Part 9 (1/2)
”Dear no, I won't say that. I think the Theatre Francais a greater inst.i.tution than the House of Commons.”
”I agree with you there!” laughed Sherringham; ”all the more that I don't consider the dramatic art a low one. It seems to me on the contrary to include all the others.”
”Yes--that's a view. I think it's the view of my friends.”
”Of your friends?”
”Two ladies--old acquaintances--whom I met in Paris a week ago and whom I've just been spending an hour with in this place.”
”You should have seen them; they struck me very much,” Biddy said to her cousin.
”I should like to see them if they really have anything to say to the theatre.”
”It can easily be managed. Do you believe in the theatre?” asked Gabriel Nash.
”Pa.s.sionately,” Sherringham confessed. ”Don't you?”
Before Nash had had time to answer Biddy had interposed with a sigh.
”How I wish I could go--but in Paris I can't!”
”I'll take you, Biddy--I vow I'll take you.”
”But the plays, Peter,” the girl objected. ”Mamma says they're worse than the pictures.”
”Oh, we'll arrange that: they shall do one at the Francais on purpose for a delightful little yearning English girl.”
”Can you make them?”
”I can make them do anything I choose.”
”Ah then it's the theatre that believes in _you_,” said Mr. Nash.
”It would be ungrateful if it didn't after all I've done for it!”
Sherringham gaily opined.
Lady Agnes had withdrawn herself from between him and her other guest and, to signify that she at least had finished eating, had gone to sit by her son, whom she held, with some importunity, in conversation. But hearing the theatre talked of she threw across an impersonal challenge to the paradoxical young man. ”Pray should you think it better for a gentleman to be an actor?”
”Better than being a politician? Ah, comedian for comedian, isn't the actor more honest?”
Lady Agnes turned to her son and brought forth with spirit: ”Think of your great father, Nicholas!”
”He was an honest man,” said Nicholas. ”That's perhaps why he couldn't stand it.”
Peter Sherringham judged the colloquy to have taken an uncomfortable twist, though not wholly, as it seemed to him, by the act of Nick's queer comrade. To draw it back to safer ground he said to this personage: ”May I ask if the ladies you just spoke of are English--Mrs.
and Miss Rooth: isn't that the rather odd name?”
”The very same. Only the daughter, according to her kind, desires to be known by some _nom de guerre_ before she has even been able to enlist.”
”And what does she call herself?” Bridget Dormer asked.