The Complete Works of Henry James

by Henry James

  It is a sign of how far he was drawn in different directions at once that when, on reaching Balaklava Place and alighting at the door of a small detached villa of the type of the “retreat,” he learned that Miss Rooth had but a quarter of an hour before quitted the spot with her mother—they had gone to the theatre, to rehearsal, said the maid who answered the bell he had set tinkling behind a stuccoed garden-wall: when at the end of his pilgrimage he was greeted by a disappointment he suddenly found himself relieved and for the moment even saved. Providence was after all taking care of him and he submitted to Providence. He would still be watched over doubtless, even should he follow the two ladies to the theatre, send in his card and obtain admission to the scene of their experiments. All his keen taste for these matters flamed up again, and he wondered what the girl was studying, was rehearsing, what she was to do next. He got back into his hansom and drove down the Edgware Road. By the time he reached the Marble Arch he had changed his mind again, had determined to let Miriam alone for that day. It would be over at eight in the evening—he hardly played fair—and then he should consider himself free. Instead of pursuing his friends he directed himself upon a shop in Bond Street to take a place for their performance. On first coming out he had tried, at one of those establishments strangely denominated “libraries,” to get a stall, but the people to whom he applied were unable to accommodate him—they hadn’t a single seat left. His actual attempt, at another library, was more successful: there was no question of obtaining a stall, but he might by a miracle still have a box. There was a wantonness in paying for a box at a play on which he had already expended four hundred pounds; but while he was mentally measuring this abyss an idea came into his head which flushed the extravagance with the hue of persuasion.

  Peter came out of the shop with the voucher for the box in his pocket, turned into Piccadilly, noted that the day was growing warm and fine, felt glad that this time he had no other strict business than to leave a card or two on official people, and asked himself where he should go if he didn’t go after Miriam. Then it was that he found himself attaching a lively desire and imputing a high importance to the possible view of Nick Dormer’s portrait of her. He wondered which would be the natural place at that hour of the day to look for the artist. The House of Commons was perhaps the nearest one, but Nick, inconsequent and incalculable though so many of his steps, probably didn’t keep the picture there; and, moreover, it was not generally characteristic of him to be in the natural place. The end of Peter’s debate was that he again entered a hansom and drove to Calcutta Gardens. The hour was early for calling, but cousins with whom one’s intercourse was mainly a conversational scuffle would accept it as a practical illustration of that method. And if Julia wanted him to be nice to Biddy—which was exactly, even if with a different view, what he wanted himself—how could he better testify than by a visit to Lady Agnes—he would have in decency to go to see her some time—at a friendly, fraternising hour when they would all be likely to be at home?

  Unfortunately, as it turned out, they were none of them at home, so that he had to fall back on neutrality and the butler, who was, however, more luckily, an old friend. Her ladyship and Miss Dormer were absent from town, paying a visit; and Mr. Dormer was also away, or was on the point of going away for the day. Miss Bridget was in London, but was out; Peter’s informant mentioned with earnest vagueness that he thought she had gone somewhere to take a lesson. On Peter’s asking what sort of lesson he meant he replied: “Oh I think—a—the a-sculpture, you know, sir.” Peter knew, but Biddy’s lesson in “a-sculpture”—it sounded on the butler’s lips like a fashionable new art—struck him a little as a mockery of the helpful spirit in which he had come to look her up. The man had an air of participating respectfully in his disappointment and, to make up for it, added that he might perhaps find Mr. Dormer at his other address. He had gone out early and had directed his servant to come to Rosedale Road in an hour or two with a portmanteau: he was going down to Beauclere in the course of the day, Mr. Carteret being ill—perhaps Mr. Sherringham didn’t know it. Perhaps too Mr. Sherringham would catch him in Rosedale Road before he took his train—he was to have been busy there for an hour. This was worth trying, and Peter immediately drove to Rosedale Road; where in answer to his ring the door was opened to him by Biddy Dormer.

  XXIX

  When that young woman saw him her cheek exhibited the prettiest, pleased, surprised red he had ever observed there, though far from unacquainted with its living tides, and she stood smiling at him with the outer dazzle in her eyes, still making him no motion to enter. She only said, “Oh Peter!” and then, “I’m all alone.”

  “So much the better, dear Biddy. Is that any reason I shouldn’t come in?”

  “Dear no—do come in. You’ve just missed Nick; he has gone to the country—half an hour ago.” She had on a large apron and in her hand carried a small stick, besmeared, as his quick eye saw, with modelling-clay. She dropped the door and fled back before him into the studio, where, when he followed her, she was in the act of flinging a damp cloth over a rough head, in clay, which, in the middle of the room, was supported on a high wooden stand. The effort to hide what she had been doing before he caught a glimpse of it made her redder still and led to her smiling more, to her laughing with a confusion of shyness and gladness that charmed him. She rubbed her hands on her apron, she pulled it off, she looked delightfully awkward, not meeting Peter’s eye, and she said: “I’m just scraping here a little—you mustn’t mind me. What I do is awful, you know. Please, Peter, don’t look, I’ve been coming here lately to make my little mess, because mamma doesn’t particularly like it at home. I’ve had a lesson or two from a lady who exhibits, but you wouldn’t suppose it to see what I do. Nick’s so kind; he lets me come here; he uses the studio so little; I do what I want, or rather what I can. What a pity he’s gone—he’d have been so glad. I’m really alone—I hope you don’t mind. Peter, please don’t look.”

  Peter was not bent on looking; his eyes had occupation enough in Biddy’s own agreeable aspect, which was full of a rare element of domestication and responsibility. Though she had, stretching her bravery, taken possession of her brother’s quarters, she struck her visitor as more at home and more herself than he had ever seen her. It was the first time she had been, to his notice, so separate from her mother and sister. She seemed to know this herself and to be a little frightened by it—just enough to make him wish to be reassuring. At the same time Peter also, on this occasion, found himself touched with diffidence, especially after he had gone back and closed the door and settled down to a regular call; for he became acutely conscious of what Julia had said to him in Paris and was unable to rid himself of the suspicion that it had been said with Biddy’s knowledge. It wasn’t that he supposed his sister had told the girl she meant to do what she could to make him propose to her: that would have been cruel to her—if she liked him enough to consent—in Julia’s perfect uncertainty. But Biddy participated by imagination, by divination, by a clever girl’s secret, tremulous instincts, in her good friend’s views about her, and this probability constituted for Sherringham a sort of embarrassing publicity. He had impressions, possibly gross and unjust, in regard to the way women move constantly together amid such considerations and subtly intercommunicate, when they don’t still more subtly dissemble, the hopes or fears of which persons of the opposite sex form the subject. Therefore poor Biddy would know that if she failed to strike him in the right light it wouldn’t be for want of an attention definitely called to her claims. She would have been tacitly rejected, virtually condemned. He couldn’t without an impulse of fatuity endeavour to make up for this to her by consoling kindness; he was aware that if any one knew it a man would be ridiculous who should take so much as that for granted. But no one would know it: he oddly enough in this calculation of security left Biddy herself out. It didn’t occur to him that she might have a secret, small irony to spare for his ingenious and magnanimous effort to show her ho
w much he liked her in reparation to her for not liking her more. This high charity coloured at any rate the whole of his visit to Rosedale Road, the whole of the pleasant, prolonged chat that kept him there more than an hour. He begged the girl to go on with her work, not to let him interrupt it; and she obliged him at last, taking the cloth off the lump of clay and giving him a chance to be delightful by guessing that the shapeless mass was intended, or would be intended after a while, for Nick. He saw she was more comfortable when she began again to smooth it and scrape it with her little stick, to manipulate it with an ineffectual air of knowing how; for this gave her something to do, relieved her nervousness and permitted her to turn away from him when she talked.

  He walked about the room and sat down; got up and looked at Nick’s things; watched her at moments in silence—which made her always say in a minute that he was not to pass judgement or she could do nothing; observed how her position before her high stand, her lifted arms, her turns of the head, considering her work this way and that, all helped her to be pretty. She repeated again and again that it was an immense pity about Nick, till he was obliged to say he didn’t care a straw for Nick and was perfectly content with the company he found. This was not the sort of tone he thought it right, given the conditions, to take; but then even the circumstances didn’t require him to pretend he liked her less than he did. After all she was his cousin; she would cease to be so if she should become his wife; but one advantage of her not entering into that relation was precisely that she would remain his cousin. It was very pleasant to find a young, bright, slim, rose-coloured kinswoman all ready to recognise consanguinity when one came back from cousinless foreign lands. Peter talked about family matters; he didn’t know, in his exile, where no one took an interest in them, what a fund of latent curiosity about them he treasured. It drew him on to gossip accordingly and to feel how he had with Biddy indefeasible properties in common—ever so many things as to which they’d always understand each other à demi-mot. He smoked a cigarette because she begged him—people always smoked in studios and it made her feel so much more an artist. She apologised for the badness of her work on the ground that Nick was so busy he could scarcely ever give her a sitting; so that she had to do the head from photographs and occasional glimpses. They had hoped to be able to put in an hour that morning, but news had suddenly come that Mr. Carteret was worse, and Nick had hurried down to Beauclere. Mr. Carteret was very ill, poor old dear, and Nick and he were immense friends. Nick had always been charming to him. Peter and Biddy took the concerns of the houses of Dormer and Sherringham in order, and the young man felt after a little as if they were as wise as a French conseil de famille and settling what was best for every one. He heard all about Lady Agnes; he showed an interest in the detail of her existence that he had not supposed himself to possess, though indeed Biddy threw out intimations which excited his curiosity, presenting her mother in a light that might call on his sympathy.

  “I don’t think she has been very happy or very pleased of late,” the girl said. “I think she has had some disappointments, poor dear mamma; and Grace has made her go out of town for three or four days in the hope of a little change. They’ve gone down to see an old lady, Lady St. Dunstans, who never comes to London now and who, you know—she’s tremendously old—was papa’s godmother. It’s not very lively for Grace, but Grace is such a dear she’ll do anything for mamma. Mamma will go anywhere, no matter at what risk of discomfort, to see people she can talk with about papa.”

  Biddy added in reply to a further question that what her mother was disappointed about was—well, themselves, her children and all their affairs; and she explained that Lady Agnes wanted all kinds of things for them that didn’t come, that they didn’t get or seem likely to get, so that their life appeared altogether a failure. She wanted a great deal, Biddy admitted; she really wanted everything, for she had thought in her happier days that everything was to be hers. She loved them all so much and was so proud too: she couldn’t get over the thought of their not being successful. Peter was unwilling to press at this point, for he suspected one of the things Lady Agnes wanted; but Biddy relieved him a little by describing her as eager above all that Grace should get married.

  “That’s too unselfish of her,” he pronounced, not caring at all for Grace. “Cousin Agnes ought to keep her near her always, if Grace is so obliging and devoted.”

  “Oh mamma would give up anything of that sort for our good; she wouldn’t sacrifice us that way!” Biddy protested. “Besides, I’m the one to stay with mamma; not that I can manage and look after her and do everything so well as Grace. But, you know, I want to,” said Biddy with a liquid note in her voice—and giving her lump of clay a little stab for mendacious emphasis.

  “But doesn’t your mother want the rest of you to get married—Percival and Nick and you?” Peter asked.

  “Oh she has given up Percy. I don’t suppose she thinks it would do. Dear Nick of course—that’s just what she does want.”

  He had a pause. “And you, Biddy?”

  “Oh I daresay. But that doesn’t signify—I never shall.”

  Peter got up at this; the tone of it set him in motion and he took a turn round the room. He threw off something cheap about her being too proud; to which she replied that that was the only thing for a girl to be to get on.

  “What do you mean by getting on?”—and he stopped with his hands in his pockets on the other side of the studio.

  “I mean crying one’s eyes out!” Biddy unexpectedly exclaimed; but she drowned the effect of this pathetic paradox in a laugh of clear irrelevance and in the quick declaration: “Of course it’s about Nick that she’s really broken-hearted.”

  “What’s the matter with Nick?” he went on with all his diplomacy.

  “Oh Peter, what’s the matter with Julia?” Biddy quavered softly back to him, her eyes suddenly frank and mournful. “I daresay you know what we all hoped, what we all supposed from what they told us. And now they won’t!” said the girl.

  “Yes, Biddy, I know. I had the brightest prospect of becoming your brother-in-law: wouldn’t that have been it—or something like that? But it’s indeed visibly clouded. What’s the matter with them? May I have another cigarette?” Peter came back to the wide, cushioned bench where he had previously lounged: this was the way they took up the subject he wanted most to look into. “Don’t they know how to love?” he speculated as he seated himself again.

  “It seems a kind of fatality!” Biddy sighed.

  He said nothing for some moments, at the end of which he asked if his companion were to be quite alone during her mother’s absence. She replied that this parent was very droll about that: would never leave her alone and always thought something dreadful would happen to her. She had therefore arranged that Florence Tressilian should come and stay in Calcutta Gardens for the next few days—to look after her and see she did no wrong. Peter inquired with fulness into Florence Tressilian’s identity: he greatly hoped that for the success of Lady Agnes’s precautions she wasn’t a flighty young genius like Biddy. She was described to him as tremendously nice and tremendously clever, but also tremendously old and tremendously safe; with the addition that Biddy was tremendously fond of her and that while she remained in Calcutta Gardens they expected to enjoy themselves tremendously. She was to come that afternoon before dinner.

  “And are you to dine at home?” said Peter.

  “Certainly; where else?”

  “And just you two alone? Do you call that enjoying yourselves tremendously?”

  “It will do for me. No doubt I oughtn’t in modesty to speak for poor Florence.”

  “It isn’t fair to her; you ought to invite some one to meet her.”

  “Do you mean you, Peter?” the girl asked, turning to him quickly and with a look that vanished the instant he caught it.

  “Try me. I’ll come like a shot.”

  “That’s kind,” said Biddy, dropping her hands and now resting her eyes on him gratefully.
She remained in this position as if under a charm; then she jerked herself back to her work with the remark: “Florence will like that immensely.”

  “I’m delighted to please Florence—your description of her’s so attractive!” Sherringham laughed. And when his companion asked him if he minded there not being a great feast, because when her mother went away she allowed her a fixed amount for that sort of thing and, as he might imagine, it wasn’t millions—when Biddy, with the frankness of their pleasant kinship, touched anxiously on this economic point (illustrating, as Peter saw, the lucidity with which Lady Agnes had had in her old age to learn to recognise the occasions when she could be conveniently frugal) he answered that the shortest dinners were the best, especially when one was going to the theatre. That was his case to-night, and did Biddy think he might look to Miss Tressilian to go with them? They’d have to dine early—he wanted not to miss a moment.