"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 attitude, 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 pronounced.
"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 competition 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 ass!" 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 embarrassed 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
passed 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!"
"So much as what?" He couldn't but wonder.
"I don't care for his actress--for that vulgar creature. I don't like
her!" said Biddy almost startlingly.