"Walking the streets?"
"I don't know--I give it up!" our young man replied; and his tone, for
some minutes, reduced his companions to silence. But a little later
Biddy said:
"Was it for him this morning she wanted that place--when she asked you
to give yours back?"
"For him exactly. It's very odd she had just managed to keep it--for all
the good use he makes of it! She told me just now that she heard from
him, at his post, a short time ago, to the effect that he had seen in a
newspaper a statement she was going to do Juliet and that he firmly
intended, though the ways and means were not clear to him--his leave of
absence hadn't yet come out and he couldn't be sure when it would
come--to be present on her first night; whereby she must do him the
service to provide him a place. She thought this a speech rather in the
air, so that in the midst of all her cares she took no particular pains
about the matter. She had an idea she had really done with him for a
long time. But this afternoon what does he do but telegraph to her from
Southampton that he keeps his appointment and counts on her for a stall?
Unless she had got back mine she wouldn't have been able to help him.
When she was in Rosedale Road this morning she hadn't received his
telegram; but his promise, his threat, whatever it was, came back to
her: she had a vague foreboding and thought that on the chance she had
better hold something ready. When she got home she found his telegram,
and she told me he was the first person she saw in the house, through
her fright when she came on in the second act. It appears she was
terrified this time, and it lasted half through the play."
"She must be rather annoyed at his having gone away," Miss Tressilian
observed.
"Annoyed? I'm not so sure!" laughed Nick.
"Ah here he comes back!" cried Biddy, behind her fan, while the absentee
edged into his seat in time for the fifth act. He stood there a moment,
first looking round the theatre; then he turned his eyes to the box
occupied by his relatives, smiling and waving his hand.
"After that he'll surely come and see you," said Miss Tressilian.
"We shall see him as we go out," Biddy returned: "he must lose no more
time."
Nick looked at him with a glass, then exclaiming: "Well, I'm glad he has
pulled himself together!"
"Why what's the matter with him--if he wasn't disappointed of his seat?"
Miss Tressilian demanded.
"The matter with him is that a couple of hours ago he had a great
shock."
"A great shock?"
"I may as well mention it at last," Nick went on. "I had to say
something to him in the lobby there when we met--something I was pretty
sure he couldn't like. I let him have it full in the face--it seemed to
me better and wiser. I let him know that Juliet's married."
"Didn't he know it?" asked Biddy, who, with her face raised, had
listened in deep stillness to every word that fell from her brother.
"How should he have known it? It has only just taken place, and they've
been so clever, for reasons of their own--those people move among a lot
of considerations that are absolutely foreign to us--about keeping it
out of the papers. They put in a lot of lies and they leave out the real
things."
"You don't mean to say Mr. Sherringham wanted to _marry_ her!" Miss
Tressilian gasped.
"Don't ask me what he wanted--I daresay we shall never know. One thing's
very certain--that he didn't like my news, dear old Peter, and that I
shan't soon forget the look in his face as he turned away from me and
slipped out into the street. He was too much upset--he couldn't trust
himself to come back; he had to walk about--he tried to walk it off."
"Let us hope, then, he _has_ walked it off!"
"Ah poor fellow--he couldn't hold out to the end; he has had to come
back and look at her once more. He knows she'll be sublime in these last
scenes."
"Is he so much in love with her as that? What difference does it make
for an actress if she _is_ mar--?" But in this rash inquiry Miss
Tressilian suddenly checked herself.
"We shall probably never know how much he has been in love with her, nor
what difference it makes. We shall never know exactly what he came back
for, nor why he couldn't stand it out there any longer without relief,
nor why he scrambled down here all but straight from the station, nor
why after all, for the last two hours, he has been roaming the streets.
And it doesn't matter, for it's none of our business. But I'm sorry for
him--she is going to be sublime," Nick added. The curtain was rising on
the tragic climax of the play.
Miriam Rooth was sublime; yet it may be confided to the reader that
during these supreme scenes Bridget Dormer directed her eyes less to the
inspired actress than to a figure in the stalls who sat with his own
gaze fastened to the stage. It may further be intimated that Peter
Sherringham, though he saw but a fragment of the performance, read
clear, at the last, in the intense light of genius with which this
fragment was charged, that even so after all he had been rewarded for
his formidable journey. The great trouble of his infatuation subsided,
leaving behind it something appreciably deep and pure. This pacification
was far from taking place at once, but it was helped on, unexpectedly to
him--it began to work at least--the very next night he saw the play,
through the whole of which he then sat. He felt somehow recalled to the
real by the very felicity of this experience, the supreme exhibition
itself. He began to come back as from a far-off province of his history
where miserable madness had reigned. He had been baffled, he had got his
answer; it must last him--that was plain. He didn't fully accept it the
first week or the second; but he accepted it sooner than he could have
supposed had he known what it was to be when he paced at night, under
the southern stars, the deck of the ship bearing him to England.
It had been, as we know, Miss Tressilian's view, and even Biddy's, that
evening, that Peter Sherringham would join them as they left the
theatre. This view, however, was not confirmed by the event, for our
troubled gentleman vanished utterly--disappointingly crude behaviour on
the part of a young diplomatist who had distinguished himself--before
any one could put a hand on him. And he failed to make up for his
crudity by coming to see any one the next day, or even the next. Indeed
many days elapsed and very little would have been known about him had it
not been that, in the country, Mrs. Dallow knew. What Mrs. Dallow knew
was eventually known to Biddy Dormer; and in this way it could be
established in his favour that he had remained some extraordinarily
small number of days in London, had almost directly gone over to Paris
to see his old chief. He came back from Paris--Biddy learnt this not
from Julia, but in a much more immediate way: she knew it by his
pressing the little electric button at the door of Florence Tressilian's
flat one day when the good Florence was out and she herself was at home.
He made on this occasion a very long visit. The good Florence knew it
not much later, you may be sure--and how he had got their address from
Nick--and she took an extravagant pleasure in it. Mr. Sherringham had
never been to see _her_--the like of her--in his life: therefore it was
clear what had made him begin. When he had once begun he kept it up, and
Miss Tressilian's pleasure grew.
Good as she was, she could remember without the slightest relenting what
Nick Dormer had repeated to them at the theatre about the dreary side of
Peter's present post. However, she was not bound to make a stand at this
if persons more nearly concerned, Lady Agnes and the girl herself,
didn't mind it. How little _they_ minded it, and Grace and Julia Dallow
and even Nick, was proved in the course of a meeting that took place at
Harsh during the Easter holidays. The mistress of that seat had a small
and intimate party to celebrate her brother's betrothal. The two ladies
came over from Broadwood; even Nick, for two days, went back to his old
hunting-ground, and Miss Tressilian relinquished for as long a time the
delights of her newly arranged flat. Peter Sherringham obtained an
extension of leave, so that he might go back to his legation with a
wife. Fortunately, as it turned out, Biddy's ordeal, in the more or less
torrid zone, was not cruelly prolonged, for the pair have already
received a superior appointment. It is Lady Agnes's proud opinion that
her daughter is even now shaping their destiny. I say "even now," for
these facts bring me very close to contemporary history. During those
two days at Harsh Nick arranged with the former mistress of his fate the
conditions, as they might be called, under which she should sit to him;
and every one will remember in how recent an exhibition general
attention was attracted, as the newspapers said in describing the
private view, to the noble portrait of a lady which was the final
outcome of that arrangement. Gabriel Nash had been at many a private
view, but he was not at that one.
These matters are highly recent, however, as I say; so that in glancing
about the little circle of the interests I have tried to evoke I am
suddenly warned by a sharp sense of modernness. This renders it
difficult to me, for instance, in taking leave of our wonderful Miriam,
to do much more than allude to the general impression that her
remarkable career is even yet only in its early prime. Basil Dashwood
has got his theatre, and his wife--people know now she _is_ his
wife--has added three or four new parts to her repertory; but every one
is agreed that both in public and in private she has a great deal more
to show. This is equally true of Nick Dormer, in regard to whom I may
finally say that his friend Nash's predictions about his reunion with
Mrs. Dallow have not up to this time been justified. On the other hand,
I must not omit to add, this lady has not, at the latest accounts,
married Mr. Macgeorge. It is very true there has been a rumour that Mr.
Macgeorge is worried about her--has even ceased at all fondly to believe
in her.