talked.

Peter walked about the room and sat down ; got up and looked at Nick’s things; watched her at moments in silence (which made her always say, in a minute, that he was not to look at her so, or she could do nothing) ; observed how her position, before her high stand, her lifted arms, her turns of the head, considering her work this way and that, all helped her to be pretty. She repeated again and again that it was an immense pity about Nick, till he was obliged to say he did n’t care a straw for Nick ; he was perfectly content with the company he found. This was not the sort of thing he thought it right, under the circumstances, to say : but then even the circumstances did not require him to pretend he liked her less than he did. After all, she was his cousin ; she would cease to be so if she should become his wife ; but one advantage of her not entering into that relation was precisely that she would remain his cousin. It was very pleasant to find a young, bright, slim, rose-colored kinswoman all ready to recognize consanguinity when one came back from cousinless foreign lands. Peter talked about family matters ; he did n’t know, in his exile, where no one took an interest in them, what a fund of latent curiosity about them was in him. It was in him to gossip about them, and to enjoy the sense that he and Biddy had indefeasible properties in common — ever so many things as to which they would understand each other a tleniimot. He smoked a cigarette, because she begged him to, said that people always smoked in studios — it made her feel so much more like an artist. She apologized for the badness of her work on the ground that Nick was so busy he could scarcely ever give her a sitting ; so that she had to do the head from photographs and occasional glimpses. They had hoped to be able to put in an hour that morning, but news had suddenly come that Mr. Carteret was worse, and Nick had hurried down to Beauclere. Mr. Carteret was very ill, poor old dear, and Nick and he were immense friends. Nick had always been charming to him. Peter and Biddy took the concerns of the houses of Dormer and Sherringham in order, and the young man felt, after a little, as if they were as wise as a French conseil de famille, settling what was best for every one. He beard all about Lady Agnes, and manifested an interest in the detail of her existence that he had not supposed himself to possess, though indeed Biddy threw out intimations which excited his curiosity, presenting her mother in a light that might call upon his sympathy.

I don’t think she has been very happy or very pleased, of late,” the girl said. “ I think she has had some disappointments. poor dear mamma ; and Grace has made her go out of town for three or four days, for a little change. They have gone down to see an old Lady St. Dunstans, who never comes to London now, and who, you know — she ’s tremendously old — was papa’s godmother. It’s not very lively for Grace, but Grace is such a dear she ‘ll do anything for mamma. Mamma will go anywhere to see people she can talk with about papa.”

Biddy added, in reply to a further inquiry from Peter, that what her mother was disappointed about was — well, themselves, her children and all their affairs; and she explained that Lady Agnes wanted all kinds of things for them that did n’t come to them, that they did n’t get or seem likely to get, so that their life appeared altogether a failure. She wanted a great deal, Biddy admitted; she really wanted everything, and she had thought in her happier days that everything was to be hers. She loved them all so much, and then she was proud: she could n’t get over the thought of their not being successful. Sherringham was unwilling to press, at this point, for be suspected one of the things that Lady Agnes wanted ; but Biddy relieved him a little by saying that one of these things was that Grace should get married.

“ That’s too unselfish of her,” rejoined Peter, who did n’t care for Grace. “ Cousin Agnes ought to keep her near her always, if Grace is so obliging and devoted.”

“ Oh, mamma would give up anything of that sort for our good ; she would n’t sacrifice us that way ! ” Biddy exclaimed. “ Besides. I’m the one to stay with mamma ; not that I can manage and look after her and do everything so well as Grace. But, you know, I want to,” said Biddy, with a liquid note in her voice, giving her lump of clay a little stab.

“ But does n’t your mother want the rest of you to get married—Percival and Nick and you ? ” Peter asked.

“ Oh, she has given up Percy. I don’t suppose she thinks it would do. Dear Nick, of course — that s just what she does want.”

Sherringham hesitated. “ And you, Biddy? ”

“Oh, I dare say; but that doesn’t signify—I never shall.”

Peter got up, at this ; the tone of it set him in motion, and he took a turn round the room. He said something to her about her being too proud ; to which she replied that that was the only thing for a girl to be, to get on.

“ What do you mean by getting on? ” Peter demanded, stopping, with his hands in his pockets, on the other side of the studio.

“I mean crying one’s eyes out!” Biddy unexpectedly exclaimed ; but she drowned the effect of this pathetic paradox in a foolish laugh and in the quick declaration, “ Of course it’s about Nick that poor mother’s really brokenhearted.”

“ What’s the matter with Nick ? ” Sherringham asked, diplomatically.

“Oh, Peter, what’s the matter with Julia?” Biddy quavered, softly, back to him, with eyes suddenly frank and mournful. “ I dare say you know what we all hoped — what we all supposed, from what they told us. And now they won’t! ” said Biddy.

“ Yes, Biddy, I know. I had the brightest prospect of becoming your brother-in-law: would n’t that have been it — or something like that ? But it is indeed visibly clouded. What’s the matter with them ? May I have another cigarette ? ” Peter came back to the wide, cushioned bench where he had been lounging: this was the way they took up the subject he wanted most to look into. “ Don’t they know how to love ? ” he went on, as he seated himself again.

“ It seems a kind of fatality ! ” sighed Biddy.

Peter said nothing for some moments, at the end of which he inquired whether his companion were to be quite alone during her mother’s absence. She replied that her mother was very droll about that — she would never leave her alone ; she thought something dreadful would happen to her. She had therefore arranged that Florence Tressilian should come and stay in Calcutta Gardens for the next few days, to look after her and see she did no wrong. Peter asked who Florence Tressilian might be ; he greatly hoped, for the success of Lady Agnes’s precautions, that she was not a flighty young genius like Biddy. She was described to him as tremendously nice and tremendously clever, but also tremendously old and tremendously safe ; with the addition that Biddy was tremendously fond of her, and that while she remained in Calcutta Gardens they expected to enjoy themselves tremendously. She was to come that afternoon, before dinner.

‘‘And are you to dine at home?” said Peter.

“ Certainly ; where else ? ”

“ And just you two, alone? Do you call that enjoying yourselves tremendously ? ”

“ It will do for me. No doubt I ought n’t, in modesty, to speak for poor Florence.”

“It is n’t fair to her ; you ought to invite some one to meet her.”

“ Do you mean you, Peter ? ” the girl asked, turning to him quickly, with a look that vanished the instant he caught it.

“ Try me ; I’ll come like a shot.”

“ That ’s kind, " said Biddy, dropping her hands and now resting her eyes on him gratefully. She remained in this position a moment, as if she were under a charm ; then she jerked herself back to her work with the remark, “ Florence will like that immensely.”

I ‘m delighted to please Florence, your description of her is so attractive,” Sherringham laughed. And when the girl asked him if he minded if there were not a great feast, because when her mother went away she allowed her a fixed amount for that sort of thing, and, as he might imagine, it was n’t millions — when Biddy, with the frankness of their pleasant kinship touched anxiously on this economical point (illustrating, as Peter saw, the lucidity with which Lady Agnes had had, in her old age, to learn to recognize the occasions when she could be conveniently frugal), he answered that the shortest dinners were the best, especially when one was going to the theatre. That was his case to-night, and did Biddy think he might look to Miss Tressilian to go with him? They would have to dine early ; he wanted not to miss a moment.

“ The theatre — Miss Tressilian?” Biddy stared, interrupted and in suspense again.

“ Would it incommode you very much to dine say at 7.15. and accept a place in my box ? The finger of Providence was in it, when I took a box an hour ago. I particularly like your being free to go— if you are free.”

Biddy became fairly confused with pleasure. “ Dear Peter, how good you are! They’ll have it at any hour. Florence will he so glad.”

“And has Florence seen Miss Booth? ”

“ Miss Booth ? ” the girl repeated, redder than before. He perceived in a moment that she had heard that he had devoted much time and attention to that young lady. It was as if she were conscious that he would be conscious in speaking of her, and there was a sweetness in her allowance for him on that score. But Biddy was more confused for him than he was for himself. He guessed in a moment how much she had thought over what she had heard; this was indicated by her saying vaguely, “ No, no, I ‘ve not seen her.” Then she became aware that she was answering a question he had not asked her, and she went on : “ We shall be too delighted. I saw her — perhaps you remember— in your rooms in Paris. I thought her so wonderful then ! Every one is talking of her here. But we don’t go to the theatre much, you know ; we don’t have boxes offered us except when go11 come. Poor Nick is too much taken up in the evening. I ‘ve wanted awfully to see her. They say she ’s magnificent.”

“ I don’t know,” said Peter. “ I have n’t seen her.”

You have n’t seen her ? ”

“ Never, Biddy. I mean on the stage. In private, often—yes,” Sherringham added, conscientiously.

“ Oh ! ” Biddy exclaimed, bending her face on Nick’s bust again. She asked him no question about the new star, and he offered her no further information. There were things in his mind hat pulled him different ways, so that or some minutes silence was the result of the conflict. At last he said, after an hesitation caused by the possibility that she was ignorant of the fact he had lately elicited from Julia, though it was move probable she might have learned it from the same source —

“Am I perhaps indiscreet in alluding to the circumstance that Nick has been painting Miss Rooth’s portrait? ”

“ You are not indiscreet in alluding to it to me, because I know it.”

“Then there’s no secret nor mystery about it ? ”

Biddy considered a moment. “ I don’t think mamma knows it.”

“ Yon mean you have been keeping it from her because she would n’t like it?

“ We are afraid she may think that papa would n’t have liked it.

This was said with an absence of humor, which for an instant moved Sherringham to mirth ; but he quickly recovered himself, repenting of any apparent failure of respect to the high memory of his late celebrated relative. He rejoined quickly, but rather vaguely, “Ah, yes, I remember that great man’s ideas : ” and then he went on, “ May I ask if you know it, the fact that we are talking of, through Julia or through Nick ? ”

“ I know it from both of them.”

“Then, if you are in their confidence, may I further ask whether this undertaking of Nick’s is the reason why things seem to be at an end between them ? ”

“ Oh, I don’t think she likes it.” returned Biddy.

“ Is n’t it good ? ”

“ Oh, I don’t mean the picture — she has n’t seen it ; but his having done it.”

“ Does she dislike it so much that that’s why she won’t marry him ? ”

Biddy gave up her work, moving away from it to look at it. She came and sat down on the long bench on which Sherringham had placed himself. Then she broke out, “Oh, Peter, it’s a great trouble — it ’s a very great trouble ; and I can’t tell you. for I don’t understand it.

“If I ask you, it’s not to pry into what does n’t concern me; but Julia is my sister, and I can’t, after all, help taking some interest in her life. But she tells me very little. She doesn’t think me worthy.”

“ Ah, poor Julia ! ” Biddy murmured, defensively. Her tone recalled to him that Julia had thought him worthy to unite himself to Bridget Dormer, and inevitably betrayed that the girl was thinking of that also. While they both thought of it they sat looking into each other’s eyes.

“ Nick, I ‘m sure, does n’t treat you that way; I’m sure he confides in you; he talks to you about, his occupations, his ambitions,” Peter continued. “And you understand him, you enter into them, you are nice to him, you help him.”

“ Oh, Nick’s life — it’s very dear to me,” said Biddy.

“That must be jolly for him.”

“ It makes me very happy.” Peter uttered a low, ambiguous groan; then he exclaimed, with irritation, “ What the deuce is the matter with them, then? Why can’t they hit it off, and be quiet and rational, and do what every one wants them to do ? ”

“ Oh. Peter, it’s awfully complicated,” said Biddy, with sagacity.

“Do you mean that Nick’s in love with her ? ”

“ In love with Julia ? ”

“ No, no, with Miriam Rooth.”

Biddy shook her head slowly; then with a smile which struck him as one of the sweetest things he had ever seen (it conveyed, at the expense of her own prospects, such a shy, generous little mercy of reassurance), “He isn’t, Peter,’ she declared. “Julia thinks it’s trifling — all that sort of thing,” she added. “ She wants him to go in for different honors.”

“ Julia’s the oddest woman. I thought she loved him, Sherringham remarked. “ And when you love a person ” — He continued to reflect, leaving his sentence impatiently unfinished, while Biddy, with lowered eyes, sat waiting (it interested her) to hear what you did in that case.

“ I can’t conceive her giving him up. He has great ability, besides being such a good fellow.”

“ It’s for his happiness, Peter — that ’s the way she reasons,” Biddy explained. “She does it for an idea; she has told me a great deal about it, and I see the way she feels.”

“ You try to, Biddy, because you are such a dear good-natured girl, but I don’t believe you do in the least. It’s too little the way you yourself would feel. Julia’s idea, as you call it, must be curious.”

“ Well, it is, Peter, " Biddy mournfully admitted. “ She won’t risk not coming out at the top.”

“ At the top of what ? ”

“ Oh, of everything.” Biddy’s tone showed a trace of awe of such high views.

“ Surely one’s at the top of everything when one’s in love.”

“ I don’t know,” said the girl.

“ Do you doubt it ? ” Sherringham demanded.

“ I have never been in love, and I never shall be.”

“You re as perverse, in your way, as Julia. But T confess I don’t understand Nick’s attitude any better. He seems to me, if I may say so, neither fish nor flesh.”

“Oh, his attitude is very noble, Peter; his state of mind is wonderfully interesting, Biddy pleaded. “ Surely you must be in favor of art,” she said. Sherringham looked at her a moment. “ Dear Biddy, your little digs are as soft as zephyrs.”

She colored, but she protested. “ My little digs ? What do you mean ? Are you not in favor of art ? ”

“The question is delightfully simple.

I don’t know what you ‘re talking about. Everything has its place. A parliamentary life scarcely seems to me the situation for portrait-painting.”

“ That’s just what Nick says.”

“ You talk of it together a great deal ? ”

“ Yes, Nick is very good to me.”

Clever Nick ! And what do you advise him ? ”

“ Oh, to do something.”

“That’s valuable,” Peter laughed.

“ Not, to give up his sweetheart for the sake of a paint-pot, I hope ? ”

“ Never, never, Peter ! It’s not a question of his giving up, for Julia has herself drawn back. I think she never really felt safe ; she loved him, but she was afraid of him. Now she is only afraid — she has lost the confidence she tried to have. Nick has tried to hold her, but she has jerked herself away. Do you know what she said to me ? She said, ‘ My confidence has gone forever.’ ”

“ I did n’t, know she was such a prig ! ” Sherringham exclaimed. “ They are queer people, verily, with water in their veins instead of blood. You and I wouldn’t be like that, should we? though you have taken up such a discouraging position, about caring for a fellow.”

“ I care for art,” poor Biddy returned.

“ You do, to some purpose,” said Peter, glancing at the bust.

“To that of making you laugh at me.”

“ Would you give a good man up for that ? ”

“ A good man ? What man ? ”

“ Well, say me — if I wanted to marry you.”

Biddy hesitated a little. “ Of course I would, in a moment. At any rate, I ’d give up the House of Commons. That’s what Nick’s going to do now — only you mustn’t tell any one.”

Sherringham stared. “ He’s going to chuck up his seat ? ”

“ I think his mind is made up to it. He has talked me over — we have had some deep discussions. Yes, I’m on the side of art ! " said Biddy, ardently.

“Do you mean in order to paint — to paint Miss Rooth ? ” Peter went on.

“ To paint every one — that’s what he wants. By keeping Ids seat he has n’t kept Julia, and she was the thing he cared most for, in public life. When he has got. out of the whole thing, his attitude, as he says, will be clear. He is tremendously interesting about it, Peter ; he has talked to me wonderfully ; he has won me over. Mamma is heartbroken ; telling her will be the hardest part.”

“ If she does n’t know, why is she heart-broken ?

“Oh, at the marriage not coming off — she knows that. That’s what she wanted. She thought it perfection. She blames Nick immensely. She thinks he held the whole thing in his hand, and that he has thrown away a magnificent opportunity.”

“And what does Nick say to her ? ”

“ He says, ‘ Dear old mummy ! ’ ”

“ That’s good,” said Sherringham.

“ I don’t know what will become of her when this other blow arrives,” Biddy pursued. “ Poor Nick wants to please her — he does, he does. But, as he says, you can’t please every one, and you must, before you die, please yourself a little.”

Peter Sherringham sat looking at the floor; the color had risen to his face while he listened to the girl. Then he sprang up and took another turn about the room. His companion’s artless but vivid recital had set his blood in motion. He had taken Nick Dormer’s political prospects very much for granted, thought of them as definite and brilliant and seductive. To learn there was something for which he was ready to renounce such honors, and to recognize the nature of that bribe, affected Sherringham powerfully and strangely. He felt as if he had heard the sudden blare of a trumpet, and he felt at the same time as if he had received a sudden slap in the face. Nick’s bribe was “ art ”—the strange temptress with whom he himself had been wrestling, and over whom he had finally ventured to believe that wisdom and exercise had won a victory. Now there was something in the conduct of his old friend and playfellow that made all his reasonings small. Nick’s unexpected choice acted on him as a reproach and a challenge. He felt ashamed at having placed himself so unromantically on his guard, and rapidly said to himself that if Nick could afford to allow so much for “ art " he might surely exhibit some of the same confidence. There had never been the least avowed competition between the cousins, — their lines lay too far apart for that; but nevertheless they rode in sight of each other, and Sherringham had at present the sensation of suddenly seeing Nick Dormer give his horse the spur, bound forward and fly over a wall. He was put on his mettle, and he had not to look long to spy an obstacle that he, too, might ride at. High rose his curiosity to see what warrant his kinsman might have for such risks — how he was mounted for such exploits. He really knew little about Nick’s talent — so little as to feel no right to exclaim, “ What an ass ! ” when Biddy gave him the news which only the existence of real talent could redeem from absurdity. All his eagerness to ascertain what Nick had been able to make of such a subject as Miriam Rooth came back to him; though it was what mainly had brought him to Rosedale Road, he had forgotten it in the happy accident of his encounter with Biddy. He was conscious that if the surprise of a revelation of power were in store for him Nick would be justified more than he himself would feel reinstated in his self-respect. For the courage of renouncing the forum for the studio hovered before him as greater than the courage of marrying an actress whom one was in love with; the reward, in the latter case, was so much more immediate. Peter asked Biddy what Nick had done with his portrait of Miriam. He had n’t seen it anywhere in rummaging about the room.

“ I think it’s here somewhere, but I don’t know, Biddy replied, getting up and looking vaguely round her.

“Have n’t you seen it? Hasn’t he shown it to you ? ”

The girl rested her eyes on him strangely a moment; then she turned them away from him with a mechanical air of seeking for the picture. “ I think it’s in the room, put away with its face to the wall.”

“ One of those dozen canvases with their backs to us ? ”

One of those, perhaps.”

“ Haven’t you tried to see ? ”

“ I haven’t touched them,” said Biddy, coloring.

“Has n’t Nick had it out to show you ? ”

“ He says it’s in too bad a state — it is n’t finished — it won’t do.”

“ And have n’t you had the curiosity to turn it round for yourself ? ”

The embarrassed look in poor Biddy’s face deepened, and it seemed to Slierringham that her eyes pleaded with him a moment; that there was a menace of tears in them, a gleam of anguish. " I have had an idea he would n’t like it.”

Her visitor’s own desire, however, had become too lively for easy forbearance. He laid his hand on two or three canvases which proved, as he extricated them, to be either blank or covered with rudimentary forms. “ Dear Biddy, are you as docile, as obliging, as that ? ” he asked, pulling out something else.

The inquiry was meant in familiar kindness, for Peter was struck, even to admiration, with the gill’s having a sense of honor which all girls have not. She must in this particular case have longed for a sight of Nick’s work — the work which had brought about such a crisis in his life. But she had passed hours in his studio, alone, without permitting herself a stolen peep; she was capable of that if she believed it would please him. Sherringham liked a charming girl’s being capable of that (he had known charming girls who would not have been), and his question was really an expression of respect. Biddy, however, apparently discovered some light mockery in it, and she broke out, incongruously —

“ I have n’t wanted so much to see it.

I don’t care for her so much as that.”

“ So much as that ? ”

“ I don’t care for his actress — for that vulgar creature. I don’t like her! ” said Biddy, unexpectedly.

Peter stared. “ I thought you had n’t seen her.”

“ I saw her in Paris — twice. She was wonderfully clever, but she didn’t charm me.”

Sherringham quickly considered, and then he said, benevolently, “ I won’t inflict the picture upon you, then ; we ‘ll leave it alone for the present.”Biddy made no reply to this at first, but after a moment she went straight over to the row of stacked canvases and exposed several of them to the light. “ Why did you say you wished to go to the theatre to-night ? ” her companion continued.

Still the girl was silent; then she exclaimed, with her back turned to him and a little tremor in her voice, while she drew forth one of her brother’s studies after the other, " For the sake of your company, Peter ! Here it is, I think,” she added, moving a large canvas with some effort. “ No, no, I ’ll hold it for you. Is that the light ? ”

She would not let him take it; she bade him stand off and allow her to place it in the right position. In this position she carefully presented it, supporting it, at the proper angle, from behind, and showing her head and shoulders above it. From the moment his eyes rested on the picture Sherringham accepted this service without protest. Unfinished, simplified, and in some portions merely suggested, it was strong, brilliant, and vivid, and had already the look of life and the air of an original thing. Sherringham was startled, he was strangely affected — he had no idea Nick moved on that plane. Miriam was represented in three quarters, seated, almost down to her feet. She leaned forward, with one of her legs crossed over the other, her arms extended and foreshortened, her hands locked together round her knee. Her beautiful head was bent a little, broodingly, and her splendid face seemed to look down at life. She had a grand appearance of being raised aloft, with a wide regard, from a height of intelligence, for the great field of the artist, all the figures and passions he may represent. Peter wondered where his kinsman had learned to paint like that. He almost gasped at the composition of the thing, at the drawing of the moulded arms. Biddy Dormer abstained from looking round the corner of the canvas as she held it; she only watched, in Peter’s eyes, for his impression of it. This she easily caught, and he could see that she had done so when, after a few minutes, he went to relieve her. She let him lift the thing out of her grasp ; he moved it, and rested it, so that they could still see it, against the high back of a chair.

“ It’s tremendously good,” he said. “ Dear, dear Nick,” Biddy murmured, looking at it now.

“Poor, poor Julia!” Sherringham was moved to exclaim, in a different tone. His companion made no rejoinder to this, and they stood another minute or two, side by side, in silence, gazing at the portrait. Then Sherringham took up his hat— he had no more time, he must go. “ Will you come to-night, all the same ? ” he asked, with a laugh that was somewhat awkward, putting out his hand to Biddy.

“ All the same ? ”

“ Why, you say she ’s a terrible creature,” Peter went on, with his eyes on the painted face.

“ Oh, anything for art,” said Biddy, smiling.

“ Well, at seven o’clock, then.” And Sherringham went away immediately, leaving the girl alone with the Tragic Muse, and feeling again, with a quickened rush, a sense of the beauty of Miriam, as well as a new comprehension of the talent of Nick.

XXX.

It was not till noon, or rather later, the next day, that Sherringham saw Miriam Rooth. He wrote her a note, that evening, to he delivered to her at the theatre, and during the performance she sent round to him a card with “ All right — come to luncheon to-morrow,” scrawled upon it in pencil.

When he presented himself in Balaklava Place he learned that the two ladies had not come in — they had gone again, early, to rehearsal ; but they had left word that he was to be pleased to wait — they would come in from one moment to the other. It was further mentioned to him, as he was ushered into the drawing-room, that Mr. Dashwood was on the ground. This circumstance, however, Sherringham barely noted ; he had been soaring so high for the past twelve hours that he had almost lost consciousness of the minor differences of earthly things. He had taken Biddy Dormer and her friend Miss Tressilian home from the play, and after leaving them he had walked about the streets, he had roamed back to his sister’s house, in a state of exultation deepened by the fact that all the evening he had contained himself, thinking it more decorous and considerate, less invidious, not to “ rave.” Sitting there in the shade of the box with his companions, he had watched Miriam in attentive but inexpressive silence, glowing and vibrating inwardly, but, for these fine, deep reasons, not committing himself to the spoken rapture. Delicacy, it appeared to him, should rule the hour; and indeed he had never had a pleasure more delicate than this little period of still observation and repressed ecstasy. Miriam’s art lost nothing by it, and Biddy’s mild nearness only gained. This young lady was silent also —wonderingly, dauntedly, as if she too were conscious, in relation to the actress, of various other things beside her mastery of her art. To this mastery Biddy’s attitude was a candid and liberal tribute : the poor girl sat quenched and pale, as if in the blinding light of a comparison by which it would be presumptuous even to be annihilated. Her subjection, however, was a gratified, a charmed subjection : there was a beneficence in such beauty — the beauty of the figure that moved before the footlights and spoke in music — even if it deprived one of hope. Peter did n’t say to her, in vulgar elation and in reference to her whimsical profession of dislike at the studio, “ Well, do you find this artist so disagreeable now ? ” and she was grateful to him for his forbearance, for the tacit kindness of which the idea seemed to be : “ My poor child, I would prefer you if I could; but — judge for yourself — how can I ? Expect of me only the possible. Expect that, certainly, but only that.” In the same degree Peter liked Biddy’s sweet, hushed air of judging for herself, of recognizing his discretion and letting him off, while she was lost in the illusion, in the convincing picture, of the stage. Miss Tressilian did most of the criticism : site broke out cheerfully and sonorously from time to time, in reference to the actress. ‘‘ Most striking, certainly,” or, " She is clever, is n’t she ? ” It was a manner to which her companions found it impossible to respond. Miss Tressilian was disappointed in nothing but their enjoyment: they did n’t seem to think the exhibition as amusing as she.

Walking away through the ordered void of Lady Agnes’s quarter, with the four acts of the play glowing again before him in the smokeless London night, Sherringham found the liveliest thing in his impression the certitude that if he had never seen Miriam before, and she had had for him none of the advantages of association, he would still have recognized in her performance the most interesting thing that, the theatre had ever offered him. He floated in a sense of the felicity of it, in the general encouragement of a thing perfectly done, in the almost aggressive bravery of still larger claims for an art which could so triumphantly, so exquisitely, render life. “ Render it ? ” Peter said to himself. “ Create it and reveal it, rather : give us something new and vast and of the first order!” He had seen Miriam now; he had never seen her before ; he had never seen her till he saw her in her conditions. Oh, her conditions — there were many things to be said about them ; they were paltry enough as yet, interior, inadequate, obstructive, as compared with the right, full, finished setting of such a talent; but the essence of them was now, irremovably, in Sherringham’s eye, the vision of how the uplifted stage and the listening house transformed her. That idea of her having no character of her own came back to him with a force that made him laugh in the empty street : this was a disadvantage she was so exempt from that he appeared to himself not to have known her till to-night. Her character was simply to hold you by the particular spell ; any other — the good-nature of home, the relation to her mother, her friends, her lovers, her debts, the practice of virtues or industries or vices — was not worth speaking of. These things were the fictions and shadows; the representation was the deep substance.

Sherringham had, as he went, an intense vision (he had often had it before) of the conditions which were still absent, the great and complete ones, those which would give the girl’s talent a superior, glorious stage. More than ever he desired them, mentally invoked them, filled them out, in imagination, cheated himself with the idea that they were possible. He saw them in a momentary illusion and confusion : a great academic, artistic theatre, subsidized and unburbened with money-getting, rich in its repertory, rich in the high quality and the wide array of its servants, pouring forth a continuity of tradition, striving for perfection, laying a splendid literature under contribution. He saw the heroine of a hundred “ situations.” variously dramatic and vividly real ; he saw comedy and drama and passion and character and English life ; he saw all humanity and history and poetry, and perpetually, in the midst of them, shining out in the high relief of some great moment, an image as fresh as an unveiled statue. He was not unconscious that he was taking all sorts of impossibilities and miracles for granted ; but it really seemed to him for the time that the woman he had been watching three hours, the incarnation of the serious drama, would be a new and vivifying force. The world was just then so bright to him that Basil Dashwood struck him at first as an harmonious minister of that force.

It must be added that before Miriam arrived the breeze that filled Slierringham’s sail began to sink a little. He passed out of the eminently “ let ” drawing-room, where twenty large photographs of the young actress bloomed in the desert; he went into the garden by a glass door that stood open, and found Mr. Dashwood reclining on a bench and smoking cigarettes. This young man’s conversation was a different music — it took him down, as lie felt; showed him, very sensibly and intelligibly, it must be confessed, the actual theatre, the one they were all concerned with, the one they would have to make the best of. It was fortunate for Sherringham that he kept his intoxication mainly to himself ; the Englishman’s habit of not being effusive still prevailed with him, even after his years of exposure to the foreign contagion. Nothing could have been less exclamatory than the meeting of the two men, with its question or two, its remark or two, about Sherringlmin’s arrival in London ; its offhand “ I noticed you last niglit. I was glad you turned up at last,” on one side, and its attenuated “ Oh, yes, it was the first time. I was very much interested,” on the other. Basil Dashwood played a part in Yolande, and Sherringham had had the satisfaction of taking the measure of his aptitude. He judged it to be of the small order, as indeed the part, which was neither that of the virtuous nor that of the villainous hero, restricted him to two or three inconspicuous effects and three or four changes of dress. He represented an ardent but respectful young lover whom the distracted heroine found time to pity a little and even to rail at; but it was impressed upon Sherringham that he scarcely represented young love. He looked very well, but Peter had heard him already in a hundred contemporary pieces; he never got out of rehearsal. He uttered sentiments and breathed vows with a nice voice, with a shy, boyish tremor in it, but as if he were afraid of being chaffed for it afterwards ; giving the spectator, in the stalls, the feeling of holding the prompt-book and listening to a recitation. He made one think of country-houses and lawn-tennis and private theatricals ; than which there could not be, to Sherringham’s sense, an association more disconnected with the actor’s art.

Dashwood knew all about the new thing, the piece in rehearsal ; he knew all about everything — receipts and salaries and expenses and newspaper articles, and what old Baskerville said and what Mrs. Ruffler thought: matters of superficial concern to Sherringham, who wondered, before Miriam appeared, whether she talked with her “ walkinggentleman ” about them by the hour, deep in them and finding them not vulgar and boring, but the natural air of her life and the essence of her profession. Of course she did — she naturally would ; it was all in the day’s work, and he might feel sure she would n’t turn up her nose at the shop. He had to remind himself that he did n’t care if she did n’t — that he would think worse of her if she should. She certainly had much confabulation with her competent playfellow, talking shop by the hour : Sherringham could see that from the familiar, customary way Dashwood sat there with his cigarette, as if he were in possession and on his own ground. He divined a great intimacy between the young artists, but asked himself at the same time what he, Peter Sherringham, had to say about it. He did n’t pretend to control Miriam’s intimacies, it was to be supposed ; and if he had encouraged her to adopt a profession which abounded in opportunities for comradeship, it was not for him to cry out because she had taken to it kindly. He had already descried a fund of utility in Mrs. Lovick’s light brother; but it irritated him, all the same, after a while, to hear Basil Dashwood represent himself as almost indispensable. He was practical — there was no doubt of that; and this idea added to Sherringham’s paradoxical sense that as regards the matters actually in question he himself had not this virtue. Dashwood had got Mrs. Rooth the house; it happened by a lucky chance that Miss Laura Lumley, to whom it belonged (Sherringham would know Miss Laura Lumley ?), wanted to get rid, for a mere song, of the remainder of a lease. She was going to Australia, with a troupe of her own. They just stepped into it; it was good air — the best sort of air to live in, to sleep in, in London, for people in their line. Sherringham wondered what Miriam’s personal relations with this deucedly knowing gentleman might be, and was again able to assure himself that they might be anything in the world she liked, for any stake he, Peter, had in them. Dashwood told him of all the smart people who had tried to take up the new star — the way the London world had already held out its hand ; and perhaps it was Sherringham’s irritation, the crushed sentiment I just mentioned, that gave a little heave in the exclamation. Oh, that — that’s all rubbish: the less of that the better ! At this Basil Dashwood stared ; he evidently felt snubbed ; he had expected his interlocutor to be pleased with the names of the eager ladies who had “ called ” — which proved to Sherringham that he took a low view of his art. The secretary of embassy explained, rather priggishly, that this art was serious work, and that society was humbug and imbecility; also that of old the great comedians would n’t have known such people.

“ No, I suppose they did n’t call in the old narrow-minded time,” said Basil Dashwood.

“ Your profession did n’t call. They had better company — that of the romantic, gallant characters they represented. They lived with them, and it was better all round.” And Peter asked himself — for the young man looked as if that struck him as a dreary period — if he only, for Miriam, in her new life, or among the futilities of those who tried to find her accessible, expressed the artistic idea. This, at least, Sherringham reflected, was a situation that could be improved.

He learned from Dashwood that the new play, the thing they were rehearsing, was an old play, a romantic drama of thirty years before, very frequently revived and threadbare with honorable service. Dashwood had a part in it, but there was an act in which he did n’t appear, and that was the act they were doing that morning. Yolande had done all Yolande could do: Sherringham was mistaken if he supposed Yolande was such a tremendous hit. It had done very well, it had run three months, but they were by no means coining money with it. It would n’t take them to the end of the season ; they had seen, for a month past, that they would have to put on something else. Miss Rooth, moreover, wanted a new part; she was impatient to show what a range she was capable of. She had grand ideas ; she thought herself very good-natured to repeat the same thing for three months. Basil Dashwood lighted another cigarette, and described to his companion some of Miss Rooth’s ideas. He gave Sherringham a great deal of information about her — about her character, her temper, her peculiarities, her little ways, her manner of producing some of her effects. He spoke with familiarity and confidence, as if he knew more about her than any one else — as if he had invented or discovered her, were in a sense her proprietor or guarantor. It was the talk of the shop, with a perceptible shrewdness in it and a touching young candor ; the expansiveness of the commercial spirit when it relaxes and generalizes, is conscious it is safe with another member of the guild.

Sherringham could not help protesting against the lame old war-horse whom it was proposed to bring into action, who had been ridden to death and had saved a thousand desperate fields ; and he exclaimed on the strange passion of the good British public for sitting again and again through expected situations, watching for speeches they had heard and surprises that struck the hour. Dashwood defended the taste of London, praised it as loyal, constant, faithful; to which Sherringham retorted with some vivacity that it was faithful to rubbish. He justified this sally by declaring that the play in rehearsal was rubbish, clumsy mediocrity which had outlived its convenience, and that the fault was the want of life in the critical sense of the public, which was ignobly docile, opening its mouth for its dose, like the pupils of Dotheboys Hall; not insisting on something different, on a fresh preparation. Dashwood asked him if he then wished Miss Rooth to go on playing forever a part she had repeated more than eighty nights on end : he thought the modern " run ” was just what he had heard him denounce, in Paris, as the disease the theatre was dying of. This imputation Sherringham gainsaid; he wanted to know if she could n’t change to something less stale than the piece in question. Dashwood opined that Miss Rooth must have a strong part, and that there happened to be one for her in the before-mentioned venerable novelty. She had to take what she could get; she was n’t a girl to cry for the moon. This was a stop-gap — she would try other things later; she would have to look round her ; you could n’t have a new piece left at your door every day with the milk. On one point Sherringham’s mind might be at rest: Miss Rooth was a woman who would do every blessed thing there was to do. Give her time, and she would walk straight through the repertory. She was a woman who would do this —she was a woman who would do that : Basil Dashwood employed this phrase so often that Sherringham, nervous, got up and threw an unsmoked cigarette away. Of course she was a woman ; there was no need of Dashwood’s saying it a hundred times.

As for the repertory, the young man went on, the most beautiful girl in the world could give but what she had. He explained, after Sherringham sat down again, that the noise made by Miss Rooth was not exactly what this admirer appeared to suppose. Sherringham had seen the house the night before ; would recognize that, though good, it was very far from great. She had done very well, very well indeed, but she had never gone above a point, which Dashwood expressed in pounds sterling, to the edification of his companion, who, vaguely, thought the figure high. Sherringham remembered that he had been unable to get a stall, but Dashwood insisted that the girl had not leaped into commanding fame: that, was a thing that never happened in fact; it happened only in ridiculous works of fiction. She had attracted notice, unusual notice for a woman whose name, the day before, had never been heard of ; she was recognized as having, for a novice, extraordinary cleverness and confidence — in addition to her looks, of course, which were the thing that had really fetched the crowd. But she had n’t been the talk of London : she had only been the talk of Gabriel Nash. He wasn’t London, more was the pity. He knew the æsthetic people — the worldly, semi-smart ones, not the frumpy, sickly lot, who wore dirty drapery ; and the æsthetic people had run after her. Basil Dashwood instructed Sherringham, sketchily, as to the different sects in the great religion of beauty, and was able to give him the particular “ note ” of the critical clique to which Miriam had begun so quickly to owe it that she had a vogue. The information made the secretary of embassy feel very ignorant of the world, very uninitiated and buried in his little professional hole. Dashwood warned him that it would be a long time before the general public would wake up to Miss Rooth, even after she had waked up to herself ; she would have to do some really big thing first. They knew it was in her, the big thing — Sherringham and he, and even poor Nash—because they had seen her as no one else had ; but London never took any one on trust — it had to be cash down. It would take their young lady two or three years to pay out her cash and get her receipt. Then, of course, the receipt would be for a big sum, a great fortune. Within its limits, however, her success was already quite a fairy-tale: there was magic in the way she had concealed, from the first, her want of experience. She absolutely made you think she had a lot of it. more than any one else. Mr. Dashwood repeated several times that she was a cool hand—a deucedly cool hand; and that he watched her himself, saw ideas come to her, saw her try different dodges on different nights. She was always alive — she liked it herself. She gave him ideas, long as he had been on the stage. Naturally she had a great deal to learn — a tremendous lot to learn ; a cosmopolite like Sherringham would understand that a girl of that age, who had never had a friend but her mother—her mother was greater far than ever now — naturally would have. Sherringham winced at being called a “ cosmopolite ” by his young companion, just as he had winced a moment before at hearing himself lumped, in esoteric knowledge, with Dashwood and Gabriel Nash; but the former of these gentlemen took no account of his sensibility while he enumerated a few of the things that the young actress had to learn. Dashwood was a mixture of acuteness and innocent fatuity; and Sherringham had to recognize that he had some of the elements of criticism in him when he said that the wonderful thing in the girl was that she learned so fast — learned something every night, learned from the same old piece, a lot more than any one else would have learned from twenty. “ That ’s what it is to be a genius,” Sherringham remarked. “ Genius is only the art of getting your experience fast, of stealing it, as it were; and in this sense Miss Rooth is a perfect brigand.” Dashwood assented good-humoredly; then he added, “ Oh, she ’ll do ! ” It was exactly in these simple words, in speaking to her, that Sherringham had phrased the same truth; yet he didn’t enjoy hearing them on his neighbor’s lips : they had a profane, patronizing sound, suggestive of displeasing equalities.

The two men sat in silence for some minutes, watching a fat robin hop about on the little Seedy lawn ; at the end of which they heard a vehicle stop on the other side of the garden wall and the voices of people descending from it. “ Here they come, the dear creatures,” said Basil Dashwood, without moving ; and from where they sat Sherringham saw the small door in the wall pushed open. The dear creatures were three in number, for a gentleman had added himself to Mrs. Rooth and her daughter. As soon as Miriam’s eyes fell upon her Parisian friend she stopped short in a large, droll theatrical attitude, and, seizing her mother’s arm, exclaimed, passionately, " Look where he sits, the author of all my woes, cold, cynical, cruel! ” She was evidently in the highest spirits ; of which Mrs. Rooth partook as she cried, indulgently, giving her a slap, “ Oh, get along, you gypsy! ”

“ She’s always up to something,” Basil Dashwood commented, as Miriam, radiant and with a conscious stage tread, glided toward Sherringham as if she were coming to the footlights. He rose slowly from his seat, looking at her and struck with her beauty : he had been impatient to see her, yet in the act his impatience had had a disconcerting check.

Sherringham had had time to perceive that the man who had come in with her was Gabriel Nash, and this recognition brought a low sigh to his lips as he held out his hand to her — a sigh expressive of the sudden sense that his interest in her now could only be a gross community. Of course that didn’t matter, since he had set it, at the most, such rigid limits ; but none the less he stood vividly reminded that it would be public and notorious, that inferior people would be inveterately mixed up with it, that she had crossed the line and sold herself to the vulgar, making him, indeed, only one of an equalized multitude. The way Gabriel Nash turned up there just when he did n ‘t want to see him made Peter feel that it was a complicated thing to have a friendship with an actress so clearly destined to be famous. He quite forgot that Nash had known Miriam long before his own introduction to her and had been present at their first meeting, which he had in tact in a measure brought about. Had Sherringham not been so cut out to make trouble of this particular joy, he might have found some adequate assurance that she distinguished him in the way in which, taking his hand in both of hers, she looked up at him and murmured, “ Dear old master! ” Then, as if this were not acknowledgment enough, she raised her head still higher, and whimsically, gratefully, charmingly, almost nobly, she kissed him on the lips, before the other men and the good mother, whose “ Oh, you honest creature ! ” made everything regular.

Henry James.