"Do you doubt it?" Peter asked.
"I"ve never been in love and I never shall be."
"You"re as perverse, in your way, as Julia," he returned to this. "But I confess I don"t understand Nick"s att.i.tude any better. He seems to me, if I may say so, neither fish nor flesh."
"Oh his att.i.tude"s very n.o.ble, Peter; his state of mind"s wonderfully interesting," Biddy pleaded. "Surely _you_ must be in favour of art,"
she beautifully said.
It made him look at her a moment. "Dear Biddy, your little digs are as soft as zephyrs."
She coloured, but she protested. "My little digs? What do you mean?
Aren"t you in favour of art?"
"The question"s delightfully simple. I don"t know what you"re talking about. Everything has its place. A parliamentary life," he opined, "scarce seems to me the situation for portrait-painting."
"That"s just what Nick says."
"You talk of it together a great deal?"
"Yes, Nick"s very good to me."
"Clever Nick! And what do you advise him?"
"Oh to _do_ something."
"That"s valuable," Peter laughed. "Not to give up his sweetheart for the sake of a paint-pot, I hope?"
"Never, never, Peter! It"s not a question of his giving up," Biddy pursued, "for Julia has herself shaken free. I think she never really felt safe--she loved him, but was afraid of him. Now she"s only afraid--she has lost the confidence she tried to have. Nick has tried to hold her, but she has wrested herself away. Do you know what she said to me? She said, "My confidence has gone for ever.""
"I didn"t know she was such a prig!" Julia"s brother commented. "They"re queer people, verily, with water in their veins instead of blood. You and I wouldn"t be like that, should we?--though you _have_ taken up such a discouraging position about caring for a fellow."
"I care for art," poor Biddy returned.
"You do, to some purpose"--and Peter glanced at the bust.
"To that of making you laugh at me."
But this he didn"t heed. "Would you give a good man up for "art"?"
"A good man? What man?"
"Well, say me--if I wanted to marry you."
She had the briefest of pauses. "Of course I would--in a moment. At any rate I"d give up the House of Commons," she amended. "That"s what Nick"s going to do now--only you mustn"t tell any one."
Peter wondered. "He"s going to chuck up his seat?"
"I think his mind is made up to it. He has talked me over--we"ve had some deep discussions. Yes, I"m on the side of art!" she ardently said.
"Do you mean in order to paint--to paint that girl?" Peter went on.
"To paint every one--that"s what he wants. By keeping his seat he hasn"t kept Julia, and she was the thing he cared for most in public life. When he has got out of the whole thing his att.i.tude, as he says, will be at least clear. He"s tremendously interesting about it, Peter," Biddy declared; "has talked to me wonderfully--has won me over. Mamma"s heart-broken; telling _her_ will be the hardest part."
"If she doesn"t know," he asked, "why then is she heart-broken?"
"Oh at the hitch about their marriage--she knows that. Their marriage has been so what she wanted. She thought it perfection. She blames Nick fearfully. She thinks he held the whole thing in his hand and that he has thrown away a magnificent opportunity."
"And what does Nick say to her?"
"He says, "Dear old mummy!""
"That"s good," Peter p.r.o.nounced.
"I don"t know what will become of her when this other blow arrives,"
Biddy went on. "Poor Nick wants to please her--he does, he does. But, as he says, you can"t please every one and you must before you die please yourself a little."
Nick"s kinsman, whose brother-in-law he was to have been, sat looking at the floor; the colour had risen to his face while he listened. Then he sprang up and took another turn about the room. His companion"s artless but vivid recital had set his blood in motion. He had taken Nick"s political prospects very much for granted, thought of them as definite and almost dazzling. To learn there was something for which he was ready to renounce such honours, and to recognise the nature of that bribe, affected our young man powerfully and strangely. He felt as if he had heard the sudden blare of a trumpet, yet felt at the same time as if he had received a sudden slap in the face. Nick"s bribe was "art"--the strange temptress with whom he himself had been wrestling and over whom he had finally ventured to believe that wisdom and training had won a victory. There was something in the conduct of his old friend and playfellow that made all his reasonings small. So unexpected, so courageous a choice moved him as a reproach and a challenge. He felt ashamed of having placed himself so unromantically on his guard, and rapidly said to himself that if Nick could afford to allow so much for "art" he might surely exhibit some of the same confidence. There had never been the least avowed compet.i.tion between the cousins--their lines lay too far apart for that; but they nevertheless rode their course in sight of each other, and Peter had now the impression of suddenly seeing Nick Dormer give his horse the spur, bound forward and fly over a wall.
He was put on his mettle and hadn"t to look long to spy an obstacle he too might ride at. High rose his curiosity to see what warrant his kinsman might have for such risks--how he was mounted for such exploits.
He really knew little about Nick"s talent--so little as to feel no right to exclaim "What an a.s.s!" when Biddy mentioned the fact which the existence of real talent alone could redeem from absurdity. All his eagerness to see what Nick had been able to make of such a subject as Miriam Rooth came back to him: though it was what mainly had brought him to Rosedale Road he had forgotten it in the happy accident of his encounter with the girl. He was conscious that if the surprise of a revelation of power were in store for him Nick would be justified more than he himself would feel reinstated in self-respect; since the courage of renouncing the forum for the studio hovered before him as greater than the courage of marrying an actress whom one was in love with: the reward was in the latter case so much more immediate. Peter at any rate asked Biddy what Nick had done with his portrait of Miriam. He hadn"t seen it anywhere in rummaging about the room.
"I think it"s here somewhere, but I don"t know," she replied, getting up to look vaguely round her.
"Haven"t you seen it? Hasn"t he shown it to you?"
She rested her eyes on him strangely a moment, then turned them away with a mechanical air of still searching. "I think it"s in the room, put away with its face to the wall."
"One of those dozen canvases with their backs to us?"
"One of those perhaps."
"Haven"t you tried to see?"
"I haven"t touched them"--and Biddy had a colour.
"Hasn"t Nick had it out to show you?"
"He says it"s in too bad a state--it isn"t finished--it won"t do."
"And haven"t you had the curiosity to turn it round for yourself?"
The embarra.s.sed look in her face deepened under his insistence and it seemed to him that her eyes pleaded with him a moment almost to tears.
"I"ve had an idea he wouldn"t like it."
Her visitor"s own desire, however, had become too sharp for easy forbearance. He laid his hand on two or three canvases which proved, as he extricated them, to be either blank or covered with rudimentary forms. "Dear Biddy, have you such intense delicacy?" he asked, pulling out something else.
The inquiry was meant in familiar kindness, for Peter was struck even to admiration with her having a sense of honour that all girls haven"t. She must in this particular case have longed for a sight of Nick"s work--the work that had brought about such a crisis in his life. But she had pa.s.sed hours in his studio alone without permitting herself a stolen peep; she was capable of that if she believed it would please him. Peter liked a charming girl"s being capable of that--he had known charming girls who wouldn"t in the least have been--and his question was really a form of homage. Biddy, however, apparently discovered some light mockery in it, and she broke out incongruously:
"I haven"t wanted so much to see it! I don"t care for her so much as that!"