"But why not take me as I am?"
"Because I"m abominably keen about that sort of thing--I must recognise my keenness. I must face the ugly truth. I"ve been through the worst; it"s all settled."
"The worst, I suppose, was when you found me this morning."
"Oh that was all right--for you."
"You"re magnanimous, Julia; but evidently what"s good enough for me isn"t good enough for you." Nick spoke with bitterness.
"I don"t like you enough--that"s the obstacle," she held herself in hand to say.
"You did a year ago; you confessed to it."
"Well, a year ago was a year ago. Things are changed to-day."
"You"re very fortunate--to be able to throw away a real devotion," Nick returned.
She had her pocket-handkerchief in her hand, and at this she quickly pressed it to her lips as to check an exclamation. Then for an instant she appeared to be listening to some sound from outside. He interpreted her movement as an honourable impulse to repress the "Do you mean the devotion I was witness of this morning?" But immediately afterwards she said something very different: "I thought I heard a ring. I"ve telegraphed for Mrs. Gresham."
He wondered. "Why did you do that?"
"Oh I want her."
He walked to the window, where the curtains had not been drawn, and saw in the dusk a cab at the door. When he turned back he went on: "Why won"t you trust me to make you like me, as you call it, better? If I make you like me as well as I like you it will be about enough, I think."
"Oh I like you enough for _your_ happiness. And I don"t throw away a devotion," Mrs. Dallow continued. "I shall be constantly kind to you. I shall be beautiful to you."
"You"ll make me lose a fortune," Nick after a moment said.
It brought a slight convulsion, instantly repressed, into her face. "Ah you may have all the money you want!"
"I don"t mean yours," he answered with plenty of expression of his own.
He had determined on the instant, since it might serve, to tell her what he had never breathed to her before. "Mr. Carteret last year promised me a pot of money on the day we should be man and wife. He has thoroughly set his heart on it."
"I"m sorry to disappoint Mr. Carteret," said Julia. "I"ll go and see him. I"ll make it all right," she went on. "Then your work, you know, will bring you an income. The great men get a thousand just for a head."
"I"m only joking," Nick returned with sombre eyes that contradicted this profession. "But what things you deserve I should do!"
"Do you mean striking likenesses?"
He watched her a moment. "You do hate it! Pushed to that point, it"s curious," he audibly mused.
"Do you mean you"re joking about Mr. Carteret"s promise?"
"No--the promise is real, but I don"t seriously offer it as a reason."
"I shall go to Beauclere," Julia said. "You"re an hour late," she added in a different tone; for at that moment the door of the room was thrown open and Mrs. Gresham, the butler p.r.o.nouncing her name, ushered in.
"Ah don"t impugn my punctuality--it"s my character!" the useful lady protested, putting a sixpence from the cabman into her purse. Nick went off at this with a simplified farewell--went off foreseeing exactly what he found the next day, that the useful lady would have received orders not to budge from her hostess"s side. He called on the morrow, late in the afternoon, and Julia saw him liberally, in the spirit of her a.s.surance that she would be "beautiful" to him, that she had not thrown away his devotion; but Mrs. Gresham remained, with whatever delicacies of deprecation, a spectator of her liberality. Julia looked at him kindly, but her companion was more benignant still; so that what Nick did with his own eyes was not to appeal to her to see him a moment alone, but to solicit, in the name of this luxury, the second occupant of the drawing-room. Mrs. Gresham seemed to say, while Julia said so little, "I understand, my poor friend, I know everything--she has told me only _her_ side, but I"m so competent that I know yours too--and I enter into the whole thing deeply. But it would be as much as my place is worth to accommodate you." Still, she didn"t go so far as to give him an inkling of what he learned on the third day and what he had not gone so far as to suspect--that the two ladies had made rapid arrangements for a scheme of foreign travel. These arrangements had already been carried out when, at the door of the house in Great Stanhope Street, the announcement was made him that the subtle creatures had started that morning for Paris.
XXVIII
They spent on their way to Florence several days in Paris, where Peter Sherringham had as much free talk with his sister as it often befell one member of their family to have with another. He enjoyed, that is, on two different occasions, half an hour"s gossip with her in her sitting-room at the hotel. On one of these he took the liberty of asking her whether or no, decidedly, she meant to marry Nick Dormer. Julia expressed to him that she appreciated his curiosity, but that Nick and she were nothing more than relations and good friends. "He tremendously wants it," Peter none the less observed; to which she simply made answer, "Well then, he may want!"
After this, for a while, they sat as silent as if the subject had been quite threshed out between them. Peter felt no impulse to penetrate further, for it was not a habit of the Sherringhams to talk with each other of their love-affairs; and he was conscious of the particular deterrent that he and Julia entertained in general such different sentiments that they could never go far together in discussion. He liked her and was sorry for her, thought her life lonely and wondered she didn"t make a "great" marriage. Moreover he pitied her for being without the interests and consolations he himself had found substantial: those of the intellectual, the studious order he considered these to be, not knowing how much she supposed she reflected and studied and what an education she had found in her political aspirations, viewed by him as scarce more a personal part of her than the livery of her servants or the jewels George Dallow"s money had bought. Her relations with Nick struck him as queer, but were fortunately none of his business. No business of Julia"s was sufficiently his to justify him in an attempt to understand it. That there should have been a question of her marrying Nick was the funny thing rather than that the question should have been dropped. He liked his clever cousin very well as he was--enough for a vague sense that he might be spoiled by alteration to a brother-in-law.
Moreover, though not perhaps distinctly conscious of this, Peter pressed lightly on Julia"s doings from a tacit understanding that in this case she would let him off as easily. He couldn"t have said exactly what it was he judged it pertinent to be let off from: perhaps from irritating inquiry as to whether he had given any more tea-parties for gross young women connected with the theatre.
Peter"s forbearance, however, brought him not quite all the security he prefigured. After an interval he indeed went so far as to ask Julia if Nick had been wanting in respect to her; but this was an appeal intended for sympathy, not for other intervention. She answered: "Dear no--though he"s very provoking." Thus Peter guessed that they had had a quarrel in which it didn"t concern him to meddle: he added her epithet and her flight from England together, and they made up to his perception one of the little magnified embroilments which do duty for the real in superficial lives. It was worse to provoke Julia than not, and Peter thought Nick"s doing so not particularly characteristic of his versatility for good. He might wonder why she didn"t marry the member for Harsh if the subject had pressingly come up between them; but he wondered still more why Nick didn"t marry that gentleman"s great backer.
Julia said nothing again, as if to give him a chance to address her some challenge that would save her from gushing; but as his impulse appeared to be to change the subject, and as he changed it only by silence, she was reduced to resuming presently:
"I should have thought you"d have come over to see your friend the actress."
"Which of my friends? I know so many actresses," Peter pleaded.
"The woman you inflicted on us in this place a year ago--the one who"s in London now."
"Oh Miriam Rooth? I should have liked to come over, but I"ve been tied fast. Have you seen her there?"
"Yes, I"ve seen her."
"Do you like her?"
"Not at all."
"She has a lovely voice," Peter hazarded after a moment.
"I don"t know anything about her voice--I haven"t heard it."
"But she doesn"t act in pantomime, does she?"
"I don"t know anything about her acting. I saw her in private--at Nick Dormer"s studio."
"At Nick"s--?" He was interested now.
"What was she doing there?"
"She was sprawling over the room and--rather insolently--staring at me."
If Mrs. Dallow had wished to "draw" her brother she must at this point have suspected she succeeded, in spite of his care to divest his tone of all emotion. "Why, does he know her so well? I didn"t know."
"She"s sitting to him for her portrait--at least she was then."
"Oh yes, I remember--I put him up to that. I"m greatly interested. Is the portrait good?"