al of plays that were
barbarously bad. The worst was its being so open to him to see that a
sharp young man really in the business might know better than he.
Another vessel of superior knowledge--he talked, that is, as if he knew
better than any one--was Gabriel Nash, who lacked no leisure for
hatefully haunting Balaklava Place, or in other words appeared to enjoy
the same command of his time as Peter Sherringham. The pilgrim from
Paris regarded him with mingled feelings, for he had not forgotten the
contentious character of their first meeting or the degree to which he
had been moved to urge upon Nick Dormer's consideration that his
talkative friend was probably one of the most eminent of asses. This
personage turned up now as an admirer of the charming creature he had
scoffed at, and there was much to exasperate in the smooth gloss of his
inconsistency, at which he never cast an embarrassed glance. He
practised indeed such loose license of regard to every question that it
was difficult, in vulgar parlance, to "have" him; his sympathies hummed
about like bees in a garden, with no visible plan, no economy in their
flight. He thought meanly of the modern theatre and yet had discovered a
fund of satisfaction in the most promising of its exponents; and Peter
could more than once but say to him that he should really, to keep his
opinions at all in hand, attach more value to the stage or less to the
interesting a tress. Miriam took her perfect ease at his expense and
treated him as the most abject of her slaves: all of which was worth
seeing as an exhibition, on Nash's part, of the beautifully
imperturbable. When Peter all too grossly pronounced him "damned"
impudent he always felt guilty later on of an injustice--Nash had so
little the air of a man with something to gain. He was aware
nevertheless of a certain itching in his boot-toe when his
fellow-visitor brought out, and for the most part to Miriam herself, in
answer to any charge of tergiversation, "Oh it's all right; it's the
voice, you know--the enchanting voice!" Nash meant by this, as indeed he
more fully set forth, that he came to the theatre or to the villa simply
to treat his ear to the sound--the richest then to be heard on earth, as
he maintained--issuing from Miriam's lips. Its richness was quite
independent of the words she might pronounce or the poor fable they
might subserve, and if the pleasure of hearing her in public was the
greater by reason of the large