The Complete Works of Henry James

by Henry James

  “The theatre—Miss Tressilian?” she stared, interrupted and in suspense again.

  “Would it incommode you very much to dine say at 7.15 and accept a place in my box? The finger of Providence was in it when I took a box an hour ago. I particularly like your being free to go—if you are free.”

  She began almost to rave with pleasure. “Dear Peter, how good you are! They’ll have it at any hour. Florence will be so glad.”

  “And has Florence seen Miss Rooth?”

  “Miss Rooth?” the girl repeated, redder than before. He felt on the spot that she had heard of the expenditure of his time and attention on that young lady. It was as if she were conscious of how conscious he would himself be in speaking of her, and there was a sweetness in her allowance for him on that score. But Biddy was more confused for him than he was for himself. He guessed in a moment how much she had thought over what she had heard; this was indicated by her saying vaguely, “No, no, I’ve not seen her.” Then she knew she was answering a question he hadn’t asked her, and she went on: “We shall be too delighted. I saw her—perhaps you remember—in your rooms in Paris. I thought her so wonderful then! Every one’s talking of her here. But we don’t go to the theatre much, you know: we don’t have boxes offered us except when you come. Poor Nick’s too much taken up in the evening. I’ve wanted awfully to see her. They say she’s magnificent.”

  “I don’t know,” Peter was glad to be able honestly to answer. “I haven’t seen her.”

  “You haven’t seen her?”

  “Never, Biddy. I mean on the stage. In private often—yes,” he conscientiously added.

  “Oh!” Biddy exclaimed, bending her face on Nick’s bust again. She asked him no question about the new star, and he offered her no further information. There were things in his mind pulling him different ways, so that for some minutes silence was the result of the conflict. At last he said, after an hesitation caused by the possibility that she was ignorant of the fact he had lately elicited from Julia, though it was more probable she might have learned it from the same source:

  “Am I perhaps indiscreet in alluding to the circumstance that Nick has been painting Miss Rooth’s portrait?”

  “You’re not indiscreet in alluding to it to me, because I know it.”

  “Then there’s no secret nor mystery about it?”

  Biddy just considered. “I don’t think mamma knows it.”

  “You mean you’ve been keeping it from her because she wouldn’t like it?”

  “We’re afraid she may think papa wouldn’t have liked it.”

  This was said with an absence of humour at which Peter could but show amusement, though he quickly recovered himself, repenting of any apparent failure of respect to the high memory of his late celebrated relative. He threw off rather vaguely: “Ah yes, I remember that great man’s ideas,” and then went on: “May I ask if you know it, the fact we’re talking of, through Julia or through Nick?”

  “I know it from both of them.”

  “Then if you’re in their confidence may I further ask if this undertaking of Nick’s is the reason why things seem to be at an end between them?”

  “Oh I don’t think she likes it,” Biddy had to say.

  “Isn’t it good?”

  “Oh I don’t mean the picture—she hasn’t seen it. But his having done it.”

  “Does she dislike it so much that that’s why she won’t marry him?”

  Biddy gave up her work, moving away from it to look at it. She came and sat down on the long bench on which Sherringham had placed himself. Then she broke out: “Oh Peter, it’s a great trouble—it’s a very great trouble; and I can’t tell you, for I don’t understand it.”

  “If I ask you,” he said, “it’s not to pry into what doesn’t concern me; but Julia’s my sister, and I can’t after all help taking some interest in her life. She tells me herself so little. She doesn’t think me worthy.”

  “Ah poor Julia!” Biddy wailed defensively. Her tone recalled to him that Julia had at least thought him worthy to unite himself to Bridget Dormer, and inevitably betrayed that the girl was thinking of that also. While they both thought of it they sat looking into each other’s eyes.

  “Nick, I’m sure, doesn’t treat you that way; I’m sure he confides in you; he talks to you about his occupations, his ambitions,” Peter continued. “And you understand him, you enter into them, you’re nice to him, you help him.”

  “Oh Nick’s life—it’s very dear to me,” Biddy granted.

  “That must be jolly for him.”

  “It makes me very happy.”

  Peter uttered a low, ambiguous groan; then he cried with irritation; “What the deuce is the matter with them then? Why can’t they hit it off together and be quiet and rational and do what every one wants them to?”

  “Oh Peter, it’s awfully complicated!” the girl sighed with sagacity.

  “Do you mean that Nick’s in love with her?”

  “In love with Julia?”

  “No, no, with Miriam Rooth.”

  She shook her head slowly, then with a smile which struck him as one of the sweetest things he had ever seen—it conveyed, at the expense of her own prospects, such a shy, generous little mercy of reassurance—”He isn’t, Peter,” she brought out. “Julia thinks it trifling—all that sort of thing,” she added “She wants him to go in for different honours.”

  “Julia’s the oddest woman. I mean I thought she loved him,” Peter explained. “And when you love a person—!” He continued to make it out, leaving his sentence impatiently unfinished, while Biddy, with lowered eyes, sat waiting—it so interested her—to learn what you did when you loved a person. “I can’t conceive her giving him up. He has great ability, besides being such a good fellow.”

  “It’s for his happiness, Peter—that’s the way she reasons,” Biddy set forth. “She does it for an idea; she has told me a great deal about it, and I see the way she feels.”

  “You try to, Biddy, because you’re such a dear good-natured girl, but I don’t believe you do in the least,” he took the liberty of replying. “It’s too little the way you yourself would feel. Julia’s idea, as you call it, must be curious.”

  “Well, it is, Peter,” Biddy mournfully admitted. “She won’t risk not coming out at the top.”

  “At the top of what?”

  “Oh of everything.” Her tone showed a trace of awe of such high views.

  “Surely one’s at the top of everything when one’s in love.”

  “I don’t know,” said the girl.

  “Do you doubt it?” Peter asked.

  “I’ve never been in love and I never shall be.”

  “You’re as perverse, in your way, as Julia,” he returned to this. “But I confess I don’t understand Nick’s attitude any better. He seems to me, if I may say so, neither fish nor flesh.”

  “Oh his attitude’s very noble, Peter; his state of mind’s wonderfully interesting,” Biddy pleaded. “Surely you must be in favour of art,” she beautifully said.

  It made him look at her a moment. “Dear Biddy, your little digs are as soft as zephyrs.”

  She coloured, but she protested. “My little digs? What do you mean? Aren’t you in favour of art?”

  “The question’s delightfully simple. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Everything has its place. A parliamentary life,” he opined, “scarce seems to me the situation for portrait-painting.”

  “That’s just what Nick says.”

  “You talk of it together a great deal?”

  “Yes, Nick’s very good to me.”

  “Clever Nick! And what do you advise him?”

  “Oh to do something.”

  “That’s valuable,” Peter laughed. “Not to give up his sweetheart for the sake of a paint-pot, I hope?”

  “Never, never, Peter! It’s not a question of his giving up,” Biddy pursued, “for Julia has herself shaken free. I think she never really felt safe—she loved him, but was afr
aid of him. Now she’s only afraid—she has lost the confidence she tried to have. Nick has tried to hold her, but she has wrested herself away. Do you know what she said to me? She said, ‘My confidence has gone for ever.’”

  “I didn’t know she was such a prig!” Julia’s brother commented. “They’re queer people, verily, with water in their veins instead of blood. You and I wouldn’t be like that, should we?—though you have taken up such a discouraging position about caring for a fellow.”

  “I care for art,” poor Biddy returned.

  “You do, to some purpose”—and Peter glanced at the bust.

  “To that of making you laugh at me.”

  But this he didn’t heed. “Would you give a good man up for ‘art’?”

  “A good man? What man?”

  “Well, say me—if I wanted to marry you.”

  She had the briefest of pauses. “Of course I would—in a moment. At any rate I’d give up the House of Commons,” she amended. “That’s what Nick’s going to do now—only you mustn’t tell any one.”

  Peter wondered. “He’s going to chuck up his seat?”

  “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.

  Peter stared. “I thought you hadn’t seen her.”

  “I saw her in Paris—twice. She was wonderfully clever, but she didn’t charm me.”

  He quickly considered, saying then all kindly: “I won’t inflict the thing on you in that case—we’ll leave it alone for the present.” Biddy made no reply to this at first, but after a moment went straight over to the row of stacked canvases and exposed several of them to the light. “Why did you say you wished to go to the theatre to-night?” her companion continued.

  Still she was silent; after which, with her back turned to him and a little tremor in her voice while she drew forth successively her brother’s studies, she made answer: “For the sake of your company, Peter! Here it is, I think,” she added, moving a large canvas with some effort. “No, no, I’ll hold it for you. Is that the light?”

  She wouldn’t let him take it; she bade him stand off
and allow her to place it in the right position. In this position she carefully presented it, supporting it at the proper angle from behind and showing her head and shoulders above it. From the moment his eyes rested on the picture Peter accepted this service without protest. Unfinished, simplified and in some portions merely suggested, it was strong, vivid and assured, it had already the look of life and the promise of power. Peter felt all this and was startled, was strangely affected—he had no idea Nick moved with that stride. Miriam, seated, was represented in three-quarters, almost to her feet. She leaned forward with one of her legs crossed over the other, her arms extended and foreshortened, her hands locked together round her knee. Her beautiful head was bent a little, broodingly, and her splendid face seemed to look down at life. She had a grand appearance of being raised aloft, with a wide regard, a survey from a height of intelligence, for the great field of the artist, all the figures and passions he may represent. Peter asked himself where his kinsman had learned to paint like that. He almost gasped at the composition of the thing and at the drawing of the difficult arms. Biddy abstained from looking round the corner of the canvas as she held it; she only watched, in Peter’s eyes, for this gentleman’s impression of it. That she easily caught, and he measured her impression—her impression of his impression—when he went after a few minutes to relieve her. She let him lift the thing out of her grasp; he moved it and rested it, so that they could still see it, against the high back of a chair. “It’s tremendously good,” he then handsomely pronounced.