Part 2 (2/2)
Nick Dormer walked away with Biddy, but he had not gone far before he stopped in front of a clever bust, where his mother, in the distance, saw him playing in the air with his hand, carrying out by this gesture, which presumably was applausive, some critical remark he had made to his sister. Lady Agnes raised her gla.s.s to her eyes by the long handle to which rather a clanking chain was attached, perceiving that the bust represented an ugly old man with a bald head; at which her ladys.h.i.+p indefinitely sighed, though it was not apparent in what way such an object could be detrimental to her daughter. Nick pa.s.sed on and quickly paused again; this time, his mother discerned, before the marble image of a strange grimacing woman. Presently she lost sight of him; he wandered behind things, looking at them all round.
”I ought to get plenty of ideas for my modelling, oughtn't I, Nick?” his sister put to him after a moment.
”Ah my poor child, what shall I say?”
”Don't you think I've any capacity for ideas?” the girl continued ruefully.
”Lots of them, no doubt. But the capacity for applying them, for putting them into practice--how much of that have you?”
”How can I tell till I try?”
”What do you mean by trying, Biddy dear?”
”Why you know--you've seen me.”
”Do you call that trying?” her brother amusedly demanded.
”Ah Nick!” she said with sensibility. But then with more spirit: ”And please what do you call it?”
”Well, this for instance is a good case.” And her companion pointed to another bust--a head of a young man in terra-cotta, at which they had just arrived; a modern young man to whom, with his thick neck, his little cap and his wide ring of dense curls, the artist had given the air of some st.u.r.dy Florentine of the time of Lorenzo.
Biddy looked at the image a moment. ”Ah that's not trying; that's succeeding.”
”Not altogether; it's only trying seriously.”
”Well, why shouldn't I be serious?”
”Mother wouldn't like it. She has inherited the fine old superst.i.tion that art's pardonable only so long as it's bad--so long as it's done at odd hours, for a little distraction, like a game of tennis or of whist.
The only thing that can justify it, the effort to carry it as far as one can (which you can't do without time and singleness of purpose), she regards as just the dangerous, the criminal element. It's the oddest hind-part-before view, the drollest immorality.”
”She doesn't want one to be professional,” Biddy returned as if she could do justice to every system.
”Better leave it alone then. There are always duffers enough.”
”I don't want to be a duffer,” Biddy said. ”But I thought you encouraged me.”
”So I did, my poor child. It was only to encourage myself.”
”With your own work--your painting?”
”With my futile, my ill-starred endeavours. Union is strength--so that we might present a wider front, a larger surface of resistance.”
Biddy for a while said nothing and they continued their tour of observation. She noticed how he pa.s.sed over some things quickly, his first glance sufficing to show him if they were worth another, and then recognised in a moment the figures that made some appeal. His tone puzzled but his certainty of eye impressed her, and she felt what a difference there was yet between them--how much longer in every case she would have taken to discriminate. She was aware of how little she could judge of the value of a thing till she had looked at it ten minutes; indeed modest little Biddy was compelled privately to add ”And often not even then.” She was mystified, as I say--Nick was often mystifying, it was his only fault--but one thing was definite: her brother had high ability. It was the consciousness of this that made her bring out at last: ”I don't so much care whether or no I please mamma, if I please you.”
”Oh don't lean on me. I'm a wretched broken reed--I'm no use _really_!”
he promptly admonished her.
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