Sherringham

“ Miriam kept on brightly and as if uttering some happy, beneficent truth. "I don't want a person who takes things even less simply than I do myself. Mr. Sherringham, poor man, must be very uncomfortable, for one side of him's in a perpetual row with the other side. He's trying to serve God and Mammon, and I don't know how God will come off. What I like in you is that you've definitely let Mammon go—it's the only decent way. That's my earnest conviction, and yet they call us people light. Dear Mr. Sherringham has tremendous ambitions—tremendous riguardi, as we used to say in Italy. ”

“ Sherringham was quite right to offer Miss Rooth an afternoon's sport; she deserved it as a fine, brave, amiable girl. She was highly educated, knew a dozen languages, was of illustrious lineage, and was immensely particular.
"Immensely particular?" Mrs. Dallow repeated.
"Perhaps I should say rather that her mother's so on her behalf. Particular about the sort of people they meet—the tone, the standard. I'm bound to say they're like you: they don't go everywhere. That spirit's not so common in the mob calling itself good society as not to deserve mention." ”

“ Her appearance made Nick feel as if the little temple of art in which they were collected had been the waiting-room of a dentist. Sherringham had seen a great many nervous girls tremble before the same ordeal, and he liked to be kind to them, to say things that would help them to do themselves justice. The probability in a given case was almost overwhelmingly in favour of their having any other talent one could think of in a higher degree than the dramatic ”

“ Five years before Nick Dormer went up to be questioned by the electors of Crockhurst Peter Sherringham had appeared before a board of examiners who let him off much less easily, though there were also some flattering prejudices in his favour; such influences being a part of the copious, light, unembarrassing baggage with which each of the young men began life. ”

“ Sherringham said. "I don't find I get tired of it. What will you have? Strong predilections are rather a blessing; they're simplifying. I'm fond of representation—the representation of life: [70] I like it better, I think, than the real thing. You like it too, you'd be ready in other conditions to go in for it, in your way—so you've no right to cast the stone. You like it best done by one vehicle and I by another; and our preference on either side has a deep root in us. There's a fascination to me in the way the actor does it, when his talent—ah he must have that!—has been highly trained. ”

“ When Nick asked her if some of the R.A.'s hadn't expressed a wish for a crack at her she replied: "Oh dear no, only the tiresome photographers; and fancy them in the future. If mamma could only do that for me!" And she added with the charming fellowship for which she was conspicuous at these hours: "You know I don't think any one yet has been quite so much struck with me as you."
"Not even Peter Sherringham?" her host jested while he stepped back to judge of the effect of a line.
"Oh Mr. Sherringham's different. You're an artist." ”

“ People began to treat me differently from the old artificial system. My altered bearing, more decided, more cheerful, and more boyish, produced its effect. The servants seemed to lose their awe of me. The gamekeeper ventured to crack a joke at my misses when he taught me to shoot; and the gardener begged Sir Wilfred not to damage certain shrubs, because Lady Sherringham was fond of them, just as he would have spoken to any other master of twelve years old. ”

“ Ambition, in the career, was probably consistent with marrying—but only with opening one's eyes very wide to do it. 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, above all 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. ”

“ Do you think him an ass for what he said about the theatre—his pronouncing it a coarse art?"
"To differ from you about him that reason would do," said Sherringham. "The only bad one would be one that shouldn't preserve our difference. You needn't tell me you agree with him, for frankly I don't care."
"Then your passion still burns?" Nick Dormer asked. ”

“ She might be such a help and might be such a blight that common prudence required some test of her in advance. Sherringham had seen women in the career, who were stupid or vulgar, make such a mess of things as would 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. ”

“ Nash. "The theatre in our countries is puerile and barbarous."
"There's something to be done for it, and perhaps mademoiselle's the person to do it," Sherringham contentiously suggested.
"Ah but, en attendant, what can it do for her?" Madame Carré asked.
"Well, anything I can help to bring about," said Peter Sherringham, more and more struck with the girl's rich type. Miriam Rooth sat in silence while this discussion went on, looking from one speaker to the other with a strange dependent candour. ”

“ Lady Agnes repeated blankly.
"Into the House of Commons. That you don't get a high salary?"
"My dear Nash, you're delightful: don't leave me—don't leave me!" Nick cried; while his mother looked at him with an eye that demanded: "Who in the world's this extraordinary person?" [48]
"What then did you think pocket-boroughs were?" Peter Sherringham asked.
Mr. Nash's facial radiance rested on him. "Why, boroughs that filled your pocket. To do that sort of thing without a bribe—c'est trop fort!" ”

“ How could the career—his career—speak to a nature that 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 [276] bribe to relinquishment? How could he think so without pretensions of the sort he pretended exactly not to flaunt?—how could he put himself forward as so high a 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 herself presumptuous as well as ambitious. ”

“ Madame Carré added.
"My mother will be happier chez nous" said Miriam, throwing her arms straight up and giving them a noble tragic movement.
"You won't be in the least in the right path till your mother's in despair."
"Well, perhaps we can bring that about even in London," Sherringham patiently laughed.
"Dear Mrs. Rooth—she's great fun," Mr. Dashwood as imperturbably dropped.
Miriam transferred the dark weight of her gaze to him as if she were practising. "You won't upset her, at any rate." Then she stood with her beautiful and fatal mask before her hostess. "I want to do the modern too. ”

“ Rooth partook as she cried indulgently, giving her a slap, "Oh get along, you gypsy!"
"She's always up to something," Dashwood laughed as Miriam, radiant and with a conscious stage tread, glided toward Sherringham as if she were coming to the footlights. ”

“ And you offer me Dashwood!"
Sherringham rose in his emotion. "I 'offer' you—?"
Miriam burst out laughing. "You look so droll! [323] You offer me yourself, then, instead of all these things."
"My dear child, I also am a very clever man," he said, trying to sink his consciousness of having for a moment stood gaping.
"You are—you are; I delight in you. No ladies at all—no femmes comme il faut?" she began again.
"Ah what do they matter? Your business is the artistic life!" he broke out with inconsequence, irritated, moreover, at hearing her sound that trivial note again. ”

“ Nash's offered cab and had taken their way homeward on foot and with the gentlemen in attendance. The streets of Paris at that hour were bright and episodical, and Sherringham trod them good-humouredly enough and not too fast, leaning a little to talk with Miriam as he went. Their pace was regulated by her mother's, who advanced on the arm of Gabriel Nash (Nick Dormer was on her other side) in refined deprecation. Her sloping back was before them, exempt from retentive stillness in spite of her rigid principles, with the little drama of her lost and recovered shawl perpetually going on. ”

“ Would you say such things if you didn't know the depths of my good nature?"
"Your good nature all comes back to that," said Sherringham. "It's an abyss of ruin—for others. You've no respect. I'm speaking of the artistic character—in the direction and in the plentitude in which you have it. It's unscrupulous, nervous, capricious, wanton."
"I don't know about respect. One can be good," Miriam mused and reasoned.
"It doesn't matter so long as one's powerful," he returned. "We can't have everything, and surely we ought to understand that we must pay for things. ”

“ Peter suggested; "to say nothing of the great Biddy's, if she's enjoying Paris."
"We may stay perhaps—with Julia to protect us," said Lady Agnes.
"Ah she won't stay; she'll go over for her man."
"Her man——?"
"The fellow who stands, whoever he is—especially if he's Nick." These last words caused the eyes of Peter Sherringham's companions to meet again, and he went on: "She'll go straight down to Harsh."
"Wonderful Julia!" Lady Agnes panted. "Of course Nick must go straight there too." ”

“ Dashwood volunteered to Sherringham in a friendly but discriminating manner.
"Constance and Juliet—take care you don't mix them," said Sherringham.
"I want to be various. You once told me I had a hundred characters," Miriam returned.
"Ah, vous en êtes là?" cried the old actress. "You may have a hundred characters, but you've only three plays. I'm told that's all there are in English."
Miriam, admirably indifferent to this charge, appealed to Peter. "What arrangements have you made? What do the people want?"
"The people at the theatre?" ”

“ The girl was but indirectly communicative; though seemingly less from any plan of secrecy than from the habit of associating with people whom she didn't honour with her confidence. She was fragmentary and abrupt, as well as not in the least shy, subdued to dread of Madame Carré as she had been for the time. She gave Sherringham a reason for this fear, and he thought her reason innocently pretentious. "She admired a great artist more than anything in the world; and in the presence of art, of great art, her heart beat so fast." ”

“ Lady Agnes wandered joylessly with the girls in the Palais Royal and the Rue de Richelieu, and emerged upon the Boulevard, where they continued their frugal prowl, as Biddy rather irritatingly called it. They went into five shops to buy a hat for Biddy, and her ladyship's presumptions of cheapness were woefully belied.
"Who in the world's your comic friend?" Peter Sherringham was meanwhile asking of his kinsman as they walked together. ”

“ In fact, none the less, it would have been impossible to be more modern than Peter Sherringham—more of one's class and one's country. But this didn't prevent several [43] stray persons—Bridget Dormer for instance—from admiring the hue of his cheek for its olive richness and his moustache and beard for their resemblance to those of Charles I. At the same time—she rather jumbled her comparisons—she thought he recalled a Titian. ”

“ At Peter Sherringham's the next day Miriam had so evidently come with the expectation of "saying" something that it was impossible such a patron of the drama should forbear to invite her, little as the exhibition at Madame Carré's could have contributed to render the invitation prompt. His curiosity had been more appeased than stimulated, but he felt none the less that he had "taken up" the dark-browed girl and her reminiscential mother and must face the immediate consequences of the act. ”

“ Isn't it an appendage and an attribute to escape kicking? How does he manage that?" Sherringham asked.
"I haven't the least idea—I don't know that he doesn't rouse the kicking impulse. Besides, he can kick back and I don't think any one has ever seen him duck or dodge. His means, his profession, his belongings have never anything to do with the question. He doesn't shade off into other people; he's as neat as an outline cut out of paper with scissors. ”

“ Sherringham, for instance, offers Miriam marriage, ever so "handsomely"; but if nothing might lead me on further than the question of what it would have been open to us—us novelists, especially in the old days—to show, "serially," a young man in Nick Dormer's quite different position as offering or a young woman in Miriam's as taking, so for that very reason such an excursion is forbidden me. ”

“ Nick introduced Gabriel Nash to his mother and to the other two as "a delightful old friend" whom he had just come across, and Sherringham acknowledged the act by saying to Mr. Nash, but as if rather less for his sake than for that of the presenter: "I've seen you very often before."
"Ah repetition—recurrence: we haven't yet, in the study of how to live, abolished that clumsiness, have we?" Mr. Nash genially inquired. "It's a poverty in the supernumeraries of our stage that we don't pass once for all, but come round and cross again like a procession or an army at the theatre. ”