Nick emitted a long strange sound. "She thinks perhaps, but she doesn"t think enough; otherwise she"d arrive at this better thought--that she knows nothing whatever about my life."
"Ah brother," the girl pleaded with solemn eyes, "you don"t imagine what an interest she takes in it. She has told me many times--she has talked lots to me about it." Biddy paused and then went on, an anxious little smile shining through her gravity as if from a cautious wonder as to how much he would take: "She has a conviction it was Mr. Nash who made trouble between you."
"Best of little sisters," Nick p.r.o.nounced, "those are thoroughly second-rate ideas, the result of a perfectly superficial view. Excuse my possibly priggish tone, but they really attribute to my dear detached friend a part he"s quite incapable of playing. He can neither make trouble nor take trouble; no trouble could ever either have come out of him or have got into him. Moreover," our young man continued, "if Julia has talked to you so much about the matter there"s no harm in my talking to you a little. When she threw me over in an hour it was on a perfectly definite occasion. That occasion was the presence in my studio of a dishevelled, an abandoned actress."
"Oh Nick, she has not thrown you over!" Biddy protested. "She has not--I"ve proof."
He felt at this direct denial a certain stir of indignation and looked at the girl with momentary sternness. "Has she sent you here to tell me this? What do you mean by proof?"
Biddy"s eyes, at these questions, met her brother"s with a strange expression, and for a few seconds, while she looked entreatingly into them, she wavered there with parted lips and vaguely stretched out her hands. The next minute she had burst into tears--she was sobbing on his breast. He said "Hallo!" and soothed her; but it was very quickly over.
Then she told him what she meant by her proof and what she had had on her mind ever since her present arrival. It was a message from Julia, but not to say--not to say what he had questioned her about just before; though indeed, more familiar now that he had his arm round her, she boldly expressed the hope it might in the end come to the same thing.
Julia simply wanted to know--- she had instructed her to sound him discreetly--if Nick would undertake her portrait; and she wound up this experiment in "sounding" by the statement that their beautiful kinswoman was dying to sit.
"Dying to sit?" echoed Nick, whose turn it was this time to feel his colour rise.
"At any moment you like after Easter, when she comes up. She wants a full-length and your very best, your most splendid work."
Nick stared, not caring that he had blushed. "Is she serious?"
"Ah Nick--serious!" Biddy reasoned tenderly. She came nearer again and he thought her again about to weep. He took her by the shoulders, looking into her eyes.
"It"s all right if she knows _I_ am. But why doesn"t she come like any one else? I don"t refuse people!"
"Nick, dearest Nick!" she went on, her eyes conscious and pleading. He looked into them intently--as well as she could he play at sounding--and for a moment, between these young persons, the air was lighted by the glimmer of mutual searchings and suppressed confessions. Nick read deep and then, suddenly releasing his sister, turned away. She didn"t see his face in that movement, but an observer to whom it had been presented might have fancied it denoted a foreboding that was not exactly a dread, yet was not exclusively a joy.
The first thing he made out in the room, when he could distinguish, was Gabriel Nash"s portrait, which suddenly filled him with an unreasoning rancour. He seized it and turned it about, jammed it back into its corner with its face against the wall. This small diversion might have served to carry off the embarra.s.sment with which he had finally averted himself from Biddy. The embarra.s.sment, however, was all his own; none of it was reflected in the way she resumed, after a silence in which she had followed his disposal of the picture:
"If she"s so eager to come here--for it"s here she wants to sit, not in Great Stanhope Street, never!--how can she prove better that she doesn"t care a bit if she meets Miss Rooth?"
"She won"t meet Miss Rooth," Nick replied rather dryly.
"Oh I"m sorry!" said Biddy. She was as frank as if she had achieved a virtual victory, and seemed to regret the loss of a chance for Julia to show an equal mildness. Her tone made her brother laugh, but she went on with confidence: "She thought it was Mr. Nash who made Miss Rooth come."
"So he did, by the way," said Nick.
"Well then, wasn"t that making trouble?"
"I thought you admitted there was no harm in her being here."
"Yes, but _he_ hoped there"d be."
"Poor Nash"s hopes!" Nick laughed. "My dear child, it would take a cleverer head than you or me, or even Julia, who must have invented that wise theory, to say what they were. However, let us agree that even if they were perfectly fiendish my good sense has been a match for them."
"Oh Nick, that"s delightful!" chanted Biddy. Then she added: "Do you mean she doesn"t come any more?"
"The dishevelled actress? She hasn"t been near me for months."
"But she"s in London--she"s always acting? I"ve been away so much I"ve scarcely observed," Biddy explained with a slight change of note.
"The same silly part, poor creature, for nearly a year. It appears that that"s "success"--in her profession. I saw her in the character several times last summer, but haven"t set foot in her theatre since."
Biddy took this in; then she suggested; "Peter wouldn"t have liked that."
"Oh Peter"s likes--!" Nick at his easel, beginning to work, conveniently sighed.
"I mean her acting the same part for a year."
"I"m sure I don"t know; he has never written me a word."
"Nor me either," Biddy returned.
There was another short silence, during which Nick brushed at a panel.
It ended in his presently saying: "There"s one thing certainly Peter _would_ like--that is simply to be here to-night. It"s a great night--another great night--for the abandoned one. She"s to act Juliet for the first time."
"Ah how I should like to see her!" the girl cried.
Nick glanced at her; she sat watching him. "She has sent me a stall; I wish she had sent me two. I should have been delighted to take you."
"Don"t you think you could get another?" Biddy quavered.
"They must be in tremendous demand. But who knows after all?" Nick added, at the same moment looking round. "Here"s a chance--here"s quite an extraordinary chance!"
His servant had opened the door and was ushering in a lady whose ident.i.ty was indeed justly reflected in those words. "Miss Rooth!" the man announced; but he was caught up by a gentleman who came next and who exclaimed, laughing and with a gesture gracefully corrective: "No, no--no longer Miss Rooth!"
Miriam entered the place with her charming familiar grandeur--entered very much as she might have appeared, as she appeared every night, early in her first act, at the back of the stage, by the immemorial middle door. She might exactly now have been presenting herself to the house, taking easy possession, repeating old movements, looking from one to the other of the actors before the footlights. The rich "Good-morning" she threw into the air, holding out her right hand to Biddy and then giving her left to Nick--as she might have given it to her own brother--had nothing to tell of intervals or alienations. She struck Biddy as still more terrible in her splendid practice than when she had seen her before--the practice and the splendour had now something almost royal.
The girl had had occasion to make her curtsey to majesties and highnesses, but the flutter those effigies produced was nothing to the way in which at the approach of this young lady the agitated air seemed to recognise something supreme. So the deep mild eyes she bent on Biddy were not soothing, though for that matter evidently intended to soothe.
Biddy wondered Nick could have got so used to her--he joked at her as she loomed--and later in the day, still under the great impression of this incident, she even wondered that Peter could have full an impunity.
It was true that Peter apparently didn"t quite feel one.
"You never came--you never came," Miriam said to her kindly and sadly; and Biddy, recognising the allusion, the invitation to visit the actress at home, had to explain how much she had been absent from London and then even that her brother hadn"t proposed to take her.
"Very true--he hasn"t come himself. What"s he doing now?" asked Miss Rooth, standing near her young friend but looking at Nick, who had immediately engaged in conversation with his other visitor, a gentleman whose face came back to the girl. She had seen this gentleman on the stage with the great performer--that was it, the night Peter took her to the theatre with Florry Tressilian. Oh that Nick would only do something of that sort now! This desire, quickened by the presence of the strange, expressive woman, by the way she scattered sweet syllables as if she were touching the piano-keys, combined with other things to make our young lady"s head swim--other things too mingled to name, admiration and fear and dim divination and purposeless pride and curiosity and resistance, the impulse to go away and the determination to (as she would have liked fondly to fancy it) "hold her ground." The actress courted her with a wondrous voice--what was the matter with the actress and what did she want?--and Biddy tried in return to give an idea of what Nick was doing. Not succeeding very well she was about to appeal to her brother, but Miriam stopped her with the remark that it didn"t signify; besides, Dashwood was telling Nick something--something they wanted him to know. "We"re in a great excitement--he has taken a theatre," Miriam added.
"Taken a theatre?" Biddy was vague.
"We"re going to set up for ourselves. He"s going to do for me altogether. It has all been arranged only within a day or two. It remains to be seen how it will answer," Miriam smiled. Biddy murmured some friendly hope, and the shining presence went on: "Do you know why I"ve broken in here to-day after a long absence--interrupting your poor brother so basely, taking up his precious time? It"s because I"m so nervous."
"About your first night?" Biddy risked.
"Do you know about that--are you coming?" Miriam had caught at it.
"No, I"m not coming--I haven"t a place."
"Will you come if I send you one?"
"Oh but really it"s too beautiful of you!" breathed the girl.
"You shall have a box; your brother shall bring you. They can"t squeeze in a pin, I"m told; but I"ve kept a box, I"ll manage it. Only if I do, you know, mind you positively come!" She sounded it as the highest of favours, resting her hand on Biddy"s.