The Tragic Muse. Henry James

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      "What do they want to do?"

      "Oh it would take me long to tell you. All sorts of trash."

      "It would take you long, and it would take them longer! All they want to do is to prevent us from doing. On our side we want to prevent them from preventing us. That's about as clearly as we all see it. So on both sides it's a beautiful, lucid, inspiring programme."

      "I don't believe in you," Mrs. Dallow replied to this, leaning back on her sofa.

      "I hope not, Julia, indeed!" He paused a moment, still with his face toward her and his elbows on his knees; then he pursued: "You're a very accomplished woman and a very zealous one; but you haven't an idea, you know—not to call an idea. What you mainly want is to be at the head of a political salon; to start one, to keep it up, to make it a success."

      "Much you know me!" Julia protested; but he could see, through the dimness, that her face spoke differently.

      "You'll have it in time, but I won't come to it," Nick went on.

      "You can't come less than you do."

      "When I say you'll have it I mean you've already got it. That's why I don't come."

      "I don't think you know what you mean," said Mrs. Dallow. "I've an idea that's as good as any of yours, any of those you've treated me to this evening, it seems to me—the simple idea that one ought to do something or other for one's country."

      "'Something or other' certainly covers all the ground. There's one thing one can always do for one's country, which is not to be afraid."

      "Afraid of what?"

      Nick Dormer waited a little, as if his idea amused him, but he presently said, "I'll tell you another time. It's very well to talk so glibly of standing," he added; "but it isn't absolutely foreign to the question that I haven't got the cash."

      "What did you do before?" she asked.

      "The first time my father paid."

      "And the other time?"

      "Oh Mr. Carteret."

      "Your expenses won't be at all large; on the contrary," said Julia.

      "They shan't be; I shall look out sharp for that. I shall have the great Hutchby."

      "Of course; but you know I want you to do it well." She paused an instant and then: "Of course you can send the bill to me."

      "Thanks awfully; you're tremendously kind. I shouldn't think of that." Nick Dormer got up as he spoke, and walked to the window again, his companion's eyes resting on him while he stood with his back to her. "I shall manage it somehow," he wound up.

      "Mr. Carteret will be delighted," said Julia.

      "I daresay, but I hate taking people's money."

      "That's nonsense—when it's for the country. Isn't it for them?"

      "When they get it back!" Nick replied, turning round and looking for his hat. "It's startlingly late; you must be tired." Mrs. Dallow made no response to this, and he pursued his quest, successful only when he reached a duskier corner of the room, to which the hat had been relegated by his cousin's maid. "Mr. Carteret will expect so much if he pays. And so would you."

      "Yes, I'm bound to say I should! I should expect a great deal—everything." And Mrs. Dallow emphasised this assertion by the way she rose erect. "If you're riding for a fall, if you're only going in to miss it, you had better stay out."

      "How can I miss it with you?" the young man smiled. She uttered a word, impatiently but indistinguishably, and he continued: "And even if I do it will have been immense fun."

      "It is immense fun," said Julia. "But the best fun is to win. If you don't——!"

      "If I don't?" he repeated as she dropped.

      "I'll never speak to you again."

      "How much you expect even when you don't pay!"

      Mrs. Dallow's rejoinder was a justification of this remark, expressing as it did the fact that should they receive on the morrow information on which she believed herself entitled to count, information tending to show how hard the Conservatives meant to fight, she should look to him to be in the field as early as herself. Sunday was a lost day; she should leave Paris on Monday.

      "Oh they'll fight it hard; they'll put up Kingsbury," said Nick, smoothing his hat. "They'll all come down—all that can get away. And Kingsbury has a very handsome wife."

      "She's not so handsome as your cousin," Julia smiled.

      "Oh dear, no—a cousin sooner than a wife any day!" Nick laughed as soon as he had said this, as if the speech had an awkward side; but the reparation perhaps scarcely mended it, the exaggerated mock-meekness with which he added: "I'll do any blessed thing you tell me."

      "Come here to-morrow then—as early as ten." She turned round, moving to the door with him; but before they reached it she brought out: "Pray isn't a gentleman to do anything, to be anything?"

      "To be anything——?"

      "If he doesn't aspire to serve the State."

      "Aspire to make his political fortune, do you mean? Oh bless me, yes, there are other things."

      "What other things that can compare with that?"

      "Well, I for instance, I'm very fond of the arts."

      "Of the arts?" she echoed.

      "Did you never hear of them? I'm awfully fond of painting."

      At this Julia stopped short, and her fine grey eyes had for a moment the air of being set further forward in her head. "Don't be odious! Good-night," she said, turning away and leaving him to go.

Part 2

      Chapter

      1

      Peter Sherringham reminded Nick the next day that he had promised to be present at Madame Carré's interview with the ladies introduced to her by Gabriel Nash; and in the afternoon, conformably to this arrangement, the two men took their way to the Rue de Constantinople. They found Mr. Nash and his friends in the small beflounced drawing-room of the old actress, who, as they learned, had sent in a request for ten minutes' grace, having been detained at a lesson—a rehearsal of the comédie de salon about to be given for a charity by a fine lady, at which she had consented to be present as an adviser. Mrs. Rooth sat on a black satin sofa with her daughter beside her while Gabriel Nash, wandering about the room, looked at the votive offerings which converted the little panelled box, decorated in sallow white and gold, into a theatrical museum: the presents, the portraits, the wreaths, the diadems, the letters, framed and glazed, the trophies and tributes and relics collected by Madame Carré during half a century of renown. The profusion of this testimony was hardly more striking than the confession of something missed, something hushed, which seemed to rise from it all and make it melancholy, like a reference to clappings which, in the nature of things, could now only be present as a silence: so that if the place was full of history it was the form without the fact, or at the most a redundancy of the one to a pinch of СКАЧАТЬ