The Tragic Muse (London & New York: Macmillan & Co., 1890)/Volume 2/Chapter 4
IV.
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 to be 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 recognized their force. It next appeared to him that it might help him (not with his superiors, but with himself,) to apply for an extension of leave; but on further reflection he remained convinced 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 out his lines of defence.
There was only one thing in life that his mind had been very much made up to, but on this question he had never wavered: he would get on to the utmost in his profession. It 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 that his hand would not falter on the day he should find it necessary to drop bitterness into his cup. This day would be sure to dawn, for no career was 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 nothing could be plain in advance about the occasion, the object, the victim. All that was tolerably definite 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 that it was a passion exercised on the easiest terms. This was not the region of responsibility. It had the discredit of being sniffed at by the austere; but if it was not, as they said, a serious field, was not the compensation just that you could not 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 fancy for the art of Garrick had never worn the proportions of an eccentricity. 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 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 private infatuations much sillier and less confessable. Had he not known men who collected old invitation-cards (hungry for those of the last century), and 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 Booth 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 certain puzzlement about this very point was part of the fascination which she had ended by throwing over him. Poor Sherringham's scheme for getting on had contained no proviso against 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 were 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. An ambitious diplomatist would probably be wise to marry, but only with his eyes very much open. 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, especially 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 always be, in short, a very important quantity, and the scene was strewn with illustrations of this general truth. She might be such a help and she might be such a blight that common prudence required that one should test her in advance. Sherringham had seen women in the career who were stupid or vulgar make a mess of things—it was enough to 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 divined that 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 was almost afraid to think of 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 in advance just what was clearest in the business. He was perhaps cold-blooded to think of them; but it must be remembered that they were the particular thing which 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 teach himself the endurance of the traveller in the desert. He kept the Channel between them, but his spirit moved every day an inch nearer to her, until (and it was not long) there were no more inches left. The last thing he expected the future ambassadress to have been was a 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 head her off. Then came worrying retorts to that, chief among which was the sense that to his artistic conscience heading her off would be simple shallowness. The poor girl had a right to her chance, and he should not really alter anything by taking it away from her; for was she not the artist to the tips of her tresses (the ambassadress never in the world), and would she not take it out in something else if one were to make her deviate? So certain was that irrepressible deviltry 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 that she could be corrupted into respectability? How could the career (his career) speak to a nature which 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 fatuity—how could he regard himself as a high 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 conceited 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 Sherringham tried to think that Miriam's talent was 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 her. But his suspicion 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 turn of mind for which the only consistency is talent. Had not Madame Carré said 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.
I ought possibly to hesitate to say how much Sherringham felt the discomfort, for him, of the advantage that Miriam had of him—the advantage of her presenting herself in a light which rendered any passion that he might entertain an implication of duty as well as of pleasure. Why there should be this implication was more than he could say; sometimes he declared to himself that he was 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 seen 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. Because in foreign countries actresses were not admitted into drawing-rooms: that was a pure English drollery, ministering equally little to histrionics and to the tone of these resorts. Did the sanctity which to his imagination made it a burden to have to reckon with Miriam come from her being English? Sherringham could remember 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 blameless life. Her romantic turn of mind would not in the least prevent her from 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 recognized was the talent which some day managers and agents would outbid each other in paying for. But she was a good-natured creature; 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 the high standards of the opposite camp.
Sherringham, I may add, had no desire that she should indulge a different preference: it was foreign to him to compute the probabilities of a young lady's misbehaving for his advantage (that seemed to him definitely base), and he would have thought himself a blackguard if, professing a tenderness for Miriam, he had not wished the thing that was best for her. The thing that was best for her would no doubt be to become the wife of the man to whose suit she should incline her ear. That this would be the best thing for the gentleman in question was however a very different matter, and Sherringham's final conviction was that it would never do for him to act the part of that hypothetic personage. He asked for no removal and no extension of leave, and he proved to himself how well he knew what he was about by never addressing a line, during his absence, to the Hôtel de la Garonne. He would simply go straight and inflict as little injury upon Peter Sherringham as upon any one else. He remained away to the last hour of his privilege and continued to act lucidly in having nothing to do with the mother and daughter for several days after his return to Paris.
It was when this discipline came to an end, one afternoon after a week had passed, that he felt most the force of the reference that has just been made to Mrs. Booth's private reckonings. He found her at home alone, writing a letter under the lamp, and as soon as he came in she cried out that he was the very person to whom the letter was addressed. She could bear it no longer; she had permitted herself to reproach him with his terrible silence—to ask why he had quite forsaken them. It was an illustration of the way in which her visitor had come to regard her that he rather disbelieved than believed this description of the crumpled papers lying on the table. He was not sure even that he believed that Miriam had just gone out. He told her mother how busy he had been all the while he was away and how much time in particular he had had to give, in London, to seeing on her daughter's behalf the people connected with the theatres.
"Ah, if you pity me, tell me that you've got her an engagement!" Mrs. Rooth cried, clasping her hands.
"I took a great deal of trouble; I wrote ever so many notes, sought introductions, talked with people—such impossible people some of them. In short I knocked at every door, I went into the question exhaustively." And he enumerated the things he had done, imparted some of the knowledge he had gathered. The difficulties were serious, and even with the influence he could command (such as it was) there was very little to be achieved in face of them. Still he had gained ground: there were two or three fellows, men with small theatres, who had listened to him better than the others, and there was one in particular whom he had a hope he might really have interested. From him he had extracted certain merciful assurances: he would see Miriam, he would listen to her, he would do for her what he could. The trouble was that no one would lift a finger for a girl unless she were known, and yet that she never could become known until innumerable fingers were lifted. You couldn't go into the water unless you could swim, and you couldn't swim until you had been in the water.
"But new performers appear; they get theatres, they get audiences, they get notices in the newspapers," Mrs. Rooth objected. "I know of these things only what Miriam tells me. It's no knowledge that I was born to."
"It's perfectly true; it's all done with money."
"And how do they come by money?" Mrs. Rooth asked, candidly.
"When they're women people give it to them."
"Well, what people, now?"
"People who believe in them."
"As you believe in Miriam?"
Sherringham was silent a moment. "No, rather differently. A poor man doesn't believe anything in the same way that a rich man does."
"Ah, don't call yourself poor!" groaned Mrs. Rooth.
"What good would it do me to be rich?"
"Why, you could take a theatre; you could do it all yourself."
"And what good would that do me?"
"Why, don't you delight in her genius?" demanded Mrs. Rooth.
"I delight in her mother. You think me more disinterested than I am," Sherringham added, with a certain soreness of irritation.
"I know why you didn't write!" Mrs. Rooth declared, archly.
"You must go to London," Peter said, without heeding this remark.
"Ah, if we could only get there it would be a relief. I should draw a long breath. There at least I know where I am, and what people are. But here one lives on hollow ground!"
"The sooner you get away the better," Sherringham went on.
"I know why you say that."
"It's just what I'm explaining."
"I couldn't have held out if I hadn't been so sure of Miriam," said Mrs. Rooth.
"Well, you needn't hold out any longer."
"Don't you trust her?" asked Sherringham's hostess.
"Trust her?"
"You don't trust yourself. That's why you were silent, why we might have thought you were dead, why we might have perished ourselves."
"I don't think I understand you; I don't know what you're talking about," Sherringham said. "But it doesn't matter."
"Doesn't it? Let yourself go: why should you struggle?" the old woman inquired.
Her unexpected insistence annoyed her visitor, and he was silent again, looking at her, on the point of telling her that he didn't like her tone. But he had his tongue under such control that he was able presently to say, instead of this— and it was a relief for him to give audible voice to the reflection: "It's a great mistake, either way, for a man to be in love with an actress. Either it means nothing serious, and what's the use of that? or it means everything, and that's still more delusive."
"Delusive?"
"Idle, unprofitable."
"Surely a pure affection is its own reward," Mrs. Rooth rejoined, with soft reasonableness.
"In such a case how can it be pure?"
"I thought you were talking of an English gentleman," said Mrs. Rooth.
"Call the poor fellow whatever you like: a man with his life to lead, his way to make, his work, his duties, his career to attend to. If it means nothing, as I say, the thing it means least of all is marriage."
"Oh, my own Miriam!" murmured Mrs. Rooth.
"On the other hand fancy the complication if such a man marries a woman who's on the stage."
Mrs. Rooth looked as if she were trying to follow. "Miriam isn't on the stage yet."
"Go to London and she soon will be."
"Yes, and then you'll have your excuse."
"My excuse?"
"For deserting us altogether."
Sherringham broke into laughter at this, the tone was so droll. Then he rejoined: "Show me some good acting and I won't desert you."
"Good acting? Ah, what is the best acting compared with the position of an English lady? If you'll take her as she is you may have her," Mrs. Rooth suddenly added.
"As she is, with all her ambitions unassuaged?"
"To marry you—might not that be an ambition?"
"A very paltry one. Don't answer for her, don't attempt that," said Sherringham. "You can do much better."
"Do you think you can?" smiled Mrs. Rooth.
"I don't want to; I only want to let it alone. She's an artist; you must give her her head," Peter went on. "You must always give an artist his head."
"But I have known great ladies who were artists. In English society there is always a field."
"Don't talk to me of English society! Thank heaven, in the first place, I don't live in it. Do you want her to give up her genius?"
"I thought you didn't care for it."
"She'd say 'No, I thank you, dear mamma.'"
"My gifted child!" Mrs. Rooth murmured.
"Have you ever proposed it to her?"
"Proposed it?"
"That she should give up trying."
Mrs. Rooth hesitated, looking down. "Not for the reason you mean. We don't talk about love," she simpered.
"Then it's so much less time wasted. Don't stretch out your hand to the worse when it may some day grasp the better," Sherringham pursued. Mrs. Rooth raised her eyes at him as if she recognized the force there might be in that, and he added: "Let her blaze out, let her look about her. Then you may talk to me if you like."
"It's very puzzling," the old woman remarked, artlessly.
Sherringham laughed again; then he said: "Now don't tell me I'm not a good friend."
"You are indeed—you're a very noble gentleman. That's just why a quiet life with you—"
"It wouldn't be quiet for me!" Sherringham broke in. "And that's not what Miriam was made for."
"Don't say that, for my precious one!" Mrs. Rooth quavered.
"Go to London—go to London," her visitor repeated.
Thoughtfully, after an instant, she extended her hand and took from the table the letter on the composition of which he had found her engaged. Then with a quick movement she tore it up. "That's what Mr. Dashwood says."
"Mr. Dashwood?"
"I forgot you don't know him. He's the brother of that lady we met the day you were so good as to receive us; the one who was so kind to us—Mrs. Lovick."
"I never heard of him."
"Don't you remember that she spoke of him and Mr. Lovick didn't seem very kind about him? She told us that if he were to meet us—and she was so good as to insinuate that it would be a pleasure to him to do so—he might give us, as she said, a tip."
Sherringham indulged in a visible effort to recollect. "Yes, he comes back to me. He's an actor."
"He's a gentleman too," said Mrs. Rooth.
"And you've met him and he has given you a tip?"
"As I say, he wants us to go to London."
"I see, but even I can tell you that."
"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Rooth; " but he says he can help us."
"Keep hold of him then, if he's in the business."
"He's a perfect gentleman," said Mrs. Rooth. "He's immensely struck with Miriam."
"Better and better. Keep hold of him."
"Well, I'm glad you don't object," Mrs. Rooth smiled.
"Why should I object?"
"You don't consider us as all your own?"
"My own? Why, I regard you as the public's—the world's."
Mrs. Rooth gave a little shudder. "There's a sort of chill in that. It's grand, but it's cold. However, I needn't hesitate then to tell you that it's with Mr. Dashwood that Miriam has gone out."
"Why hesitate, gracious heaven?" But in the next breath Sherringham asked: "Where has she gone?"
"You don't like it!" laughed Mrs. Rooth.
"Why should it be a thing to be enthusiastic about?"
"Well, he's charming, and I trust him."
"So do I," said Sherringham.
"They've gone to see Madame Carré."
"She has come back then?"
"She was expected back last week. Miriam wants to show her how she has improved."
"And has she improved?"
"How can I tell—with my mother's heart?" asked Mrs. Rooth. "I don't judge; I only wait and pray. But Mr. Dashwood thinks she's wonderful."
"That's a blessing. And when did he turn up?"
"About a fortnight ago. We met Mrs. Lovick at the English church, and she was so good as to recognize us and speak to us. She said she had been away with her children, or she would have come to see us. She had just returned to Paris."
"Yes, I've not yet seen her," said Sherringham. "I see Lovick, but he doesn't talk of his brother-in-law."
"I didn't, that day, like his tone about him," Mrs. Rooth observed. "We walked a little way with Mrs. Lovick and she asked Miriam about her prospects and if she were working. Miriam said she had no prospects."
"That was not very nice to me," Sherringham interrupted.
"But when you had left us in black darkness, where were our prospects?"
"I see; it's all right. Go on."
"Then Mrs. Lovick said her brother was to be in Paris a few days and she would tell him to come and see us. He arrived, she told him and he came. Voilà!" said Mrs. Rooth.
"So that now (so far as he is concerned) Miss Rooth has prospects?"
"He isn't a manager unfortunately."
"Where does he act?"
"He isn't acting just now; he has been abroad. He has been to Italy, I believe, and he is just stopping here on his way to London."
"I see; he is a perfect gentleman," said Sherringham.
"Ah, you're jealous of him."
"No, but you're trying to make me so. The more competitors there are for the glory of bringing her out, the better for her."
"Mr. Dashwood wants to take a theatre," said Mrs. Rooth.
"Then perhaps he's our man."
"Oh, if you'd help him?" cried Mrs. Rooth.
"Help him?"
"Help him to help us."
"We'll all work together; it will be very jolly," said Sherringham gaily. "It's a sacred cause, the love of art, and we shall be a happy band. Dashwood's his name?" he added in a moment. "Mrs. Lovick wasn't a Dashwood."
"It's his nom de théâtre—Basil Dashwood. Do you like it?" Mrs. Rooth inquired.
"You say that as Miriam might do: her talent is catching."
"She's always practising—always saying things over and over, to seize the tone. I have her voice in my ears. He wants her not to have any."
"Not to have any?"
"Any nom de théâtre. He wants her to use her own; he likes it so much. He says it will do so well—you can't better it."
"He's a capital adviser," said Sherringham, getting up. "I'll come back to-morrow."
"I won't ask you to wait till they return, they may be so long," Mrs. Rooth replied.
"Will he come back with her?" Sherringham inquired, smoothing his hat.
"I hope so, at this hour. With my child in the streets I tremble. We don't live in cabs, as you may easily suppose."
"Did they go on foot?" Sherringham continued.
"Oh yes; they started in high spirits."
"And is Mr. Basil Dashwood acquainted with Madame Carré?"
"Oh no, but he longed to be introduced to her; he implored Miriam to take him. Naturally she wishes to oblige him. She's very nice to him—if he can do anything."
"Quite right; that's the way."
"And she also wanted him to see what she can do for the great critic," Mrs. Rooth added.
"The great critic?"
"I mean that terrible old woman in the red wig."
"That's what I should like to see too," said Sherringham.
"Oh, she has gone ahead; she is pleased with herself. 'Work, work, work,' said Madame Carré. Well, she has worked, worked, worked. That's what Mr. Dashwood is pleased with even more than with other things."
"What do you mean by other things?"
"Oh, her genius and her fine appearance."
"He approves of her fine appearance? I ask because you think he knows what will take."
"I know why you ask," said Mrs. Rooth. "He says it will be worth hundreds of thousands to her."
"That's the sort of thing I like to hear," Sherringham rejoined. "I'll come in to-morrow," he repeated.
"And shall you mind if Mr. Dashwood's here?"
"Does he come every day?"
"Oh, they're always at it."
"Always at it?"
"Why, she acts to him—every sort of thing—and he says if it will do."
"How many days has he been here then?"
Mrs. Rooth reflected. "Oh, I don't know. Since he turned up they've passed so quickly."
"So far from 'minding' it I'm eager to see him," Sherringham declared; "and I can imagine nothing better than what you describe—if he isn't an ass."
"Dear me, if he isn't clever you must tell us: we can't afford to be deceived!" Mrs. Rooth exclaimed, innocently and plaintively. "What do we know—how can we judge?" she added.
Sherringham hesitated, with his hand on the latch. "Oh, I'll tell you what I think of him!"