"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 conditions
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."