The Tragic Muse (London & New York: Macmillan & Co., 1890)/Volume 3/Chapter 3
III.
That evening—the evening of his return from Beauclere—Nick was conscious of a keen desire to get away, to go abroad, to leave behind him the little chatter his resignation would be sure to produce in an age of publicity which never discriminated as to the quality of events. Then he felt it was better to stay, to see the business through on the spot. Besides, he would have to meet his constituents (would a parcel of cheese-eating burgesses ever have been "met" on so queer an occasion?) and when that was over the worst would be over. Nick had an idea that he knew in advance how it would feel to be pointed at as a person who had given up a considerable chance of eventual "office" to take likenesses at so much a head. He wouldn't attempt, down at Harsh, to touch on the question of motive; for, given the nature of the public mind of Harsh, that would be a strain on his faculty of expression. But as regards the chaff of the political world and of society he had an idea he should find chaff enough for answers. It was true that when his mother chaffed him in her own effective way he had felt rather flattened out; but then one's mother might have a heavier hand than any one else.
He had not thrown up the House of Commons to amuse himself; he had thrown it up to work, to sit quietly down and bend over his task. If he should go abroad his mother might think he had some weak-minded view of joining Julia Dallow and trying, with however little hope, to win her back—an illusion it would be singularly pernicious to encourage. His desire for Julia's society had succumbed, for the present at any rate, to an irresistible interruption—he had become more and more conscious that they spoke a different language. Nick felt like a young man who has gone to the Rhineland to "get up" his German for an examination—committed to talk, to read, to dream only in the new idiom. Now that he had taken his jump everything was simplified, at the same time that everything was pitched in a higher, more excited key; and he wondered how in the absence of a common dialect he had conversed on the whole so happily with Julia. Then he had after-tastes of understandings tolerably independent of words. He was excited because every fresh responsibility is exciting, and there was no manner of doubt that he had accepted one. No one knew what it was but himself (Gabriel Nash scarcely counted—his whole attitude on the question of responsibility was so wanton), and he would have to ask his dearest friends to take him on trust. Rather, he would ask nothing of any one, but would cultivate independence, mulishness and gaiety and fix his thoughts on a bright if distant morrow. It was disagreeable to have to remember that his task would not be sweetened by a sense of heroism; for if it might be heroic to give up the muses for the strife of great affairs, no romantic glamour worth speaking of would ever gather round an Englishman who in the prime of his strength had given up great or even small affairs for the muses. Such an original might himself privately, perversely regard certain phases of this inferior commerce as a great affair; but who would give him the benefit of that sort of confidence—except indeed a faithful, clever, excited little sister Biddy, if he should have the good luck to have one? Biddy was in fact all ready for heroic flights and eager to think she might fight the battle of the beautiful by her brother's side; so that Nick had really to moderate her and remind her that his actual job was not a crusade, with bugles and banners, but a gray, sedentary grind, whose charm was all at the core. You might have an emotion about it, and an emotion that would be a help, but this was not the sort of thing you could show—the end in view would seem ridiculously small for it. Nick asked Biddy how one could talk to people about the "responsibility" of what she would see him pottering at in his studio.
Nick therefore didn't talk any more than he was forced to, having moreover a sense that that side of the situation would be plentifully looked after by Gabriel Nash. He left the burden of explanation to others, meeting them on the ground of inexhaustible satire. He saw that he should live for months in a thick cloud of irony, not the finest air of the season, and he adopted the weapon to which a person whose use of tobacco is only occasional resorts when every one else produces a cigar—he puffed the empirical, defensive cigarette. He accepted the idea of a mystery in his behaviour and abounded so in that sense that his critics were themselves bewildered. Some of them felt that they got, as the phrase is, little out of him—he rose in his good-humour so much higher than the "rise" they had looked for—on his very first encounter with the world after his scrimmage with his mother. He went to a dinner-party (he had accepted the invitation many days before), having seen his resignation, in the form of a telegram from Harsh, announced in the evening papers. The people he found there had seen it as well, and the most imaginative of them wanted to know what he was going to do. Even the least imaginative asked if it were true he had changed his politics. He gave different answers to different persons, but left most of them under the impression that he had remarkable conscientious scruples. This however was not a formidable occasion, for there happened to be no one present he was particularly fond of. There were old friends whom it would not be so easy to satisfy—Nick was almost sorry, for an hour, that he had so many old friends. If he had had more enemies the case would have been simpler; and he was fully aware that the hardest thing of all would be to be let off too easily. Then he would appear to himself to have been put on his generosity, and his deviation would wear its ugliest face.
When he left the place at which he had been dining he betook himself to Rosedale Road: he saw no reason why he should go down to the House, though he knew he had not done with that yet. He had a dread of behaving as if he supposed he should be expected to make a farewell speech, and was thankful his eminence was not of a nature to create on such an occasion a demand for his oratory. He had in fact nothing whatever to say in public—not a word, not a syllable. Though the hour was late he found Gabriel Nash established in his studio, drawn thither by the fine exhilaration, of having seen an evening paper. Trying it late, on the chance, he had been told by Nick's servant that Nick would sleep there that night, and he had come in to wait, he was so eager to congratulate him. Nick submitted with a good grace to his society—he was tired enough to go to bed, but he was restless too—in spite of feeling now, oddly enough, that Nash's congratulations could add little to his fortitude. He had felt a good deal, before, as if he were in Nash's hands; but now that he had made his final choice he seemed to himself to be altogether in his own. Gabriel was wonderful, but no Gabriel could assist him much henceforth.
Gabriel was indeed more wonderful than ever, while he lolled on a divan and emitted a series of reflections which were even more ingenious than opportune. Nick walked up and down the room, and it might have been supposed from his manner that he was impatient for his visitor to withdraw. This idea would have been contradicted however by the fact that subsequently, after Nash had taken leave, he continued to perambulate. He had grown used to Nash—had a sense that he had heard all he had to say. That was one's penalty with persons whose main gift was for talk, however irrigating; talk engendered a sense of sameness much sooner than action. The things a man did were necessarily more different from each other than the things he said, even if he went in for surprising you. Nick felt Nash could never surprise him any more save by doing something.
He talked of his host's future, he talked of Miriam Rooth and of Peter Sherringham, whom he had seen at Miriam Booth's and whom he described as in a predicament delightful to behold. Nick asked a question or two about Peter's predicament and learned rather to his disappointment that it consisted only of the fact that he was in love with Miriam. He requested his visitor to do better than this; whereupon Nash added the touch that Sherringham wouldn't be able to have her. "Oh, they have ideas!" he said, when Nick asked him why.
"What ideas? So has he, I suppose."
"Yes, but they're not the same."
"Oh well, they'll arrange something," said Nick.
"You'll have to help them a bit. She's in love with another man," Nash returned.
"Do you mean with you?"
"Oh, I'm never another man," said Nash; "I'm more the wrong one than the man himself. It's you she's after." And upon Nick's asking him what he meant by this he added: "While you were engaged in transferring her image to your sensorium you stamped your own upon hers."
Nick stopped in his walk, staring. "Ah, what a bore!"
"A bore? Don't you think she's agreeable?"
Nick hesitated. "I wanted to go on with her—now I can't."
"My dear fellow, it only makes her handsomer: I wondered what was the matter with her."
"Oh, that's twaddle," said Nick, turning away. "Besides, has she told you?"
"No, but her mother has."
"Has she told her mother?"
"Mrs. Rooth says not. But I have known Mrs. Rooth to say that which isn't."
"Apply that rule then to the information you speak of."
"Well, since you press me, I know more," said Nash. "Miriam knows you are engaged to a certain lady; she told me as much, told me she had seen her here. That was enough to set Miriam off—she likes forbidden fruit."
"I'm not engaged to any lady. I was, but we've altered our minds."
"Ah, what a pity!" sighed Nash.
"Mephistopheles!" Nick rejoined, stopping again and looking at his visitor gravely.
"Pray, whom do you call Margaret? May I ask if your failure of interest in the political situation is the cause of this change in your personal one?" Nash went on. Nick signified to him that he might not; whereupon Gabriel added: "I am not in the least devilish—I only mean it's a pity you've altered your minds, because now perhaps Miriam will alter hers. She goes from one thing to another. However, I won't tell her."
"I will, then," said Nick, between jest and earnest.
"Would that really be prudent?" Nash asked, with an intonation that made hilarity prevail.
"At any rate," Nick resumed, "nothing would induce me to interfere with Peter Sherringham. That sounds fatuous, but to you I don't mind appearing an ass."
"The thing would be to get Sherringham—out of spite—to entangle himself with another woman."
"What good would that do?"
"Oh, Miriam would begin to fancy him then."
"Spite surely isn't a conceivable motive—for a healthy man."
"Ah, Sherringham isn't a healthy man. He's too much in love."
"Then he won't care for another woman."
"He would try to, and that would produce its effect—its effect on Miriam."
"You talk like an American novel. Let him try, and God keep us all straight." Nick thought, in extreme silence, of his poor little Biddy and hoped—he would have to see to it a little—that Peter wouldn't "try" on her. He changed the subject and before Nash went away took occasion to remark to him—the occasion was offered by some new allusion of the visitor's to the sport he hoped to extract from seeing Nick carry out everything to which he stood committed—that the great comedy would fall very flat, the great incident would pass unnoticed.
"Oh, if you'll simply do your part I'll take care of the rest," said Nash.
"If you mean by doing my part working like a beaver, it's all right," Nick replied.
"Ah, you reprobate, you'll become a fashionable painter, a P. R. A.!" his companion groaned, getting up to go.
When he had gone Nick threw himself back on the cushions of the divan and, with his hands locked above his head, sat a long time lost in thought. He had sent his servant to bed; he was unmolested. He gazed before him into the gloom produced by the unheeded burning out of the last candle. The vague outer light came in through the tall studio window, and the painted images, ranged about, looked confused in the dusk. If his mother had seen him she might have thought he was staring at his father's ghost.