The Tragic Muse

XXXI.

IF Peter Sherringham was ruffled by some of Miriam’s circumstances, there was comfort and consolation to be drawn from others, beside the essential fascination (there was no doubt about that now) of the young lady’s own society. He spent the afternoon, they all spent the afternoon, and the occasion reminded him of a scene in Wilhelm Meister. Mrs. Rooth had little resemblance to Mignon, but Miriam was remarkably like Philina. Luncheon was delayed two or three hours ; but the long wait was a positive source of gayety, for they all smoked cigarettes in the garden and Miriam gave striking illustrations of the parts she was studying. Sherringham was in the state of a man whose toothache has suddenly stopped — he was exhilarated by the cessation of pain. The pain had been the effort to remain in Paris after Miriam came to London, and the balm of seeing her now was the measure of the previous soreness.

Gabriel Nash had, as usual, plenty to say, and he talked of Nick Dormer’s picture so long that Sherringham wondered whether he did it on purpose to vex him. They went in and out of the house ; they made excursions to see how lunch was coming on ; and Sherringham got half an hour alone, or virtually alone, with the object of his unsanctioned passion — drawing her publicly away from the others and making her sit with him in the most sequestered part of the little graveled grounds. There was summer enough in the trees to shut out the adjacent villas, and Basil Dashwood and Gabriel Nash lounged together at a convenient distance, while Nick’s whimsical friend tried experiments upon the histrionic mind. Miriam confessed that, like all comedians, they ate at queer hours ; she sent Dashwood in for biscuits and sherry — she proposed sending him round to the grocer’s in the Circus Road for superior wine. Sherringham judged him to he the factotum of the little household: he knew where the biscuits were kept and the state of the grocer’s account. When Peter congratulated the young actress on having so useful an associate, she said, genially, but as if the words disposed of him, " Oh, he’s blissfully practical.” To this she added, “ You ’re not, you know ; ” resting the kindest, most pitying eyes on him. The sensation they gave him was as sweet as if she had stroked his cheek, and her manner was responsive even to tenderness. She called him “ Dear master ” again, and sometimes “ Cher maître,” and appeared to express gratitude and reverence by every intonation.

“ You’re doing the bumble dependent now,” he said : “ you do it beautifully, as you do everything.” She replied that she did n’t make it humble enough — she couldn’t; she was too proud, too insolent in her triumph. She liked that, the triumph, too much, and she did n’t mind telling him that she was perfectly happy. Of course, as yet, the triumph was very limited ; but success was success, whatever its quantity ; the dish was a small one, but it had the right taste. Her imagination had already bounded beyond the first phase, unexpectedly brilliant as this had been : her position struck her as modest compared with a future that was now vivid to her. Sherringham had never seen her so soft and sympathetic ; she had insisted, in Paris, that her personal character was that of the good girl (she used the term in a fine loose way), and it was impossible to be a better girl than she showed herself on this pleasant afternoon. She was full of gossip and anecdote and drollery ; she had exactly the air that he would have liked her to have — that of thinking of no end of things to tell him. It was as if she had just returned from a long journey, had had strange adventures and made wonderful discoveries. She began to speak of this and that, and broke off to speak of something else ; she talked of the theatre, of the newspapers, and then of London, of the people she had met and the extraordinary things they said to her, of the parts she was going to take up, of lots of new ideas that had come to her about the art of comedy. She wanted to do comedy now — to do the comedy of London life. She was delighted to find that seeing more of the world suggested things to her ; they came straight from the fact, from nature, if you could call it nature : so that she was convinced more than ever that the artist ought to live, to get on with his business, gather ideas, lights from experience — ought to welcome any experience that would give him lights. But work, of course, was experience, and everything in one’s life that was good was work. That was the jolly thing in the actor’s trade — it made up for other portions that were odious: if you only kept your eyes open nothing could happen to you that would not be food for observation and grist to your mill, showing you how people looked and moved and spoke, cried and grimaced, or writhed and dissimulated, in given situations. She saw all round her things she wanted to “do”—London was full of them, if you had eyes to see. Miriam demanded imperiously why people did n’t take them up, put them into plays and parts, give one a chance with them ; she expressed her sharp impatience of the general literary stupidity. She had never been chary of this particular displeasure, and there were moments (it was an old story and a subject of frank raillery to Sherringham) when to hear her you might have thought there was no cleverness anywhere but in her disdainful mind. She wanted tremendous things done, that she might use them, but she did n’t pretend to say exactly what they were to be, nor, even approximately, how they were to be handled: her ground was rather that if she only had a pen — it was exasperating to have to explain ! She mainly contented herself with declaring that nothing had really been touched: she felt that more and more as she saw more of people’s goings-on.

Sherringham went to her theatre again that evening, and he made no scruple of going every night for a week. Rather, perhaps I should say, he made a scruple ; but it was a part of the pleasure of his life during these arbitrary days to overcome it. The only way to prove to himself that he could overcome it was to go; and he was satisfied, after he had been seven times, not only with the spectacle on the stage, but with his own powers of demonstration. There was no satiety, however, with the spectacle on the stage, inasmuch as that only produced a further curiosity. Miriam’s performance was a living thing, with a power to change, to grow, to develop, to beget new forms of the same life. Peter Sherringham contributed to it, in his amateurish way, and watched with solicitude the fate of his contributions. He talked it over in Balaklava Place, suggested modifications, variations worth trying. Miriam professed herself thankful for any refreshment that could be administered to her interest in Yolande, and, with an effectiveness that showed large resource, touched up her part and drew several new airs from it. Sherringham’s suggestions bore upon her way of uttering certain speeches, the intonations that would have more beauty or make the words mean more. Miriam had her ideas, or rather she had her instincts, which she defended and illustrated, with a vividness superior to argument, by a happy pictorial phrase or a snatch of mimicry; but she was always for trying; she liked experiments and caught at them, and she was especially thankful when some one gave her a showy reason, a plausible formula, in a case where she only stood upon an intuition. She pretended to despise reasons and to like and dislike at her sovereign pleasure ; but she always honored the exotic gift, so that Sherringham was amused with the liberal way she produced it, as if she had been a naked islander rejoicing in a present of crimson cloth.

Day after day he spent most of his time in her society, and Miss Laura Lumley’s recent habitation became the place in London to which his thoughts were most attached. He was highly conscious that he was not now carrying out that principle of abstention which he had brought to such maturity before leaving Paris ; but he contented himself with a much cruder justification of this inconsequence than he would have thought adequate in advance. It consisted simply in the idea that to be identified with the first public steps of a young genius was a delightful experience. What was the harm of it, if the genius was real? Sherringham’s main security was now that his relations with Miriam had been frankly placed under the protection of the idea of legitimate extravagance. In this department they made a very creditable figure, and required much less watching and pruning than when it was his effort to fit them into a worldly plan. Sherringham had a sense of real wisdom when he said to himself that it surely should be enough that this momentary intellectual participation in the girl’s dawning fame was a charming thing. Charming things, in a busy man’s life, were not frequent enough to be kicked out of the way. Balaklava Place, under this genial sanction, became almost idyllic: it gave Peter the pleasantest impression he had ever had of London.

The season happened to he remarkably fine; the temperature was high, but not so high as to keep people from the theatre. Miriam’s “ business ” visibly increased, so that the question of putting on the second play underwent some reconsideration. The girl insisted, and showed in her insistence a temper of which Sherringham had already observed some splendid gleams. It was very evident that through her career it would be her expectation to carry things with a high hand. Her managers and agents would not find her an easy victim or a calculable force ; but the public would adore her, surround her with the popularity that attaches to a humorous, good-natured princess, and her comrades would have a kindness for her. because she would n’t be selfish. They too would form, in a manner, a portion of her affectionate public. This was the way Sherringham read the signs, liking her whimsical tolerance of some of her vulgar playfellows almost well enough to forgive their presence in Balaklava Place, where they were a sore trial to her mother, who wanted her to multiply her points of contact only with the higher orders. There were hours when Sherringham thought he foresaw that her principal relation to the proper world would be to have, within two or three years, a grand battle with it, making it take her, if she let it have her at all, absolutely on her own terms: a picture which led our young man to ask himself, with a helplessness that was not exempt, as he perfectly knew, from absurdity, what part he should find himself playing in such a contest, and if it would be reserved to him to be the more ridiculous as a peacemaker or as a heavy auxiliary.

“ She might know any one she would, and the only person she appears to take any pleasure in is that dreadful Miss Rover,” Mrs. Rooth whimpered, more than once, to Sherringham, who recognized in the young lady so designated the principal complication of Balaklava Place.

Miss Rover was a little actress who played at Miriam’s theatre, combining with an unusual aptitude for delicate comedy a less exceptional absence of rigor in private life. She was pretty and quick and clever, and had a fineness that Miriam professed herself already in a position to estimate as rare. She had no control of her inclinations ; yet sometimes they were wholly laudable, like the devotion she had formed for her beautiful colleague, whom she admired not only as an ornament of the profession, but as a being of a more fortunate essence. She had had an idea that real ladies were “ nasty; ” but Miriam was not nasty, and who could gainsay that Miriam was a real lady? The girl justified herself to Sherringham, who had found no fault with her ; she knew how much her mother feared that the proper world would n’t come in if they knew that the improper, in the person of pretty Miss Rover, was on the ground. What did she care who came and who did n’t, and what was to be gained by receiving half the idiots in London ? People would have to take her exactly as they found her — that they would have to learn ; and they would be much mistaken if they thought her capable of becoming an idiot, too, for the sake of their sweet company. She did n’t pretend to be anything but what she meant to be, the best general actress of her time ; and what had that to do with her seeing or not seeing a poor ignorant girl who had lov— Well, she need n’t say what Fanny had. She had met her in the way of business — she did n t say she would have run after her. She had liked her, because she was n t a stick, and when Fanny Rover had asked her, quite wistfully, if she might n’t come and see her, she had n’t bristled with scandalized virtue. Miss Rover was not a bit more stupid or more ill-natured than any one else : it would be time enough to shut the door when she should become so.

Sherringham commended, even to extravagance, the liberality of such comradeship ; said that of course a woman did n’t go into that profession to see how little she could swallow. She was right to live with the others so long as they were at all possible, and it was for her, and only for her, to judge how long that might be. This was rather heroic on Peter’s part, for his assumed detachment from the girl’s personal life still left him a margin for some forms of uneasiness. It would have made, in his spirit, a great difference for the worse that the woman he loved, and for whom he wished no baser lover than himself, should have embraced the prospect of consorting only with the cheaper kind. It was all very well, but Fanny Rover was simply a cabotine, and that sort of association was an odd training for a young woman who was to have been good enough (he could n’t forget that — he kept remembering it, as if it might still have a future use) to be his wife. Certainly he ought to have thought of such things before he permitted himself to become so interested in a theatrical nature. His heroism did him service, however, for the hour : it helped him by the end of the week to feel tremendously broken in to Miriam’s little circle. What helped him most, indeed, was to reflect that she would get tired of a good many of its members herself, in time ; for it was not that they were shocking (very few of them shone with that intense light), but that they could be trusted in the long run to bore you.

There was a lovely Sunday, in particular, that he spent almost wholly in Balaklava Place — he arrived so early — when, in the afternoon, all sorts of odd people dropped in. Miriam held a reception in the little garden and insisted on almost all the company’s staying to supper. Her mother shed tears to Sherringham, in the desecrated house, because they had accepted, Miriam and she, an invitation — and in Cromwell Road too — for the evening. Miriam decreed that they should n’t go: they would have much better fun with their good friends at home. She sent off a message — it was a terrible distance — by a cabman, and Sherringham had the privilege of paying the messenger. Basil Dashwood, in another vehicle, proceeded to an hotel that he knew, a mile away, for supplementary provisions, and came back with a cold ham and a dozen of champagne. It was all very Bohemian and journalistic and picturesque, very supposedly droll and enviable to outsiders ; and Miriam told anecdotes and gave imitations of the people she would have met if she had gone out : so no one had a sense of loss — the two occasions were fantastically united. Mrs. Rooth drank champagne, for consolation ; though the consolation was imperfect when she remembered that she might have drunk it (not quite so much, indeed) in Cromwell Road.

Taken in connection with the evening before, the day formed, for Sherringham, the most complete revelation he had had of Miriam Rooth. He had been at the theatre, to which the Saturday night happened to have brought the fullest house she had yet played to, and he came early to Balaklava Place, to tell her once again (he had told her half a dozen times the evening before) that, with the excitement of her biggest audience, she had surpassed herself, acted with remarkable intensity. It pleased her to hear it, and the spirit with which she interpreted the signs of the future, and, during an hour he spent alone with her, Mrs. Rooth being up-stairs and Basil Dashwood not arrived, treated him to specimens of Active emotion of various kinds, was beyond any natural abundance that he had yet seen in a woman. The impression could scarcely have been other if she had been playing wild snatches to him at the piano : the bright, up-darting flame of her talk rose and fell like an improvisation on the keys. Later, all the rest of the day, he was fascinated by the good grace with which she fraternized with her visitors, finding the right words for each, the solvent of incongruities, the right ideas to keep vanity quiet and make humility gay. It was a wonderful expenditure of generous, nervous life. But what Sherringham read in it above all was the sense of success in youth, with the future large, and the action of that force upon all the faculties. Miriam’s limited past had yet pinched her enough to make emancipation sweet, and the emancipation had come at last in an hour. She had stepped into her position, divined and appropriated everything it could give her, become, in a day, a really original contemporary. Sherringham was of course not less conscious of that than Nick Dormer had been when, in the cold light of his studio, he saw how marvelously she had changed.

But the great thing, to his mind and, these first days, the irresistible seduction of the theatre, was that she was a rare incarnation of beauty. Beauty was the principle of everything she did and of the way, unerringly, she did it — an exquisite harmony of line and motion and attitude and tone, what was most general and most characteristic in her performance. Accidents and instincts played together to this end and constituted something which was independent of her talent or of her merit, in a given case, and which in its influence, to Sherringham’s imagination, was far superior to any talent and to any merit. It was a supreme infallible felicity, a source of importance, a stamp of absolute value. To see it in operation, to sit within its radius and feel it shift and revolve and change and never fail, was a corrective to the depression, the humiliation, the bewilderment of life. It transported Sherringham from the vulgar hour and the ugly fact; drew him to something which had no reason but its sweetness, no name nor place save as the pure, the distant, the antique. It was what most made him say to himself, “ Oh, hang it, what does it matter ? " when he reflected that an homme sérieux (as they said in Paris) rather gave himself away (as they said in America) by going every night to the same theatre, for all the world to stare. It was what kept him from doing anything but hover round Miriam — kept him from paying any other visits, from attending to any business, from going back to Calcutta Gardens. It was a spell which he shrank intensely from breaking, and the cause of a hundred postponements, confusions and incoherences. It made of the crooked little stucco villa in St. John’s Wood a place in the upper air, commanding the prospect; a nest of winged liberties and ironies, hanging far aloft above the huddled town. One should live at altitudes when one could — they braced and simplified ; and for a happy interval Sherringham never touched the earth.

It was not that there were no influences tending at moments to drag him down — an abasement from which he escaped only because he was up so high. We have seen that Basil Dash wood could affect him at times like a piece of wood tied to his ankle, through the circumstance that he made Miriam’s famous conditions — those of the public exhibition of her genius — seem small and prosaic ; so that Sherringham had to remind himself that perhaps this smallness was involved in their being at all. She carried his imagination off into infinite spaces, whereas she carried Dashwood’s only into the box-office and the revival of plays that were barbarously bad. The worst was that it was open to him to believe that a sharp young man who was in the business might know better than he. Another possessor of superior knowledge (he talked, that is, as if he knew better than any one) was Gabriel

Nash, who appeared to have abundant leisure to haunt Balaklava Place, or, in other words, appeared to enjoy the same command of his time as Peter Sherringham. Our young diplomatist regarded him with mingled feelings, for he had not forgotten the contentious character of their first meeting or the degree to which he had been moved to urge upon Nick Dormer’s consideration that his talkative friend was probably an ass. This personage turned up now as an admirer of the charming creature he had scoffed at, and there was something exasperating in the quietude of his inconsistency, of which he had not the least embarrassing consciousness. Indeed, he had such fantastic and desultory ways of looking at any question that it was difficult, in vulgar parlance, to have him ; his sympathies hummed about like bees in a garden, With no visible plan, no economy in their flight. He thought meanly of the modern theatre, and yet he had discovered a fund of satisfaction in the most promising of its exponents ; so that Sherringham more than once said to him that he should really, to keep his opinions at all in hand, attach more value to the stage or less to the interesting actress. Miriam made infinitely merry at his expense and treated him as the most abject of her slaves: all of which was worth seeing as an exhibition, on Nash’s part, of the imperturbable. When Sherringham mentally pronounced him impudent he felt guilty of an injustice— Nash had so little the air of a man with something to gain. Nevertheless he felt a certain itching in his boot - toe when his fellow - visitor exclaimed, explicatively (in general to Miriam herself), in answer to a charge of tergiversation : “ Oh, it’s all right; it’s the voice, you know — the enchanting voice! ’’ He meant by this, as indeed he more fully set forth, that he came to the theatre, or to the villa in St. John’s Wood, simply to treat his ear to the sound (the richest then to be heard on earth, as he maintained) issuing from Miriam’s lips. Its richness was quite independent of the words she might pronounce or the poor fable they might subserve, and if the pleasure of hearing her in public was the greater by reason of the larger volume of her utterance, it was still highly agreeable to see her at home, for it was there that the artistic nature that he freely conceded to her came out most. He spoke as if she had been formed by the bounty of nature to be his particular recreation, and as if, being an expert in innocent joys, he took his pleasure wherever he found it.

He was perpetually in the field, sociable, amiable, communicative, inveterately contradicted but never confounded, ready to talk to any one about anything, and making disagreement, (of which he left the responsibility wholly to others) a basis of intimacy. Every one knew what he thought of the theatrical profession, and yet it could not he said that he did not regard its members as the exponents of comedy, inasmuch as he often elicited their foibles in a way that made even Sherringham laugh, notwithstanding his attitude of reserve where Nash was concerned. At any rate, though he had committed himself on the subject of the general fallacy of their attempt, he put up with their company, for the sake of Miriam’s accents, with a practical philosophy that was all his own. Miriam pretended that he was her supreme, her incorrigible adorer, masquerading as a critic to save his vanity, and tolerated for his secret constancy in spite of being a bore. To Sherringham he was not a bore, and the secretary of embassy felt a certain displeasure at not being able to regard him as one. He had seen too many strange countries and curious things, observed and explored too much, to be void of illustration. Peter bad a suspicion that if he himself was in the grandes espaces Gabriel Nash probably had a still wider range. If among Miriam’s associates Basil Dashwood dragged him down, Gabriel challenged him rather to higher and more fantastic flights. If he saw the girl in larger relations than the young actor, who mainly saw her in illwritten parts, Nash went a step further and regarded her, irresponsibly and sublimely, as a priestess of harmony, with whom the vulgar ideas of success and failure had nothing to do. He laughed at her “parts,” holding that without them she would be great. Sherringham envied him his power to content himself with the pleasures he could get; he had a shrewd impression that contentment was not destined to be the sweetener of his own repast.

Above all Nash held his attention by a constant element of unstudied reference to Nick Dormer, who, as we know, had suddenly become much more interesting to his cousin. Sherringham found food for observation, and in some measure for perplexity, in the relations of all these clever people with each other. He knew why his sister, who had a personal impatience of unapplied ideas, had not been agreeably affected by Mr. Nash, and had not viewed with complacency a predilection for him in the man she was to marry. This was a side by which he had no desire to resemble Julia Dallow, for he needed no teaching to divine that Gabriel had not set her intelligence in motion. He, Peter, would have been sorry to have to confess that he could not, understand him. He understood, furthermore, that Miriam, in Nick’s studio, might very well have appeared to Julia a formidable power. She was younger, but she had quite as much her own form, and she was beautiful enough to have made Nick compare her with Mrs. Dallow even if he had been in love with that lady — a pretension as to which Peter had private ideas.

Sherringham, for many days, saw nothing of the member for Harsh, though it might have been said that, by implication, he participated in the life of Balaklava Place. Had Nick given Julia tangible grounds, and was his unexpectedly fine rendering of Miriam an act of virtual infidelity ? In that case, in what degree was Miriam to be regarded as an accomplice in his defection, and what was the real nature of this young lady’s esteem for her new and (as he might be called) distinguished ally ? These questions would have given Peter still more to think about if he had not flattered himself that he had made up his mind that they concerned Nick and Miriam infinitely more than they concerned him. Miriam was personally before him, so that he had no need to consult, for his pleasure, his fresh recollection of the portrait. But he thought of this striking production each time he thought of his enterprising kinsman. And that happened often, for in his hearing Miriam often discussed the happy artist and his possibilities with Gabriel Nash, and Gabriel broke out about them to Miriam. The girl’s tone on the subject was frank and simple ; she only said, with an iteration that was slightly irritating, that Mr. Dormer had been tremendously kind to her. She never mentioned Julia’s irruption to Julia’s brother; she only referred to the portrait, with inscrutable amenity, as a direct consequence of Peter’s fortunate suggestion that first day at Madame Carré’s. Gabriel Nash, however, showed such a disposition to expatiate, sociably and luminously, on the peculiarly interesting character of what he called Dormer’s predicament, and on the fine suspense which it was fitted to kindle in the breast of discerning friends, that Peter wondered, as I have already hinted, if this insistence were not a subtle perversity, a devilish little invention to torment a man whose jealousy was presumable. Yet on the whole, Nash struck him as but scantily devilish, and still less occupied with the prefigurement of his emotions. Indeed, he threw a glamour of romance over Nick ; tossed off such illuminating yet mystifying references to him that Sherringham found himself capable of a magnanimous curiosity, a desire to follow out the chain of events. He learned from Gabriel that Nick was still away, and he felt as if he could almost submit to instruction, to initiation. The rare charm of these unregulated days was troubled — it ceased to be idyllic — when, late on the evening of the second Sunday, he walked away with Gabriel, southward, from St. John’s Wood. For then something came out.

XXXII.

It mattered not so much what the doctors thought (and Sir Matthew Hope, the greatest of them all, had been down twice in one week) as that Mr. Chayter, the omniscient butler, declared with all the authority of his position and his experience that Mr. Carteret was very bad indeed. Nick Dormer had a long talk with him (it lasted six minutes) the day he hurried to Beaudere in response to a telegram. It was Mr. Chayter who had taken upon himself to telegraph, in spite of the presence in the house of Mr. Carteret’s nearest relation and only surviving sister, Mrs. London. This lady, a large, mild, healthy woman, with a heavy tread, who liked early breakfasts, uncomfortable chairs and the advertisement-sheet of the Times, had arrived the week before and was awaiting the turn of events. She was a widow and lived in Cornwall, in a house nine miles from a station, which had, to make up for this inconvenience, as she had once told Nick, a delightful old herbaceous garden. She was extremely fond of an herbaceous garden ; her principal interest was in that direction. Nick had often seen her — she came to Beauclere once or twice a year. Her sojourn there made no great difference ; she was only an “Urania, dear,” for Mr. Carteret to look across the table at when, on the close of dinner, it was time for her to retire. She went out of the room always as if it were after some one else ; and on the gentlemen “ joining ” her later (the junction was not very close) she received them with an air of gratified surprise.

Chayter honored Nick Dormer with a regard which approached, without improperly competing with it, the affection his master had placed on the same young head, and Chayter knew a good many tilings. Among them he knew his place; but it was wonderful how little that knowledge had rendered him inaccessible to other kinds. He took upon himself to send for Nick without speaking to Mrs. Lendon, whose influence was now a good deal like that of a large occasional piece of furniture, which had been introduced in case it should he required. She was one of the solid conveniences that a comfortable house would have ; but you could n’t. talk with a mahogany sofa or a folding screen. Chayter knew how much she had “ had ” from her brother, and how much her two daughters had each received on marriage ; and he was of the opinion that it was quite enough, especially considering the society in which they (you could scarcely call it) moved. He knew, beyond this, that they would all have more, and that was why he hesitated little about communicating with Nick. If Mrs. Lendon should be ruffled at the intrusion of a young man who neither was the child of a cousin nor had been formally adopted. Chayter would undertake to see that the decencies were observed. He had indeed a slightly compassionate sense that Mrs. Lendon was not easily ruffled. She was always down an extraordinary time before breakfast (Chayter refused to take it as in the least admonitory), but she usually went straight into the garden (as if to see that none of the plants had been stolen in the night), and had in the end to be looked for by the footman in some out-of-the-way spot behind the shrubbery, where, plumped upon the ground, she was doing something “rum” to a flower.

Mr. Carteret himself had expressed no wishes. He slept most of the time (his failure at the last had been sudden, but he was rheumatic and seventyseven), and the situation was in Chayter’s hands. Sir Matthew Hope had opined, even on his second visit, that he would rally and go on, in a certain comfort, some time longer ; but Chayter took a different and a still more intimate view. Nick was embarrassed ; he scarcely knew what he was there for from the moment he could give his good old friend no conscious satisfaction. The doctors, the nurses, the servants, Mrs. Lendon, and above all the settled equilibrium of the square, thick house, where an immutable order appeared to slant through the polished windows and tinkle in the quieter hells, all represented best the kind of supreme solace to which the master was most accessible.

For the first day it was judged better that Nick should not be introduced into the darkened chamber. This was the decision of the two decorous nurses, of whom the visitor had had a glimpse, and who, with their black uniforms and fresh faces of business, suggested a combination of the bar-maid and the nun. He was depressed, yet restless, felt himself in a false position and thought it. lucky Mrs. Lendon had powers of placid acceptance. They were old acquaintances ; she treated him with a certain ceremony, but it was not the rigor of mistrust. It was much more an expression of remote Cornish respect for young abilities and distinguished connections, inasmuch as she asked him a great deal about Lady Agnes and about Lady Flora and Lady Elizabeth. He knew she was kind and ungrudging, and his principal discomfort was the sense of meagre information and of responding poorly in regard to his uninterestiug aunts. He sat in the garden with newspapers and looked at the lowered blinds in Mr. Carteret’s windows; he wandered around the abbey with cigarettes, and lightened his tread, and felt grave, and wished that everything were over. He would have liked much to see Mr. Carteret again, but he had no desire that Mr. Carteret should see him. In the evening he dined with Mrs. Lendon, and she talked to him, at his request, and as much as she could, about her brother’s early years, his beginnings of life. She was so much younger that they appeared to have been rather a tradition of her own youth; but her talk made Nick feel how tremendously different Mr. Carteret had been at that period from what he, Nick, was to-day. He had published, at the age of thirty, a little volume (it was thought wonderfully clever) called The Incidence of Rates; but Nick had not yet collected the material for any Such treatise. After dinner Mrs. Lendon, who was in full dress, retired to the drawing-room, where, at the end of ten minutes, she was followed by Nick, who had remained behind only because he thought Chayter would expect it. Mrs. Lendon almost shook hands with him again, and then Chayter brought in coffee. Almost in no time afterwards he brought in tea, and the occupants of the drawing-room sat for a slow halfhour, during which the lady looked round at the apartment with a sigh and said, “ Don’t you think poor Charles had exquisite taste ? ”

Fortunately, at this moment, the " local man ” was ushered in. He had been up-stairs, and he entered, smiling, with the remark, “ It’s quite wonderful— it’s quite wonderful.” What was wonderful was a marked improvement in the breathing, a distinct indication of revival. The doctor had some tea, and he chatted for a quarter of an hour in a way that showed what a “ good ” manner and how large an experience a local man could have. When he went away Nick walked out with him. The doctor’s house was near by, and he had come on foot. He left Nick with the assurance that in all probability Mr. Carteret, who was certainly picking up, would be able to see him on the morrow. Our young man turned his steps again to the abbey and took a stroll about it in the starlight. It never looked so huge as when it reared itself into the night, and Nick had never felt more fond of it than on this occasion, more comforted and confirmed by its beauty. When he came back he was readmitted by Chayter, who surveyed him in respectful deprecation of the frivolity which had led him to attempt to help himself through such an evening in such a way.

Nick went to bed early and slept badly, which was unusual with him; but it was a pleasure to him to be told almost as soon as he came out of his room that Mr. Carteret had asked for him. He went in to see him, and was struck with the change in his appearance. He had, however, spent a day with him just after the New Year, and another at the beginning of March, so that he had perceived the first symptoms of mortal alteration. A week after Julia Dallow’s departure for the Continent Nick had devoted several hours to Beauelere and to the intention of telling his old friend how the happy event had been brought to naught — the advantage that he had been so good as to desire for him and to make the condition of a splendid gift. Before this, for a few days, Nick had been keeping back, to announce it personally, the good news that Julia had at last set their situation in order: he wanted to enjoy the old man’s pleasure — so sore a trial had her arbitrary behavior been for a year. Mrs. Dallow had offered Mr. Carteret a conciliatory visit before Christmas — had come down from London one day to lunch with him, but only with the effect of making him subsequently exhibit to poor Nick, as the victim of her whimsical hardness, a great deal of earnest commiseration in a jocose form. Upon his honor, as he said, she was as clever and “ specious ” a woman (this was the odd expression he used) as he had ever seen in his life. The merit of her behavior on this occasion, as Nick knew, was that she had not been specious at her lover’s expense : she had breathed no doubt of his public purpose and had had the feminine courage to say that in truth she was older than he, so that it was only fair to give his affections time to mature. But when Nick saw their sympathizing host after the rupture that I lately narrated, he found him in no state to encounter a disappointment: he was seriously ailing, it was the beginning of worse things, and it had not been difficult to evade a challenge. Nick went back to town after this excursion saddened by Mr. Carteret’s now unmistakably settled decline, but rather relieved that he had not been forced to make his confession. It bad even occurred to him that the need for making it might not come up if the ebb of his old friend’s strength should continue unchecked. He might pass away in the persuasion that everything would happen as he wished it, though indeed without enriching Nick on his wedding-day to the tune that be had promised. Very likely he had made legal arrangements in virtue of which his bounty would take effect in the right conditions and in them alone. At present Nick had a larger confession to treat him to — the last three days had made the difference ; but, oddly enough, though his responsibility had increased, his reluctance to speak bad vanished : he was positively eager to clear up a situation over which it was not consistent with his honor to leave a shade.

The doctor had been right when he came in after dinner ; it was clear in the morning that Mr. Carteret’s power of picking up was by no means at an end. Chayter, who had been in to see him, refused austerely to change his opinion with every change in his master’s temperature ; but the nurses took the cheering view that it would do their patient good for Mr. Dormer to sit with him a little. One of them remained in the room, in the deep window-seat, and Nick spent twenty minutes by the bedside. It was not a case for much conversation, but Mr. Carteret seemed to like to look at him. There was life in his kind old eyes, which would express itself yet in some further wise provision. He laid his liberal hand on Nick’s with a confidence which showed it was not yet disabled. He said very little, and the nurse had recommended that the visitor himself should not overflow in speech; but from time to time he murmured, with a faint smile, “ To-night’s division, you know—you mustn’t miss it.”There was to be no division that night, as it happened, but even Mr. Carteret’s aberrations were parliamentary. Before Nick left him he had been able to assure him that he was rapidly getting better, that such valuable hours must not be wasted. “ Come back on Friday, if they come to the second reading.” These were the words with which Nick was dismissed, and at noon the doctor said the invalid was doing very well, but that Nick had better leave him alone for that day. Our young man accordingly determined to go up to town for the night, and even, if he should receive no summons, for the next day. He arranged with Chayter that he should be telegraphed to if Mr. Carteret were either better or worse.

“ Oh, he can’t very well be worse, sir,” Chayter replied, inexorably; but he relaxed so far as to remark that of course it would n’t do for Nick to neglect. the House.

“ Oh, the House ! ” Nick sighed, ambiguously, avoiding the butler’s eye. It would be easy enough to tell Mr. Carteret, but nothing would have sustained him in the effort to make a clean breast to Chayter.

He might be ambiguous about the House, but he had the sense of things to be done awaiting him in London. He telegraphed to his servant and spent that night in Rose dale Road. The things to be done were apparently to be done in his studio: his servant met him there with a large bundle of letters. He failed that evening to stray within two miles of Westminster, and the legislature of his country reassembled without his support. The next morning he received a telegram from Chayter, to whom he had given Rosedale Road as an address. This missive simply informed him that Mr. Carteret wished to see him, and it seemed to imply that he was better, though Chayter would n’t say so. Nick again took his place in the train to Beauclere. He had been there very often, but it was present to him that now, after a little, he should never go again. All that was over — everything that belonged to it was over. He learned on his arrival — he saw Mrs. Lendon immediately — that his old friend had continued to pick up. He had expressed a strong and a perfectly rational desire to talk with Nick, and the doctor had said that if it was about anything important it was much better not to oppose him. ‘‘ He says it’s about something very important,” Mrs. Lendon remarked, resting shy eyes on him while she added that she was looking after her brother for the hour. She had sent those wonderful young ladies out to see the abbey. Nick paused with her outside of Mr. Carteret’s door. He wanted to say something comfortable to her in return for her homely charity —• give her a hint, which she was far from looking for, that, practically, he had now no interest in her brother’s estate. This was impossible, of course. Her absence of irony gave him no pretext, and such an allusion would be an insult to her simple discretion. She was either not thinking of his interest at all, or she was thinking of it with the tolerance of a mind trained to a hundred decent submissions. Nick looked for an instant into her mild, uninvestigating eyes, and it came over him, supremely, that the goodness of these people was singularly pure: they were a part of what was cleanest and sanest in humanity. There had been just a little mocking inflection in Mrs. Lendon’s pleasant voice; but it was dedicated to the young ladies in the black uniforms (she could perhaps be satirical about them), and not to the theory of the “ importance ” of Nick’s interview with her brother. Nick’s arrested desire to let her know he was not dangerous translated itself into a vague friendliness and into the abrupt, rather bewildering words, “ I can’t tell you half the good I think of you.” As he passed into Mr. Carteret’s room it occurred to him that she would perhaps interpret this speech as an acknowledgment of obligation — of her good-nature in not keeping him away from the rich old man.

XXXIII.

Mr. Carteret was propped up on pillows, and in this attitude, beneath the high, spare canopy of his bed, presented himself to Nick’s picture-seeking vision as a figure in a clever composition or a novel. He had gathered strength, though this Strength was not much in his voice; it was mainly in his brighter eye and his air of being pleased with himself. He put out his hand and said, “ I dare say you know why I sent for you ; ” upon which Nick sank into the seat he had occupied the day before, replying that he had been delighted to come, whatever the reason. Mr. Carteret said nothing more about the division or the second reading ; he only murmured that they were keeping the newspapers for him. “ I’m rather behind — I’m rather behind,” he went on ; “ but two or three quiet mornings will make it all right. You can go hack to-night, you know — you can easily go back.” This was the only thing not quite straight that Nick saw in him, — his making light of his young friend’s flying to and fro. Nick sat looking at him with a sense that was half compunction and half the idea of the rare beauty of his face, to which, strangely, the waste of illness now seemed to have restored some of its youth. Mr. Carteret was evidently conscious that, this morning, he should not be able to go on long, so that he must be practical and concise. " I dare say you know — you have only to remember,” he continued.

“ You know what a pleasure it is to me to see you — there can be no better reason than that.”

“ Has n’t the year come round — the year of that foolish arrangement ? ”

Nick thought a little, and asked himself if it were really necessary to disturb his companion’s earnest faith. Then the consciousness of the falsity of his own position surged over him again, and he replied: “ Do you mean the period for which Mrs. Dallow insisted on keeping me dangling ? Oh, that’s over.”

And are you married — has it come off?” the old man asked, eagerly. “ How long have I been ill ? ”

“ We are uncomfortable, unreasonable people, not deserving of your interest. We are not married,” Nick said.

“Then I haven’t been ill so long,” Mr. Carteret sighed, with vague relief.

“ Not very long — but things are different,” Nick continued.

The old man’s eyes rested on his, and Nick noted how much larger they appeared. “ You mean the arrangements are made — the day is at hand ? ”

“ There are no arrangements,” Nick smiled: “ but why should it trouble you ? ”

“ What then will you do — without arrangements ? ” Mr. Carteret’s inquiry was plaintive and childlike.

“ We shall do nothing — there is nothing to be done. We are not to be married — it ’s all off,” said Nick. Then he added, “ Mrs. Dallow has gone abroad.”

The old man, motionless among his pillows, gave a long groan. “ Ah, I don’t like that.”

“No more do I, sir.”

“ What’s the matter ? It was so good — so good.”

“ It was n’t good enough for her,” Nick Dormer declared.

“ For her? Is she so great as that ? She told me she had the greatest regard for you. You’re good enough for the best, my dear boy,” Mr. Carteret went on.

“ You don’t know me ; I am disappointing. Mrs. Dallow had, I believe, a great regard for me, but I have forfeited her regard.”

The old man stared, at this cynical announcement; he searched his companion’s face for some attenuation of the words. But Nick apparently struck him as unashamed ; and a faint color coming into his withered cheek indicated his mystification and alarm. “ Have you been unfaithful to her?” he demanded, considerately.

“ She thinks so — it comes to the same thing. As I told you a year ago, she does n’t believe in me.”

“ You ought to have made her — you ought to have made her,” said Mr. Carteret. Nick was about to utter some rejoinder when he continued : “ Do you remember what I told you I would give you, if you did ? Do you remember what I told you I would give you on your wedding-day ? ”

“You expressed the most generous intentions ; and I remember them as much as a man may do who has no wish to remind you of them.”

“The money is there — I have put it aside.”

“ I have n’t earned it — I have n’t earned a penny of it. Give it to those who deserve it more.”

“ I don’t understand — I don’t understand,” Mr. Carteret murmured, with the tears of weakness coming into his eyes. His face flushed and he added: " I’m not good for much discussion ; I ‘m very much disappointed.”

“ I think I may say it’s not my fault — I have done what I can,” returned Nick.

“ But when people are in love they do more than that.”

“ Oh, it’s all over ! ” Nick exclaimed ; not caring much now, for the moment, how disconcerted his companion might be, so long as he disabused him of the idea that they were partners to a bargain. “ We’ve tormented each other and we’ve tormented you ; and that is all that has come of it.”

“ Don’t you care for what I would have done for you — should n’t you have liked it ? ”

“ Of course one likes kindness —one likes money. But it’s all over,” Nick repeated. Then he added : “ I fatigue you, I knock you up, with telling you these uncomfortable things. I only do so because it seems to me right you should know. But don’t be worried — everything will be all right.”

He patted his companion’s hand reassuringly, he leaned over him affectionately ; but Mr. Carteret was not easily soothed. He had practiced lucidity all his life, he had expected it of others, and he had never given his assent to an indistinct proposition. Pie was weak, but he was not too weak to perceive that he had formed a calculation which was now vitiated by a wrong factor — put his name to a contract of which the other side had not been carried out. More than fifty years of conscious success pressed him to try to understand ; he had never muddled his affairs and he could n’t muddle them now. At the same time he was aware of the necessity of economizing his effort, and he evidently gathered himself, within, patiently and almost cunningly, for the right question and the right induction. He was still able to make his agitation reflective, and it could still consort with his high hopes of Nick that he should And himself regarding the declaration that everything would be all right as an inadequate guarantee. So, after he had looked a moment into his companion’s eyes, he inquired —

“ Have you done anything bad ? ”

“ Nothing worse than usual,” laughed Nick.

“ Everything should have been better than usual.”

“ Ah, well, it has n’t been that — that I must say.”

“ Do you sometimes think of your father ? ” Mr. Carteret continued.

Nick hesitated a moment. “ You make me think of him — you have always that pleasant effect.”

“ His name would have lived — it must n’t be lost.”

“ Yes, but the competition to-day is terrible,” Nick replied.

Mr. Carteret considered this a moment, as if be found a serious flaw in it; after which he began again : “ I never supposed you were a trifler.”

“ I am determined not to be.”

“ I thought her charming. Don’t you love her ? ” Mr. Carteret asked.

“ Don’t ask me that to-day, for I feel sore and resentful. I don’t think she has treated me well.”

“You should have held her — you should n’t have let her go,” the old man returned, with unexpected fire.

His companion flushed, at this, so strange it seemed to him to receive a lesson in energy from a dying octogenarian. Yet after an instant Nick answered. modestly enough, “ I have n’t been clever enough, no doubt.”

“Don’t say that — don’t say that,” Mr. Carteret murmured, looking almost frightened. “ Don’t think I can allow you any mitigation of that sort. I know how well you’ve done. You are taking your place. Several gentlemen have told me. Has n’t she felt a scruple, knowing my settlement on you was contingent? ” he pursued.

“Oh, she has n’t known — has n’t known anything about it.”

“ I don’t understand; though I think you explained somewhat, a year ago,” Mr. Carteret said, with discouragement. “ I think she wanted to speak to me — of any intentions I might have, in regard to you — the day she was here. Very nicely, very properly, she would have done it, I’m sure. I think her idea was that I ought to make any settlement quite independent of your marrying her or not marrying her. But I tried to convey to her—1 don’t know whether she understood me — that I liked her too much for that, I wanted too much to make sure of her.”

“ To make sure of me, you mean,” said Nick. “ And now, after all, you see you have n’t.”

“ Well, perhaps it was that,” sighed the old man, confusedly.

“ All this is very bad for you — we ’ll talk again,” Nick rejoined.

“No, no — let us finish it now. I like to know what I am doing. I shall rest better when I do know. There are great things to be done ; the future will be full — the future will be fine,” Mr. Carteret wandered.

“ Let me say this for Julia : that if we had n’t been sundered her generosity to me would have been complete, she would have put her great fortune absolutely at my disposal,” Nick said, after a moment. “ Her consciousness of all that naturally carries her over any particular distress in regard to what won’t come to me now from another source.”

“ Ah, don’t lose it,” pleaded the old man, painfully.

“It’s in your hands, sir,” reasoned Nick.

“ I mean Mrs. Dallow’s fortune. It will be of the highest utility. That was what your father missed.”

“ I shall miss more than my father did,” said Nick.

“ She’ll come back to you — I can’t look at you and doubt that.”

Nick shook his head slowly, smiling. “Never, never, never! You look at me, my grand old friend, but you don’t see me. I am not what you think.”

“ What is it — what is it ? Have you been bad ? ” Mr. Carteret panted.

“ No, no ; I ’m not bad. But I ’in different.”

“ Different ? ”

“ Different from my father — different from Mrs. Dallow — different from you.”

“ Ah, why do you perplex me ? ” moaned the old man. “ You have done something.”

“ I don’t want to perplex you, but I have done something,” said Nick, getting up.

He had heard the door open softly behind him and Mrs. Lendon come forward with precautions. “ What has he done — what has he done ? ” quavered Mr. Carteret to his sister. She, however. after a glance at the patient, motioned Nick away, and, bending over the bed, replied, in a voice expressive at that moment of a sharply contrasted plenitude of vital comfort —

“He has only excited you, I am afraid, a little more than is good for you. Is n’t your dear old head a little too high ? ” Nick regarded himself as justly banished, and he quitted the room with a ready acquiescence in any power to carry on the scene of which Mrs. Lendon might find herself possessed. He felt distinctly brutal as he heard his host emit a soft, troubled exhalation of assent to some change of position. But he would have reproached himself more if he had wished less to guard against the acceptance of an equivalent for duties unperformed. Mr. Carteret had had in his mind, characteristically, the idea of an enlightened agreement, and there was something more to be said about that.

Nick went out of tire house and stayed away for two or three hours, quite ready to consider that the place was quieter and safer without him. He haunted the abbey, as usual, and sat a long time in its simplifying stillness, turning over many things. He came into the house again at the luncheon-hour, through the garden, and heard, somewhat to his surprise and greatly to his relief, that Mr. Carteret had composed himself, promptly enough, after their agitating interview. Mrs. London talked at luncheon much as if she expected her brother to be, as she said, really quite fit again. She asked Nick no embarrassing question; which was uncommonly good of her, he thought, considering that she might have said, “ What in the world were you trying to get out of him ? ” She only told our young man that the invalid had very little doubt he should be able to see him again, about half past seven, for a very short time : this gentle emphasis was Mrs. Lendon’s single tribute to the critical spirit. Nick divined that Mr. Carteret’s desire for further explanations was really strong and had been capable of sustaining him through a bad morning — capable even of helping him (it would be a secret and wonderful momentary victory over his weakness) to pass it off for a good one. He wished he might make a sketch of him, from the life, as he had seen him after breakfast ; he had a conviction he could make a strong one, and it would be a precious memento. But he shrank from proposing this — Mr. Carteret might think it a sort of bravado. The doctor had called while Nick was out, and he came again, at live o’clock, without our young man’s seeing him. Nick was busy, in his room, at that hour : he wrote a short letter which took him a long time. But apparently there had been no veto on a resumption of talk, for at half past seven the old man sent for him. The nurse, at the door, said, “ Only a moment, I hope, sir?” but she took him in and then withdrew.

The prolonged daylight was in the room, and Mr. Carteret was again established on his pile of pillows, but with his head a little lower. Nick sat down by him and began to express the hope that he had not upset him in the morning ; but the old man, with fixed, expanded eyes, took up their conversation exactly where they had left it.

“ What have you done — what have you done ? Have you associated yourself with some other woman ? ”

“ No, no; I don’t think she can accuse me of that.”

“ Well, then, she ’ll come back to you, if you take the right way with her.”

It might have been droll to hear Mr. Carteret, in his situation, giving his views on the right way with women; but Nick was not moved to enjoy that diversion. “ I’ve taken the wrong way. I’ve done something which will spoil my prospects in that direction forever. I have written a letter,” Nick went on ; but his companion had already interrupted him.

“ You’ve written a letter ? ”

“ To my constituents, informing them of my determination to resign my seat.”

“ To resign your seat? ”

“ I’ve made up my mind, after no end of reflection, dear Mr. Carteret, to work in a different line. I have a project of becoming a painter. So I’ve given up the idea of a political life.”

“ A painter ? ” Mr. Carteret seemed to turn whiter.

“ I ’m going in for the portrait, in oils : it sounds absurd, I know, and I only mention it to show you that I don’t in the least expect you to count upon me.” Mr. Carteret had continued to stare, at first; then his eyes slowly closed and he lay motionless and blank. "‘ Don’t let it trouble you now; it’s a long story ; when you get better I ’ll tell you all about it. We’ll talk it over amicably, and I ’ll bring you to my side,” Nick went on, hypocritically. He had laid his hand on Mr. Carteret’s again : it felt cold; and as the old man remained silent he had a moment of exaggerated fear.

“ This is dreadful news,” said Mr. Carteret, opening his eyes.

‘‘ Certainly it must seem so to you, for I’ve always kept from you (I was ashamed, and my present confusion is a just chastisement) the great interest I have always taken in the ” — Nick hesitated, and then added, with an intention of humor and a sense of foolishness — in the pencil and the brush.” He spoke of his present confusion ; but it must be confessed that his manner showed it but little. He was surprised at his own serenity, and had to recognize that at the point things had come to now he was profoundly obstinate and quiet.

“ The pencil — the brush ? They are not the weapons of a gentleman,” said Mr. Carteret.

“ I was sure that would be your view. I repeat that I mention them only because you once said you intended to do something for me, as the phrase is, and I thought you ought n’t to do it in ignorance.”

“ My ignorance was better. Such knowledge is n’t good for me.”

“ Forgive me, my dear old friend. When you are better you will see it differently.”

“ I shall never be better now.”

“ Ah, no,” pleaded Nick, “ it will do you good, after a little. Think it over quietly, and you will be glad l’ve stopped being a humbug.”

“ I loved you — I loved you as my son,” moaned the old man.

Nick sank on his knee beside the bed and leaned over him tenderly. “ Get better, get better, and I will be your son for the rest of your life.”

“ Poor Dormer — poor Dormer, Mr. Carteret softly wailed. “ I admit that if he had lived I probably should n’t have done it,” said Nick. “ I dare say I should have deferred to his prejudices, even if I thought them narrow.”

u Do you turn against your father ‘ ” Mr. Carteret asked, making, to disengage his arm from the young man’s touch, an effort in which Nick recognized the irritation of conscious weakness. Nick got up, at this, and stood a moment looking down at him; and Mr. Carteret went on : “ Do you give up your name, do you give up your country ? ”

“ If I do something good my country may like it,” Nick contended.

“ Do you regard them as equal, the two glories ? ”

“ Here comes your nurse, to blow me up and turn me out, said Nick.

The nurse had come in, but Mr. Carteret managed to direct to her an audible, dry, courteous “ Be so good as to wait till I send for you,” which arrested her, in the large room, at some distance from the bed, and then had the effect of making her turn on her heel with a professional laugh. She appeared to think that an old gentleman with the fine manner of his prime might still be trusted to take care of himself. When she had gone Mr. Carteret went on, addressing Nick, with the inquiry for which his deep displeasure lent him strength : “ Do you pretend there is a nobler life than a high political career? ”

“I think the noble life is doing one’s work well. One can do it very ill, and be very base and mean, in what you call a high political career. I have n’t been in the House so many months without finding that out. It contains some very small souls.”

“ You should stand against them — you should expose them !” stammered Mr. Carteret.

“ Stand against them, against one’s own party ? ”

The old man looked bewildered, a moment, at this ; then he broke out : “ God forgive you, are you a Tory — are you a Tory ? ”

“How little you understand me ! ‘ laughed Nick, with a ring of bitterness.

“ Little enough — little enough, my boy. Have you sent your electors your dreadful letter ? ”

“Not yet; but it’s all ready, and I sha’n’t change my mind.”

“You will — you will; you’ll think better of it, you ’ll see your duty,” said the old man, almost coaxingly.

“ That seems very improbable, for my determination, crudely and abruptly as, to my great regret, it comes to you here, is the fruit of a long and painful struggle. The difficulty is that I see my duty just in this other effort.”

“ An effort ? Do you call it an effort to fall away, to sink far down, to give up every effort ? What does your mother say, heaven help her ? ” Mr. Carteret pursued, before Nick could answer the other question.

“ I have n’t told her yet.”

“ You ’re ashamed, you ’re ashamed ! ” Nick only looked out, of the western window, at this; he felt himself growing red. “ Tell her it would have been sixty thousand; I had the money all ready.”

“ I sha’n’t tell her that,” said Nick, redder still.

“ Poor woman —poor dear woman ! ” Mr. Carteret whimpered.

“ Yes, indeed ; she won’t like it.”

“Think it all over again ; don’t throw away a splendid future! ” These words were uttered with a recovering flicker of passion. Nick Dormer had never heard such an accent on his old friend’s lips. But the next instant Mr. Carteret began to murmur, “ I’m tired — I’m very tired,” and sank back with a groan and with closed lips.

Nick assured him, tenderly, that he had only too much cause to be exhausted, but that the worst was over now. He smoothed his pillows for him and said he must leave him, he would send in the nurse.

“Come back—come back,” Mr. Carteret pleaded, before he quitted him ; “ come back and tell me it’s a horrible dream.”

Nick did go back, very late that evening ; Mr. Carteret had sent a message to his room. But one of the nurses was on the ground this time, and she remained there, with her watch in her hand. The invalid’s chamber was shrouded and darkened ; the shaded candle left the bed in gloom. Nick’s interview with his venerable host was the affair of but a moment; the nurse interposed, impatient and not understanding. She heard Nick tell Mr. Carteret that he had posted his letter now, and Mr. Carteret flashed out, with an acerbity which savored still of the sordid associations of a world he had not done with, “ Then of course my settlement. does n’t take effect! ”

“ Oh, that’s all right.” Nick answered, kindly ; and he went off the next morning by the early train — his injured host was still sleeping. Mrs. Lendon’s habits made it easy for her to be present, in matutinal bloom, at the young man’s hasty breakfast, and she sent a particular remembrance to Lady Agnes and (when Nick should see them) to the Ladies Flora and Elizabeth. Nick had a prevision of the spirit in which his mother, at least, would now receive hollow compliments from Beauelere.

The night before, as soon as he had quitted Mr. Carteret, the old man said to the nurse that he wished her to tell Mr. Chayter that, the first thing in the morning, he must go and fetch Mr. Mitton. Mr. Mitton was the first solicitor at Beauelere.

Henry James.