For to Rose, as she sat there, the thought had come that for all she saw
of her husband she might as well not be married to him. She had been
better off at Hampstead when she waited on him hand and foot; when she
was doing things for him half the day; when, more often than not, he had
a minute to spare for a word or a look that set her heart fairly
dancing. She had agreed to their marriage chiefly because it would
enable her to wait on him and nobody but him, to wait on him all day
long.

And he had said to her, first thing, as they dined together on their
wedding-day, that he wasn't going to let his wife wait on him. That was
why they lived in rooms (since he couldn't afford a house and servant),
that she might be waited on. He had hated to see her working, he said;
and now she wouldn't have to work. No, never again. And when she asked
him if he liked to see her sitting with her hands before her, doing
nothing, he said that was precisely what he did like. And it had been
all very well so long as he had been there to see her. But now he wasn't
ever there.

It was worse than it was down in Sussex. All morning he shut himself up
in his study to write. After lunch he went up there again to smoke. Then
he would go out by himself, and he might or might not come in for
dinner. All evening he shut himself up again and wrote. At midnight or
after he would come to her, worn out, and sleep, lying like a dead man
at her side.

She was startled by the sound of the postman's knock and the flapping
fall of a letter in the letter-box. It was for Tanqueray, and she took
it up to him and laid it beside him without a word. To speak would have
been fatal. He had let his fire go out (she knew he would); so, while he
was reading his letter, she knelt down by the hearth and made it up
again. She went to work very softly, but he heard her.

"What are you doing there?" he said.

"I thought," said she, "I was as quiet as a mouse."

"So you were. Just about. A horrid little mouse that keeps scratching at
the wainscot and creeping about the room and startling me."

"Do I startle you?"

"You do. Horribly."

Rose put down the poker without a sound.

He had finished his letter and had not begun writing again. He was only
looking at his letter. So Rose remarked that lunch was ready. He put the
letter into a drawer, and they went down.

About half-way through lunch he spoke.

"Look here," he said, "you _must_ keep out of the room when I'm
writing."

"You're always writing now."

Yes. He was always writing now; because he did not want to talk to Rose
and it was the best way of keeping her out of the room. But as yet he
did not know that was why, any more than he knew that he had come to
live in London because he wanted to talk to Jinny. The letter in his
drawer up-stairs was from Jinny, asking him if she might not come and
see his wife. He was not sure that he wanted her to come and see his
wife. Why should she?

"You'll 'urt your brain," his wife was saying, "if you keep on
writ-writin', lettin' the best of the day go by before you put your foot
out of doors. It would do you all the good in the world if you was to
come sometimes for a walk with me----"

It all went in at one ear and out of the other.

So all morning, all afternoon, all evening, Rose sat by herself in the
room looking on the pavement. She had nothing to do in this house that
didn't belong to them. When she had helped the little untidy servant to
clear away the breakfast things; when she had dusted their sitting-room
and bedroom; when she had gone out and completed her minute marketings,
she had nothing to do. Nothing to do for herself; worse than all,
nothing to do for Tanqueray. She would hunt in drawers for things of his
to mend, going over his socks again and again in the hope of finding a
hole in one of them. Rose, who loved taking care of people, who was born
in the world and fashioned by Nature to that end, Rose had nothing to
take care of. You couldn't take care of Tanqueray.

Sometimes she found herself wishing that he were ill. Not dangerously
ill, but ill enough to be put to bed and taken care of. Not that Rose
was really aware of this cruel hope of hers. It came to her rather as a
picture of Tanqueray, lying in his sleeping-suit, adorably helpless, and
she nursing him. Her heart yearned to that vision.

For she saw visions. From perpetual activities of hands and feet, from
running up and down stairs, from sweeping and dusting, from the making
of beds, the washing of clothes and china, she had passed to the life of
sedentary contemplation. She was always thinking. Sometimes she thought
of nothing but Tanqueray. Sometimes she thought of Aunt and Uncle, of
Minnie and the seven little dogs. She could see them of a Sunday
evening, sitting in the basement parlour, Aunt in her black cashmere
with the gimp trimmings, Uncle in his tight broadcloth with his pipe in
his mouth, and Mrs. Smoker sleeping with her nose on the fender. Mr.
Robinson would come in sometimes, dressed as Mr. Robinson could dress,
and sit down at the little piano and sing in his beautiful voice, "'Ark,
'Ark, my Soul," and "The Church's one Foundation," while Joey howled at
all his top notes, and the smoke came curling out of Uncle's pipe, and
Rose sat very still dreaming of Mr. Tanqueray. (She could never hear
"Hark, Hark, my Soul," now, without thinking of Tanqueray.)

Sometimes she thought of that other life, further back, in her
mistress's house at Fleet, all the innocent service and affection, the
careful, exquisite tending of the delicious person of Baby, her humble,
dutiful intimacy with Baby's mother. She would shut her eyes and feel
Baby's hands on her neck, and the wounding pressure of his body against
her breasts. And then Rose dreamed another dream.

She no longer cared to sew now, but when Tanqueray's mending was done,
she would sit for hours with her hands before her, dreaming.

He found her thus occupied one evening when he had come home after
seeing Jane. After seeing Jane he was always rather more aware of his
wife's existence than he had been, so that he was struck now by the
strange dejection of her figure. He came to her and stood, leaning
against the chimney-piece and looking down at her, as he had stood once
and looked down at Jane.

"What is it?" he said.

"It's nothing. I've a cold in me head."

"Cold in your head! You've been crying. There's a blob on your dress."
(He kissed her.) "What are you crying about?"

"I'm not cryin' about _anything_."

"But--you're crying." It gave him pain to see Rose crying.

"If I am it's the first time I've done it."

"Are you quite sure?"

"Certain. I never _was_ one for cryin', nor for bein' seen cry. It's
just--it's just sittin' here with me 'ands before me, havin' nothing to
do."

"I suppose there isn't very much for you to do."

"I've done all there is and a great deal there isn't."

"I say, shall we go to the play to-night?"

She smiled with pleasure at his thought for her. Then she shook her
head. "It's not plays I want--it's work. I'd like to have me hands full.
If we had a little house----"

"Oh no. No--no--no." He looked terrified.

"It would come a lot cheaper. Only a _little_ house, where I could do
all the work."

"I've told you before I won't let you."

"With a girl," she pleaded, "to scrub. A little house up Hampstead way."

"I don't want to live up Hampstead way."

"If you mean Uncle and Aunt," she said, "they wouldn't think of
intrudin'. We settled that, me and Uncle. I'd be as happy as the day is
long."

"You're _not_? And the day is very long, is it?"

He kissed her, first on her mouth and then on the lobe of the ear that
was next to him.

"Kissin' 's all very well," said Rose. "You never kissed me at
Hampstead, and you don't know how happy I was there. Doin' things for
you."

"I don't want things done for me."

"No. I wish you did."

"And, Rose, I don't want to be bothered with a house; to be tied to a
house; to have anything to do with a house."

"Would it worry you?"

"Abominably. And think of the horrors of moving!"

"I'd move you," said Rose.

"I couldn't. Look here. It would kill that book. I must have peace. This
is a beastly hole, I know, but there's peace in it. You don't know what
that damned book _is_."

She gave up the idea of a house; and seven months after her marriage,
she fell into a melancholy.

Sometimes, now, on a fine afternoon, she would go out into the streets
and look listlessly through shop-windows at hats and gowns and all the
pretty things she would have thought it sin so much as to desire to
wear. Where Rose lingered longest was outside those heavenly places
where you saw far off a flutter of white in the windows, which turned
out to be absurd, tiny, short-waisted frocks and diminutive
under-garments, and little heartrending shoes; things of desire, things
of impossible dream, to be approached with a sacred dumbness of the
heart.

The toy-shops, too, they carried her away in a flight; so that Rose
caught herself saying to herself, "Some day, perhaps, I shall be here
buying one of them fur animals, or that there Noah's ark."

Then, p'raps, she said to her very inmost self, things might be
different.

Sometimes she would go up to Hampstead, ridin', as she phrased it, in a
bus, to see her Aunt and Uncle and a friend she had, Polly White. Not
often; for Rose did not hold with gadding about when you had a husband;
besides, she was afraid of Aunt asking her, "Wot's _'E_ doin'?" (By
always referring to Tanqueray as "'E," Mrs. Eldred evaded the problem of
what she was expected to call the gentleman who had so singularly
married her husband's niece.) Most of all Rose dreaded the question,
"Wen is 'E goin' to take a little 'ouse?" For in Rose's world it is
somewhat of a reflection on a married man if he is not a householder.

And last time Mrs. Eldred's inquiries had taken a more terrible and
searching form. "Is 'E lookin' for anything to do besides 'Is writin'?"
Rose had said then that no, he needn't, they'd got enough; an answer
that brought Mrs. Eldred round to her point again. "Then why doesn't 'E
take a little 'ouse?"

Sometimes Polly White came to tea in Bloomsbury. Very seldom, though,
and only when Tanqueray was not there. Rose knew and Polly knew that her
friends had to keep away when her husband was about. As for _his_
friends, she had never caught a sight of them.

Then, all of a sudden, when Rose had given up wondering whether things
would ever be different, Tanqueray, instead of going up-stairs as usual,
sat down and lit a pipe as if he were going to spend the evening with
her. Rose did not know whether she would be allowed to talk. He seemed
thoughtful, and Rose knew better than to interrupt him when he was
thinking.

"Rose," he said at last, apparently as the result of his meditation, "a
friend of mine wants to call on you to-morrow."

"To call on _me_?"

"On you, certainly."

"Shall I have to see him?"

"She, Rose, she. Yes; I think you'll have to see her."

"I didn't know," said Rose, "you had a friend."

She meant what she would have called a lady friend.

"I've dozens," said Tanqueray, knowing what she meant.

"You haven't told me this one's name yet."

"Her name is Jane Holland."

It was Rose who became thoughtful now.

"'As she anything to do with the Jane Holland that's on those books of
yours?"

"She wrote 'em."

"You didn't tell me you knew her."

"Didn't I?"

"I suppose that's how you knew her."

"Yes. That's how I knew her."

"What made 'er take to writin'? Is she married?"

"No."

"I see," said Rose, almost as if she really saw. "And wot shall I've to
do?"

"You'll write a pretty little note to her and ask her to tea."

"Oh dear!"

"You needn't be afraid of her."

"I'm not afraid; but goodness knows what I shall find to talk about."

"You can talk about me."

"I suppose I _shall_ 'ave to talk to her?"

"Well--yes. Or--I can talk to her."

Rose became very thoughtful indeed.

"Wot's she like?"

He considered. What _was_ Jinny like? Like nothing on earth that Rose
had ever seen.

"I mean," said Rose, "to look at."

"I don't know that I can tell you what she's like."

"Is she like Miss Kentish? You remember Miss Kentish at Hampstead?"

He smiled. "Not in the very least."

Rose looked depressed. "Is she like Mrs. 'Enderson down at Fleet?"

"That's nearer. But she's not like Mrs. Henderson. She's--she's
charming."

"So's Mrs. 'Enderson."

"It's another sort of charm. I don't even know whether you'd see it."

"Ah, _you_ should have seen Mrs. 'Enderson with Baby. They was a perfect
picture."

"That's it. I can't see Miss Holland with Baby. I can only see her by
herself."

"I wish," said Rose, "she was married. Because, if she 'ad been, there
might be something----"

"Something?"

"Well--to talk about."

It was his turn to say "I see."

He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, thus closing the sitting, and
settled down to a long correspondence in arrears.

At bed-time Rose spoke again.

"How old is she?" Rose said.




XVII


The next day at four o'clock Rose had on her best gown and was
bright-eyed and pink. Brighter-eyed and pinker than Tanqueray had seen
her for many weeks. She was excited, not so much by the prospect of
seeing Miss Holland as by the beautiful vision of her tea-table. There
was a cake with sugar icing on it, and bread and butter rolled as Rose
had seen it rolled at Fleet. She had set out the tea-service that her
aunt had given her for a wedding-present. The table cloth had a lace
edge to it which gratified Rose whenever she thought of it. Tanqueray
had on his nicest suit, and Rose's gaze travelled up and down it, and
paused in ecstasy at his necktie.

"You do pay for dressin'," she said.

"I do indeed," said Tanqueray.

Rose got on very well at tea-time. It was marvellous how many things she
found to say. The conversation really made itself. She had only to sit
there and ask Miss Holland how she liked her tea, weak or strong, and if
she took so much milk or a little drop more, and sugar, one lump or two
lumps, and that sized lump or a little larger? She spun it out till
George was ready to begin talking. And there came a beautiful and sacred
silence while Rose made Tanqueray's tea and gave it him.

After seven months it was still impossible for Rose to hide her deep
delight in waiting on him. More than once her eyes turned from Jane to
watch him in the wonderful and interesting acts of eating and drinking.

For a moment Jane suffered an abominable pang as she realized the things
that were permissible to Rose, the things that she could say to
Tanqueray, the things that she might do for him. At first she had looked
away so that she might not see these tender approaches of Rose to
Tanqueray. Then she remembered that this was precisely what she had come
out to see,--that she had got to realize Rose. And thus, as she brought
herself round to face it fairly, she caught in a flash Rose's attitude
and the secret of it.

It was not a thing flung in her face to madden her, it had no bridal
insolence about it, and none of the consecrated folly of the bride. It
was a thing of pathos and of innocence, something between the
uncontrollable tenderness, the divine infatuation of a mother, and the
crude obsession of a girl uncertain of the man she has set her unhappy
heart on; a thing, Rose's attitude, stripped of all secrecy by its
sadness.

But there was nothing abject in it. It was strong; it was militant under
its pathos and its renunciation. With such a look Rose would have faced
gates of death closing between her and Tanqueray.

So Jane realized Rose.

And she said to herself, "What a good thing Tanks never did care for me.
It would be awful if I made her more uncertain of him."

At this moment Tanqueray said, "How's Hambleby?"

"He's not quite so well as he was," said Jane.

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Tanqueray.

"Is anybody ill?" said Rose. She was always interested in anybody who
was ill.

"Only Hambleby," said Tanqueray.

"Who's he?" said Rose.

"The man Jinny's in love with."

Rose was shocked at this violation of the holy privacies. She looked
reprovingly at Tanqueray.

"Is your tea as you like it?" she inquired, with tact, to make it more
comfortable for Jane.

"I'm going to smoke," said Tanqueray. "Will you come to my den, Jinny,
and talk about Hambleby?"

Rose looked as if positively she couldn't believe her ears. But it was
at Jane that she looked, not at Tanqueray.

"No," said Jinny. "I don't want to talk about Hambleby. I want to talk
to your wife."

"You mustn't mind what 'e says," said Rose, when they were alone
together. "'E sometimes says things to me that make me fair jump."

"I didn't jump," said Jane, "did I?"

"No. You took it a deal better than I should have done."

It was odd, but Rose was ten times more at her ease since Tanqueray's
awful reference to Hambleby. And she seemed happier, too.

"You see," said Jane, "there wasn't much to take. Hambleby's only a man
in a book I'm writing."

"Oh--only a man in a book."

Rose looked depressed. There was a silence which even Jane found it
difficult to break. Then she had an inspiration.

"I'm supposed to be in love with him because I can't think or talk about
anything else."

"That's just like Mr. Tanqueray," said Rose.

"Only he isn't in love with the people in his books," said Jane.

"He must think a deal of 'em."

"He says he doesn't."

"Well--'e's always thinkin' when he isn't writin'."

There was trouble on Rose's face.

"Miss 'Olland--'ow many hours do _you_ sit at it?"

"Oh, it depends."

"'E's sittin' all day sometimes, and 'arf the night. And my fear is,"
said Rose, "'e'll injure 'is brain."

"It will take a good deal to injure it. It's very tough. He'll leave off
when he's tired."

"He hasn't left off for months and months."

Her trouble deepened.

"Did 'e always work that 'ard?"

"No," said Jane. "I don't think he ever did."

"Then w'y," said Rose, coming straight to her point, "is he doin' it
now?"

They looked at each other; and somehow Jane knew why he was doing it.
She wondered if Rose knew; if she suspected.

"He's doing it," she said, "because he _can_ do it. You've had a good
effect on him."

"Do you think, do you really think it's _me_!"

"I do indeed," said Jane, with immense conviction.

"And you think it doesn't hurt him?"

"No. Does him good. You should be glad when you see him writing."

"If," said Rose, "I _could_ see 'im. But I've bin settin' here thinkin'.
I lie awake sometimes at night till I'm terrified wonderin' wot's
'appenin', and whether 'is brain won't give way with 'im drivin' it. You
see, we 'ad a lodger once and 'e overworked 'is brain and 'ad to be sent
orf quick to the asylum. That's wot's frightened me."

"But I don't suppose the lodger's brain was a bit like Mr. Tanqueray's."

"That's wot I keep sayin' to myself. People's brains is different. But
there's been times when I could have taken that old book away from him
and hidden it, thinkin' that might be for his good."

"It wouldn't be for his good."

"No," said Rose, "I'm not that certain that it would. That's why I don't
do it."

She became pensive.

"Besides, it's 'is pleasure. Why, it's all the pleasure he's got."

She looked up at Jane. Her thoughts swam in her large eyes.

"It's awful, isn't it," said she, "not knowin' wot really is for
people's good?"

"I'm afraid we must trust them to know best."

"Well," said Rose, "I'll just let 'im alone. That's safest."

Jane rose.

"You mustn't worry," said she.

"I don't," said Rose. "He hates worryin'."

She looked up again into Jane's face as one beholding the calm face of
wisdom.

"You've done me good," said she.

Jane stooped and kissed her. She kissed Tanqueray's wife.

"Do you know," she said, "you are what I thought you would be."

Rose's eyes grew rounder.

"And what's that?"

"Something very sweet and nice."

Rose's face was a soft mist of smiles and blushes. "Fancy that," she
said.

"Why did you let her go away without telling me?" said Tanqueray,
half-an-hour later.

"I didn't think," said Rose. "We got talking."

"What did you talk about?"

She would not tell.




XVIII


She had known all the time that if she was not to go on thinking about
George Tanqueray she must see his wife. When she had once thoroughly
realized his wife it would be easier to give him up to her.

It was George who had tried to prevent her realizing Rose. He, for his
part, refused to be given up to Rose or in any way identified with her.
Nina was right. His marriage had made no difference to George.

But now that she realized Rose, it made all the difference to Jane. Rose
was realized so completely that she turned George out of the place he
persisted in occupying in Jane's mind. Jane had not allowed herself to
feel that there was anything to be sorry about in George's marriage. She
was afraid of having to be sorry for George, because, in that case,
there would be no end to her thinking about him. But if there was any
sorrow in George's marriage it was not going to affect George. She would
not have to be sorry about him.

Like Nina, Jane was sorry for the woman.

That little figure strayed in and out of Jane's mind without disturbing
her renewed communion with Hambleby.

Up till now she had contrived to keep the very existence of Hambleby a
secret from her publishers. But they had got wind of him somehow, and
had written many times inquiring when he would be ready? As if she could
tell, as if her object was to get him ready, and not rather to prolong
the divine moments of his creation. She would have liked to have kept
him with her in perpetual manuscript, for in this state he still seemed
a part of herself. Publicity of any sort was a profanation. When
published he would be made to stand in shop windows coarsely labelled,
offering himself for sale at four-and-six; he would go into the houses
of people who couldn't possibly appreciate him, and would suffer
unspeakable things at their hands. As the supreme indignity, he would be
reviewed. And she, his creator, would be living on him, profiting by his
degradation at percentages which made her blush. To be thinking of what
Hambleby would "fetch" was an outrage to his delicate perfection.

But she had to think of it; and after all, when she had reckoned it up,
he would not "fetch" so very much. She had failed to gather in one half
of the golden harvest. The serial rights of Hambleby lay rotting in the
field. George used to manage all these dreadful things for her. For
though George was not much cleverer than she he liked to think he was.
It was his weakness to imagine that he had a head for business. And in
the perversity of things he had really done better for her than he had
ever done for himself. That was the irony of it; when, if she could, she
would have taken her luck and shared it with him.

Anyhow, business without George had been very uninteresting; and
therefore she had not attended to it. There had been opportunities as
golden as you please, but she had not seized them. There had been
glorious openings for Hambleby, far-reaching prospects, noble vistas, if
only he had been born six months sooner. And when George said that
Hambleby would be popular, he was, of course, only tormenting her. He
never meant half of the unpleasant things he said.

It was now April. Hambleby waited only for the crowning chapter. The
arrangements for his publication had been made, all but the date, which
was left unsettled, in case at the last moment a new opening should be
found.

At four o'clock on an April afternoon Jane was meditating on her affairs
when the staircase bell rang somewhat imperiously. It sounded like
somebody determined to get in. A month ago she would have taken no
notice of it. Now she was afraid not to open her door lest Tanqueray
should be there.

It was not Tanqueray. It was Hugh Brodrick.

For a second she wondered at him, not taking him in. She had forgotten
that Brodrick existed. It was his eyes she recognized him by. They were
fixed on her, smiling at her wonder. He stood on the little square of
landing between the door and the foot of the staircase.

"Of course," he said. "You're just going out?"

"No, do come in."

"May I? I don't believe you know in the least who I am."

"I do, really. I'm very glad to see you."

He followed her up the stairs and into her sitting-room, the small
white-painted sitting-room, with its three straight windows looking on
the Square. He went to one of the windows and looked out.

"Yes," he said, "there is a charm about it."

He spoke as if his mind had been long occupied with this place she lived
in; as if they had disputed together many times as to the attraction of
Kensington Square, and he had been won over, at last, reluctantly, to
her view. It all strengthened the impression he gave of being absorbed
in her.

He turned to her.

"You like living here? All alone? Cut off from everybody?"

She remembered then how they had really discussed this question.

"I like it very much indeed."

"Well----" (He said it sadly.) "Do you write in this room? At that
table?"

"Yes."

He looked at the table as if he thought it all very interesting and very
incomprehensible and very sad. He looked at the books on the shelf close
to the table and read George Tanqueray's name on them. He frowned
slightly at the books and turned away.

She sat down. He did not take the chair she indicated, but chose another
where he could see her rather better. He was certainly a man who knew
his own mind.

"I've called," he said, "a great many times. But I've always missed
you."

"So at last you gave it up? Like everybody else."

"Does it look as if I'd given it up?"

She could not say it did.

"No," he said. "I never give anything up. In that I'm not like everybody
else."

He wasn't, she reflected. And yet somehow he ought to have been. There
was nothing so very remarkable about him.

He smiled. "I believe," he said, "you thought I was the man come to tune
the piano."

"Did I look as if I did?"

"A little."

"Do I now?" She was beginning to like Brodrick.

"Not so much. As it happens, I have come partly for the pleasure of
seeing you and partly--to discuss, if you don't mind, some business."

Jane was aware of a certain relief. If it was that he came for----

"I don't know whether you've heard that I'm bringing out a magazine?"

"Oh yes. I remember you were bringing it out----"

"I was thinking of bringing it out when I last met you. It may interest
you, because it's to have nothing in it that isn't literature. I'm going
in for novels, short stories, essays, poems. No politics."

"Won't that limit your circulation?"

"Of course it'll limit it. Still, it's not easy to keep honest if you go
in for politics."

"I see. Rather than not be honest you prefer to limit your circulation?"

He blushed like a man detected in some meanness; the supreme meanness of
vaunting his own honesty.

"Oh, well, I don't know about that. Politics means my brother-in-law. If
I keep them out I keep him out, and run the thing my own way. I dare say
that's all there is in it."

Certainly she liked him. He struck her as powerful and determined. With
his magazine, he had the air of charging, sublimely, at the head of the
forlorn hope of literature.

"It's taken me all this time to get the capital together. But I've got
it."

"Yes. You would get it."

He looked up gravely inquiring.

"You strike me as being able to get things."

He flushed with pleasure. "Do I? I don't know. If I can get the authors
I want I believe I can make the magazine one of the big things of the
century." He said it quietly, as if inspired by caution rather than
enthusiasm. "_They_'ll make it--if I can get them."

"Are they so difficult?"

"The ones I want are. I don't want any but the best."

She smiled.

"It's all very well to smile; but this kind of magazine hasn't really
been tried before. There's room for it."

"Oh, oceans of _room_."

"And it will have all the room there is. Now's its moment. All the good
old magazines are dead."

"And gone to heaven because they were so good."

"Because they were old. My magazine will be young."

"There has been frightful mortality among the young."

"I know the things you mean. They were decadent, neurotic, morbid, worse
than old. My magazine will be really young. It's the young writers that
I want. And there isn't one of them I want as much as you."

She seemed to have hardly heard him.

"Have you asked Mr. Tanqueray?"

"Not yet. You're the first I've asked. The very first."

"You should have asked him first."

"I didn't want him first."

"You should have wanted him. Why" (she persisted), "did you come to me
before him?"

"Because you're so much more valuable to me."

"In what way?"

"Your name is better known."

"It oughtn't to be. If it's names you want----" She gave him a string of
them.

"Your name stands for more."

"And Mr. Tanqueray's? Does it not stand?"

He hesitated.

She insisted. "If mine does."

"I am corrupt," said Brodrick, "and mercenary and brutal."

"I wish you weren't," said she, so earnestly that he laughed.

"My dear Miss Holland, we cannot blink the fact that you have a name and
he hasn't."

"Or that my name sells and his doesn't. Is that it?"

"Not altogether. If I couldn't get you I'd try to get him."

"Would you? How do you know that you're going to get me?"

He smiled. "I don't. I only know that I'm prepared, if I may say so, to
pay for you."

"Oh," she said, "it isn't that."

He smiled again at her horror.

"I know it isn't that. Still----" He named a round sum, a sum so perfect
in its roundness that it took her breath away. With such a sum she could
do all that she wanted for her sister Effy at once, and secure herself
against gross poverty for years.

"It's more than we could give Mr. Tanqueray."

"Is it?"

"Much more."

"That's what's so awful," she said.

He noticed how she clenched her hands as she said it.

"It's not my fault, is it?"

"Oh--I don't care whose fault it is!"

"But you care?"

"Yes." She almost whispered it.

He was struck by that sudden drop from vehemence to pathos.

"He is a very great friend of yours?"

"Yes."

"And--he's just married, isn't he?"

"Yes. And he isn't very well off. I don't think he could afford----" she
said.

He coloured painfully as if she had suspected him of a desire to traffic
in Tanqueray's poverty.

"We should pay him very well," he said.

"His book" (she pressed it on him), "is not arranged for."

"And yours is?"

"Practically it is. The contract's drawn up, but the date's not
settled."

"If the date's not settled, surely I've still a chance?"

"And he," she said, "has still a chance if--I fail you?"

[Illustration: "And he," she said, "has still a chance if--I fail you?"]

"Of course--if you _fail_ me."

"And supposing that I hadn't got a book?"

"But you have."

"Supposing?"

"Then I should fall back on Mr. Tanqueray."

"Fall back on him!--The date is settled."

"But I thought----"

"_I_'ve settled it."

"Oh. And it can't be unsettled?"

"It can't--possibly."

"Why not?"

She meditated. "Because--it would spoil the chances of the book."

"I see. The chances of the book."

Their eyes met in conflict. It was as if they were measuring each
other's moral value.

"I should make you a bigger offer, Miss Holland," he said; "only I
believe you don't want that."

"No. Certainly I don't want that."

He paused. "Do you mind telling me if you've any other chance?"

"None. Not the ghost of one."

"So that, but for this all-important question of the date, I might have
had you?"

"You might have had me."

"I'm almost glad," he said, "to have lost you--that way."

"Which way?" said she.

At that moment a servant of the house brought in tea. She announced that
Mr. Nicholson was down-stairs and would like to see Miss Holland.

"Very well. You'll stay?" Jane said to Brodrick.

He did. He was, Jane reflected, the sort of man who stayed.

"Here's Mr. Brodrick," said she, as Nicky entered. "He's going to make
all our fortunes."

"His own, too, I hope," said Brodrick. But he looked sulky, as if he
resented Nicholson's coming in.

"Of course," he said, "they tell me the whole thing's a dream, a
delusion, that it won't pay. But I know how to make it pay. The reason
why magazines go smash is because they're owned by men with no business
connections, no business organization, no business capacity. I couldn't
do it if I hadn't the 'Telegraph' at my back. Practically I make the
paper pay for the magazine."

And he went into it, in his quick, quiet voice, expounding and expanding
his scheme, laying it down fairly and squarely, with lucidity but no
apparent ardour.

It was Nicky who was excited. Jane could see cupidity in Nicky's eyes as
Brodrick talked about his magazine. Brodrick dwelt now on the commercial
side of it which had no interest for Nicky. Yet Nicky was excited. He
wanted badly to get into Brodrick's magazine, and Brodrick wanted,
Brodrick was determined to keep him out. There was a brief struggle
between Nicky's decency and his desire; and then Nicky's desire and
Brodrick's determination fairly skirmished together in the open.
Brodrick tried heavily to keep Nicky off it. But Nicky hovered airily,
intangibly about it. He fanned it as with wings; when Brodrick dropped
it he picked it up, he sustained it, he kept it flying high. Every
movement intimated in Nicky's most exquisite manner that if Brodrick
really meant it, if he had positively surrendered to the expensive
dream, if he wanted, in short, to keep it up and keep it high, he
couldn't be off letting Nicky in.

Brodrick's shameless intention had been to out-stay Nicky. And as long
as Nicky's approaches were so delicate as to provoke only delicate
evasions, Brodrick stayed. But in the end poor Nicky turned desperate
and put it to him point-blank. "Was there, or was there not to be a
place for poets in the magazine?"

At that Brodrick got up and went.

"Nicky," said Jane, as the door closed on the retreating editor, "he
came for my book, and I've made him take George Tanqueray's instead."

"I wish," said he, "you'd make him take my poems. But you can't. Nobody
can _make_ Brodrick do anything he doesn't want to."

"Oh----" said Jane, and dismissed Brodrick. "It's ages since I've seen
you."

"I heard that you were immersed, and so I kept away."

"That was very good of you," said she.

It struck her when she had said it that perhaps it was not altogether
what Nicky would have liked her to say.

"I _was_ immersed," she said, "in Hambleby."

"Is he finished?"

"All but. I'm waiting to put a crown upon his head."

"Were you by any chance making it--the crown?"

"I haven't even begun to make it."

"I shan't spoil him then if I stay?"

"No. I doubt if anything could spoil him now."

"You've got him so safe?"

"So safe. And yet, Nicky, there are moments when I can hardly bear to
think of Hambleby for fear he shouldn't be all right. It's almost as if
he came too easily."

"He couldn't. All my best things come," said Nicky "--like _that_!"

A furious sweep of Nicky's arm simulated the onrush of his inspiration.

"Oh, Nicky, how splendid it must be to be so certain."

"It is," said Nicky solemnly.

After all, it argued some divine compensation somewhere that a thing so
destitute should remain unaware of its destitution, that a creature so
futile and diminutive should be sustained by this conviction of his
greatness. For he _was_ certain. Nothing could annihilate the illusion
by which Nicky lived. But it was enough to destroy all certainty in
anybody else, and there were moments when the presence of Nicky had this
shattering effect on Jane. She could not have faced him until Hambleby
was beyond his power to slay.

But Nicky, so far from enlarging on his certainty, meditated with his
eyes fixed on the clock.

"You don't dine, do you," he said suddenly, "till half-past seven?"

"You'll stay, won't you?"

"I think I mustn't, thanks. I only wanted to know how long I had."

"You've really half-an-hour, if you _won't_ dine."

"I say, you're not expecting anybody else?"

"I didn't expect Mr. Brodrick. I've kept everybody out so long that
they've left off coming."

"I wonder," said he, still meditating, "if _I_'ve come too soon."

She held her breath. Nicky's voice was charged with a curious emotion.

"I knew," he went on, "it wasn't any use my coming as long as you were
immersed. I wouldn't for worlds do anything that could possibly injure
your career."

"Oh--my career----"

"The question is," he meditated, "would it?"

"Your coming, Nicky?"

"My not keeping away. I suppose I ought to be content to stand aside and
watch it, your genius, when it's so tremendous. I've no right to get in
its way----"

"You don't--you don't."

"I wouldn't. I always should be standing aside and watching. That," said
Nicky, "would be, you see, my attitude."

"Dear Nicky," she murmured, "it's a beautiful attitude. It
couldn't--your attitude--be anything but beautiful."

"Only, of course," he added, "I'd be there."

"But you are. You are there. And it's delightful to have you."

His face, which had turned very white, flushed, but not with pleasure.
It quivered with some sombre and sultry wave of pain.

"I meant," he said, "if I were always there."

His eyes searched her. She would not look at him.

"Nobody," she said, "can be--always."

"You wouldn't know it. You wouldn't see me--when you were immersed."

"I'm afraid," she said, "I always am, I always shall be--immersed."

"Won't there be moments?"

"Oh, moments! Very few."

"I wouldn't care how few there were," he said. "I know there can't be
many."

She understood him. There was nothing on earth like Nicky's delicacy. He
was telling her that he would accept any terms, the very lowest; that he
knew how Tanqueray had impoverished her; that he could live on moments,
the moments Tanqueray had left.

"There are none, Nicky. None," she said.

"I see this isn't one of them."

"All the moments--when there are any--will be more or less like this.
I'm sorry," she said.

"So am I," said he. It was as if they were saying they were sorry he
could not dine.

So monstrous was Nicky's capacity for illusion that he went away
thinking he had given Jane up for the sake of her career.

And Jane tried to think of Nicky and be sorry for him. But she couldn't.
She was immoderately happy. She had given up Brodrick's magazine and
Brodrick's money for Tanqueray's sake. Tanks would have his chance. He
would be able to take a house, and then that little wife of his wouldn't
have to sit with her hands before her, fretting her heart away because
of Tanks. She was pleased, too, because she had made Brodrick do what he
hadn't meant and didn't want to do.

But as she lay in bed that night, not thinking of Brodrick, she saw
suddenly Brodrick's eyes fixed on her with a look in them which she had
not regarded at the time; and she heard him saying, in that queer, quiet
voice of his, "I'm almost glad to have lost you this way."

"I wonder," she said to herself, "if he really spotted me."




XIX


Brodrick's house, Moor Grange, stood on the Roehampton side of Putney
Heath, just discernible between the silver and green of the birches.
With its queer, red-tiled roofs, pitched at every possible slope, white,
rough-cast, many-cornered walls, green storm-shutters, lattice windows
of many sorts and sizes, Brodrick's house had all the brilliant
eccentricity of the twentieth century.

But Brodrick's garden was at least a hundred years older than his house.
It had a beautiful green lawn with a lime-tree in the middle and a
stone-flagged terrace at the back overlooking the north end of the
Heath. Behind the house there was a kitchen garden that had survived
modernity.

Brodrick's garden was kept very smooth and very straight, no impudent
little flowers hanging out of their beds, no dissolute straggling of
creepers upon walls. Even the sweet-peas at the back were trained to a
perfect order and propriety.

And in Brodrick's house propriety and order were carried to the point of
superstition. Nothing in that queer-cornered, modern exterior was ever
out of place. No dust ever lay on floor or furniture. All the
white-painted woodwork was exquisitely white. Time there was measured by
a silver-chiming clock that struck the quiet hours with an infallible
regularity.

And yet Brodrick was not a tidy nor a punctual man. In his library the
spirit of order contended against fearful odds. For Brodrick lived in
his library, the long, book-lined, up-stairs room that ran half the
length of the house on the north side. But even there, violate as he
would his own sanctuary, the indestructible propriety renewed itself by
a diurnal miracle. He found books restored to their place, papers
sorted, everything an editor could want lying ready to his hand. For the
spirit of order rose punctually to perform its task.

But in the drawing-room its struggles and its triumph were complete.

It had been, so Brodrick's sisters told him, a man's idea of a
drawing-room. And now there were feminine touches, so incongruous and
scattered that they seemed the work of a person establishing herself
tentatively, almost furtively, by small inconspicuous advances and
instalments. A little work-table stood beside the low settle in the
corner by the fireplace. Gay, shining chintz covered the ugly chairs.
There were cushions here and there where a woman's back most needed
them. Books, too, classics in slender duo-decimo, bought for their
cheapness, novels (from the circulating library), of the kind that
Brodrick never read. On the top of a writing-table, flagrantly feminine
in its appointments, there stood, well in sight of the low chair, a
photograph of Brodrick which Brodrick could not possibly have framed and
put there.

The woman who entered this room now had all the air of being its
mistress; she moved in it so naturally and with such assurance, as in
her sphere. You would have judged her occupied with some mysterious
personal predilections with regard to drawing-rooms. She paused in her
passage to reinstate some article dishonoured by the parlour-maid, to
pat a cushion into shape and place a chair better to her liking. At each
of these small fastidious operations she frowned like one who resents
interference with the perfected system of her own arrangements.

She sat down at the writing-table and took from a pigeonhole a sheaf of
tradesmen's bills. These she checked and docketed conscientiously, after
entering their totals in a book marked "Household." From all these acts
she seemed to draw some secret enjoyment and satisfaction. Here she was
evidently in a realm secure from the interference of the incompetent.

With a key attached to her person she now unlocked the inmost shrine of
the writing-table. A small squat heap of silver and of copper sat there
like the god of the shrine. She took it in her hand and counted it and
restored it to its consecrated seat. She then made a final entry: "Cash
in Hand, thirty-five shillings."

She sat smiling in tender contemplation of this legend. It stood for the
savings of the last month, effected by her deft manipulation of the
household. There was no suggestion of cupidity in her smile, nor any
hint of economy adored and pursued for its own sake.

She was Gertrude Collett, the lady who for three years had acted as
Brodrick's housekeeper, or, as she now preferred to call herself, his
secretary. She had contrived, out of this poor material of his weekly
bills, to fashion for herself a religion and an incorporeal romance.

She raised her face to the photograph of Brodrick, as if spiritually she
rendered her account to him. And Brodrick's face, from the ledge of the
writing-table, looked over Gertrude's head with an air of being unmoved
by it all, with eyes intent on their own object.

She, Brodrick's secretary, might have been about five-and-thirty. She
was fair with the fairness which is treacherous to women of her age,
which suffers when they suffer. But Gertrude's skin still held the
colours of her youth as some strong fabric holds its dye. Her face
puzzled you; it was so broad across the cheek-bones that you would have
judged it coarse; it narrowed suddenly in the jaws, pointing her chin to
subtlety. Her nose, broad also across the nostrils and bridge, showed a
sharp edge in profile; it was alert, competent, inquisitive. But there
was mystery again in the long-drawn, pale-rose lines of her mouth. A
wide mouth with irregular lips, not coarse, but coarsely finished. Its
corners must once have drooped with pathos, but this tendency was
overcome or corrected by the serene habit of her smile.

It was not the face of a dreamer. Yet at the moment you would have said
she dreamed. Her eyes, light coloured, slightly prominent, stared
unsheltered under their pale lashes and insufficient brows. They were
eyes that at first sight had no depths in them. Yet they seemed to hold
vapour. They dreamed. They showed her dream.

She started as the silver-chiming clock struck the quarter.

She went up-stairs to the room that was her own, and examined herself
carefully in the looking-glass. Then she did something to her hair.
Waved slightly and kept in place by small amber-coloured combs,
Gertrude's hair, though fragile, sustained the effect of her almost
Scandinavian fairness. Next she changed her cotton blouse for an
immaculate muslin one. As she drew down the blouse and smoothed it under
the clipping belt, she showed a body flat in the back, sharp-breasted,
curbed in the waist; the body of a thoroughly competent, serviceable
person. Her face now almost suggested prettiness, as she turned and
turned its little tilted profile between two looking-glasses.

At half-past three she was seated at her place in Brodrick's library. A
table was set apart for her and her type-writer on a corner by the
window.

The editor was at work at his own table in the centre of the room. He
did not look up at her as she came in. His eyes were lowered, fixed on
the proof he was reading. Once, as he read, he shrugged his shoulders
slightly, and once he sighed. Then he called her to him.

She rose and came, moving dreamily as if drawn, yet holding herself
stiffly and aloof. He continued to gaze at the proof.

"You sat up half the night to correct this, I suppose?"

"Have I done it very badly?"

He did not tell her that she had, that he had spent the best part of his
morning correcting her corrections. She was an inimitable housekeeper,
and a really admirable secretary. But her weakness was that she desired
to be considered admirable and inimitable in everything she undertook.
It would distress her to know that this time she had not succeeded, and
he did not like distressing people who were dependent on him. It used to
be so easy, so mysteriously easy, to distress Miss Collett; but she had
got over that; she was used to him now; she had settled down into the
silent and serene performance of her duties. And she had brought to her
secretarial work a silence and serenity that were invaluable to a man
who detested argument and agitation.

So, instead of insisting on her failure, he tried to diminish her
disturbing sense of it; and when she inquired if she had done her work
very badly, he smiled and said, No, she had done it much too well.

"Too well?" She flushed as she echoed him.

"Yes. You've corrected all Mr. Tanqueray's punctuation and nearly all
his grammar."

"But it's all wrong. Look there--and there."

"How do you know it's all wrong?"

"But--it's so simple. There are rules."

"Yes. But Mr. Tanqueray's a great author, and great authors are born to
break half the rules there are. What you and I have got to know is when
they _may_ break them, and when they mayn't."

A liquid film swam over Gertrude's eyes, deepening their shallows. It
was the first signal of distress.

"It's all right," he said. "I wanted you to do it. I wanted to see what
you could do." He considered her quietly. "It struck me you might
perhaps prefer it to your other duties."

"What made you think that?"

"I didn't think. I only wondered. Well----"

The next half-hour was occupied with the morning's correspondence, till
Brodrick announced that they had no time for more.

"It's only just past four," she said.

"I know; but----Is there anything for tea?" He spoke vaguely like a man
in a dream.

"What an opinion you have of my housekeeping," she said.

"Your housekeeping, Miss Collett, is perfection."

She flushed with pleasure, so that he kept it up.

"Everything," he said, "runs on greased wheels. I don't know how you do
it."

"Oh, it's easy enough to do."

"And it doesn't matter if a lady comes to tea?"

He took up a pencil and began to sharpen it.

"Is there," said Miss Collett, "a lady coming to tea?"

"Yes. And we'll have it in the garden. Tea, I mean."

"And who," said she, "is the lady?"

"Miss Jane Holland." Brodrick did not look up. He was absorbed in his
pencil.

"Another author?"

"Another author," said Brodrick to his pencil.

She smiled. The editor's attitude to authors was one of prolonged
amusement. Prodigious people, authors, in Brodrick's opinion. More than
once, by way of relieving his somewhat perfunctory communion with Miss
Collett, he had discussed the eccentricity, the vanity, the
inexhaustible absurdity of authors. So that it was permissible for her
to smile.

"You are not," he said, "expecting either of my sisters?"

He said it in his most casual, most uninterested voice. And yet she
detected an undertone of anxiety. He did not want his sisters to be
there when Miss Holland came. She had spent three years in studying his
inflections and his wants.

"Not specially to-day," she said.

Brodrick became manifestly entangled in the process of his thought. The
thought itself was as yet obscure to her. She inquired, therefore, where
Miss Holland was to be "shown in." Was she a drawing-room author or a
library author?

In the perfect and unspoken conventions of Brodrick's house the
drawing-room was Miss Collett's place, and the library was his. Tea in
the drawing-room meant that he desired Miss Collett's society; tea in
the library that he preferred his own. There were also rules for the
reception of visitors. Men were shown into the library and stayed there.
Great journalistic ladies like Miss Caroline Bickersteth were shown into
the drawing-room. Little journalistic ladies with dubious manners,
calling, as they did, solely on business, were treated as men and
confined strictly to the library.