Part 86 (1/2)
Nick emitted a long strange sound. ”She thinks perhaps, but she doesn't think enough; otherwise she'd arrive at this better thought--that she knows nothing whatever about my life.”
”Ah brother,” the girl pleaded with solemn eyes, ”you don't imagine what an interest she takes in it. She has told me many times--she has talked lots to me about it.” Biddy paused and then went on, an anxious little smile s.h.i.+ning through her gravity as if from a cautious wonder as to how much he would take: ”She has a conviction it was Mr. Nash who made trouble between you.”
”Best of little sisters,” Nick p.r.o.nounced, ”those are thoroughly second-rate ideas, the result of a perfectly superficial view. Excuse my possibly priggish tone, but they really attribute to my dear detached friend a part he's quite incapable of playing. He can neither make trouble nor take trouble; no trouble could ever either have come out of him or have got into him. Moreover,” our young man continued, ”if Julia has talked to you so much about the matter there's no harm in my talking to you a little. When she threw me over in an hour it was on a perfectly definite occasion. That occasion was the presence in my studio of a dishevelled, an abandoned actress.”
”Oh Nick, she has not thrown you over!” Biddy protested. ”She has not--I've proof.”
He felt at this direct denial a certain stir of indignation and looked at the girl with momentary sternness. ”Has she sent you here to tell me this? What do you mean by proof?”
Biddy's eyes, at these questions, met her brother's with a strange expression, and for a few seconds, while she looked entreatingly into them, she wavered there with parted lips and vaguely stretched out her hands. The next minute she had burst into tears--she was sobbing on his breast. He said ”Hallo!” and soothed her; but it was very quickly over.
Then she told him what she meant by her proof and what she had had on her mind ever since her present arrival. It was a message from Julia, but not to say--not to say what he had questioned her about just before; though indeed, more familiar now that he had his arm round her, she boldly expressed the hope it might in the end come to the same thing.
Julia simply wanted to know--- she had instructed her to sound him discreetly--if Nick would undertake her portrait; and she wound up this experiment in ”sounding” by the statement that their beautiful kinswoman was dying to sit.
”Dying to sit?” echoed Nick, whose turn it was this time to feel his colour rise.
”At any moment you like after Easter, when she comes up. She wants a full-length and your very best, your most splendid work.”
Nick stared, not caring that he had blushed. ”Is she serious?”
”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 embarra.s.sment with which he had finally averted himself from Biddy. The embarra.s.sment, 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.”