Part 87 (1/2)

”Don't be afraid. And may I bring a friend--the friend with whom I'm staying?”

Miriam now just gloomed. ”Do you mean Mrs. Dallow?”

”No, no--Miss Tressilian. She puts me up, she has got a flat. Did you ever see a flat?” asked Biddy expansively. ”My cousin's not in London.”

Miriam replied that she might bring whom she liked and Biddy broke out to her brother: ”Fancy what kindness, Nick: we're to have a box to-night and you're to take me!”

Nick turned to her a face of levity which struck her even at the time as too cynically free, but which she understood when the finer sense of it subsequently recurred to her. Mr. Dashwood interposed with the remark that it was all very well to talk about boxes, but that he didn't see how at that time of day the miracle was to be worked.

”You haven't kept one as I told you?” Miriam demanded.

”As you told me, my dear? Tell the lamb to keep its tenderest mutton from the wolves!”

”You shall have one: we'll arrange it,” Miriam went on to Biddy.

”Let me qualify that statement a little, Miss Dormer,” said Basil Dashwood. ”We'll arrange it if it's humanly possible.”

”We'll arrange it even if it's inhumanly _im_possible--that's just the point,” Miriam declared to the girl. ”Don't talk about trouble--what's he meant for but to take it? _Cela s'annonce bien_, you see,” she continued to Nick: ”doesn't it look as if we should pull beautifully together?” And as he answered that he heartily congratulated her--he was immensely interested in what he had been told--she exclaimed after resting her eyes on him a moment: ”What will you have? It seemed simpler! It was clear there had to be some one.” She explained further to Nick what had led her to come in at that moment, while Dashwood approached Biddy with a civil a.s.surance that they would see, they would leave no stone unturned, though he would not have taken upon himself to promise.

Miriam reminded Nick of the blessing he had been to her nearly a year before, on her other first night, when she was all impatient and on edge; how he had let her come and sit there for hours--helped her to possess her soul till the evening and to keep out of harm's way. The case was the same at present, with the aggravation indeed that he would understand--Dashwood's nerves as well as her own: Dashwood's were a great deal worse than hers. Everything was ready for Juliet; they had been rehearsing for five months--it had kept her from going mad from the treadmill of the other piece--and he, Nick, had occurred to her again, in the last intolerable hours, as the friend in need, the salutary stop-gap, no matter how much she worried him. She shouldn't be turned out? Biddy broke away from Basil Dashwood: she must go, she must hurry off to Miss Tressilian with her news. Florry might make some other stupid engagement for the evening: she must be warned in time. The girl took a flushed, excited leave after having received a renewal of Miriam's pledge and even heard her say to Nick that he must now give back the seat already sent him--they should be sure to have another use for it.

LI

That night at the theatre and in the box--the miracle had been wrought, the treasure found--Nick Dormer pointed out to his two companions the stall he had relinquished, which was close in front; noting how oddly it remained during the whole of the first act vacant. The house was beyond everything, the actress beyond any one; though to describe again so famous an occasion--it has been described repeatedly by other reporters--is not in the compa.s.s of the closing words of a history already too sustained. It is enough to say that these great hours marked an era in contemporary art and that for those who had a spectator's share in them the words ”revelation,” ”incarnation,” ”acclamation,”

”demonstration,” ”ovation”--to name only a few, and all accompanied by the word ”extraordinary”--acquired a new force. Miriam's Juliet was an exquisite image of young pa.s.sion and young despair, expressed in the truest, divinest music that had ever poured from tragic lips. The great childish audience, gaping at her points, expanded there before her like a lap to catch flowers.

During the first interval our three friends in the box had plenty to talk about, and they were so occupied with it that for some time they failed to observe a gentleman who had at last come into the empty stall near the front. This discovery was presently formulated by Miss Tressilian in the cheerful exclamation: ”Only fancy--there's Mr.

Sherringham!” This of course immediately became a high wonder--a wonder for Nick and Biddy, who had not heard of his return; and the prodigy was quickened by the fact that he gave no sign of looking for them or even at them. Having taken possession of his place he sat very still in it, staring straight before him at the curtain. His abrupt reappearance held the seeds of anxiety both for Biddy and for Nick, so that it was mainly Miss Tressilian who had freedom of mind to throw off the theory that he had come back that very hour--had arrived from a long journey. Couldn't they see how strange he was and how brown, how burnt and how red, how tired and how worn? They all inspected him, though Biddy declined Miss Tressilian's gla.s.s; but he was evidently indifferent to notice and finally Biddy, leaning back in her chair, dropped the fantastic words:

”He has come home to marry Juliet!”

Nick glanced at her and then replied: ”What a disaster--to make such a journey as that and to be late for the fair!”

”Late for the fair?”

”Why she's married--these three days. They did it very quietly; Miriam says because her mother hated it and hopes it won't be much known! All the same she's Basil Dashwood's wedded wife--he has come in just in time to take the receipts for Juliet. It's a good thing, no doubt, for there are at least two fortunes to be made out of her, and he'll give up the stage.” Nick explained to Miss Tressilian, who had inquired, that the gentleman in question was the actor who was playing Mercutio, and he asked Biddy if she hadn't known that this was what they were telling him in Rosedale Road that morning. She replied that she had understood nothing but that she was to be where she was, and she sank considerably behind the drapery of the box. From this cover she was able to launch, creditably enough, the exclamation:

”Poor, poor Peter!”

Nick got up and stood looking at poor, poor Peter. ”He ought to come round and speak to us, but if he doesn't see us I suppose he doesn't.”

He quitted the box as to go to the restored exile, and I may add that as soon as he had done so Florence Tressilian bounded over to the dusk in which Biddy had nestled. What pa.s.sed immediately between these young ladies needn't concern us: it is sufficient to mention that two minutes later Miss Tressilian broke out:

”Look at him, dearest; he's turning his head this way!”

”Thank you, I don't care to watch his turns,” said Biddy; and she doubtless demeaned herself in the high spirit of these words. It nevertheless happened that directly afterwards she had certain knowledge of his having glanced at his watch as if to judge how soon the curtain would rise again, as well as of his having then jumped up and pa.s.sed quickly out of his place. The curtain had risen again without his reappearing and without Nick's returning. Indeed by the time Nick slipped in a good deal of the third act was over; and even then, even when the curtain descended, Peter had not come back. Nick sat down in silence to watch the stage, to which the breathless attention of his companions seemed attached, though Biddy after a moment threw round at him a single quick look. At the end of the act they were all occupied with the recalls, the applause and the responsive loveliness of Juliet as she was led out--Mercutio had to give her up to Romeo--and even for a few minutes after the deafening roar had subsided nothing was said among the three. At last Nick began:

”It's quite true he has just arrived; he's in Great Stanhope Street.

They've given him several weeks, to make up for the uncomfortable way they bundled him off--to get there in time for some special business that had suddenly to be gone into--when he first went out: he tells me they even then promised that. He got into Southampton only a few hours ago, rushed up by the first train he could catch and came off here without any dinner.”