by Henry James
While Peter recited all his hindrance Nick was occupied in rubbing with a cloth a palette he had just scraped. “I see what you mean—I’m very sorry too. I’m sorry you can’t give my mother this joy—I give her so little.”
“My dear fellow, you might give her a little more!” it came to Peter to say. “It’s rather too much to expect me to make up for your omissions!”
Nick looked at him with a moment’s fixedness while he polished the palette; and for that moment he felt the temptation to reply: “There’s a way you could do that, to a considerable extent—I think you guess it—which wouldn’t be intrinsically disagreeable.” But the impulse passed without expressing itself in speech, and he simply brought out; “You can make this all clear to Biddy when she comes, and she’ll make it clear to my mother.”
“Poor little Biddy!” Peter mentally sighed, thinking of the girl with that job before her; but what he articulated was that this was exactly why he had come to the studio. He had inflicted his company on Lady Agnes the previous Thursday and had partaken of a meal with her, but had not seen Biddy though he had waited for her, had hoped immensely she’d come in. Now he’d wait again—dear Bid was thoroughly worth it.
“Patience, patience then—you’ve always me!” said Nick; to which he subjoined: “If it’s a question of going to the play I scarcely see why you shouldn’t dine at my mother’s all the same. People go to the play after dinner.”
“Yes, but it wouldn’t be fair, it wouldn’t be decent: it’s a case when I must be in my seat from the rise of the curtain.” Peter, about this, was thoroughly lucid. “I should force your mother to dine an hour earlier than usual and then in return for her courtesy should go off to my entertainment at eight o’clock, leaving her and Grace and Biddy languishing there. I wish I had proposed in time that they should go with me,” he continued not very ingenuously.
“You might do that still,” Nick suggested.
“Oh at this time of day it would be impossible to get a box.”
“I’ll speak to Miss Rooth about it if you like when she comes,” smiled Nick.
“No, it wouldn’t do,” said Peter, turning away and looking once more at his watch. He made tacitly the addition that still less than asking Lady Agnes for his convenience to dine early would this be decent, would it be thinkable. His taking Biddy the night he dined with her and with Miss Tressilian had been something very like a violation of those proprieties. He couldn’t say that, however, to the girl’s brother, who remarked in a moment that it was all right, since Peter’s action left him his own freedom.
“Your own freedom?”—and Peter’s question made him turn.
“Why you see now I can go to the theatre myself.”
“Certainly; I hadn’t thought of that. You’d naturally have been going.”
“I gave it up for the prospect of your company at home.”
“Upon my word you’re too good—I don’t deserve such sacrifices,” said Peter, who read in his kinsman’s face that this was not a figure of speech but the absolute truth. “Didn’t it, however, occur to you that, as it would turn out, I might—I even naturally would—myself be going?” he put forth.
Nick broke into a laugh. “It would have occurred to me if I understood a little better—!” But he paused, as still too amused.
“If you understood a little better what?”
“Your situation, simply.”
Peter looked at him a moment. “Dine with me to-night by ourselves and at a club. We’ll go to the theatre together and then you’ll understand it.”
“With pleasure, with pleasure: we’ll have a jolly evening,” said Nick.
“Call it jolly if you like. When did you say she was coming?” Peter asked.
“Biddy? Oh probably, as I tell you, at any moment.”
“I mean the great Miriam,” Peter amended.
“The great Miriam, if she’s punctual, will be here in about forty minutes.”
“And will she be likely to find your sister?”
“That will depend, my dear fellow, on whether my sister remains to see her.”
“Exactly; but the point’s whether you’ll allow her to remain, isn’t it?”
Nick looked slightly mystified. “Why shouldn’t she do as she likes?”
“In that case she’ll probably go.”
“Yes, unless she stays.”
“Don’t let her,” Peter dropped; “send her away.” And to explain this he added: “It doesn’t seem exactly the right sort of thing, fresh young creatures like Bid meeting des femmes de théâtre.” His explanation, in turn, struck him as requiring another clause; so he went on: “At least it isn’t thought the right sort of thing abroad, and even in England my foreign ideas stick to me.”
Even with this amplification, however, his plea evidently still had for his companion a flaw; which, after he had considered it a moment, Nick exposed in the simple words: “Why, you originally introduced them in Paris, Biddy and Miss Rooth. Didn’t they meet at your rooms and fraternise, and wasn’t that much more ‘abroad’ than this?”
“So they did, but my hand had been forced and she didn’t like it,” Peter answered, suspecting that for a diplomatist he looked foolish.
“Miss Rooth didn’t like it?” Nick persisted.
“That I confess I’ve forgotten. Besides, she wasn’t an actress then. What I mean is that Biddy wasn’t particularly pleased with her.”
“Why she thought her wonderful—praised her to the sides. I remember that.”
“She didn’t like her as a woman; she praised her as an actress.”
“I thought you said she wasn’t an actress then,” Nick returned.
Peter had a pause. “Oh Biddy thought so. She has seen her since, moreover. I took her the other night, and her curiosity’s satisfied.”
“It’s not of any consequence, and if there’s a reason for it I’ll bundle her off directly,” Nick made haste to say. “But the great Miriam seems such a kind, good person.”
“So she is, charming, charming,”—and his visitor looked hard at him.
“Here comes Biddy now,” Nick went on. “I hear her at the door: you can warn her yourself.”
“It isn’t a question of ‘warning’—that’s not in the least my idea. But I’ll take Biddy away,” said Peter.
“That will be still more energetic.”
“No, it will be simply more selfish—I like her company.” Peter had turned as if to go to the door and meet the girl; but he quickly checked himself, lingering in the middle of the room, and the next instant Biddy had come in. When she saw him there she also stopped.
XLIII
“Come on boldly, my dear,” said Nick. “Peter’s bored to death waiting for you.”
“Ah he’s come to say he won’t dine with us to-night!” Biddy stood with her hand on the latch.
“I leave town to-morrow: I’ve everything to do; I’m broken-hearted; it’s impossible”—Peter made of it again such a case as he could. “Please make my peace with your mother—I’m ashamed of not having written to her last night.”
She closed the door and came in while her brother said to her, “How in the world did you guess it?”
“I saw it in the Morning Post.” And she kept her eyes on their kinsman.
“In the Morning Post?” he vaguely echoed.
“I saw there’s to be a first night at that theatre, the one you took us to. So I said, ‘Oh he’ll go there.’”
“Yes, I’ve got to do that too,” Peter admitted.
“She’s going to sit to me again this morning, his wonderful actress—she has made an appointment: so you see I’m getting on,” Nick pursued to his sister.
“Oh I’m so glad—she’s so splendid!” The girl looked away from her cousin now, but not, though it seemed to fill the place, at the triumphant portrait of Miriam Rooth.
“I’m delighted you’ve come in. I have waited for you,” Peter hastened to declare to her, though conscious that this was in the cond
itions meagre.
“Aren’t you coming to see us again?”
“I’m in despair, but I shall really not have time. Therefore it’s a blessing not to have missed you here.”
“I’m very glad,” said Biddy. Then she added: “And you’re going to America—to stay a long time?”
“Till I’m sent to some better place.”
“And will that better place be as far away?”
“Oh Biddy, it wouldn’t be better then,” said Peter.
“Do you mean they’ll give you something to do at home?”
“Hardly that. But I’ve a tremendous lot to do at home to-day.” For the twentieth time Peter referred to his watch.
She turned to her brother, who had admonished her that she might bid him good-morning. She kissed him and he asked what the news would be in Calcutta Gardens; to which she made answer: “The only news is of course the great preparations they’re making, poor dears, for Peter. Mamma thinks you must have had such a nasty dinner the other day,” the girl continued to the guest of that romantic occasion.
“Faithless Peter!” said Nick, beginning to whistle and to arrange a canvas in anticipation of Miriam’s arrival.
“Dear Biddy, thank your stars you’re not in my horrid profession,” protested the personage so designated. “One’s bowled about like a cricket-ball, unable to answer for one’s freedom or one’s comfort from one moment to another.”
“Oh ours is the true profession—Biddy’s and mine,” Nick broke out, setting up his canvas; “the career of liberty and peace, of charming long mornings spent in a still north light and in the contemplation, I may even say in the company, of the amiable and the beautiful.”
“That certainty’s the case when Biddy comes to see you,” Peter returned.
Biddy smiled at him. “I come every day. Anch’io son pittore! I encourage Nick awfully.”
“It’s a pity I’m not a martyr—she’d bravely perish with me,” Nick said.
“You are—you’re a martyr—when people say such odious things!” the girl cried. “They do say them. I’ve heard many more than I’ve repeated to you.”
“It’s you yourself then, indignant and loyal, who are the martyr,” observed Peter, who wanted greatly to be kind to her.
“Oh I don’t care!”—but she threw herself, flushed and charming, into a straight appeal to him. “Don’t you think one can do as much good by painting great works of art as by—as by what papa used to do? Don’t you think art’s necessary to the happiness, to the greatness of a people? Don’t you think it’s manly and honourable? Do you think a passion for it’s a thing to be ashamed of? Don’t you think the artist—the conscientious, the serious one—is as distinguished a member of society as any one else?”
Peter and Nick looked at each other and laughed at the way she had got up her subject, and Nick asked their kinsman if she didn’t express it all in perfection. “I delight in general in artists, but I delight still more in their defenders,” Peter made reply, perhaps a little meagrely, to Biddy.
“Ah don’t attack me if you’re wise!” Nick said.
“One’s tempted to when it makes Biddy so fine.”
“Well, that’s the way she encourages me: it’s meat and drink to me,” Nick went on. “At the same time I’m bound to say there’s a little whistling in the dark in it.”
“In the dark?” his sister demanded.
“The obscurity, my dear child, of your own aspirations, your mysterious ambitions and esthetic views. Aren’t there some heavyish shadows there?”
“Why I never cared for politics.”
“No, but you cared for life, you cared for society, and you’ve chosen the path of solitude and concentration.”
“You horrid boy!” said Biddy.
“Give it up, that arduous steep—give it up and come out with me,” Peter interposed.
“Come out with you?”
“Let us walk a little or even drive a little. Let us at any rate talk a little.”
“I thought you had so much to do,” Biddy candidly objected.
“So I have, but why shouldn’t you do a part of it with me? Would there be any harm? I’m going to some tiresome shops—you’ll cheer the frugal hour.”
The girl hesitated, then turned to Nick. “Would there be any harm?”
“Oh it’s none of his business!” Peter protested.
“He had better take you home to your mother.”
“I’m going home—I shan’t stay here to-day,” Biddy went on. Then to Peter: “I came in a hansom, but I shall walk back. Come that way with me.”
“With pleasure. But I shall not be able to go in,” Peter added.
“Oh that’s no matter,” said the girl. “Good-bye, Nick.”
“You understand then that we dine together—at seven sharp. Wouldn’t a club, as I say, be best?” Peter, before going, inquired of Nick. He suggested further which club it should be; and his words led Biddy, who had directed her steps toward the door, to turn a moment as with a reproachful question—whether it was for this Peter had given up Calcutta Gardens. But her impulse, if impulse it was, had no sequel save so far as it was a sequel that Peter freely explained to her, after Nick had assented to his conditions, that her brother too had a desire to go to Miss Rooth’s first night and had already promised to accompany him.
“Oh that’s perfect; it will be so good for him—won’t it?—if he’s going to paint her again,” Biddy responded.
“I think there’s nothing so good for him as that he happens to have such a sister as you,” Peter declared as they went out. He heard at the same time the sound of a carriage stopping, and before Biddy, who was in front of him, opened the door of the house had been able to say to himself, “What a bore—there’s Miriam!” The opened door showed him that truth—this young lady in the act of alighting from the brougham provided by Basil Dashwood’s thrifty zeal. Her mother followed her, and both the new visitors exclaimed and rejoiced, in their demonstrative way, as their eyes fell on their valued friend. The door had closed behind Peter, but he instantly and violently rang, so that they should be admitted with as little delay as possible, while he stood disconcerted, and fearing he showed it, by the prompt occurrence of an encounter he had particularly sought to avert. It ministered, moreover, a little to this sensibility that Miriam appeared to have come somewhat before her time. The incident promised, however, to pass off in a fine florid way. Before he knew it both the ladies had taken possession of Biddy, who looked at them with comparative coldness, tempered indeed by a faint glow of apprehension, and Miriam had broken out:
“We know you, we know you; we saw you in Paris, and you came to my theatre a short time ago with Mr. Sherringham!”
“We know your mother, Lady Agnes Dormer. I hope her ladyship’s very well,” said Mrs. Rooth, who had never struck Peter as a more objectionable old woman.
“You offered to do a head of me or something or other: didn’t you tell me you work in clay? I daresay you’ve forgotten all about it, but I should be delighted,” Miriam pursued with the richest urbanity. Peter was not concerned with her mother’s pervasiveness, though he didn’t like Biddy to see even that; but he hoped his companion would take the overcharged benevolence of the young actress in the spirit in which, rather to his surprise, it evidently was offered. “I’ve sat to your clever brother many times,” said Miriam; “I’m going to sit again. I daresay you’ve seen what we’ve done—he’s too delightful. Si vous saviez comme cela me repose!” she added, turning for a moment to Peter. Then she continued, smiling at Biddy; “Only he oughtn’t to have thrown up such prospects, you know. I’ve an idea I wasn’t nice to you that day in Paris—I was nervous and scared and perverse. I remember perfectly; I was odious. But I’m better now—you’d see if you were to know me. I’m not a bad sort—really I’m not. But you must have your own friends. Happy they—you look so charming! Immensely like Mr. Dormer, especially about the eyes; isn’t she, mamma?”