The Tragic Muse (London & New York: Macmillan & Co., 1890)/Volume 3/Chapter 1
THE TRAGIC MUSE.
I.
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 back tonight, 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."
"Hasn't the year come round—the year of that foolish arrangement?"
Nick thought a little, asking 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 wasn'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 colour 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 doesn'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 haven't earned it—I haven'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—shouldn'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 practised lucidity all his life, he had expected it of others and he had never given his assent to an indistinct proposition. He 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 couldn'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 find 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 hasn'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 mustn't be lost."
"Yes, but the competition to-day is terrible," Nick replied.
Mr. Carteret considered this a moment, as if he found a serious flaw in it; after which he began again: "I never supposed you were a trifler."
"I'm 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 shouldn'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 haven'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're taking your place. Several gentlemen have told me. Hasn't she felt a scruple, knowing my settlement on you was contingent?" he pursued.
"Oh, she hasn't known—hasn'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—I 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 haven'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'm 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 hadn'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'm 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'm different."
"Different?"
"Different from my father—different from Mrs. Dallow—different from you."
"Ah, why do you perplex me?" moaned the old man. "You've 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'm afraid, a little more than is good for you. Isn'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 the 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. Lendon 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 timid 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 unparliamentary. The doctor had called while Nick was out, and he came again at five 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 for ever. I've 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 and rather a poor one; 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 humour 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're 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 oughtn't to do it in ignorance."
"My ignorance was better. Such knowledge isn't good for me."
"Forgive me, my dear old friend. When you're better you'll 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'll be glad I'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'll 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 shouldn't have done it," said Nick. "I dare say I should have deferred to his prejudices, even if I thought them narrow."
"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, while 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 haven'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 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 haven'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 savoured still of the sordid associations of a world he had not done with: "Then of course my settlement doesn'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 Beauclere.
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 Beauclere.