Генри Джеймс
The Tragic Muse
XVII
Nick's little visit was to terminate immediately after luncheon the following day: much as the old man enjoyed his being there he wouldn't have dreamed of asking for more of his time now that it had such great public uses. He liked infinitely better that his young friend should be occupied with parliamentary work than only occupied in talking it over with him. Talking it over, however, was the next best thing, as on the morrow, after breakfast, Mr. Carteret showed Nick he considered. They sat in the garden, the morning being warm, and the old man had a table beside him covered with the letters and newspapers the post had poured forth. He was proud of his correspondence, which was altogether on public affairs, and proud in a manner of the fact that he now dictated almost everything. That had more in it of the statesman in retirement, a character indeed not consciously assumed by Mr. Carteret, but always tacitly attributed to him by Nick, who took it rather from the pictorial point of view—remembering on each occasion only afterwards that though he was in retirement he had not exactly been a statesman. A young man, a very sharp, handy young man, came every morning at ten o'clock and wrote for him till luncheon. The young man had a holiday to-day in honour of Nick's visit—a fact the mention of which led Nick to make some not particularly sincere speech about his being ready to write anything if Mr. Carteret were at all pressed.
"Ah but your own budget—what will become of that?" the old gentleman objected, glancing at Nick's pockets as if rather surprised not to see them stuffed out with documents in split envelopes. His visitor had to confess that he had not directed his letters to meet him at Beauclere: he should find them in town that afternoon. This led to a little homily from Mr. Carteret which made him feel quite guilty; there was such an implication of neglected duty in the way the old man said, "You won't do them justice—you won't do them justice." He talked for ten minutes, in his rich, simple, urbane way, about the fatal consequences of getting behind. It was his favourite doctrine that one should always be a little before, and his own eminently regular respiration seemed to illustrate the idea. A man was certainly before who had so much in his rear.
This led to the bestowal of a good deal of general advice on the mistakes to avoid at the beginning of a parliamentary career—as to which Mr. Carteret spoke with the experience of one who had sat for fifty years in the House of Commons. Nick was amused, but also mystified and even a little irritated, by his talk: it was founded on the idea of observation and yet our young man couldn't at all regard him as an observer. "He doesn't observe me," he said to himself; "if he did he would see, he wouldn't think–!" The end of this private cogitation was a vague impatience of all the things his venerable host took for granted. He didn't see any of the things Nick saw. Some of these latter were the light touches the summer morning scattered through the sweet old garden. The time passed there a good deal as if it were sitting still with a plaid under its feet while Mr. Carteret distilled a little more of the wisdom he had laid up in his fifty years. This immense term had something fabulous and monstrous for Nick, who wondered whether it were the sort of thing his companion supposed he had gone in for. It was not strange Mr. Carteret should be different; he might originally have been more—well, to himself Nick was not obliged to phrase it: what our young man meant was more of what it was perceptible to him that his old friend was not. Should even he, Nick, be like that at the end of fifty years? What Mr. Carteret was so good as to expect for him was that he should be much more distinguished; and wouldn't this exactly mean much more like that? Of course Nick heard some things he had heard before; as for instance the circumstances that had originally led the old man to settle at Beauclere. He had been returned for that borough—it was his second seat—in years far remote, and had come to live there because he then had a conscientious conviction, modified indeed by later experience, that a member should be constantly resident. He spoke of this now, smiling rosily, as he might have spoken of some wild aberration of his youth; yet he called Nick's attention to the fact that he still so far clung to his conviction as to hold—though of what might be urged on the other side he was perfectly aware—that a representative should at least be as resident as possible. This gave Nick an opening for something that had been on and off his lips all the morning.
"According to that I ought to take up my abode at Harsh."
"In the measure of the convenient I shouldn't be sorry to see you do it."
"It ought to be rather convenient," Nick largely smiled. "I've got a piece of news for you which I've kept, as one keeps that sort of thing—for it's very good—till the last." He waited a little to see if Mr. Carteret would guess, and at first thought nothing would come of this. But after resting his young-looking eyes on him for a moment the old man said:
"I should indeed be very happy to hear that you've arranged to take a wife."
"Mrs. Dallow has been so good as to say she'll marry me," Nick returned.
"That's very suitable. I should think it would answer."
"It's very jolly," said Nick. It was well Mr. Carteret was not what his guest called observant, or he might have found a lower pitch in the sound of this sentence than in the sense.
"Your dear father would have liked it."
"So my mother says."
"And she must be delighted."
"Mrs. Dallow, do you mean?" Nick asked.
"I was thinking of your mother. But I don't exclude the charming lady. I remember her as a little girl. I must have seen her at Windrush. Now I understand the fine spirit with which she threw herself into your canvass."
"It was her they elected," said Nick.
"I don't know," his host went on, "that I've ever been an enthusiast for political women, but there's no doubt that in approaching the mass of electors a graceful, affable manner, the manner of the real English lady, is a force not to be despised."
"Julia's a real English lady and at the same time a very political woman," Nick remarked.
"Isn't it rather in the family? I remember once going to see her mother in town and finding the leaders of both parties sitting with her."
"My principal friend, of the others, is her brother Peter. I don't think he troubles himself much about that sort of thing," said Nick.
"What does he trouble himself about?" Mr. Carteret asked with a certain gravity.
"He's in the diplomatic service; he's a secretary in Paris."
"That may be serious," said the old man.
"He takes a great interest in the theatre. I suppose you'll say that may be serious too," Nick laughed.
"Oh!"—and Mr. Carteret looked as if he scarcely understood. Then he continued; "Well, it can't hurt you."
"It can't hurt me?"
"If Mrs. Dallow takes an interest in your interests."
"When a man's in my situation he feels as if nothing could hurt him."
"I'm very glad you're happy," said Mr. Carteret. He rested his mild eyes on our young man, who had a sense of seeing in them for a moment the faint ghost of an old story, the last strange flicker, as from cold ashes, of a flame that had become the memory of a memory. This glimmer of wonder and envy, the revelation of a life intensely celibate, was for an instant infinitely touching. Nick had harboured a theory, suggested by a vague allusion from his father, who had been discreet, that their benevolent friend had had in his youth an unhappy love-affair which had led him to forswear for ever the commerce of woman. What remained in him of conscious renunciation gave a throb as he looked at his bright companion, who proposed to take the matter so much the other way. "It's good to marry and I think it's right. I've not done right, I know that. If she's a good woman it's the best thing," Mr. Carteret went on. "It's what I've been hoping for you. Sometimes I've thought of speaking to you."
"She's a very good woman," said Nick.
"And I hope she's not poor." Mr. Carteret spoke exactly with the same blandness.
"No indeed, she's rich. Her husband, whom I knew and liked, left her a large fortune."
"And on what terms does she enjoy it?"
"I haven't the least idea," said Nick.
Mr. Carteret considered. "I see. It doesn't concern you. It needn't concern you," he added in a moment.
Nick thought of his mother at this, but he returned: "I daresay she can do what she likes with her money."
"So can I, my dear young friend," said Mr. Carteret.
Nick tried not to look conscious, for he felt a significance in the old man's face. He turned his own everywhere but toward it, thinking again of his mother. "That must be very pleasant, if one has any."
"I wish you had a little more."
"I don't particularly care," said Nick.
"Your marriage will assist you; you can't help that," Mr. Carteret declared. "But I should like you to be under obligations not quite so heavy."
"Oh I'm so obliged to her for caring for me–!"
"That the rest doesn't count? Certainly it's nice of her to like you. But why shouldn't she? Other people do."
"Some of them make me feel as if I abused it," said Nick, looking at his host. "That is, they don't make me, but I feel it," he corrected.
"I've no son "—and Mr. Carteret spoke as if his companion mightn't have been sure. "Shan't you be very kind to her?" he pursued. "You'll gratify her ambition."
"Oh she thinks me cleverer than I am."
"That's because she's in love," the old gentleman hinted as if this were very subtle. "However, you must be as clever as we think you. If you don't prove so–!" And he paused with his folded hands.
"Well, if I don't?" asked Nick.
"Oh it won't do—it won't do," said Mr. Carteret in a tone his companion was destined to remember afterwards. "I say I've no son," he continued; "but if I had had one he should have risen high."
"It's well for me such a person doesn't exist. I shouldn't easily have found a wife."
"He would have gone to the altar with a little money in his pocket."
"That would have been the least of his advantages, sir," Nick declared.
"When are you to be married?" Mr. Carteret asked.
"Ah that's the question. Julia won't yet say."
"Well," said the old man without the least flourish, "you may consider that when it comes off I'll make you a settlement."
"I feel your kindness more than I can express," Nick replied; "but that will probably be the moment when I shall be least conscious of wanting anything."
"You'll appreciate it later—you'll appreciate it very soon. I shall like you to appreciate it," Mr. Carteret went on as if he had a just vision of the way a young man of a proper spirit should feel. Then he added; "Your father would have liked you to appreciate it."
"Poor father!" Nick exclaimed vaguely, rather embarrassed, reflecting on the oddity of a position in which the ground for holding up his head as the husband of a rich woman would be that he had accepted a present of money from another source. It was plain he was not fated to go in for independence; the most that he could treat himself to would be dependence that was duly grateful "How much do you expect of me?" he inquired with a grave face.
"Well, Nicholas, only what your father did. He so often spoke of you, I remember, at the last, just after you had been with him alone—you know I saw him then. He was greatly moved by his interview with you, and so was I by what he told me of it. He said he should live on in you—he should work in you. It has always given me a special feeling, if I may use the expression, about you."
"The feelings are indeed not usual, dear Mr. Carteret, which take so munificent a form. But you do—oh you do—expect too much," Nick brought himself to say.
"I expect you to repay me!" the old man returned gaily. "As for the form, I have it in my mind."
"The form of repayment?"
"The form of repayment!"
"Ah don't talk of that now," said Nick, "for, you see, nothing else is settled. No one has been told except my mother. She has only consented to my telling you."
"Lady Agnes, do you mean?"
"Ah no; dear mother would like to publish it on the house-tops. She's so glad—she wants us to have it over to-morrow. But Julia herself," Nick explained, "wishes to wait. Therefore kindly mention it for the present to no one."
"My dear boy, there's at this rate nothing to mention! What does Julia want to wait for?"
"Till I like her better—that's what she says."
"It's the way to make you like her worse," Mr. Carteret knowingly declared. "Hasn't she your affection?"
"So much so that her delay makes me exceedingly unhappy."
Mr. Carteret looked at his young friend as if he didn't strike him as quite wretched; but he put the question: "Then what more does she want?" Nick laughed out at this, though perceiving his host hadn't meant it as an epigram; while the latter resumed: "I don't understand. You're engaged or you're not engaged."
"She is, but I'm not. That's what she says about it. The trouble is she doesn't believe in me."
Mr. Carteret shone with his candour. "Doesn't she love you then?"
"That's what I ask her. Her answer is that she loves me only too well. She's so afraid of being a burden to me that she gives me my freedom till I've taken another year to think."
"I like the way you talk about other years!" Mr. Carteret cried. "You had better do it while I'm here to bless you."
"She thinks I proposed to her because she got me in for Harsh," said Nick.
"Well, I'm sure it would be a very pretty return."
"Ah she doesn't believe in me," the young man repeated.
"Then I don't believe in her."
"Don't say that—don't say that. She's a very rare creature. But she's proud, shy, suspicious."
"Suspicious of what?"
"Of everything. She thinks I'm not persistent."
"Oh, oh!"—Nick's host deprecated such freedom.
"She can't believe I shall arrive at true eminence."
"A good wife should believe what her husband believes," said Mr. Carteret.
"Ah unfortunately"—and Nick took the words at a run—"I don't believe it either."
Mr. Carteret, who might have been watching an odd physical rush, spoke with a certain dryness. "Your dear father did."
"I think of that—I think of that," Nick replied.
"Certainly it will help me. If I say we're engaged," he went on, "it's because I consider it so. She gives me my liberty, but I don't take it."
"Does she expect you to take back your word?"
"That's what I ask her. She never will. Therefore we're as good as tied."
"I don't like it," said Mr. Carteret after a moment. "I don't like ambiguous, uncertain situations. They please me much better when they're definite and clear." The retreat of expression had been sounded in his face—the aspect it wore when he wished not to be encouraging. But after an instant he added in a tone more personal: "Don't disappoint me, dear boy."
"Ah not willingly!" his visitor protested.
"I've told you what I should like to do for you. See that the conditions come about promptly in which I may, do it. Are you sure you do everything to satisfy Mrs. Dallow?" Mr. Carteret continued.
"I think I'm very nice to her," Nick declared. "But she's so ambitious. Frankly speaking, it's a pity for her that she likes me."
"She can't help that!" the old man charmingly said.
"Possibly. But isn't it a reason for taking me as I am? What she wants to do is to take me as I may be a year hence."
"I don't understand—since you tell me that even then she won't take back her word," said Mr. Carteret.
"If she doesn't marry me I think she'll never marry again at all."
"What then does she gain by delay?"
"Simply this, as I make it out," said Nick—"that she'll feel she has been very magnanimous. She won't have to reproach herself with not having given me a chance to change."
"To change? What does she think you liable to do?"
Nick had a pause. "I don't know!" he then said—not at all candidly.
"Everything has altered: young people in my day looked at these questions more naturally," Mr. Carteret observed. "A woman in love has no need to be magnanimous. If she plays too fair she isn't in love," he added shrewdly.
"Oh, Julia's safe—she's safe," Nick smiled.
"If it were a question between you and another gentleman one might comprehend. But what does it mean, between you and nothing?"
"I'm much obliged to you, sir," Nick returned. "The trouble is that she doesn't know what she has got hold of."
"Ah, if you can't make it clear to her!"—and his friend showed the note of impatience.
"I'm such a humbug," said the young man. And while his companion stared he continued: "I deceive people without in the least intending it."
"What on earth do you mean? Are you deceiving me?"
"I don't know—it depends on what you think."
"I think you're flighty," said Mr. Carteret, with the nearest approach to sternness Nick had ever observed in him. "I never thought so before."
"Forgive me; it's all right. I'm not frivolous; that I promise you I'm not."
"You have deceived me if you are."
"It's all right," Nick stammered with a blush.
"Remember your name—carry it high."
"I will—as high as possible."
"You've no excuse. Don't tell me, after your speeches at Harsh!" Nick was on the point of declaring again that he was a humbug, so vivid was his inner sense of what he thought of his factitious public utterances, which had the cursed property of creating dreadful responsibilities and importunate credulities for him. If he was "clever" (ah the idiotic "clever"!) what fools many other people were! He repressed his impulse and Mr. Carteret pursued. "If, as you express it, Mrs. Dallow doesn't know what she has got hold of, won't it clear the matter up a little by informing her that the day before your marriage is definitely settled to take place you'll come into something comfortable?"
A quick vision of what Mr. Carteret would be likely to regard as something comfortable flitted before Nick, but it didn't prevent his replying: "Oh I'm afraid that won't do any good. It would make her like you better, but it wouldn't make her like me. I'm afraid she won't care for any benefit that comes to me from another hand than hers. Her affection's a very jealous sentiment."
"It's a very peculiar one!" sighed Mr. Carteret. "Mine's a jealous sentiment too. However, if she takes it that way don't tell her."
"I'll let you know as soon as she comes round," said Nick.
"And you'll tell your mother," Mr. Carteret returned. "I shall like her to know."
"It will be delightful news to her. But she's keen enough already."
"I know that. I may mention now that she has written to me," the old man added.
"So I suspected."
"We've—a—corresponded on the subject," Mr. Carteret continued to confess. "My view of the advantageous character of such an alliance has entirely coincided with hers."
"It was very good-natured of you then to leave me to speak first," said Nick.
"I should have been disappointed if you hadn't. I don't like all you've told me. But don't disappoint me now."
"Dear Mr. Carteret!" Nick vaguely and richly sounded.
"I won't disappoint you," that gentleman went on with a finer point while he looked at his big old-fashioned watch.
BOOK FOURTH
XVIII
At first Peter Sherringham thought of asking to be transferred to another post and went so far, in London, as to take what he believed good advice on the subject. The advice, perhaps struck him as the better for consisting of a strong recommendation to do nothing so foolish. Two or three reasons were mentioned to him why such a request would not, in the particular circumstances, raise him in the esteem of his superiors, and he promptly recognised their force. He next became aware that it might help him—not with his superiors but with himself—to apply for an extension of leave, and then on further reflexion made out that, though there are some dangers before which it is perfectly consistent with honour to flee, it was better for every one concerned that he should fight this especial battle on the spot. During his holiday his plan of campaign gave him plenty of occupation. He refurbished his arms, rubbed up his strategy, laid down his lines of defence.
There was only one thing in life his mind had been much made up to, but on this question he had never wavered: he would get on, to the utmost, in his profession. That was a point on which it was perfectly lawful to be unamiable to others—to be vigilant, eager, suspicious, selfish. He had not in fact been unamiable to others, for his affairs had not required it: he had got on well enough without hardening his heart. Fortune had been kind to him and he had passed so many competitors on the way that he could forswear jealousy and be generous. But he had always flattered himself his hand wouldn't falter on the day he should find it necessary to drop bitterness into his cup. This day would be sure to dawn, since no career could be all clear water to the end; and then the sacrifice would find him ready. His mind was familiar with the thought of a sacrifice: it is true that no great plainness invested beforehand the occasion, the object or the victim. All that particularly stood out was that the propitiatory offering would have to be some cherished enjoyment. Very likely indeed this enjoyment would be associated with the charms of another person—a probability pregnant with the idea that such charms would have to be dashed out of sight. At any rate it never had occurred to Sherringham that he himself might be the sacrifice. You had to pay to get on, but at least you borrowed from others to do it. When you couldn't borrow you didn't get on, for what was the situation in life in which you met the whole requisition yourself?
Least of all had it occurred to our friend that the wrench might come through his interest in that branch of art on which Nick Dormer had rallied him. The beauty of a love of the theatre was precisely in its being a passion exercised on the easiest terms. This was not the region of responsibility. It was sniffed at, to its discredit, by the austere; but if it was not, as such people said, a serious field, was not the compensation just that you couldn't be seriously entangled in it? Sherringham's great advantage, as he regarded the matter, was that he had always kept his taste for the drama quite in its place. His facetious cousin was free to pretend that it sprawled through his life; but this was nonsense, as any unprejudiced observer of that life would unhesitatingly attest. There had not been the least sprawling, and his interest in the art of Garrick had never, he was sure, made him in any degree ridiculous. It had never drawn down from above anything approaching a reprimand, a remonstrance, a remark. Sherringham was positively proud of his discretion, for he was not a little proud of what he did know about the stage. Trifling for trifling, there were plenty of his fellows who had in their lives infatuations less edifying and less confessable. Hadn't he known men who collected old invitation-cards and were ready to commit bassesses for those of the eighteenth century? hadn't he known others who had a secret passion for shuffleboard? His little weaknesses were intellectual—they were a part of the life of the mind. All the same, on the day they showed a symptom of interfering they should be plucked off with a turn of the wrist.
Sherringham scented interference now, and interference in rather an invidious form. It might be a bore, from the point of view of the profession, to find one's self, as a critic of the stage, in love with a coquine; but it was a much greater bore to find one's self in love with a young woman whose character remained to be estimated. Miriam Rooth was neither fish nor flesh: one had with her neither the guarantees of one's own class nor the immunities of hers. What was hers if one came to that? A rare ambiguity on this point was part of the fascination she had ended by throwing over him. Poor Peter's scheme for getting on had contained no proviso against his falling in love, but it had embodied an important clause on the subject of surprises. It was always a surprise to fall in love, especially if one was looking out for it; so this contingency had not been worth official paper. But it became a man who respected the service he had undertaken for the State to be on his guard against predicaments from which the only issue was the rigour of matrimony. Ambition, in the career, was probably consistent with marrying—but only with opening one's eyes very wide to do it. That was the fatal surprise—to be led to the altar in a dream. Sherringham's view of the proprieties attached to such a step was high and strict; and if he held that a man in his position was, above all as the position improved, essentially a representative of the greatness of his country, he considered that the wife of such a personage would exercise in her degree—for instance at a foreign court—a function no less symbolic. She would in short always be a very important quantity, and the scene was strewn with illustrations of this general truth. She might be such a help and might be such a blight that common prudence required some test of her in advance. Sherringham had seen women in the career, who were stupid or vulgar, make such a mess of things as would wring your heart. Then he had his positive idea of the perfect ambassadress, the full-blown lily of the future; and with this idea Miriam Rooth presented no analogy whatever.
The girl had described herself with characteristic directness as "all right"; and so she might be, so she assuredly was: only all right for what? He had made out she was not sentimental—that whatever capacity she might have for responding to a devotion or for desiring it was at any rate not in the direction of vague philandering. With him certainly she had no disposition to philander. Sherringham almost feared to dwell on this, lest it should beget in him a rage convertible mainly into caring for her more. Rage or no rage it would be charming to be in love with her if there were no complications; but the complications were just what was clearest in the prospect. He was perhaps cold-blooded to think of them, but it must be remembered that they were the particular thing his training had equipped him for dealing with. He was at all events not too cold-blooded to have, for the two months of his holiday, very little inner vision of anything more abstract than Miriam's face. The desire to see it again was as pressing as thirst, but he tried to practise the endurance of the traveller in the desert. He kept the Channel between them, but his spirit consumed every day an inch of the interval, until—and it was not long—there were no more inches left. The last thing he expected the future ambassadress to have been was fille de théâtre. The answer to this objection was of course that Miriam was not yet so much of one but that he could easily, by a handsome "worldly" offer, arrest her development. Then came worrying retorts to that, chief among which was the sense that to his artistic conscience arresting her development would be a plan combining on his part fatuity, not to say imbecility, with baseness. It was exactly to her development the poor girl had the greatest right, and he shouldn't really alter anything by depriving her of it. Wasn't she the artist to the tips of her tresses—the ambassadress never in the world—and wouldn't she take it out in something else if one were to make her deviate? So certain was that demonic gift to insist ever on its own.
Besides, could one make her deviate? If she had no disposition to philander what was his warrant for supposing she could be corrupted into respectability? How could the career—his career—speak to a nature that had glimpses as vivid as they were crude of such a different range and for which success meant quite another sauce to the dish? Would the brilliancy of marrying Peter Sherringham be such a bribe to relinquishment? How could he think so without pretensions of the sort he pretended exactly not to flaunt?—how could he put himself forward as so high a prize? Relinquishment of the opportunity to exercise a rare talent was not, in the nature of things, an easy effort to a young lady who was herself presumptuous as well as ambitious. Besides, she might eat her cake and have it—might make her fortune both on the stage and in the world. Successful actresses had ended by marrying dukes, and was not that better than remaining obscure and marrying a commoner? There were moments when he tried to pronounce the girl's "gift" not a force to reckon with; there was so little to show for it as yet that the caprice of believing in it would perhaps suddenly leave him. But his conviction that it was real was too uneasy to make such an experiment peaceful, and he came back, moreover, to his deepest impression—that of her being of the inward mould for which the only consistency is the play of genius. Hadn't Madame Carré declared at the last that she could "do anything"? It was true that if Madame Carré had been mistaken in the first place she might also be mistaken in the second. But in this latter case she would be mistaken with him—and such an error would be too like a truth.
How, further, shall we exactly measure for him—Sherringham felt the discomfort of the advantage Miriam had of him—the advantage of her presenting herself in a light that rendered any passion he might entertain an implication of duty as well as of pleasure? Why there should have been this implication was more than he could say; sometimes he held himself rather abject, or at least absurdly superstitious, for seeing it. He didn't know, he could scarcely conceive, of another case of the same general type in which he would have recognised it. In foreign countries there were very few ladies of Miss Rooth's intended profession who would not have regarded it as too strong an order that, to console them for not being admitted into drawing-rooms, they should have no offset but the exercise of a virtue in which no one would believe. This was because in foreign countries actresses were not admitted into drawing-rooms: that was a pure English drollery, ministering equally little to real histrionics and to the higher tone of these resorts. Did the oppressive sanctity which made it a burden to have to reckon with his young friend come then from her being English? Peter could recall cases in which that privilege operated as little as possible as a restriction. It came a great deal from Mrs. Rooth, in whom he apprehended depths of calculation as to what she might achieve for her daughter by "working" the idea of a life blameless amid dire obsessions. Her romantic turn of mind wouldn't in the least prevent her regarding that idea as a substantial capital, to be laid out to the best worldly advantage. Miriam's essential irreverence was capable, on a pretext, of making mince-meat of it—that he was sure of; for the only capital she recognised was the talent which some day managers and agents would outbid each other in paying for. Yet as a creature easy at so many points she was fond of her mother, would do anything to oblige—that might work in all sorts of ways—and would probably like the loose slippers of blamelessness quite as well as having to meet some of the queer high standards of the opposite camp.
