"You mean you've been keeping it from her because she wouldn't like it?"
"We're afraid she may think papa wouldn't have liked it."
This was said with an absence of humour at which Peter could but show
amusement, though he quickly recovered himself, repenting of any
apparent failure of respect to the high memory of his late celebrated
relative. He threw off rather vaguely: "Ah yes, I remember that great
man's ideas," and then went on: "May I ask if you know it, the fact
we're talking of, through Julia or through Nick?"
"I know it from both of them."
"Then if you're in their confidence may I further ask if this
undertaking of Nick's is the reason why things seem to be at an end
between them?"
"Oh I don't think she likes it," Biddy had to say.
"Isn't it good?"
"Oh I don't mean the picture--she hasn't seen it. But his having done
it."
"Does she dislike it so much that that's why she won't marry him?"
Biddy gave up her work, moving away from it to look at it. She came and
sat down on the long bench on which Sherringham had placed himself. Then
she broke out: "Oh Peter, it's a great trouble--it's a very great
trouble; and I can't tell you, for I don't understand it."
"If I ask you," he said, "it's not to pry into what doesn't concern me;
but Julia's my sister, and I can't after all help taking some interest
in her life. She tells me herself so little. She doesn't think me
worthy."
"Ah poor Julia!" Biddy wailed defensively. Her tone recalled to him that
Julia had at least thought him worthy to unite himself to Bridget
Dormer, and inevitably betrayed that the girl was thinking of that also.
While they both thought of it they sat looking into each other's eyes.
"Nick, I'm sure, doesn't treat _you_ that way; I'm sure he confides in
you; he talks to you about his occupations, his ambitions," Peter
continued. "And you understand him, you enter into them, you're nice to
him, you help him."
"Oh Nick's life--it's very dear to me," Biddy granted.
"That must be jolly for him."
"It makes _me_ very happy."
Peter uttered a low, ambiguous groan; then he cried with irritation;
"What the deuce is the matter with them then? Why can't they hit it off
together and be quiet and rational and do what every one wants them to?"
"Oh Peter, it's awfully complicated!" the girl sighed with sagacity.
"Do you mean that Nick's in love with her?"
"In love with Julia?"
"No, no, with Miriam Rooth."
She shook her head slowly, then with a smile which struck him as one of
the sweetest things he had ever seen--it conveyed, at the expense of her
own prospects, such a shy, generous little mercy of reassurance--"He
isn't, Peter," she brought out. "Julia thinks it trifling--all that
sort of thing," she added "She wants him to go in for different
honours."
"Julia's the oddest woman. I mean I thought she loved him," Peter
explained. "And when you love a person--!" He continued to make it out,
leaving his sentence impatiently unfinished, while Biddy, with lowered
eyes, sat waiting--it so interested her--to learn what you did when you
loved a person. "I can't conceive her giving him up. He has great
ability, besides being such a good fellow."
"It's for his happiness, Peter--that's the way she reasons," Biddy set
forth. "She does it for an idea; she has told me a great deal about it,
and I see the way she feels."
"You try to, Biddy, because you're such a dear good-natured girl, but I
don't believe you do in the least," he took the liberty of replying.
"It's too little the way you yourself would feel. Julia's idea, as you
call it, must be curious."
"Well, it is, Peter," Biddy mournfully admitted. "She won't risk not
coming out at the top."
"At the top of what?"
"Oh of everything." Her tone showed a trace of awe of such high views.
"Surely one's at the top of everything when one's in love."
"I don't know," said the girl.
"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 attitude any better. He seems to me,
if I may say so, neither fish nor flesh."
"Oh his attitude's very noble, 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."