The Tragic Muse (London & New York: Macmillan & Co., 1890)/Volume 2/Chapter 13
XIII.
Nick Dormer went to Great Stanhope Street at five o'clock and learned, rather to his surprise, that Mrs. Dallow was not at home—to his surprise because he had told her he would come at that hour, and he attributed to her, with a certain simplicity, an eager state of mind in regard to his explanation. Apparently she was not eager; the eagerness was his own—he was eager to explain. He recognized, not without a certain consciousness of magnanimity in doing so, that there had been some reason for her quick withdrawal from his studio, or at any rate for her extreme discomposure there. He had a few days before put in a plea for a snatch of worship in that sanctuary, and she had accepted and approved it; but the worship, when the curtain happened to blow back, proved to be that of a magnificent young woman, an actress with disordered hair, who wore in a singular degree the aspect of a person settled to spend the day. The explanation was easy: it resided in the circumstance that when one was painting, even very badly and only for a moment, one had to have models. Nick was impatient to give it, with frank, affectionate lips and a full, jocose admission that it was natural Julia should have been startled; and he was the more impatient that, though he would not in the least have expected her to like finding a strange woman domesticated for the hour under his roof, she had disliked it even more than would have seemed probable. That was because, not having heard from him about the matter, the impression was for the moment irresistible with her that a trick had been played her. But three minutes with him alone would make the difference.
They would indeed have a considerable difference to make, Nick reflected, as minutes much more numerous elapsed without bringing Mrs. Dallow home. For he had said to the butler that he would come in and wait (though it was odd she should not have left a message for him): she would doubtless return from one moment to the other. Nick had of course full license to wait, anywhere he preferred; and he was ushered into Julia's particular sitting-room and supplied with tea and the evening papers. After a quarter of an hour however he gave little attention to these beguilements, owing to the increase of his idea that it was odd that when she definitely knew he was coming she should not have taken more pains to be at home. He walked up and down and looked out of the window, took up her books and dropped them again, and then, as half an hour had elapsed, began to feel rather angry. What could she be about when, at a moment when London was utterly empty, she could not be paying visits? A footman came in to attend to the fire; whereupon Nick questioned him as to the manner in which Mrs. Dallow was probably engaged. The man revealed the fact that his mistress had gone out only a quarter of an hour before Nick arrived, and, as if he appreciated the opportunity for a little decorous conversation, gave him still more information than he asked for. From this it appeared that, as Nick knew or could surmise, she had the evening previous, in the country, telegraphed for the victoria to meet her in the morning at Paddington and had gone straight from the station to the studio, while her maid, with her luggage, proceeded in a cab to Great Stanhope Street. On leaving the studio however she had not come directly home; she had chosen this unusual season for an hour's drive in the Park. She had finally re-entered her house, but had remained up-stairs all day, seeing no one and not coming down to luncheon. At four o'clock she had ordered the brougham for four forty-five, and had got into it punctually, saying "To the Park!" as she did so.
Nick, after the footman had left him, felt himself much mystified by Julia's sudden passion for the banks of the Serpentine, forsaken and foggy now, inasmuch as the afternoon had come on gray and the light was waning. She usually hated the Park and she hated a closed carriage. He had a discomfortable vision of her, shrunken into a corner of her brougham and veiled as if she had been crying, revolving round the solitude of the Drive. She had of course been deeply disconcerted, and she was nervous and upset: the motion of the carriage soothed her and made her fidget less. Nick remembered that in the morning, at his door, she had appeared to be going home; so she had turned into the Park on second thoughts, as she passed. He lingered another half hour, walked up and down the room many times and thought of many things. Had she misunderstood him when he said he would come at five? Couldn't she be sure, even if she had, that he would come early rather than late, and might she not have left a message for him on the chance? Going out that way a few minutes before he was to come had even a little the air of a thing done on purpose to offend him; as if she had been so displeased that she had taken the nearest occasion of giving him a sign that she meant to break. But were these the things that Julia did and was that the way she did them—his fine, proud, delicate, generous Julia?
"When six o'clock came poor Nick felt distinctly resentful; but he stayed ten minutes longer, on the possibility that Mrs. Dallow would in the morning have understood him to mention that hour. The April dusk began to gather and the unsociability of her behaviour, especially if she were still rumbling about the Park, became absurd. Anecdotes came back to Nick, vaguely remembered, heard he couldn't have said when or where, of poor artists for whom life had been rendered difficult by wives who wouldn't allow them the use of the living female model and who made scenes if, on the staircase, they encountered such sources of inspiration. These ladies struck him as vulgar and odious persons, with whom it seemed grotesque that Julia should have anything in common. Of course she was not his wife yet, and of course if she were he should have washed his hands of every form of activity requiring the services of the sitter; but even these qualifications left him with a capacity to shudder at the way Julia just escaped ranking herself with the heavy-handed.
At a quarter-past six he rang a bell and told the servant who answered it that he was going and that Mrs. Dallow was to be informed as soon as she came in that he had expected to find her and had waited an hour and a quarter for her. But he had just reached the doorstep, on his departure, when her brougham, emerging from the evening mist, stopped in front of the house. Nick stood at the door, hanging back till she got out, allowing the servants to help her. She saw him—she was not veiled, like his mental image of her; but this did not prevent her from pausing to give an order to the coachman, a matter apparently requiring some discussion. When she came to the door Nick remarked to her that he had been waiting an eternity for her; to which she replied that he must not make a grievance to her of that—she was too unwell to do justice to it. He immediately professed regret and sympathy, adding, however, that in that case she had much better not have gone out. She made no answer to this—there were three servants in the hall who looked as if they might understand at least what was not said to them: only when he followed her in she asked if his idea had been to stay longer.
"Certainly, if you're not too ill to see me."
"Come in, then," Julia said, turning back after having gone to the foot of the stairs.
This struck him immediately as a further restriction of his visit: she would not readmit him to the drawing-room or to her boudoir; she would receive him in an impersonal apartment down-stairs, in which she saw people on business. What did she want to do to him? He was prepared by this time for a scene of jealousy; for he was sure he had learned to read her character justly in feeling that if she had the appearance of a cold woman she had also on certain occasions a liability to extreme emotion. She was very still, but every now and then she would fire off a pistol. As soon as Nick had closed the door she said, without sitting down:
"I dare say you saw I didn't like that at all."
"My having a sitter, that way? I was very much annoyed at it myself," Nick answered.
"Why were you annoyed? She's very handsome," said Mrs. Dallow, perversely.
"I didn't know you looked at her!" Nick laughed.
Julia hesitated a moment. "Was I very rude?"
"Oh, it was all right. It was only awkward for me, because you didn't know," Nick replied.
"I did know; that's why I came."
"How do you mean? My letter couldn't have reached you."
"I don't know anything about your letter," said Mrs. Dallow, casting about her for a chair and then seating herself on the edge of a sofa, with her eyes on the floor.
"She sat to me yesterday; she was there all the morning; but I didn't write to tell you. I went at her with great energy and, absurd as it may seem to you, found myself very tired afterwards. Besides, in the evening I went to see her act."
"Does she act?" asked Mrs. Dallow.
"She's an actress; it's her profession. Don't you remember her that day at Peter's, in Paris? She's already a celebrity; she has great talent; she's engaged at a theatre here and is making a sensation. As I tell you, I saw her last night."
"You needn't tell me," Mrs. Dallow replied, looking up at him with a face of which the intense, the tragic sadness startled him.
He had been standing before her, but at this he instantly sat down beside her, taking her passive hand. "I want to, please; otherwise it must seem so odd to you. I knew she was coming when I wrote to you the day before yesterday. But I didn't tell you then, because I didn't know how it would turn out and I didn't want to exult in advance over a poor little attempt that might come to nothing. Moreover it was no use speaking of the matter at all unless I told you exactly how it came about," Nick went on, explaining kindly, copiously. "It was the result of a visit unexpectedly paid me by Gabriel Nash."
"That man—the man who spoke to me?" Julia asked, startled into a shuddering memory.
"He did what he thought would please you, but I dare say it didn't. You met him in Paris and didn't like him; so I thought it best to hold my tongue about him."
"Do you like him?"
"Very much."
"Great heaven!" Julia ejaculated, almost under her breath.
"The reason I was annoyed was because, somehow, when you came in, I suddenly had the air of having got out of those visits and shut myself up in town to do something that I had kept from you. And I have been very unhappy till I could explain."
"You don't explain—you can't explain," Mrs. Dallow declared, turning on her companion eyes which, in spite of her studied stillness, expressed deep excitement. "I knew it—I knew everything; that's why I came."
"It was a sort of second-sight—what they call a brainwave," Nick smiled.
"I felt uneasy, I felt a kind of call; it came suddenly, yesterday. It was irresistible; nothing could have kept me this morning."
"That's very serious, but it's still more delightful. You mustn't go away again," said Nick. "We must stick together—forever and ever."
He put his arm round her, but she detached herself as soon as she felt its pressure. She rose quickly, moving away, while, mystified, he sat looking up at her as she had looked a few moments before at him. "I've thought it all over; I've been thinking of it all day," she began. "That's why I didn't come in."
"Don't think of it too much; it isn't worth it."
"You like it more than anything else. You do—you can't deny it," she went on.
"My dear child, what are you talking about?" Nick asked, gently.
"That's what you like—doing what you were this morning; with women lolling, with their things off, to be painted, and people like that man."
Nick slowly got up, hesitating. "My dear Julia, apart from the surprise, this morning, do you object to the living model?"
"Not a bit, for you."
"What's the inconvenience, then, since in my studio they are only for me?"
"You love it, you revel in it; that's what you want, and that's the only thing you want!" Julia broke out.
"To have models, lolling women, do you mean?"
"That's what I felt, what I knew, what came over me and haunted me yesterday, so that I couldn't throw it off. It seemed to me that if I could see it with my eyes and have the perfect proof I should feel better, I should be quiet. And now I am after a struggle of some hours, I confess. I have seen; the whole thing's clear and I'm satisfied."
"I'm not, and to me the whole thing isn't clear. What exactly are you talking about?" Nick demanded.
"About what you were doing this morning. That's your innermost preference, that's your secret passion."
"A little go at something serious? Yes, it was almost serious," said Nick. "But it was an accident, this morning and yesterday: I got on better than I intended."
"I'm sure you have immense talent," Mrs. Dallow remarked, with a joylessness that was almost droll.
"No, no, I might have had. I've plucked it up: it's too late for it to flower. My dear Julia, I'm perfectly incompetent and perfectly resigned."
"Yes, you looked so this morning, when you hung over her. Oh, she'll bring back your talent!"
"She's an obliging and even an intelligent creature, and I've no doubt she would if she could. But I've received from you all the help that any woman is destined to give me. No one can do for me again what you have done."
"I shouldn't try it again; I acted in ignorance. Oh, I've thought it all out!" Julia declared. Then, with a strange face of anguish resting on his, she said: "Before it's too late—before it's too late!"
"Too late for what?"
"For you to be free—for you to be free. And for me—for me to be free too, You hate everything I like!" she exclaimed, with a trembling voice. "Don't pretend, don't pretend!" she went on, as a sound of protest broke from him.
"I thought you wanted me to paint," protested Nick, flushed and staring.
"I do—I do. That's why you must be free, why we must part."
"Why we must part?"
"Oh, I've turned it over. I've faced the truth. It wouldn't do at all," said Mrs. Dallow.
"I like the way you talk of it, as if it were a trimming for your dress!" Nick rejoined, with bitterness. "Won't it do for you to be loved and cherished as well as any woman in England?"
Mrs. Dallow turned away from him, closing her eyes as if not to see something that would be dangerous to her. "You mustn't give anything up for me. I should feel it all the while and I should hate it. I'm not afraid of the truth, but you are."
"The truth, dear Julia? I only want to know it," said Nick. "It seems to me I've got hold of it. When two persons are united by the tenderest affection and are sane and generous and just, no difficulties that occur in the union their life makes for them are insurmountable, no problems are insoluble."
Mrs. Dallow appeared for a moment to reflect upon this; it was spoken in a tone that might have touched her. At any rate at the end of the moment, lifting her eyes, she announced: "I hate art, as you call it. I thought I did, I knew I did; but till this morning I didn't know how much."
"Bless your soul, that wasn't art," pleaded Nick. "The real thing will be a thousand miles away from us; it will never come into the house, soyez tranquille. Why then should you worry?"
"Because I want to understand, I want to know what I'm doing. You're an artist: you are, you are!" Mrs. Dallow cried, accusing him passionately.
"My poor Julia, it isn't so easy as that, nor a character one can take on from one day to the other. There are all sorts of things; one must be caught young and put through the mill and see things as they are. There would be sacrifices I never can make."
"Well then, there are sacrifices for both of us, and I can't make them either. I dare say it's all right for you, but for me it would be a terrible mistake. When I think I'm doing something I mustn't do just the opposite," Julia went on, as if she wished to explain and be clear. "There are things I've thought of, the things I like best; and they are not what you mean. It would be a great deception, and it's not the way I see my life, and it would be misery if we don't understand."
Nick looked at her in hard perplexity, for she did not succeed in explaining as well as she wished. "If we don't understand what?"
"That we are awfully different—that you are doing it all for me."
"And is that an objection to me—what I do for you?" asked Nick.
"You do too much. You're awfully good, you're generous, you're a dear fellow; but I don't believe in it. I didn't, at bottom, from the first—that's why I made you wait, why I gave you your freedom. Oh, I've suspected you! I had my ideas. It's all right for you, but it won't do for me: I'm different altogether. Why should it always be put upon me, when I hate it? What have I done? I was drenched with it, before." These last words, as they broke forth, were accompanied, even as the speaker uttered them, with a quick blush; so that Nick could as quickly discern in them the uncalculated betrayal of an old irritation, an old shame almost—her late husband's flat, inglorious taste for pretty things, his indifference to every chance to play a public part. This had been the mortification of her youth, and it was indeed a perversity of fate that a new alliance should contain for her even an oblique demand for the same spirit of accommodation, impose on her the secret bitterness of the same concessions. As Nick stood there before her, struggling sincerely with the force that he now felt to be strong in her, the intense resolution to break with him, a force matured in a few hours, he read a riddle that hitherto had baffled him, saw a great mystery become simple. A personal passion for him had all but thrown her into his arms (the sort of thing that even a vain man—and Nick was not especially vain—might hesitate to recognize the strength of); held in check, with a tension of the cord at moments of which he could still feel the vibration, by her deep, her rare ambition, and arrested at the last only just in time to save her calculations. His present glimpse of the immense extent of these calculations did not make him think her cold or poor; there was in fact a positive strange heat in them and they struck him rather as grand and high. The fact that she could drop him even while she longed for him—drop him because it was now fixed in her mind that he would not after all serve her determination to be associated, so far as a woman could, with great affairs; that she could postpone, and postpone to an uncertainty, the satisfaction of a gnawing tenderness and judge for the long run—this exhibition of will and courage, of the large plan that possessed her, commanded his admiration on the spot. He paid the heavy penalty of being a man of imagination; he was capable of far excursions of the spirit, disloyalties to habit and even to faith, and open to wondrous communications. He ached for the moment to convince her that he would achieve what he wouldn't, for the vision of his future that she had tried to entertain shone before him as a bribe and a challenge. It seemed to him there was nothing he couldn't fancy enough, to be so fancied by her. Presently he said:
"You want to be sure the man you marry will be prime minister of England. But how can you be sure, with any one?"
"I can be sure some men won't," Mrs. Dallow replied.
"The only safe thing, perhaps, would be to marry Mr. Macgeorge," Nick suggested.
"Possibly not even him."
"You're a prime minister yourself," Nick answered. "To hold fast to you as I hold, to be determined to be of your party—isn't that political enough, since you are the incarnation of politics?"
"Ah, how you hate them!" Julia moaned. "I saw that when I saw you this morning. The whole place reeked of it."
"My dear child, the greatest statesmen have had their distractions. What do you make of my hereditary talent? That's a tremendous force."
"It wouldn't carry you far." Then Mrs. Dallow added: "You must be a great artist." Nick gave a laugh at the involuntary contempt of this, but she went on: "It's beautiful of you to want to give up anything, and I like you for it. I shall always like you. We shall be friends, and I shall always take an interest—"
He stopped her at this, made a movement which interrupted her phrase, and she suffered him to hold her hand as if she were not afraid of him now. "It isn't only for you," he argued gently; "you're a great deal, but you're not everything. Innumerable vows and pledges repose upon my head. I'm inextricably committed and dedicated. I was brought up in the temple; my father was a high priest and I'm a child of the Lord. And then the life itself—when you speak of it I feel stirred to my depths: it's like a herald's trumpet. Fight with me, Julia—not against me! Be on my side, and we shall do everything. It is fascinating, to be a great man before the people—to be loved by them, to be followed by them. An artist isn't—never, never. Why should he be? Don't forget how clever I am."
"Oh, if it wasn't for that!" she rejoined, flushed with the effort to resist his tone. She asked abruptly: "Do you pretend that if I were to die to-morrow you would stay in the House?"
"If you were to die? God knows! But you do singularly little justice to my incentives," Nick continued. "My political career is everything to my mother."
Julia hesitated a moment; then she inquired: "Are you afraid of your mother?"
"Yes, particularly; for she represents infinite possibilities of disappointment and distress. She represents all my father's as well as all her own; and in them my father tragically lives again. On the other hand I see him in bliss, as I see my mother, over our marriage and our life of common aspirations; though of course that's not a consideration that I can expect to have power with you."
Mrs. Dallow shook her head slowly, even smiling a little with an air of recovered calmness and lucidity. "You'll never hold high office."
"But why not take me as I am?"
"Because I'm abominably keen about that sort of thing; I must recognize it. I must face the ugly truth. I've been through the worst; it's all settled."
"The worst, I suppose, was when you found me this morning."
"Oh, that was all right—for you."
"You're magnanimous, Julia; but evidently what's good enough for me isn't good enough for you." Nick spoke with bitterness.
"I don't like you enough—that's the obstacle," said Mrs. Dallow bravely.
"You did a year ago; you confessed to it."
"Well, a year ago was a year ago. Things are changed to-day."
"You're very fortunate—to be able to throw away a devotion," Nick replied.
Julia had her pocket-handkerchief in her hand, and at this she quickly pressed it to her lips, as if to check an exclamation. Then for an instant she appeared to be listening as if for a sound from outside. Nick interpreted her movement as an honourable impulse to repress the words: "Do you mean the devotion that I was witness of this morning?" But immediately afterwards she said something very different: "I thought I heard a ring. I've telegraphed for Mrs. Gresham."
""Why did you do that?" asked Nick.
"Oh, I want her."
He walked to the window, where the curtains had not been drawn, and saw in the dusk a cab at the door. When he turned back he said: "Why won't you trust me to make you like me, as you call it, better? If I make you like me as well as I like you, it will be about enough, I think."
"Oh, I like you enough for your happiness. And I don't throw away a devotion," Mrs. Dallow continued. "I shall be constantly kind to you. I shall be beautiful to you."
"You'll make me lose a fortune," declared Nick.
Julia stared, then she coloured. "Ah, you may have all the money you want."
"I don't mean yours," he answered, flushing in his turn. He had determined on the instant, since it might serve, to tell her what he had never spoken of to her before. "Mr. Carteret last year promised me a pot of money on the day I should stand up with you. He has set his heart on our marriage."
"I'm sorry to disappoint Mr. Carteret," said Julia. "I'll go and see him. I'll make it all right," she went on. "Besides, you'll make a fortune by your portraits. The great men get a thousand, just for a head."
"I'm only joking," Nick returned, with sombre eyes that contradicted this profession. "But what things you deserve I should do!"
"Do you mean striking likenesses?"
"You do hate it! Pushed to that point, it's curious," the young man audibly mused.
"Do you mean you're joking about Mr. Carteret's promise?"
"No, the promise is real; but I don't seriously offer it as a reason."
"I shall go to Beauclere," said Mrs. Dallow. "You're an hour late," she added in a different tone; for at that moment the door of the room was thrown open and Mrs. Gresham, the butler pronouncing her name, was ushered in.
"Ah, don't impugn my punctuality; it's my character?" the useful lady exclaimed, putting a sixpence from the cabman into her purse. Nick went off, at this, with a simplified farewell—went off foreseeing exactly what he found the next day, that Mrs. Gresham would have received orders not to budge from her hostess's side. He called on the morrow, late in the afternoon, and Julia saw him liberally, in pursuance of her assertion that she would be "beautiful" to him, that she had not thrown away his devotion; but Mrs. Gresham remained immutably a spectator of her liberality. Julia looked at him kindly, but her companion was more benignant still; so that what Nick did with his own eyes was not to appeal to Mrs. Dallow to see him for a moment alone, but to solicit, in the name of this luxury, the second occupant of the drawing-room. Mrs. Greshain seemed to say, while Julia said very little: "I understand, my poor friend, I know everything (she has told me only her side, but I'm so competent that I know yours too), and I enter into the whole thing deeply. But it would be as much as my place is worth to accommodate you." Still, she did not go so far as to give him an inkling of what he learned on the third day and what he had not gone so far as to suspect—that the two ladies had made rapid arrangements for a scheme of foreign travel. These arrangements had already been carried out when, at the door of the house in Great Stanhope Street, the fact was imparted to Nick that Mrs. Dallow and her friend had started that morning for Paris.