"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 embarrassment with which he had finally averted
himself from Biddy. The embarrassment, 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
identity 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.
"Don't be afraid. And may I bring a friend--the friend with whom I'm
staying?"