(He remembered it.)

"That don't matter. Aunt's gone instead of me."

"Wearing it? She couldn't. Get into it at once, and leave that
confounded cloth alone and go. You've plenty of time."

She repeated that she did not want to go, and went on laying the cloth.

"Why not?" said he.

"I don't want to leave you, sir."

"Do you mean to say you've given up that Dog Show--with Joey in it--for
me?"

"Joey isn't in it; and I'd rather be here looking after you."

"I won't be looked after. I insist on your going. Do you hear?"

"Yes, sir, I hear you."

"And you're going?"

"No, sir." She meditated with her head a little on one side; a way she
had. "I've got a headache, and--and--and I don't want to go and see them
other dogs, sir."

"Oh, that's it, is it? A feeling for Joey?"

But by the turn of head he knew it wasn't. Rose was lying, the little
minx.

"But you _must_ go somewhere. You _shall_ go somewhere. You shall go--I
say, supposing you go for a drive with me?"

"You mustn't take me for drives, sir."

"Mustn't I?"

"I don't want you to give me drives--or--or anything."

"I see. You are to do all sorts of things for me, and I'm not to be
allowed to do anything for you."

She placed his chair for him in silence, and as he seated himself he
looked up into her face.

"Do you want to please me, Rose?"

Her face was firm as she looked at him. It was as if she held him in
check by the indomitable set of her chin, and the steady light of her
eyes. (Where should he be if Rose were to let herself go?)

Her mouth trembled, it protested against these austerities and
decisions. It told him dumbly that she did want, very much, to please
him; but that she knew her place.

Did she? Did she indeed know her place? Did he know it?

"You're right, Rose. That isn't the way I ought to have put it. Will you
do me the honour of going for a drive with me?"

She looked down, troubled and uncertain.

"It can be done, Rose," he said, answering her thoughts. "It can be
done. The only thing is, would you like it?"

"Yes, sir, I would like it very much."

"Can you be ready by three o'clock?"

At three she was ready.

She wore the lilac gown she had bought for the Show, and the hat. It had
red roses in it.

He did not like her gown. It was trimmed with coarse lace, and he could
not bear to see her in anything that was not fine.

"Is anything wrong with my hair?" said Rose.

"No, nothing's wrong with your hair, but I think I like you better in
the green and brown----"

"That's only for every day."

"Then I shall like you better every day."

"Why do you like my green and brown dress?"

He looked at her again and suddenly he knew why.

"Because you had it on when I first saw you. I say, would you mind
awfully putting it on instead of that thing?"

She did mind, awfully; but she went and put it on. And still there was
something wrong with her. It was her hat. It did not go with the green
and brown. But he felt that he would be a brute to ask her to take that
off, too.

They drove to Hendon and back. They had tea at "Jack Straw's Castle."
(Rose's face surrendered to that ecstasy.) And then they strolled over
the West Heath and found a hollow where Rose sat down under a birch-tree
and Tanqueray stretched himself at her feet.

"Rose," he said suddenly, "do you know what a wood-nymph is?"

"Well," said Rose, "I suppose it's some sort of a little animal."

"Yes, it's a little animal. A delightful little animal."

"Can you catch it and stroke it?"

"No. If you tried it would run away. Besides, you're not allowed to
catch it, or to stroke it. The wood-nymph is very strictly preserved."

Rose smiled; for though she did not know what a wood-nymph was, she knew
that Mr. Tanqueray was looking at her all the time.

"The wood-nymphs always dress in green and brown."

"Like me?"

"Like you. Only they don't wear boots" (Rose hid her boots), "nor yet
collars."

"You wouldn't like to see me without a collar."

"I'd like to see you without that hat."

Any difficulty in taking Rose about with him would lie in Rose's hat. He
could not say what was wrong with it except that the roses in it were
too red and gay for Rose's gravity.

"Would you mind taking it off?"

She took it off and put it in her lap. Surrendered as she was, she could
not disobey. The eternal spell was on her.

Tanqueray removed her hat gently and hid it behind him. He laid his
hands in her lap. It was deep delight to touch her. She covered his
hands with hers. That was all he asked of her and all she thought of
giving.

On all occasions which she was prepared for, Rose was the soul of
propriety and reserve. But this, the great occasion, had come upon her
unaware, and Nature had her will of her. Through Rose she sent out the
sign and signal that he waited for. And Rose became the vehicle of that
love which Nature fosters and protects; it was visible and tangible, in
her eyes, and in her rosy face and in the naГЇf movements of her hands.

Sudden and swift and fierce his passion came upon him, but he only lay
there at her feet, holding her hands, and gazing into her face, dumb,
like any lover of her class.

Then Rose lifted her hands from his and spoke.

"What have you done with my hat?"

In that moment he had turned and sat on it.

Deliberately, yet impulsively, and without a twinge of remorse, he had
sat on it. But not so that Rose could see him.

"I haven't done anything _with_ it," said he, "I couldn't do anything
with a hat like that."

"You've 'idden it somewhere."

He got up slowly, feigning a search, and produced what a minute ago had
been Rose's hat.

It was an absurd thing of wire and net, Rose's hat, and it had collapsed
irreparably.

"Well, I declare, if you haven't gone and sat on it."

"It looks as if I had. Can you forgive me?"

"Well--if it was an accident."

He looked down upon her tenderly.

"No, Rose, it was not an accident. I couldn't bear that hat."

He put his hand on her arm and raised her to her feet.

"And now," he said, "the only thing we can do is to go and get another
one."

They went slowly back, she shamefaced and bareheaded, he leading her by
the arm till they found themselves in Heath Street outside a magnificent
hat-shop.

Chance took him there, for Rose, interrogated on the subject of
hat-shops, was obstinately reticent.

But here, in this temple, in its wonderful window, before a curtain, on
a stage, like actors in a gay drama, he saw hats; black hats and white
hats; green and blue and rose-coloured hats; hats of all shapes and
sizes; airily perched; laid upon velvet; veiled and unveiled;
befeathered and beflowered. Hats of a beauty and a splendour before
which Rose had stood many a time in awful contemplation, and had hurried
past with eyes averted, leaving behind her the impermissible dream.

And now she had a thousand scruples about entering. He had hit, she
said, on the most expensive shop in Hampstead. Miss Kentish wouldn't
think of buying a hat there. No, she wouldn't have it. He must please,
please, Mr. Tanqueray, let her buy herself a plain straw and trim it.

But he seized her by the arm and drew her in. And once in there was no
more use resisting, it only made her look foolish.

Reality with its harsh conditions had vanished for a moment. It was like
a funny dream to be there, in Madame Rodier's shop, with Mr. Tanqueray
looking at her as she tried on innumerable hats, and Madame herself,
serving her, putting the hats on the right way, and turning her round
and round so that Mr. Tanqueray could observe the effect from every side
of her.

Madame talked all the time to Mr. Tanqueray and ignored Rose.

Rose had a mortal longing for a rose-coloured hat, and Madame wouldn't
let her have it. Madame, who understood Mr. Tanqueray's thoughts better
than if he had expressed them, insisted on a plain black hat with a
black feather.

"That's madame's hat, sir," said Madame. "We must keep her very simple."

"We must," said Tanqueray, with fervour. He thought he had never seen
anything so enchanting in its simplicity as Rose's face under the broad
black brim with its sweeping feather.

Rose had to wear the hat going home. Tanqueray carried the old one in a
paper parcel.

At the gate of the corner house he paused and looked at his watch.

"We've half-an-hour yet before we need go in. I want to talk to you."

He led her through the willows, and up the green slope opposite the
house. There was a bench on the top, and he made her sit on it beside
him.

"I suppose," he said, "you think that when we go in I shall let you wait
on me, and it'll be just the same as it was before?"

"Yes, sir. Just the same."

"It won't, Rose, it can't. You may wait on me to-night, but I shall go
away to-morrow."

She turned her face to him, it was dumb with its trouble.

"Oh no--no, sir--don't go away."

"I must. But before I go, I want to ask you if you'll be my wife----"

The hands she held clasped in her lap gripped each other tight. Her
mouth was set.

"I'm asking you now, Rose. To be my wife. My wife," he repeated
fiercely, as if he repelled with violence a contrary suggestion.

"I can't be your wife, sir," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because," she said simply, "I'm not a lady."

At that Tanqueray cried, "Ah," as if she had hurt him.

"No, sir, I'm not, and you mustn't think of it."

"I shall think of nothing else, and talk of nothing else, until you say
yes."

She shook her little head; and from the set of her chin he was aware of
the extreme decision of her character.

He refrained from any speech. His hand sought hers, for he remembered
how, just now, she had unbent at the holding of her hand.

But she drew it gently away.

"No," said she. "I look at it sensible. I can see how it is. You've been
ill, and you're upset, and you don't know what you're doin'--sir."

"I do--madam."

She smiled and drew back her smile as she had drawn back her head. She
was all for withdrawal.

Tanqueray in his attempt had let go the parcel that he held. She seized
it in a practical, business-like manner which had the perfect touch of
finality. Then she rose and went back to the house, and he followed her,
still pleading, still protesting. But Rose made herself more than ever
deaf and dumb. When he held the gate open for her she saw her advantage,
darted in, and vanished (his divinity!) down the area steps.

She went up-stairs to her little garret, and there, first of all, she
looked at herself in the glass. Her face was strange to her under the
black hat with its sweeping feather. She shook her head severely at the
person in the glass. She made her take off the hat with the feather and
put it by with that veneration which attends the disposal of a best hat.
The other one, the one with the roses, she patted and pulled and
caressed affectionately, till she had got it back into something of the
shape it had been, to serve for second best. Then she wished she had
left it as it was.

She loved them both, the new one because he had given it her, and the
old one because he had sat on it.

Finally she smoothed her hair to an extreme sleekness, put on a clean
apron and went down-stairs.

In the evening she appeared to Tanqueray, punctual and subservient,
wearing the same air of reticence and distance with which she had waited
on him first. He was to see, it seemed to say, that she was only little
Rose Eldred, his servant, to whom it was not proper that he should
speak.

But he did speak. He put his back to the door she would have escaped by,
and kept her prisoned there, utterly in his power.

Rose, thus besieged, delivered her ultimatum.

"Well," she said, "you take a year to think it over sensible."

"A year?"

"A year. And if you're in the same mind then as you are now, p'raps I
won't say no."

"A year? But in a year I may be dead."

"You come to me," said Rose, "if you're dyin'."

"And you'll have me then?" he said savagely.

"Yes. I'll 'ave you then."

But, though all night Tanqueray by turns raged and languished, it was
Rose who, in the morning, looked about to die. Not that he saw her. He
never saw her all that day. And at evening he listened in vain for her
call at the gate, her salutation to the night: "Min--Min--Minny!
Puss--Puss--Puss!"

For in the afternoon Rose left the house, attended by her uncle, who
carried by its cord her little trunk.

In her going forth she wore a clean white linen gown. She wore, not the
Hat, nor yet the sad thing that Tanqueray had sat on, but a little black
bonnet, close as a cap, with a black velvet bow in the front, and black
velvet strings tied beneath her chin.

It was the dress she had worn when she was nurse in a gentleman's
family.




V


Late in the evening of that day, Tanqueray, as he sat in miserable
meditation, was surprised by the appearance of Mrs. Eldred. She held in
her hand Rose's hat, the hat he had given her, which she placed before
him on the table.

"You'll be good enough, sir," said Mrs. Eldred, "to take that back."

"Why should I take it back?" he replied, with that artificial gaiety
which had been his habitual defence against the approaches of Mrs.
Eldred.

"Because, it was all very well for you to offer Rose wot you did, sir,
and she'd no call to refuse it. But a 'at's different. There's meanin',"
said Mrs. Eldred, "in a 'at."

Tanqueray looked at the hat.

"Meaning? If you knew all the meaning there is in that hat, Mrs. Eldred,
you'd feel, as I do, that you knew _something_. Half the poetry that's
been written has less meaning in it than that hat. That hat fulfills all
the requirements of poetry. It is simple--extremely simple--and sensuous
and passionate. Yes, passionate. It would be impossible to conceive a
hat less afflicted with the literary taint. It stands, as I see it, for
emotion reduced to its last and purest expression. In short, Mrs.
Eldred, what that hat doesn't mean isn't worth meaning."

"If you'd explain _your_ meaning, sir, I should be obliged."

"I am explaining it. My meaning, Mrs. Eldred, is that Rose wore that
hat."

"I know she did, sir, and she 'adn't ought to 'ave wore it. I'm only
askin' _you_, sir, to be good enough to take it back."

"Take it back? But whatever should I do with it? I can't wear it. I
might fall down and worship it, but--No, I couldn't wear it. It would be
sacrilege."

That took Mrs. Eldred's breath away, so that she sat down and wheezed.

"Does Rose not know what that hat means?" he asked.

"No, sir. I'll say that for her. She didn't think till I arst her."

"Then--I think--you'd perhaps better send Rose to me."

"Sir?"

"Please send her to me. I want her."

"And you may want her, sir. Rose isn't here."

"Not here? Where is she? I must see her."

"Rose is visitin' in the country, for her 'ealth."

"Her health? Is she ill?"

Mrs. Eldred executed a vast gesture that dismissed Rose.

"Where is she?" he repeated. "I'll go down and see her."

"You will not, sir. Her uncle wouldn't hear of it."

"But, by God! he shall hear of it."

He rang the bell with fury.

"It's no use your ringin', sir. Eldred's out."

"What have you done this for?"

"To get the child out of harm's way, sir. We're not blamin' you, sir.
We're blamin' 'er."

"Her? Her?"

"Properly speakin', we're not blamin' anybody. We're no great ones for
blamin', me and Eldred. But, if you'll excuse my sayin' so, sir, there's
a party would be glad of your rooms next month, a party takin' the 'ole
'ouse, and if you would be so good as to try and suit yourself
elsewhere----Though we don't want to put you to no inconvenience, sir."

It was extraordinary, but the more Mrs. Eldred's meaning was offensive,
the more her manner was polite. He reflected long afterwards that,
really, a lady, in such difficult circumstances, could hardly have
acquitted herself better.

"Oh, is that all? I'll go. But you'll give me Rose's address."

"You leave Rose alone, sir. Rose's address don't concern you."

"Rose's address concerns me a good deal more than my own, I can tell
you. So you'd better give it me."

"Look 'ere, sir. Are you actin' honest by that girl, or are you not?"

"What the devil do you mean by asking me that?"

His violence made her immense bulk tremble; but her soul stood firm.

"I dessay you mean no 'arm, sir. But we can't 'ave you playin' with 'er.
That's all."

"Playing with her? Playing?"

"Yes, playin'. Wot else is it? You know, sir, you ain't thinkin' of
marryin' 'er."

"That's just what I am thinking of."

"You 'aven't told _'er_ that."

"I _have_ told her. And, by Heaven! I'll do it."

"You mean that, sir?"

"Of course I mean it. What else should I mean?"

She sat meditating, taking it in slowly.

"You'll never make 'er 'appy, sir. Nor she you."

"She and I are the best judges of that."

"'Ave you spoke to 'er?"

"Yes. I told you I had."

"Not a word 'ave she said to _me_."

"Well, I dare say she wouldn't."

"Sir?"

"She wouldn't have me."

Mrs. Eldred's lower lip dropped, and she stared at Tanqueray.

"She wouldn't 'ave you? Then, depend upon it, that's wot made 'er ill."

"Ill?"

"Yes, ill, sir. Frettin', I suppose."

"Where's that address? Give it me at once."

"No, sir, I darsen't give it you. Eldred'd never forgive me."

"Haven't I told you I'm going to marry her?"

"I don't know, sir, as 'ow Rose'll marry _you_. When she's set, she's
set. And if you'll forgive my saying it, sir, Rose is a good girl, but
she's not in your class, sir, and it isn't suitable. And Rose, I dessay,
she's 'ad the sense to see it so."

"She's got to see it as I see it. That address?"

Mrs. Eldred rose heavily. She still trembled.

"You'd best speak to her uncle. 'E'll give it you if 'e approves. And if
'e doesn't 'e won't."

He stormed. But he was impotent before this monument of middle-class
integrity.

"When will Eldred be back?"

"We're expecting of 'im nine o'clock to-night."

"Mind you send him up as soon as he comes in."

"Very good, sir."

She paused.

"Wot am I to do with that 'at?"

He looked at her and at the hat. He laughed.

"You can leave the hat with me."

She moved slowly away. "Stop!" he cried; "have you got such a thing as a
band-box?"

"I think I might 'ave, sir; if I could lay my 'and on it."

"Lay your hand on it, then, and bring it to me."

She brought it. An enormous band-box, but brown, which was a good
colour. He lowered the hat into it with care and shut the lid on it,
reverently, as if he were committing some sacred emblem to its shrine.

He sat at his writing-table, tried to work and accomplished nothing. His
heart waited for the stroke of nine.

At nine there came to his summons the little, lean, brown man, Rose's
uncle. Eldred, who was a groom, was attired with excessive horsiness. He
refused to come further into the room than its threshold, where he stood
at attention, austerely servile, and respectfully despotic.

The interview in all points resembled Tanqueray's encounter with Mrs.
Eldred; except that the little groom, who knew his world, was even more
firmly persuaded that the gentleman was playing with his Rose.

"And we can't 'ave that, sir," said Eldred.

"You're not going to have it."

"No, sir, we ain't," reiterated Eldred. "We can't 'ave any such goin's
on 'ere."

"Look here--don't be an idiot--it isn't your business, you know, to
interfere."

"Not my business? When 'er father left 'er to me? I should like to know
what is my business," said Mr. Eldred hotly.

Tanqueray saw that he would have to be patient with him. "Yes, _I_ know.
_That's_ all right. Don't you see, Eldred, I'm going to marry her."

But his eagerness woke in Eldred a ghastlier doubt. Rose's uncle stood
firmer than ever, not turning his head, but casting at Tanqueray a
small, sidelong glance of suspicion.

"And _why_ do you want to marry her, sir? You tell me that."

Tanqueray saw.

"Because I want her. And it's the only way to get her. Do you need me to
tell you that?"

The man reddened. "I beg your pardon, sir."

"You beg _her_ pardon, you mean."

Eldred was silent. He had been hit hard, that time. Then he spoke.

"Are you certain sure of your feelin's, sir?"

"I'm certain of nothing in this world except my feelings."

"Because" (Eldred was slow but steady and indomitable in coming to his
point), "because we don't want 'er 'eart broke."

"_You_'re breaking it, you fool, every minute you stand there. Give me
her address."

In the end he gave it.

Down-stairs, in the kitchen, by the ashes of the raked-out fire, he
discussed the situation with his wife.

"Did you tell him plain," said Mrs. Eldred, "that we'd 'ave no
triflin'?"

"I did."

"Did you tell 'im that if 'e was not certain sure 'e wanted 'er, there
was a young man who did?"

Eldred said nothing to that question. He lit a pipe and began to smoke
it.

"Did you tell 'im," his wife persisted, "about Mr. Robinson?"

"No, I didn't, old girl."

"Well, if it 'ad bin me I should have said, 'Mr. Tanqueray, for all
you've fam'ly on your side and that, we're not so awful anxious for Rose
to marry you. We'd rather 'ave a young man without fam'ly, in a good
line o' business and steady risin'. And we know of such as would give
'is 'ead to 'ave 'er.' That's wot I should 'ave said."

"I dessay you would. I didn't say it, because I don't want 'im to 'ave
'er. That I don't. And if 'e was wantin' to cry off, and I was to have
named Mr. Robinson, that'd 'ave bin the very thing to 'ave stirred 'im
up to gettin' 'er. That's wot men _is_, missis, and women, too, all of
'em I've ever set eyes on. Dorgs wot'll leave the bone you give 'em, to
fight for the bone wot another dorg 'e's got. Wot do you say to that,
Mrs. Smoker, old girl?"

Mrs. Smoker, the Aberdeen, pricked up her ears and smiled, with her eyes
only, after the manner of her breed.

"Anyhow," said Mrs. Eldred, "you let 'im see as 'ow we wasn't any way
snatchin' at 'im?"

"I did, missis."




VI


Mr. Eldred, groom and dog fancier, profoundly musing upon human nature
and illuminated by his study of the lower animals, had hit upon a truth.
Once let him know that another man desired to take Rose away from him
and Mr. Tanqueray would be ten times more desirous to have her. What Mr.
Eldred did not see was the effect upon Mr. Tanqueray of Rose's taking
herself away, or he would not have connived at her departure. "Out o'
sight, out o' mind," said Mr. Eldred, arguing again from his experience
of the lower animals.

But with Tanqueray, as with all creatures of powerful imagination, to be
out of sight was to be perpetually in mind.

All night, in this region of the mind, Rose's image did battle with
Jane's image and overcame it.

It was not only that Jane's charm had no promise for his senses. She was
unfit in more ways than one. Jane was in love with him; yet her attitude
implied resistance rather than surrender. Rose's resistance, taking, as
it did, the form of flight, was her confession of his power. Jane held
her ground; she stood erect. Rose bowed before him like a flower shaken
by the wind. He loved Rose because she was small and sweet and
subservient. Jane troubled and tormented him. He revolted against the
tyranny of Jane.

Jane was not physically obtrusive, yet there were moments when her
presence in a room oppressed him. She had further that disconcerting
quality of all great personalities, the power to pursue and seize, a
power so oblivious, so pure from all intention or desire, that there was
no flattery in it for the pursued. It persisted when she was gone.
Neither time nor space removed her. He could not get away from Jane. If
he allowed himself to think of her he could not think of anything else.
But he judged that Rose's minute presence in his memory would not be
disturbing to his other thoughts.

His imagination could play tenderly round Rose. Jane's imagination
challenged his. It stood, brandishing its flaming sword before the gates
of any possible paradise. There was something in Jane that matched him,
and, matching, rang defiance to his supremacy. Jane plucked the laurel
and crowned herself. Rose bowed her pretty head and let him crown her.
Laurel crowns, crowns of glory, for Jane. The crown of roses for Rose.

He meant, of course, the wedding-wreath and the wedding-ring. His
conversation with the Eldreds had shown him that marriage had not
entered into their humble contemplations; also that if there was no
question of marriage, there could be no question of Rose.

He had known that in the beginning, he had known it from the
uncompromising little Rose herself. From the first flowering of his
passion until now, he had seen marriage as the sole means to its
inevitable end. Tanqueray had his faults, but it was not in him to bring
the creature he loved to suffering and dishonour. And the alternative,
in Rose's case, was not dishonour, but frustration, which meant
suffering for them both. He would have to give Rose up unless he married
her.

At the moment, and the moment's vision was enough for him, he saw no
reason why he should not marry her. He wanted to obtain her at once and
to keep her for ever. She was not a lady and she knew it; but she had a
gentleness, a fineness of the heart which was the secret of her
unpremeditated charm. Without it Rose might have been as pretty as she
pleased, she would not have pleased Tanqueray. He could withstand any
manifestly unspiritual appeal, restrained by his own fineness and an
invincible disdain. Therefore, when the divine folly fell upon him, he
was like a thing fresh from the last touch of the creator, every sense
in him unworn and delicate and alert.

And Rose had come to him when the madness of the quest was on him, a
madness so strong that it overcame his perception of her social lapses.
It was impossible to be unaware of some of them, of certain phrases, of
the sudden wild flight of her aspirates. But these things were entangled
with her adorable gestures, with the soft ways of her mouth, with her
look when she hung about him, nursing him; so that a sane judgment was
impossible.

It was palpable, too, that Rose was not intellectual, that she was not
even half-educated. But Tanqueray positively disliked the society of
intellectual, cultivated women; they were all insipid after Jane. After
Jane, he did not need intellectual companionship in his wife. He would
still have Jane. And when he was tired of Jane there would, no doubt, be
others; and when he was tired of all of them, there was himself.

What he did need in his wife was the obstinate, dumb devotion of a
creature that had no life apart from him; a creature so small that in
clinging it would hang no weight on his heart. And he had found it in
Rose.

Why should he not marry her?

She was now, he had learned, staying with her former mistress at Fleet,
in Hampshire.

The next morning he took a suitable train down to Fleet, and arrived,
carrying the band-box, at the door of the house where Rose was. He sat a
long time in the hall of the house with the band-box on his knees. He
did not mind waiting. People went in and out of the hall and looked at
him; and he did not care. He gloried in the society of the sacred
band-box. He enjoyed the spectacle of his own eccentricity.

At last he was shown into a little room where Rose came to him. She came
from behind, from the garden, through the French window. She was at his
side before he saw her. He felt her then, he felt her fear of him.

He turned. "Rose," he said, "I've brought you the moon in a band-box."

"Oh," said Rose, and her cry had a thick, sobbing vibration in it.

He put his arm on her shoulder and drew her out of sight and kissed her,
and she was not afraid of him any more.

"Rose," he said, "have you thought it over?"

"Yes, I have. Have you?"

"I've thought of nothing else."

"Sensible?"

"Oh, Lord, yes."

"You've thought of how I haven't a penny and never shall have?"

"Yes."

"And how I'm not clever, and how it isn't a bit as if I'd any head for
studyin' and that?"

"Yes, Rose."

"Have you thought of how I'm not a lady? Not what you'd call a lady?"

There was no answer to that, and so he kissed her.

"And how you'd be if you was to marry some one who was a lady? Have you
thought of that?"

"I have."

"Well then, it's this way. If you was a rich man I wouldn't marry you."
She paused.

"But you will, because I'm a poor one?"

"Yes."

"Thank God I'm poor."

He drew her to him and she yielded, not wholly, but with a shrinking of
her small body, and a soft, shy surrender of her lips.

She was thinking, "If he married a lady he'd have to spend ten times on
her what he need on me."

All she said was, "There are things I can do for you that a lady
couldn't."

"Oh--don't--don't!" he cried. That was the one way she hurt him.

"What are you going to do with me now?" said she.

"I'm going to take you for a walk. We can't stay here."

"Can you wait?"

"I have waited."

She ran away and stayed away for what seemed an interminable time. Then
somebody opened the door and handed Rose in. Somebody kissed her where
she stood in the doorway, and laughed softly, and shut the door upon
Rose and Tanqueray.

Rose stood there still. "Do you know me?" said she, and laughed.

Somebody had transformed her, had made her slip her stiff white gown and
dressed her in a muslin one with a belt that clipped her, showing her
pretty waist. Somebody had taught her how to wear a scarf about her
shoulders; and somebody had taken off that odious linen collar and bared
the white column of her neck.

"_She_ made me put it on," said Rose. "She said if I didn't, I couldn't
wear the hat."

Somebody, Rose's mistress, had been in Rose's secret. She knew and
understood his great poem of the Hat.

Rose took it out of the band-box and put it on. Impossible to say
whether he liked her better with it or without it. He thought without;
for she had parted her hair in the middle and braided it at the back.

"Do you like my hair?" said she.

"Why didn't you do it like that before?"

"I don't know. I wanted to. But I didn't."

"Why not?"

Rose hid her face. "I thought," said she, "you'd notice, and think--and
think I was after you."

No. He could never say that she had been after him, that she had laid a
lure. No huntress she. But she had found him, the hunted, run down and
sick in his dark den. And she had stooped there in the darkness, and
tended and comforted him.

They set out.

"_She_ said I was to tell you," said Rose, "to be sure and take me
through the pine-woods to the pond."

How well that lady knew the setting that would adorn his Rose; sunlight
and shadow that made her glide fawn-like among the tall stems of the
trees. Through the pine-woods he took her, his white wood-nymph, and
through the low lands covered with bog myrtle, fragrant under her feet.
Beyond the marsh they found a sunny hollow in the sand where the heath
touched the pond. The brushwood sheltered them.

Side by side they sat and took their fill of joy in gazing at each
other, absolutely dumb.

It was Tanqueray who broke that beautiful silence. He had obtained her.
He had had his way and must have it to the end. He loved her; and the
thing beyond all things that pleased him was to tease and torment the
creatures that he loved.

"Rose," he said, "do you think I'm good-looking?"

"No. Not what you call good-looking."

"How do you know what I call good-looking?"

"Well--_me_. Don't you?"

"You're a woman. Give me your idea of a really handsome man."

"Well--do you know Mr. Robinson?"

"No. I do not know Mr. Robinson."

"Yes, you do. He keeps the shop in the High Street where you get your
'ankychiefs and collars. You bought a collar off of him the other day.
He told me."

"By Jove, so I did. Of course I know Mr. Robinson. What about him?"

"Well--_he's_ what I call a _handsome_ man."

"Oh." He paused. "Would you love me more if I were as handsome as Mr.
Robinson?"

"No. Not a bit more. I couldn't. I'd love you just the same if you were
as ugly as poor Uncle. There, what more do you want?"

"What, indeed? Rose, how much have you seen of Mr. Robinson?"

"How much? Well--I see him every time I go into his shop. And every
Sunday evening when I go to church. And sometimes he comes and has
supper with us. 'E plays and 'e sings beautiful."

"The devil he does! Well, did he ever take you anywhere?"

"Once--he took me to Madame Tussaws; and once to the Colonial
Exhibition; and once----"

"You minx. That'll do. Has he ever given you anything?"

"He gave me Joey."

"I always knew there was something wrong about that dog."

"And last Christmas he gave me a scented sashy from the shop."

"Never--anything else?"

"Never anything else." She smiled subtly. "I wouldn't let 'im."

"Well, well. And I suppose you consider Mr. Robinson a better dressed
man than I am?"

"Yes, he was always a beautiful dresser. He makes it what you might call
'is hobby."

"Of course Mr. Robinson wants you to marry him?"

"Yes. Leastways he says so."

"And I suppose your uncle and aunt want you to marry him?"

"They were more for it than I was."

"Rose--he's got a bigger income than I have."

"He never told me what his income is."

"But you know?"

"I dare say Uncle does."

"Better dressed--decidedly more handsome----"

"Well--he _is_ that."

"A bigger income. Rose, do you want Mr. Robinson to be found dead in his
shop--horribly dead--among the collars and the handkerchiefs--spoiling
them, and--not--looking--handsome--any more?"

"Oh, Mr. Tanqueray!"

"Then don't talk about him."

He turned his face to hers. She put up her hands and drew his head down
into the hollow of her breasts that were warm with the sun on them.

"Rose," he said, "if you stroke my hair too much it'll come off, like
Joey's. Would you love me if my hair came off?"

She kissed his hair.

"When did you begin to love me, Rose?"

"I don't know. I think it must have been when you were ill."

"I see. When I was bowled over on my back and couldn't struggle. What
_made_ you love me?"

She was silent a long time, smiling softly to herself.

"I think it was because--because--because you were so kind to Joey."

"So you thought I would be kind to you?"

"I didn't--I didn't think at all. I just----"

"So did I," said Tanqueray.




VII


It had been arranged that Rose was to be married from the house of her
mistress, and that she was to remain there until her wedding-day. There
were so many things to be seen to. There was the baby. You couldn't,
Rose said, play fast and loose with _him_. Rose, at her own request, had
come to take care of the baby for a month, and she was not going back on
that, not if it was ever so. Then there were all the things that her
mistress, Rose said, was going to learn her. So many things, things she
was not to do, things she was not to say, things she was on no account
to wear. Rose, buying her trousseau, was not to be trusted alone for a
minute.

It had been put to Rose, very gently by her mistress, very gravely by
her master, whether she would really be happy if she married this
eccentric young gentleman with the band-box. Was it not possible that
she might be happier with somebody rather less eccentric? And Rose
replied that she knew her own mind; that she couldn't be happy at all
with anybody else, and that, if she could, she'd rather be unhappy with
Mr. Tanqueray, eccentricity, band-box and all. Whereas, if he was to be
unhappy with _her_, now----But, when it came to that, they hadn't the
heart to tell her that he might, and very probably would be.

If Rose knew her own mind, Tanqueray knew his. The possibility of being
unhappy with Rose (he had considered it) was dim compared with the
certainty that he was unhappy without her. To be deprived of the sight
and sound of her for six days in the week, to go down to Fleet, like the
butcher, on a Sunday, and find her rosy and bright-eyed with affection,
with a little passion that grew like his own with delay, that grew in
silence and in secret, making Rose, every Sunday, more admirably shy;
to be with her for two hours, and then to be torn from her by a train he
had to catch; all this kept Tanqueray in an excitement incompatible with
discreet reflection.

Rose would not name a day before the fourteenth of July, not if it was
ever so. He adored that little phrase of desperate negation. He was in a
state of mind to accept everything that Rose did and said as adorable.
Rose had strange audacities, strange embarrassments. Dumbness would come
upon Rose in moments which another woman, Jane for instance, would have
winged with happy words. She had a look that was anything but dumb, a
look of innocent tenderness, which in another woman, Jane again, would
not have been allowed to rest upon him so long. He loved that look. In
her very lapses, her gentle elision of the aitch, he found a foreign, an
infantile, a pathetic charm.

So the date of the wedding was fixed for the fourteenth.

It was now the twelfth, and Tanqueray had not yet announced his
engagement.

On the morning of the twelfth two letters came which made him aware of
this omission. One was from young Arnott Nicholson, who wanted to know
when, if ever, he was coming out to see him. The other was from Jane's
little friend, Laura Gunning, reminding him that the twelfth was Jane's
birthday.

He had forgotten.

Yet there it stood in his memorandum-book, entered three months ago,
lest by any possibility he should forget.

How, in the future, was he going to manage about birthdays? For,
whenever any of the three had a birthday, they all celebrated it
together. Last time it had been Tanqueray's birthday, and they had made
a day of it, winding up with supper in little Laura's rooms. Such a
funny, innocent supper that began with maccaroni, and ended, he
remembered, with bread and jam. Before that, it had been Laura's
birthday, and Tanqueray had taken them all to the play. But on Jane's
birthday (and on other days, _their_ days) it was their custom to take
the train into the country, to tramp the great white roads, to loiter in
the fields, to climb the hillsides and lie there, prone, with slackened
limbs, utterly content with the world, with each other and themselves.
As he thought of those days, their days, he had a sudden vision of his
marriage-day as a dividing line, sundering him from them, their
interests and their activities. He could not think of Rose as making one
of that company.

Laura now inquired innocently what his plans were for that day. Would he
meet them (she meant, would he meet her and Jane Holland) at Marylebone,
by the entrance, at eleven o'clock, and go with them somewhere into the
country?

Would he? He thought about it for five minutes, and decided that on the
whole he would rather go than not. He was restless in these days before
his wedding. He could not stand the solitude of this house where Rose
had been and was not. And he wanted to see Jane Holland again and make
it right with her. He was aware that in many ways he had made it wrong.

He would have to tell her. He would have to tell Nicholson. And
Nicholson, why, of course, Nicholson would have to see him through. He
must go to Nicholson at once.

Nicholson lived at Wendover. There was a train from Marylebone about
eleven. It was possible to combine a festival for Jane with a descent
upon Nicky.

By the entrance, at eleven, Laura Gunning waited for him, punctually
observant of the hour. Beyond, on the pavement before the station, he
saw the tall figure of another woman. It was Nina Lempriere. She was not
waiting--Nina never waited--but striding impatiently up and down. He
would have to reckon, then, with Nina Lempriere, too. He was glad that
Jane was with her.

Little Laura, holding herself very straight, greeted him with her funny
smile, a smile that was hardly more than a tremor of her white lips.
Laura Gunning, at twenty-seven, had still in some of her moods the
manner of a child. She was now like a seven-year-old made shy and
serious by profound excitement. She was a very small woman and she had a
small face, with diminutive features in excessively low relief, a face
shadowless as a child's. Everything about Laura Gunning was small and
finished with an innocent perfection. She had a small and charming
talent for short stories, little novels, perfect within the limits of
their kind.

Tanqueray laid before her his Wendover scheme. Laura said he must ask
Jane. It was Jane's birthday. Jane, being asked, said, No, she didn't
mind where they went, provided they went somewhere. She supposed there
was a gate they could sit on, while Tanqueray called on Nicky. Tanqueray
said he thought he saw Nicky letting her sit on a gate. Considering that
Nicky had been pestering him for the last six months (he had) to bring
her out to have tea with him on one of their days.

"And we've never been," said he.

Jane let it pass. But Nina Lempriere, as Tanqueray well knew, had a
devil in her. Nina's eyes had the trick of ignoring your position in the
space they traversed, which made it the more disconcerting when they
came back and fixed you with their curious, hooded stare. They were
staring at Tanqueray now.

"Where have you been?" said she. "We haven't heard of you for ages."

"I've been ill."

Jane looked at him and said nothing.

"Ill? And you never told us?" said Nina.

"I was all right. I was well looked after."

"Who looked after you?"

He did not answer her. For in that instant there rose before him the
image of Rose Eldred, tender and desirable, and it kept him dumb.

Nina, whose devil was nothing if not persistent, repeated her question.
He divined already in Nina a secret, subtle hostility.

"Oh," he said abruptly. "I looked after myself."

Jane stared intently at a notice of the departure and arrival of trains.

Laura, aware of embarrassment somewhere, began to talk to him
light-heartedly, in her fashion, and the moment passed.

In the train, going down to Wendover, Laura talked to Jane. Nina did not
talk. Her queer eyes, when they looked at him, had a light in them of
ironic devilry and suspicion. They left him speculating on the extent
to which he was cutting himself off. This journey down to Wendover was a
stage in the process. He was going down to tell Nicholson, to ask
Nicholson to see him through.

How would Jane take it? How would Nina? How would Laura? He had said to
himself, light-heartedly, that his marriage would make no difference,
that he should retain them, all three, as an intellectual seraglio.
Would this, after all, be possible? When they heard that he, George
Tanqueray, was marrying a servant in a lodging-house?

Aware now, vividly aware, of the thing he was doing, he asked himself
why, if he was not in love with Jane, he had not been in love with Nina?
Nina had shown signs. Yes, very unmistakably she had shown signs. He
could recall a time when there had lurked a betraying tenderness about
her ironic mouth; when her queer eyes, as they looked at him, took on a
certain softness and surrender. It had not touched him. To his mind
there had always been something a little murky about Nina. It was the
fault, no doubt, of her complexion. Not but what Nina had a certain
beauty, a tempestuous, haggard, Roman eagle kind of beauty. She looked
the thing she was, a creature of high courage and prodigious energy.
Besides, she had a devil. Without it, he doubted whether even her genius
(he acknowledged, a little grudgingly, her genius) could have done all
it did.

It had entered into Tanqueray's head (though not his heart) to be in
love with Jane. But never, even by way of fantasy, had it entered it to
be in love with Nina; though it was to Nina that he looked when he
wanted the highest excitement in his intellectual seraglio. He could not
conceive any man being in love with her, to the extent, that is to say,
of trying to marry her. Nina had the thing called temperament, more
temperament and murkier than he altogether cared for; but, as for
marrying, you might as well try to marry some bird of storm on the wing,
or a flash of lightning on its career through heaven. Nina--career and
all--was pre-eminently unfit.

She had shown, more than once, this ironic antagonism, as if she knew
what he thought of her, and owed him a grudge.

If not Nina, why not Laura? She was small and she was pretty and she was
pathetic, and he liked women to be so. Why was it that with all her
feminine smallness and prettiness and pathos he had never cared for her?

They were talking.

"Tired, Laura?" Jane asked.

"Only sleepy. Papa had another dream last night."

They laughed. So did Laura, though her tragedy was there, the tragedy
which had given her that indomitable face.

Laura lived under conditions which would have driven Tanqueray mad. She
had a father; she who, as Jane said, could least of all of them afford a
father. Her father had had a sunstroke, and it had made him dream
dreams. He would get up a dozen times in the night and wander in and out
of Laura's bedroom, and sit heavily on her bed and tell her his dreams,
which terrified Laura.

"It wasn't funny, this time," said she. "It was one of his horrid ones."

Nobody laughed then. They were dumb with the pity and horror of it.
Laura's father, when he was awake, was the most innocent, most
uninspired, most uncreative of old gentlemen; but in his dreams he had a
perfect genius for the macabre. The dreams had been going on for about a
year, and they were making Laura ill. Tanqueray knew it, and it made him
sad.

That was why he had not cared to care for Laura.

Yet little Laura, very prettily, very innocently, with an entire
unconsciousness, had let him see where her heart was. And as prettily
and innocently and unconsciously as he could, he had let her see that
her heart was no concern of his, any more than Nina's.

And she had not cherished any resentment, she had not owed him any
grudge. She had withdrawn herself, still prettily, still innocently, so
that she seemed, with an absurd prettiness, to be making room for Jane.

He had even a vague recollection of himself as acquiescing in her
withdrawal, on those grounds. It was almost as if there had been an
understanding between him and Laura, between Jane and Laura, between
him and Jane. They had behaved perfectly, all three. What made their
perfection was that in all these withdrawals, acquiescences and
understandings not one of them had given any outward sign. They had kept
their spoken compact. They had left each other free.

As for his mere marriage, he was certain with all of them to be
understood. It was their business, as they had so often told each other,
to understand. But he was not sure that he wanted to be understood with
the lucidity, the depth, the prodigious thoroughness of which they were
capable.

He said to himself, "The blood of these women is in their brains." That
was precisely what he had against them.




VIII


It was a perfect day, Jane's birthday, like a young June day, a day of
the sun, of white distances and vivid foregrounds.

Wendover Hill looked over Arnott Nicholson's white house and over his
green garden, where, summer and winter through, there brooded a heavenly
quiet, a perfect peace. It was strange and sad, said Tanqueray, that a
quiet and peace like that should be given to Nicky--to write poems in.
Jane said it was sadder and stranger that verse so vile should flow from
anything so charming, so perfect in its way as Nicky.

"Do you think," said she, as they crowded on his doorstep, "do you think
he'll be at home?"

"Rather. We shall find him in his library, among his books and his
busts, seething in a froth of abominable manuscripts, and feeling
himself immortal."

Arnott Nicholson was at home, and he was in his library, with his books
and his busts, and with Gisborne's great portrait of Jane Holland (the
original) above his chimney-piece. He was, as Tanqueray had predicted,
seething in his froth. Their names came to him there--Miss Holland and
Mr. Tanqueray. In a moment Nicky was out of his library and into his
drawing-room.

He was a singularly attractive person, slender, distinguished, highly
finished in black and white. He was dressed, not like a candidate for
immortality, but in the pink of contemporary perfection.

He was shyly, charmingly glad to see them. And delighted, of course, he
said, to see Miss Lempriere and Miss Gunning. He insisted on their all
staying to tea, to dinner, on their giving him, now that they had come,
a day. He ordered whisky and soda and lemonade. He brought peaches and
chocolates and cigarettes, and offered them diffidently, as things
mortal and savouring of mortality.

He went to and fro, carrying himself humbly yet with triumph, like one
aware that he entertained immortal guests. He couldn't get over it, he
said, their dropping in on him like this, with a divine precipitance,
out of their blue. Heavens! Supposing he had been out! He stood there
glowing at them, the most perfect thing in his perfect drawing-room.

It was a room of old chintzes and old china, of fragile, distinguished
furniture, of family portraits, of miniatures in medallions, and great
bowls of roses everywhere. The whole house had a strange feminine
atmosphere, a warm look as if a woman's hand had passed over it. Yet it
was Nicky who was the soul of his house, a slender soul, three parts
feminine.

Nicky was looking at Jane as she stooped over the roses. "Do you know,"
he said, "that you've come home? Come and see yourself."

He led the way into his library where her portrait looked down from its
high place.

"You bought it?" said she.

"Rather. Gisborne painted it for me."

"Oh, Nicky!"

"It's your genius brooding over mine--I mean over me."

He looked at her again. When he looked at you Nicky's perfect clothes,
his long chin, his nose that seemed all bridge, his fine little black
moustache, Nicky himself retreated into insignificance beneath his
enormous, prominent black eyes.

"I put you there," he said, "to inspire me."

Nicky's eyes gazed at you with a terrible solemnity whenever he talked
about his inspiration.

"Do I?"

She did. They had caught him in the high act of creation. He'd been at
it since ten o'clock; sitting there, with the blood, he said, beating so
furiously in his brain that if he'd gone on like that he'd have
destroyed himself. His head was burning now.