Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/89

Rh singular that he should have missed him. At any rate he flushed a little when Miriam, of whom he inquired whether she hadn't invited her oldest and dearest friend, exclaimed: "Oh, he says he doesn't like the kitchen fire—he only wants the pndding!" It would have taken the kitchen fire to account at that moment for the red of Sherringham's cheek; and he was indeed uncomfortably heated by helping to handle, as he phrased it, the saucepans.

This he felt so much after he had returned to his seat, which he forbore to quit again till the curtain had fallen on the last act, that in spite of the high beauty of that part of the performance of which Miriam carried the weight there was a moment when his emancipation led him to give a suppressed gasp of relief, as if he were scrambling up the bank of a torrent after an immersion. The girl herself, at any rate, as was wholly right, was of the incorruptible faith: she had been saturated to good purpose with the great spirit of Madame Carré. That was conspicuous as the play went on and she watched over the detail with weary piety and passion. Sherringham had never liked the piece itself; he thought that as clumsy in form and false in feeling it did little honour to the British theatre; he hated many of the speeches, pitied Miriam for having to utter them and considered that, lighted by that sort of candle, the path of fame might very well lead nowhere.

When the rehearsal was over he went behind again, and in the rose-coloured satin of the dénoûment the heroine of the occasion said to him: "Fancy my having to drag through that other stuff to-night—the brutes!" He was vague about the persons designated in this allusion, but he let it pass: he