The tragic muse
James, Henry, 1843-1916 | Richard Clay & Sons. (1890)
SS88 • I < «< OTIU/ASINELITERISAORSEST. 5. & University of California • Berkeley Gift of MR. E. W. NASH. 1 THE TRAGIC MUSE VOL. I. THE TRAGIC MUSE BY HENRY JAMES IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. I. H o n to o n MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK The Right of Translation and Reproduction j's Reserved RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, LONDON & BUNOAY. THE TBAGIC MUSE. THE people of France have made it no secret that those of England, as a general thing, are, to their perception, an in- expressive and speechless race, perpendicular and unsociable, unaddicted to enriching any bareness of contact with verbal or other embroidery. This view might have derived en- couragement, a few years ago, in Paris, from the manner in which four persons sat together in silence, one fine day about noon, in the garden, as it is called, of the Palais de I'lndustrie —the central court of the great glazed bazaar where, among plants and parterres, gravelled walks and thin fountains, are ranged the figures and groups, the monuments and busts, which form, in the annual exhibition of the Salon, the department of statuary. The spirit of observation is naturally high at the Salon, quickened by a thousand artful or artless appeals, but no particular tension of the visual sense would have been required to embrace the character of the four persons in question. As a solicitation of the eye on definite grounds, they too constituted a successful plastic fact } and VOL. I. B THE TKAG10 MUSE. even the most superficial observer would have perceived them to be striking products of an insular neighbourhood, repre- sentatives of that tweed-and -waterproof class with which, on the recurrent occasions when the English turn out for a holiday — Christmas and Easter, Whitsuntide and the autumn — Paris besprinkles itself at a night's notice. They had about them the indefinable professional look of the British traveller abroad ; that air of preparation for exposure, material and moral, which is so oddly combined with the serene revelation of security and of persistence, and which excites, according to individual susceptibility, the ire or the admiration of foreign communities. They were the more unmistakable as they illustrated very favourably the energetic race to which they had the honour to belong. The fresh, diffused light of the Salon made them clear and important ; they were finished productions, in their way, and ranged there motionless, on their green bench, they were almost as much on exhibition as if they had been hung on the line. Three ladies and a young man, they were obviously a family — a mother, two daughters and a son — a circumstance which had the effect at once of making each member of the group doubly typical and of helping to account for their fine taciturnity. They were not, with each other, on terms of ceremony, and moreover they were probably fatigued with their course among the pictures, the rooms on the upper floor. Their attitude, on the part of visitors who had superior features, even if they might appear to some passers-by to have neglected a fine opportunity for completing these features with an expression, was after all a kind of tribute to the state of THE TRAGIC MUSE. exhaustion, of bewilderment, to which the genius of France is still capable of reducing the proud. " En v'la des abrutis ! " more than one of their fellow- gazers might have been heard to exclaim ; and certain it is that there was something depressed and discouraged in this interesting group, who sat looking vaguely before them, not noticing the life of the place, somewhat as if each had a private anxiety. A very close observer would have guessed that though on many questions they were closely united, this present anxiety was not the same for each. If they looked grave, moreover, this was doubtless partly the result of their all being dressed in mourning, as if for, a recent bereavement. The eldest of the three ladies had indeed a face of a fine austere mould, which would have been moved to gaiety only by some force more insidious than any she was likely to recognize in Paris. Cold, still and considerably worn, it was neither stupid nor hard, but it was firm, narrow and sharp. This competent matron, acquainted evidently with grief, but not weakened by it, had a high forehead, to which the quality of the skin gave a singular polish — it glittered even when seen at a distance ; a nose which achieved a high, free curve ; and a tendency to throw back her head and carry it well above her, as if to disengage it from the possible entangle- ments of the rest of her person. If you had seen her walk you would have perceived that she trod the earth in a manner suggesting that in a world where she had long since discovered that one couldn't have one's own way, one could never tell what annoying aggression might take place, so that it was well, from hour to hour, to save what one could. Lady THE TllAGIC MUSE. Agnes saved her head, her white triangular forehead, aver •which her closely crinkled flaxen hair, reproduced in different shades in her children, made a sort of looped silken canopy, like the marquee at a garden-party. Her daughters were tall, like herself — that was visible even as they sat there— and one of them, the younger evidently, was very pretty : a straight, slender, gray-eyed English girl, with a "good" figure and a fresh complexion. The sister, who was not pretty, was also straight and slender and gray-eyed. But the gray, in this case, was not so pure, nor were the slenderness and the straightness so maidenly. The brother of these young ladies had taken oft' his hat, as if he felt the air of the summer day heavy in the great pavilion. He was a lean, strong, clear- faced youth, with a straight nose and light-brown hair, which lay continuously and profusely back from his forehead, so that to smooth it from the brow to the neck but a single movement of the hand was required. I cannot describe him better than by saying that he was the sort of young English- man who looks particularly well abroad, and whose general aspect — his inches, his limbs, his friendly eyes, the modulation of his voice, the cleanness of his flesh-tints and the fashion <>f his garments — excites on the part of those who encounter him in far countries on the ground of a common speech a delightful sympathy of race. This sympathy is sometimes qualified by an apprehension of undue literalness, but it almost revels as soon as such a danger is dispelled. We shall see quickly enough how accurate a measure it might have taken of Nicholas Dormer. There was food for suspicion, perhaps, in the wandering blankness that sat at moments in his eyes, THE TRAGIC MUSE. as if he had no attention at all, not the least in the world, at his command ; but it is no more than just to add, without delay, that this discouraging symptom was known, among those who liked him, by the indulgent name of dreaminess. For his mother and sisters, for instance, his dreaminess was notorious. He is the more welcome to the benefit of such an inter- pretation as there is always held to be something engaging in the combination of the muscular and the musing, the mildness of strength. After some time — a period during which these good people might have appeared to have come, individually, to the Palais de 1' Industrie much less to see the works of art than to think over their domestic affairs — the young man, rousing himself from his reverie, addressed one of the girls. " I say, Biddy, why should we sit moping here all day 1 Come and take a turn about with me." His younger sister, while he got up, leaned forward a little, looking round her, but she gave, for the moment, no further sign of complying with his invitation. " Where shall we find you, then, if Peter comes 1 " inquired the other Miss Dormer, making no movement at all. " I dare say Peter won't come. He'll leave us here to cool our heels." " Oh, Nick, dear ! " Biddy exclaimed in a sweet little voice of protest. It was plainly her theory that Peter would come, and even, a little, her apprehension that she might miss him should she quit that spot. " We shall come back in a quarter of an hour. Really, I must look at these things," Nick declared, turning his face to THE TRAGIC MUSE. a marble group which stood near them, on the right — a man, with the skin of a beast round his loins, tussling with a naked woman in some primitive effort of courtship or capture. Lady Agnes followed the direction of her son's eyes, and then observed : "Everything seems very dreadful. I should think Biddy had better sit still. Hasn't she seen enough horrors up above ? " "I dare say that if Peter comes Julia will be with him," the elder girl remarked irrelevantly. " Well, then, he can take Julia about. That will be more proper," said Lady Agnes. "Mother, dear, she doesn't care "a rap about art. It's a fearful bore looking at fine things with Julia," Nick rejoined. " "Won't you go with him, Grace ? " said Biddy, appealing to her sister. " I think she has awfully good taste ! " Grace exclaimed, not answering this inquiry. " Don't say nasty things about her ! " Lady Agnes broke out, solemnly, to her son, after resting her eyes on him a moment with an air of reluctant reprobation. " I say nothing but what she'd say herself," the young man replied. " About some things she has very good taste, but about this kind of thing she has no taste at all." " That's better, I think," said Lady Agnes, turning her eyes again to the " kind of thing " that her son appeared to designate. " She's awfully clever — awfully ! " Grace went on, with decision. THE TRAGIC MUSE. " Awfully, awfully." her brother repeated, standing in front of her and smiling down at her. "You are nasty, Nick. You know you are," said the young lady, but more in sorrow than in anger. Biddy got up at this, as if the accusatory tone prompted her to place herself generously at his side. " Mightn't you go and order lunch, in that place, you know?" she asked of her mother. " Then we would come back when it was ready." " My dear child, I can't order lunch," Lady Agnes replied, with a cold impatience which seemed to intimate that she had problems far more important than those of victualling to contend with. " I mean Peter, if he comes. I am sure he's up in everything of that sort." " Oh, hang Peter ! " Nick exclaimed. " Leave him out of account, and do order lunch, mother ; but not cold beef and pickles." " I must say — about him — you're not nice," Biddy ventured to remark to her brother, hesitating, and even blushing, a little. " You make up for it, my dear," the young man answered, giving her chin — a very charming, rotund little chin — a friendly whisk with his forefinger. " I can't imagine what you've got against him," her ladyship murmured, gravely. " Dear mother, it's a disappointed fondness," Nick argued. " They won't answer one's notes ; they won't let one know where they are nor what to expect. ' Hell has no f ury like a woman scorned ; ' nor like a man either." THE TRAGIC MUSE. " Peter has such a tremendous lot to do — it's a very busy time at the Embassy ; there are sure to be reasons," Biddy explained, with her pretty eyes. "Reasons enough, no doubt!" said Lady Agnes, who accompanied these words with an ambiguous sigh, however, as if in Paris even the best reasons would naturally be bad ones. " Doesn't Julia write to you, doesn't she answer you the very day ? " Grace inquired, looking at Nick as if she were the courageous one. He hesitated a moment, returning her glance with a certain severity. " What do you know about my correspondence ? No doubt I ask too much," he went on ; "I am so attached to them. Dear old Peter, dear old Julia ! " " She's younger than you, my dear ! " cried the elder girl, still resolute. "Yes, nineteen days." " I'm glad you know her birthday." " She knows yours ; she always gives you something," Lady Agnes resumed, to her son. "Her taste is good then, isn't it, Nick?" Grace Dormer continued. " She makes charming presents ; but, dear mother, it isn't her taste. It's her husband's." "Her husband's?" " The beautiful objects of which she disposes so freely are the things he collected, for years, laboriously, devotedly, poor man ! " " She disposes of them to you, but not to others," said Lady THE TRAGIC MUSE. Agnes. "But that's all right," she added, as if this might have been taken for a complaint of the limitations of Julia's bounty. " She has to select, among so many, and that's a proof of taste," her ladyship went on. '•'You can't say she doesn't choose lovely ones," Grace remarked to her brother, in a tone of some triumph. " My dear, they are all lovely. George Dallow's judgment was so sure, he was incapable of making a mistake," Nicholas Dormer returned. " I don't see how you can talk of him ; he was dreadful," said Lady Agnes. " My dear, if he was good enough for Julia to marry, he is good enough for one to talk of." " She did him a great honour." " I dare say ; but he was not unworthy of it. No such intelligent collection of beautiful objects has been made in England in our time." " You think too much of beautiful objects," returned her ladyship. " I thought you were just now implying that I thought too little." " It's very nice— his having left Julia so well off," Biddy interposed, soothingly, as if she foresaw a tangle. " He treated her en grand seigneur, absolutely," Nick went on. " He used -to look greasy, all the same," Grace Dormer pursued, with a kind of dull irreconcilability. " His name ought to have been Tallow." " You are not saying what Julia would like, if that's what you are trying to say," her brother remarked. 10 THE TRAGIC MUSE. " Don't be vulgar, Grace," said Lady Agnes. " I know Peter Sherringham's birthday ! " Biddy broke out innocently, as a pacific diversion. She had passed her hand into her brother's arm, to signify her readiness to go with him, while she scanned the remoter portions of the garden as if it had occurred to her that to direct their steps in some such sense might after all be the shorter way to get at Peter. " He's too much older than you, my dear," Grace rejoined, discouragingly. "That's why I've noticed it — he's thirty-four. Do you call that too old 1 I don't care for slobbering infants ! " Biddy cried. "Don't be vulgar," Lady Agnes enjoined again. "Come, Bid, we'll go and be vulgar together; for that's what we are, I'm afraid," her brother said to her. " We'll go and look at all these low works of art." " Do you really think it's necessary to the child's develop- ment?" Lady Agnes demanded, as the pair turned away. Nicholas Dormer was struck as by a kind of challenge, and he paused, lingering a moment, with his little sister on his arm. " What we've been through this morning in this place, and what you've paraded before our eyes — the murders, the tortures, all kinds of disease and indecency ! " Nick looked at his mother as if this sudden protest surprised him, but as if also there were lurking explanations of it which he quickly guessed. Her resentment had the effect not so much of animating her cold face as of making it colder, less expressive, though visibly prouder. " Ah, dear mother, don't do the British matron ! " he exclaimed, good-humou redly. THE TRAGIC MUSE. 11 " British matron is soon said ! I don't know what they are coming to." " How odd that you should have been struck only with the disagreeable things, when, for myself, I have felt it to be the most interesting, the most suggestive morning I have passed for ever so many months ! " " Oh, Nick, Nick ! " Lady Agnes murmured, with a strange depth of feeling. "I like them better in London — they are much less unpleasant," said Grace Dormer. " They are things you can look at," her ladyship went on. "We certainly make the better show." " The subject doesn't matter ; it's the treatment, the treat- ment ! " Biddy announced, in a voice like the tinkle of a silver bell. " Poor little Bid! " her brother cried, breaking into a laugh. " How can I learn to model, mamma dear, if I don't look at things and if I don't study them? " the girl continued. This inquiry passed unheeded, and Nicholas Dormer said to his mother, more seriously, but with a certain kind explicit- ness, as if he could make a particular allowance : "This place is an immense stimulus to me; it refreshes me, excites me, it's such an exhibition of artistic life. It's full of ideas, full of refinements; it gives one such an impression of artistic experience. They try everything, they feel everything. While you were looking at the murders, apparently, I observed an immense deal of curious and interesting work. There are too many of them, poor devils ; so many who must make their way, who must attract attention. Some of them can only 12 THE TKAGIC MUSE. fajwr fort., stand on their heads, turn summersaults or commit deeds of violence, to make people notice them. After that, no doubt, a good many will be quieter. But I don't know ; to-day I'm in an appreciative mood — I feel indulgent even to them : they give me an impression of intelligence, of eager observation. All art is one — remember that, Biddy, dear," the young man continued, looking down at his sister with a smile. "It's the same great, many-headed effort, and any ground that's gained by an individual, any spark that's struck in any province, is of use and of suggestion to all the others. We are all in the same boat." " * We,' do you say, my dear ? Are you really setting up for an artist?" Lady Agnes asked. Nick hesitated a moment. " I was speaking for Biddy ! " " But you are one, Nick — you are ! " the girl cried. Lady Agnes looked for an instant as if she were going to say once more " Don't be vulgar ! " But she suppressed these words, if she had intended them, and uttered others, few in number and not completely articulate, to the effect that she hated talking about art. While her son spoke she had watched him as if she failed to follow him ; yet something in the tone of her exclamation seemed to denote that she had understood him only too well. " We are all in the same boat," Biddy repeated, smiling at her. " Not me, if you please ! " Lady Agnes replied. " It's horrid, messy work, your modelling." " Ah, but look at the results ! " said the girl, eagerly, glancing about at the monuments in the garden as if in THE TKAGIC MUSE. 13 regard even to them she were, through that unity of art that her brother had just proclaimed, in some degree an effective cause. "There's a great deal being done here — a real vitality," Nicholas Dormer went on, to his mother, in the same reason- able, informing way. " Home of these fellows go very far." "They do, indeed ! " said Lady Agnes. " I'm fond of young schools, like this movement in sculpture," Nick remarked, with his slightly provoking serenity. " They're old enough to know better 1 " " Mayn't I look, mamma 1 It is necessary to my develop- ment," Biddy declared. " You may do as you like," said Lady Agnes, with dignity. " She ought to see good work, you know," the young man went on. " I leave it to your sense of responsibility." This state- ment was somewhat majestic, and for a moment, evidently, it tempted Nick, almost provoked him, or at any rate suggested to him an occasion to say something that he had on his mind. Apparently, however, he judged the occasion on the whole not good enough, and his sister Grace interposed with the inquiry — " Please,, mamma, are we nerer going to lunch?" " Ah, mother, mother ! " the young man murmured, in a troubled way, looking down at Lady Agnes with a deep fold in his forehead. For her, also, as she returned his look, it seemed an occasion; but with this difference, that she had no hesitation in taking advantage of it. She was encouraged by his slight embarrass- ment ; for ordinarily Nick was not embarrassed. " You used 14 THE TKAGIC MUSE. to have so much," she went on ; " but sometimes I don't know what has become of it — it seems all, all gone ! " " Ah, mother, mother ! " he exclaimed again, as if there were so many things to say that it was impossible to choose. But this time he stepped closer, bent over her, and, in spite of the publicity of their situation, gave her a quick, expressive kiss. The foreign observer whom I took for granted in beginning to sketch this scene would have had to admit that the rigid English family had, after all, a capacity for emotion. Grace Dormer, indeed, looked round her to see if at this moment they were noticed. She discovered with satisfaction that they had escaped. II. NICK DORMER walked away with Biddy, but he had not gone far before he stopped in front of a clever bust, where his mother, in the distance, saw him playing in the air with his hand, carrying out by this gesture, which presumably was applausive, some critical remark he had made to his sister. Lady Agnes raised her glass to her eyes by the long handle to which rather a clanking chain was attached, perceiving that the bust represented an ugly old man with a bald head ; at which her ladyship indefinitely sighed, though it was not apparent in what way such an object could be detrimental to her daughter. Nick passed on, and quickly paused again ; this time, his mother discerned, it was before the marble image of a grimacing woman. Presently she lost sight of him ; he wandered behind things, looking at them all round. " I ought to get plenty of ideas for my modelling, oughtn't I, Nick?" his sister inquired of him, after a moment. "Ah, my poor child, what shall I say?" " Don't you think I have any capacity for ideas ? " the girl continued, ruefully. "Lots of them, no doubt. But the capacity for applying them, for putting them into practice — how much of that have you?'7 16 THE TRAGIC MUSE. " How can I tell till I try ? " " What do you mean by trying, Biddy clear ? " " Why, you know — you've seen me," " Do you call that trying 1 " her brother asked, smiling at her. " Ah, Nick ! " murmured the girl, sensitively. Then, with more spirit, she went on : " And please, what do you ? " " Well, this, for instance \" and her companion pointed to another bust — a head of a young man, in terra-cotta, at which they had just arrived ; a modern young man, to whom, with his thick neck, his little cap and his wide ring of dense curls, the artist had given the air of a Florentine of the time of Lorenzo. Biddy looked at the image a moment. "Ah, that's not trying ; that's succeeding." "Not altogether ; it's only trying seriously." "Well, why shouldn't I be serious?" "Mother wouldn't like it. She has inherited the queer old superstition that art is pardonable only so long as it's bad — so long as it's done at odd hours, for a little distraction, like a game of tennis or of whist. The only thing that can justify it, the effort to carry it as far as one can (which you can't do without time and singleness of purpose), she regards as just the dangerous, the criminal element. It's the oddest hind-par t-bef ore view, the drollest immorality." " She doesn't want one to be professional," Biddy remarked, as if she could do justice to every system. " Better leave it alone, then : there are duffers enough." " I don't want to be a duffer," Biddy said. " But I thought you encouraged me." THE TRAGIC MUSE. 17 " So I did, my poor child. It was only to encourage myself." " With your own work — your painting ? " "With my futile, my ill-starred endeavours. Union is strength ; so that we might present a wider front, a larger surface of resistance." Biddy was silent a moment, while they continued their tour of observation. She noticed how her brother passed over some things quickly, his first glance sufficing to show him whether they were worth another, and recognized in a moment the figures that had something in them. His tone puzzled her, but his certainty of eye impressed her, and she felt what a difference there was yet between them — how much longer, in every case, she would have taken to discriminate. She was aware that she could rarely tell whether a picture was good or bad until she had looked at it for ten minutes ; and modest little Biddy was compelled privately to add, " And often not even then." She was mystified, as I say (Nick was often mystifying — it was his only fault), but one thing was definite : her brother was exceedingly clever. It was the consciousness of this that made her remark at last : " I don't so much care whether or no I please mamma, if I please you." " Oh, don't lean on me. I'm a wretched broken reed. I'm no use really ! " Nick Dormer exclaimed. "Do you mean you're a duffer?" Biddy asked, alarmed. " Frightful, frightful ! " " So that you mean to give up your work — to let it alone, as you advise me ? " " It has never been my work, Biddy. If it had, it would be different. I should stick to it." VOL. i. c 18 THE TRAGIC MUSE. " And you won't stick to it ?" the girl exclaimed, standing before him, open-eyed. Her brother looked into her eyes a moment, and she had a compunction ; she feared she was indiscreet and was worrying him. " Your questions are much simpler than the elements out of which my answer should come." " A great talent — what is simpler than that 1 " " One thing, dear Biddy : no talent at all ! " " Well, yours is so real, you can't help it." ""We shall see, we shall see," said Nicholas Dormer. "Let us go look at that big group." "We shall see if it's real?" Biddy went on, as she accompanied him. " No ; we shall see if I can't help it. What nonsense Paris makes one talk ! " the young man added, as they stopped in front of the composition. This was true, perhaps, but not in a sense which he found himself tempted to deplore. The present was far from being his first visit to the French capital : he had often quitted England, and usually made a point of " putting in," as he called it, a few days there on the outward journey to the Continent or on the return ; but on this occasion the emotions, for the most part agreeable, attendant upon a change of air and of scene had been more punctual and more acute than for a long time before, and stronger the sense of novelty, refreshment, amusement, of manifold suggestions looking to that quarter of thought to which, on the whole, his attention was apt most frequently, though not most confessedly, to stray. He was fonder of Paris than most of his countrymen, though not so fond, THE TRAGIC MUSE. 19 perhaps, as some other captivated aliens : the place had always had the power of quickening sensibly the life of reflection and of observation within him. It was a good while since the reflections engendered by his situation there had been so favourable to the city by the Seine; a good while, at all events, since they had ministered so to excitement, to exhilara- tion, to ambition, even to a restlessness which was not pre- vented from being agreeable by the nervous quality in it. Dormer could have given the reason of this unwonted glow ; but his preference was very much to keep it to himself. Certainly, to persons not deeply knowing, or at any rate not deeply curious, in relation to the young man's history, the explanation might have seemed to beg the question, consisting as it did of the simple formula that he had at last come to a crisis. Why a crisis — what was it, and why had he not come to it before ? The reader shall learn these things in time, if he care enough for them. For several years Nicholas Dormer had not omitted to see the Salon, which the general voice, this season, pronounced not particularly good. None the less, it was the exhibition of this season that, for some cause connected with his " crisis," made him think fast, produced that effect which he had spoken of to his mother as a sense of artistic life. The precinct of the marbles and bronzes appealed to him especially to-day ; the glazed garden, not florally rich, with its new pro- ductions alternating with perfunctory plants and its queer damp smell, partly the odour of plastic clay, of the studios of sculptors, spoke to him with the voice of old associations, of other visits, of companionships that were closed — an insinuating 20 THE TRAGIC MUSE. eloquence which was at the same time, somehow, identical with the general sharp contagion of Paris. There was youth in the air, and a multitudinous newness, for ever reviving, and the diffusion of a hundred talents, ingenuities, experiments. The summer clouds made shadows on the roof of the great building ; the white images, hard in their crudity, spotted the place with provocations ; the rattle of plates at the restaurant sounded sociable in the distance, and our young man con- gratulated himself more than ever that he had not missed the exhibition. He felt that it would help him to settle some- thing. At the moment he made this reflection his eye fell upon a person who appeared — just in the first glimpse — to carry out the idea of help. He uttered a lively ejaculation, which, however, in its want of finish, Biddy failed to under- stand ; so pertinent, so relevant and congruous, was the other party to this encounter. The girl's attention followed her brother's, resting with his on a young man who faced them without seeing them, engaged as he was in imparting to two persons who were with him his ideas about one of the works exposed to view. What Biddy discerned was that this young man was fair and fat and of the middle stature ; he had a round face and a short beard, and on his crown a mere reminiscence of hair, as the fact that he carried his hat in his hand permitted it to be observed. Bridget Dormer, who was quick, estimated him immediately as a gentleman, but a gentleman unlike any other gentleman she had ever seen. She would have taken him for a foreigner, but that the words proceeding from his mouth reached her ear and imposed themselves as a rare variety of English. It was THE TRAGIC MUSE. 21 not that a foreigner might not have spoken excellent English, nor yet that the English of this young man was not excellent. It had, on the contrary, a conspicuous and aggressive per- fection, and Biddy was sure that no mere learner would have ventured to play such tricks with the tongue. He seemed to draw rich effects and wandering airs from it — to modulate and manipulate it as he would have done a musical instru- ment. Her view of the gentleman's companions was less operative, save that she made the rapid reflection that they were people whom in any country, from China to Peru, one would immediately have taken for natives. One of them was an old lady with a shawl ; that was the most salient way in which she presented herself. The shawl was an ancient, voluminous fabric of embroidered cashmere, such as many ladies wore forty years ago in their walks abroad, and such as 110 lady wears to-day. It had fallen half off the back of the wearer, but at the moment Biddy permitted herself to consider her she gave it a violent jerk and brought it up to her shoulders again, where she continued to arrange and settle it, with a good deal of jauntiness and elegance, while she listened to the talk of the gentleman. Biddy guessed that this little transaction took place very frequently, and she was not unaware that it gave the old lady a droll, fac- titious, faded appearance, as if she were singularly out of step with the age. The other person was very much younger — she might have been a daughter — and had a pale face, a low forehead and thick, dark hair. What she chiefly had, how- ever, Biddy rapidly discovered, was a pair of largely-gazing eyes. Our young friend was helped to the discovery by the 22 THE TRAGIC MUSE. accident of their resting at this moment, for a little while — it struck Biddy as very long — on her own. Both of these ladies were clad in light, thin, scanty gowns, giving an impression of flowered figures and odd transparencies, and in low shoes, which showed a great deal of stocking and were ornamented with large rosettes. Biddy's slightly agitated perception travelled directly to their shoes : they suggested to her vaguely that the wearers were dancers — connected possibly with the old-fashioned exhibition of the shawl-dance. By the time she had taken in so much as this the mellifluous young man had perceived and addressed himself to her brother. He came forward with an extended hand. Nick greeted him and said it was a happy chance — he was uncommonly glad to see him. " I never come across you — I don't know why," Nick remarked, while the two, smiling, looked each other up and down, like men reunited after a long interval. " Oh, it seems to me there's reason enough : our paths in life are so different." Nick's friend had a great deal of manner, as was evinced by his fashion of saluting her without knowing her. "Different, yes, but not so different as that. Don't we both live in London, after all, and in the nineteenth century 1 " "Ah, my dear Dormer, excuse me: I don't live in the nineteenth century. Jamais de la vie I " " Nor in London either 1 " " Yes — when I'm not in Samarcand ! But surely we've diverged since the old days. I adore what you burn; you burn what I adore." While the stranger spoke he looked cheerfully, hospitably, at Biddy ; not because it was she, she THE TRAGIC MUSE. 23 easily guessed, but because it was in his nature to desire a second auditor — a kind of sympathetic gallery. Her life, somehow, was filled with shy people, and she immediately knew that she had never encountered any one who seemed so to know his part and recognize his cues. " How do you know what I adore ? " Nicholas Dormer inquired. " I know well enough what you used to." " That's more than I do myself ; there were so many things." " Yes, there are many things — many, many : that's what makes life so amusing." " Do you find it amusing ? " " My dear fellow, cest d, se tordre ! Don't you think so 1 Ah, it was high time I should meet you — I see. I have an idea you need me." " Upon my word, I think I do ! " Nick said, in a tone which struck his sister and made her wonder still more why, if the gentleman was so important as that, he didn't introduce him. " There are many gods, and this is one of their temples," the mysterious personage went on. " It's a house of strange idols — isn't it ? — and of some curious and unnatural sacrifices." To Biddy, as much as to her brother, this remark appeared to be offered ; but the girl's eyes turned back to the ladies, who, for the moment, had lost their companion. She felt irresponsive and feared she should pass with this familiar cosmopolite for a stiff, scared English girl, which was not the type she aimed at ; but there seemed an interdiction even of ocular commerce so long as she had not a sign from Nick. 24 THE TRAGIC MUSE. The elder of the strange women had turned her back and was looking at some bronze figure, losing her shawl again as she did so ; but the younger stood where their escort had quitted her, giving all her attention to his sudden sociability with others. Her arms hung at her sides, her head was bent, her face lowered, so that she had an odd appearance of raising her eyes from under her brows; and in this attitude she was striking, though her air was unconciliatory, almost dangerous. Did it express resentment at having been abandoned for another girl ? Biddy, who began to be frightened — there was a moment when the forsaken one resembled a tigress about to spring — was tempted to cry out that she had no wish what- ever to appropriate the gentleman. Then she made the dis- covery that the young lady had a manner, almost as much as her cicerone, and the rapid induction that it perhaps meant no more than his. She only looked at Biddy from beneath her eyebrows, which were wonderfully arched, but there was a manner in the way she did it. Biddy had a momentary sense of being a figure in a ballet, a dramatic ballet — a sub- ordinate, motionless figure, to be dashed at, to music, or capered up to. It would be a very dramatic ballad indeed if this young person were the heroine. She had magnificent hair, the girl reflected ; and at the same moment she heard Nick say to his interlocutor : " You're not in London — one can't meet you there ? " " I drift, I float," was the answer ; " my feelings direct me — if such a life as mine may be said to have a direction. "Where there's anything to feel I try to be there ! " the young man continued with his confiding laugh. THE TRAGIC MUSE. 25 " I should like to get hold of you," Nick remarked. " Well, in that case there would be something to feel. Those are the currents — any sort of personal relation — that govern my career." " I don't want to lose you this time," Nick continued, in a manner that excited Biddy's surprise. A moment before, when his friend had said that he tried to be where there was anything to feel, she had wondered how he could endure him. "Don't lose me, don't lose me!" exclaimed the stranger, with a countenance and a tone which affected the girl as the highest expression of irresponsibility that she had ever seen. " After all, why should you 1 Let us remain together, unless I interfere "—and he looked, smiling and interrogative, at Biddy, who still remained blank, only observing again that Nick forbore to make them acquainted. This was an anomaly, since he prized the gentleman so ; but there could be no anomaly of Nick's that would not impose itself upon his younger sister. " Certainly, I keep you," said Nick, " unless, on my side, I deprive those ladies — " " Charming women, but it's not an indissoluble union. We meet, we communicate, we part ! They are going — I'm seeing them to the door. I shall come back." With this Nick's friend rejoined his companions, who moved away with him, the strange, fine eyes of the girl lingering on Nick, as well as on Biddy, as they receded. " Who is he — who are they? " Biddy instantly asked. "He's a gentleman," Nick replied, unsatisfactorily, and even, as she thought, with a shade of hesitation. He spoke 26 THE TRAGIC MUSE. as if she might have supposed he was not one ; and if he was really one why didn't he introduce him 1 But Biddy would not for the world have put this question to her brother, who now moved to the nearest bench and dropped upon it, as if to wait for the other's return. No sooner, however, had his sister seated herself than he said : " See here, my dear, do you think you had better stay 1 " " Do you want me to go back to mother 1 " the girl asked, with a lengthening visage. " Well, what do you think 1 " and Mck smiled down at her. " Is your conversation to be about — about private affairs 1 " " No, I can't say that. But I doubt whether mother would think it the sort of thing that's ' necessary to your development.' " This assertion appeared to inspire Biddy with the eagerness with which again she broke out : " But who are they — who are they?" " I know nothing of the ladies. I never saw them before. The man's a fellow I knew very well at Oxford. He was thought immense fun there. We have diverged, as he says, and I had almost lost sight of him, but not so much as he thinks, because I've read him, and read him with interest. He has written a very clever book." " What kind of a book?" " A sort of a novel." " What sort of a novel?" " Well, I don't know — with a lot of good writing." Biddy listened to this with so much interest that she thought it THE TRAGIC MUSE. 27 illogical her brother should add : "I dare say Peter will have come, if you return to mother." " I don't care if he has. Peter's nothing to me. But I'll go if you wish it." Nick looked down at her again, and then said : " It doesn't signify. We'll all go." " All? " Biddy echoed. " He won't hurt us. On the contrary, he'll do us good." This was possible, the girl reflected in silence, but none the less the idea struck her as courageous — the idea of their taking the odd young man back to breakfast with them and with the others, especially if Peter should be there. If Peter was nothing to her, it was singular she should have attached such importance to this contingency. The odd young man reap- peared, and now that she saw him without his queer female appendages he seemed personally less unusual. He struck her, moreover, as generally a good deal accounted for by the liter- ary character, especially if it were responsible for a lot of good writing. As he took his place on the bench Nick said to him, indicating her, " My sister Bridget," and then mentioned his name, " Mr. Gabriel Nash." " You enjoy Paris — you are happy here ? " Mr. Nash inquired, leaning over his friend to speak to the girl. Though his words belonged to the situation, it struck her that his tone didn't, and this made her answer him more dryly than she usually spoke. " Oh, yes, it's very nice." " And French art interests you 1 You find things here that please?" " Oh, yes, I like some of them." 28 THE TRAGIC MUSE. Mr. Nash looked at her with kind eyes. " I hoped you would say you like the Academy better." " She would if she didn't think you .expected it," said Nicholas Dormer. " Oh, Nick ! " Biddy protested. "Miss Dormer is herself an English picture," Gabriel Nash remarked, smiling like a man whose urbanity was a solvent. 