Brodrick's stare of surprise showed Gertrude that she had blundered. He
had a superstitious reverence for those authors who, like Mr. Tanqueray,
were great.

"My dear Miss Collett, do you know who she is? The drawing-room, of
course, and all possible honour."

She laughed. She had cultivated for Brodrick's sake the art of laughter,
and prided herself upon knowing the precise moments to be gay.

"I see," she said. And yet she did not see. How could there be any
honour if he did not want his sisters to be there? "That means the best
tea-service and my best manners?"

He didn't know, he said, that she had any but the best.

How good they were she let him see when he presented Miss Holland on her
arrival, her trailing, conspicuous arrival. Gertrude had never given him
occasion to feel that his guests could have a more efficient hostess
than his secretary. She spoke of the pleasure it gave her to see Miss
Holland, and of the honour that she felt, and of how she had heard of
Miss Holland from Mr. Brodrick. There was no becoming thing that
Gertrude did not say. And all the time she was aware of Brodrick's eyes
fixed on Miss Holland with that curious lack of diffuseness in their
vision.

Brodrick was carrying it off by explaining Gertrude to Miss Holland.

"Miss Collett," he said, "is a wonderful lady. She's always doing the
most beautiful things, so quietly that you never knew they're done."

"Does anybody," said Jane, "know how the really beautiful things are
done?"

"There's a really beautiful tea," said Miss Collett gaily, "in the
garden. There are scones and the kind of cake you like."

"You see," Brodrick said, "how she spoils me, how I lie on roses."

"You'd better come," said Miss Collett, "while the scones are still
hot."

"While," said Jane, "the roses are still fresh."

He held the door open for her, and on the threshold she turned to Miss
Collett who followed her.

"Are you sure," said she, "that he's the horrid Sybarite you think
him?"

"I am," said Brodrick, "whatever Miss Collett thinks me. If it pleases
her to think I'm a Sybarite I've got to _be_ a Sybarite."

"I see. And when the rose-leaves are crumpled you bring them to Miss
Collett, and she irons them out, and makes them all smooth again, so
that you don't know they're the same rose-leaves?"

"The rose-leaves never are crumpled."

"Except by some sudden, unconsidered movement of your own?"

"My movements," said Brodrick, "are never sudden and unconsidered."

"What? Never?"

Miss Collett looked a little surprised at this light-handed treatment of
the editor.

And Jane observed Brodrick with a new interest as they sat there in the
garden and Miss Collett poured out tea. "Mr. Brodrick," she said to
herself, "is going to marry Miss Collett, though he doesn't know it."

By the end of the afternoon it seemed to her an inevitable consummation,
the marriage of Mr. Brodrick and Miss Collett. She could almost see it
working, the predestined attraction of the eternally compatible, the
incomparably fit. And when Brodrick left off taking any notice of Miss
Collett, and finally lured Jane away into the library on the flimsiest
pretence, she wondered what game he was up to. Perhaps in his innocence
he was blind to Miss Collett's adoration. He was not sure of Miss
Collett. He was trying to draw her.

Jane, intensely interested, advanced from theory to theory of Brodrick
and Miss Collett while Brodrick removed himself to the writing-table,
and turned on her a mysterious back.

"I want to show you something," he said.

She went to him. In the bared centre of the writing-table he had placed
a great pile of manuscript. He drew out his chair for her, so that she
could sit down and look well at the wonder.

Her heart leaped to the handwriting and to George Tanqueray's name on
the title-page.

"You've seen it?" he said.

"No. Mr. Tanqueray never shows his work."

From some lair in the back of the desk he swept forward a prodigious
array of galley proofs. Tanqueray's novel was in the first number of the
"Monthly Review."

"Oh!" she cried, looking up at him.

"I've pleased you?" he said.

"You have pleased me very much."

She rose and turned away, overcome as by some desired and unexpected
joy. He followed her, making a cushioned place for her in the chair by
the hearth, and seated himself opposite her.

"I was very glad to do it," he said simply.

"It will do you more good than Hambleby," she said.

"You know I did not think so," said he. And there was a pause between
them.

"Mr. Brodrick," she said presently, "do you really want a serial from
me?"

"Do I want it!"

"As much as you think you do?"

"I always," said he, "want things as much as I think I do."

She smiled, wondering whether he thought he wanted Miss Collett as much
as he obviously did.

"What?" he said. "Are you going to let me have the next?"

"I had thought of it. If you really do----"

"Have you had any other offers?"

"Yes; several. But----"

"You must remember mine is only a new venture. And you may do
better----"

It was odd, but a curious uncertainty, a modesty had come upon him since
she last met him. He had been then so absurd, so arrogant about his
magazine.

"I don't want to do better."

"Of course, if it's only a question of terms----"

It was incredible, Brodrick's depreciating himself to a mere question of
terms. She flushed at this dreadful thought.

"It isn't," she said. "Oh! I didn't mean _that_."

"You never mean that. Which is why I must think of it for you. I can at
least offer you higher terms."

"But," she persisted, "I should hate to take them. I _want_ you to have
the thing. That's to say I want _you_ to have it. You must not go paying
me more for that."

"I see," he said, "you want to make up."

She looked at him. He was smiling complacently, in the fulness of his
understanding of her.

"My dear Miss Holland," he went on, "there must be no making up. Nothing
of that sort between you and me."

"There isn't," she said. "What is there to make up for? For your not
getting me?"

He smiled again as if that idea amused him.

"Or," said she, "for my making you take Mr. Tanqueray?"

"You didn't _make_ me," he said. "I took him to please you."

"Well," she said; "and you'll take me now, to please me."

She rose.

"I must say good-bye to Miss Collett. How nice," she said, "Miss Collett
is."

"Isn't she?" said he.

He saw her politely to the station.

That evening he drank his coffee politely in the drawing-room with Miss
Collett.

"Do you know," he said, "Miss Holland thinks you're nice."

To his wonder Miss Collett did not look as if the information gave her
any joy.

"Did she say so?"

"Yes. Do you think _her_ nice?"

"Of course I do."

"What," said he, "do you really think of her?" He was in the habit of
asking Miss Collett what she thought of people. It interested him to
know what women thought, especially what they thought of other women.

It was in the spirit of their old discussions that she now replied.

"You can see she is a great genius. They say geniuses are bad to live
with. But I do not think she would be."

He did not answer. He was considering very profoundly the question she
had raised.

Which was precisely what Miss Collett meant that he should do.

As the silver-chiming clock struck ten she rose and said good-night. She
never allowed these sittings to be prolonged past ten. Neither did
Brodrick.

"And I am not to read any more proofs?" she said.

"Do you like reading them?"

She smiled. "It's not because I like it. I simply wanted to save you."

"You do save me most things."

"I try," she said sweetly, "to save you all."

He smiled now. "There are limits," he said, "even to your power of
saving me. And to my capacity for being saved."

The words were charged with a significance that Brodrick himself was not
aware of; as if the powers that worked in him obscurely had used him for
the utterance of a divination not his own.

His secretary understood him better than he did himself. She had spent
three years in understanding him. And now, for the first time in three
years, her lucidity was painful.

She could not contemplate serenely the thing she thought she had seen.
Therefore she drew a veil over it and refused to believe that it was
there.

"He did not mean anything," said Gertrude to herself. "He is not the
sort of man who means things." Which was true.




XX


Brodrick, living on Putney Heath, was surrounded by his family. It was
only fifteen minutes' walk from his front door to his brother John's
house in Augustus Road, Wimbledon; only five minutes from his back door
to Henry's house in Roehampton Lane. You went by a narrow foot-track
down the slope to get to Henry. You crossed the Heath by Wimbledon
Common to get to John. If John and Henry wanted to get to each other,
they had to pass by Brodrick's house.

Moor Grange was a half-way house, the great meeting-place of all the
Brodricks.

One fine warm Sunday in mid-May, about four o'clock, all the Brodricks
except Hugh were assembled on Hugh's lawn. There was Mr. John Brodrick,
the eldest brother, the head of the firm of Brodrick and Brodrick,
Electrical Engineers. There was Dr. Henry Brodrick, who came next to
John. He had brought Mrs. Heron, their sister (Mrs. Heron lived with
Henry, because Mr. Heron had run away with the governess, to the
unspeakable scandal of the Brodricks). There was Mrs. Louis Levine, who
came next to Mrs. Heron. There was Mrs. John Brodrick, not to be
separated from her husband, who, in a decorous dumbness and secrecy,
adored her; and Mr. Louis Levine, who owed his position among the
Brodricks to the very properly apparent devotion of his wife.

And there were children about. Eddy and Winny Heron, restless,
irrepressible in their young teens, sprawled at their mother's feet and
hung over her in attitudes of affection. One very small Levine trotted
to and fro on fat legs over the lawn. The other, too small to run, could
be seen in the background, standing in Gertrude Collett's lap and
trampling on her.

The Levines had come over from St. John's Wood, packed tight in their
commodious brand-new motor-car, the symbol of Levine's prosperity. So
that all Brodrick's family were at Putney this afternoon.

They were sitting in the delicate shadow of the lime-tree. Outside, the
lawn was drenched with light, light that ran quivering into the little
inlets and pools among the shadows. The cropped grass shone clear as
emerald, and all the garden showed clear-cut and solid and stable in its
propriety and order.

Still more distinct, more stable and more solid, more ineradicably fixed
in order and propriety, were the four figures of the Brodricks. Sitting
there, in a light that refused, in spite of the lime-tree, to lend
itself to any mystery or enchantment, they maintained themselves in a
positively formidable reality. All these Brodricks had firm,
thick-skinned faces in which lines came slowly, and were few but strong.
Faces, they were, of men who have lived in absolute sobriety and sanity,
untorn by any temptation to live otherwise; faces of women to whom
motherhood has brought the ultimate content.

Comfortably material persons, sitting in a deep peace, not to be rapt
from it by any fantasy, nor beguiled by any dream, they paid only in a
high morality their debt to the intangible.

This afternoon, in spite of themselves, they were roused somewhat from
the peace they sat in. They were expecting somebody.

"I suppose, when she arrives, we shall all have to sit at the lady's
feet," said Mrs. Levine.

"_I_'ve no objection," said the Doctor; "after what she's done."

"It was pretty decent of her," said Levine. He was dark, nervous and
solemn-eyed, a lean man of his race, and handsome. Sophy Brodrick had
not loved her husband when she married him. She adored him now, because
of the beauty that had passed from him into her children.

"I say, Uncle Louis, you _might_ tell me what she _did_ do," said Eddy
Heron.

"She got your Uncle Hughy out of a tight place, my boy."

"I say, what's _he_ been doing?"

Mr. Levine smiled inscrutably, while his wife shook her head at him.

"He's been going it, has he? Good old Uncle Hughy!"

Eddy's mother thought it would be nice if he and Winny went down the
Heath road to meet Uncle Hughy and Miss Holland. Whereupon Eddy embraced
his mother, being unable to agree with her.

"You really believe," said Mr. John Brodrick, who seemed anxious to be
sure of his facts before he committed himself, "you really believe that
if it had not been for this lady he'd have had to give it up?"

"Well," said Levine judicially, "she practically saved it. You see he
_would_ start it with George Tanqueray. And who cares about George
Tanqueray? That's what wrecked him. I told him at the time it was sheer
lunacy, but he wouldn't listen to me. _Why_" (Levine spoke in a small
excited voice with sudden high notes), "he hadn't subscriptions enough
to float the thing for twenty-four hours. As soon as he gets Miss
Holland they go up by leaps and bounds, and it's bin goin' steady ever
since. How long it'll keep goin's another thing."

"I understood Hugh to say," said John, "that the arrangements involved
some considerable sacrifice to the lady."

"Well, you see, he'd been a bit of an ass. He'd made her a ridiculous
offer, an offer _we_ simply couldn't afford, and we had to tell her so."

"And then," said Sophy, "you might as well mention that she gave it him
for what you _could_ afford."

"She certainly let him have it very cheap." He ruminated. "Uncommonly
cheap--considering what her figure is."

Eddy wanted to know what Miss Holland's figure had to do with his Uncle
Hughy. Winny, round-eyed with wonder, inquired if it was beautiful, and
was told that it was fairly beautiful, a tidy figure, a nice round
figure, like her Aunt Sophy's.

"That," said John, "was _very_ decent of her."

"Very," said the gentle lady, Mrs. John.

"It was splendid," said Mrs. Heron.

The Doctor meditated. "I wonder _why_ she did it," said the Doctor.

His brother-in-law explained. "Oh, she thought she'd let him in for
Tanqueray."

"Let him _in_?"

"Don't you see," said Mrs. Heron, "it was her idea of honour."

"A woman's idea of honour," said the Doctor.

"You needn't criticize it," said his sister Sophy.

"I don't," said the Doctor.

"I can tell you," said Levine, "what with her idea of honour and Hugh's
idea of honour, the office had a pretty rough time of it till they got
the business fixed."

"With Hugh's _ideas_," said John, "he's hardly likely to make this thing
pay, is he? Especially if he's going to bar politics."

He said it importantly. By a manner, by wearing spectacles, and brushing
his hair back in two semi-circles from his forehead, Mr. John Brodrick
contrived to appear considerably more important than he was.

"Ah, he's made a mistake there," said the Doctor.

"That's what _I_ tell him." Levine was more excited than ever.

"I should think he might be allowed to do what he likes," said Sophy.
"After all, it's _his_ magazine."

Mr. Levine's face remained supernaturally polite while it guarded his
opinion that it wasn't his brother-in-law's magazine at all. They had
disagreed about Tanqueray. They had disagreed about everything connected
with the magazine, from the make-up of the first number to the salary of
the sub-editor. They had almost quarreled about what Levine called "Miss
Holland's price." And now, when his wife said that it was Sunday--and if
they were going to talk business all the afternoon--she was told that
Hugh's magazine wasn't business. It was Hugh's game. (His dreadfully
expensive, possibly ruinous game.)

"Then," she said, "you might let him play it. I'm sure he works hard
enough on your horrid old 'Telegraph.'"

Sophy invariably stood up for her family against her husband. But she
would have stood up for her husband against all the world.

"Thank you, my pet." She stooped to the little three-year-old girl who
trotted to and fro, offering to each of these mysteriously, deplorably
preoccupied persons a flower without a stalk.

It was at this moment that Brodrick arrived from the station with Miss
Holland.

"Is it a garden-party?" Jane inquired.

"No," said Brodrick, "it's my family."

She came on with him over the lawn. And the group rose to its feet; it
broke up with little movements and murmurs, in a restrained, dignified
expectancy. Jane had the sense of being led towards some unaccountable
triumph and acclamation.

They closed round her, these unknown Brodricks, inaudibly stirred, with
some unspoken, incomprehensible emotion in the men's gaze and in the
women's touch. The big boy and girl shared it as they came forward in
their shyness, with affectionate faces and clumsy, abortive encounters
of the hand.

It was the whole Brodrick family moved to its depths, feeling as one. It
could only be so moved by the spectacle of integrity and honour and
incorruptible loyalty to It.

Still moved, it was surrounding Jane when a maid arrived with the
tea-table, and the white cloth waved a signal to Miss Collett across the
lawn. There was then a perceptible pause in the ovation as Brodrick's
secretary appeared.

Even across the lawn Jane could discern trouble in Miss Collett's face.
But Miss Collett's face was plastic in readjustments, and by the time
she was fairly on the scene it had recaptured the habit of its smile.
The smile, in greeting, covered and carried off the betraying reluctance
of her hand. It implied that, if Miss Holland was to be set up in a high
place and worshipped, Miss Collett was anxious to observe the
appropriate ritual. Having observed it, she took, with her quiet,
inconspicuous assurance, the place that was her own. She gave but one
sign of her trouble when Dr. Brodrick was heard congratulating their
guest on the great serial which, said he, by "saving" the magazine, had
"saved" his brother. Then Gertrude quivered slightly, and the blood
flushed in her set face and passed as fierce heat passes through iron.

While they were talking Jane had opportunity to watch and wonder at the
firm, consolidated society that was Brodrick's family. These faces
proclaimed by their resemblance the material link. Mr. John Brodrick was
a more thick-set, an older, graver-lined, and grizzled Hugh, a Hugh who
had lost his sombre fixity of gaze. Dr. Henry Brodrick was a tall,
attenuated John, with a slightly, ever so slightly receding chin. Mrs.
Heron was Hugh again made feminine and slender. She had Hugh's features,
refined and diminished. She had Hugh's eyes, filled with some tragic
sorrow of her own. Her hair was white, every thread of it, though she
could not have been more than forty-five.

These likenesses were not so apparent at first sight in Mrs. Levine, the
golden, full-blown flower of the Brodricks. They had mixed so thoroughly
and subtly that they merged in her smoothness and her roundness. And
still the facial substance showed in the firm opacity of her skin, the
racial soul asserted itself in her poised complacence and decision.

"You don't know," she was saying, "how we're all sitting at your feet."

"We are indeed," said Mr. John Brodrick.

"Very much so," said the Doctor.

"Even little Cissy," said Hugh.

For little Cissy was bringing all her stalkless flowers to Jane; smiling
at her as if she alone possessed the secret of this play. Brodrick
watched, well-pleased, the silent traffic of their tendernesses.

The others were talking about Hambleby now. They had all read him. They
had all enjoyed him. They all wanted more of him.

"If we could only have had Hambleby, Miss Holland," said Levine. "It
wasn't my fault that we didn't get him."

Jane remembered that this was the brother-in-law whom Brodrick had
wanted to keep out. He had the air of being persistently, permanently
in.

"Of course it wasn't your fault," said she.

Levine then thought it necessary to say things about Jane's celebrity
till Brodrick cut him short.

"Miss Holland," he said, "doesn't like her celebrity. You needn't talk
about it."

John and Henry looked graver than ever, and Sophy made sweet eyes at
Jane. Sophy's eyes--when they looked at you--were very sweet. It was
through her eyes only that she apologized for her husband, whose own
eyes were manifestly incapable of apologizing for anything. The
Brodricks seemed to tolerate their brother-in-law; and he seemed, more
sublimely, to tolerate their tolerance.

Great efforts were now made to divert Levine from the magazine. Mr. John
Brodrick headed him off with motors and their makers; the Doctor kept
his half-resentful spirit moving briskly round the Wimbledon golf-links;
and Hugh, with considerable dexterity, landed him securely on the fiscal
question, where he might be relied upon to stay.

But it was the Baby who saw what was to be done if his parent was to be
delivered from his own offensiveness.

"Oh, look!" cried Winny. "Look at Baby. Making such a ducky angel of
himself."

The Baby, having sat down abruptly on the grass, was making a ducky
angel of himself by wriggling along it, obliquely, as he sat.

At the sight of him all the Brodricks instantaneously lost their
seriousness and sanity. He was captured and established as the centre of
the group. And, in the great act of adoration of the Baby, Levine was
once more united to his wife's family.

His wife's family, like his wife, could forgive anything to Louis Levine
because of the babies. It reserved its disapproval for Mrs. John
Brodrick who had never had any; who had never done anything that was
expected of her. Mrs. John looked as if she had cried a great deal
because of the things she had not done. She had small hazel eyes with
inflamed lids, and a small high nose that was always rather red. She was
well born, and she carried her low-browed, bird-like head among the
Brodricks with a solitary grace, and the motions of a dignified,
distinguished bird.

And now, in mute penitence and wistful worship, she prostrated herself
before their divinity, the Baby.

And in the middle of it all, with amazing smiles and chuckles, the Baby
suddenly renounced his family and held out his arms to Jane. And
suddenly all the Brodricks laughed. His mother laughed more than any of
them. She took the Baby, and set him at Jane's feet; and he sat there,
looking at Jane, as at some object of extraordinary interest and wonder
and fascination. And Brodrick looked at both of them with something of
the same naГЇf expression, and the Doctor, the attenuated, meditative
Doctor, looked at all three, but especially at his brother. Gertrude
Collett looked, now at Brodrick and now at Jane.

Brodrick did not see the Doctor or Gertrude either. It had just struck
him that Jane was not in the least like her portrait, _the_ portrait. He
was thinking, as Tanqueray had once thought, that Gisborne, R. A., was
an ass, and that if he could have her painted he would have her painted
as she looked now.

As he was trying to catch the look, Gertrude came and said it was the
Baby's tea-time, and carried him away. And the look went from Jane's
face, and Brodrick felt annoyed with Gertrude because she had made it
go.

Then Mrs. John came up and tried very hard to talk to Jane. She was
nervously aware that conversation was expected of her as the wife of the
head of the family, and that in this thing also she had failed him. She
was further oppressed by Miss Holland's celebrity, and by the idea she
had that Miss Holland must be always thinking of it and would not like
to see it thus obscured by any other interest.

And while Mrs. John sat beside her, painfully and pensively endeavouring
to converse, Jane heard Brodrick talking to Mrs. Levine.

"Where's Gertrude gone?" he said.

And Mrs. Levine answered, "She's indoors with the children."

Mrs. John was saying that Miss Holland must have known Hambleby; and
then again that no, that wasn't likely. That was what made it so
wonderful that she should know. Mrs. John could not have done it. She
recounted sorrowfully the number of things she could not do. And through
it all Jane heard the others talking about Gertrude.

"Gertrude looks very ill," said Mrs. Levine. "What's the matter with
her?"

"How should I know?" said Brodrick. "Ask Henry."

"Miss Collett," said the Doctor solemnly, "has not consulted me."

At this point Mrs. Heron delivered Jane from Mrs. John. She said she
wanted Miss Holland to see the sweet-peas in the kitchen garden.

And in the kitchen garden, among the sweet-peas, Mrs. Heron thanked Jane
on her own account for what she had done, while Jane kept on saying that
she had done nothing. All down the kitchen garden there was an alley of
sweet-peas with a seat at the end of it, and there they sat while Mrs.
Heron talked about her brother Hugh who had been so good to her and to
her children. This praise of Brodrick mingled with the scent of the
sweet-peas, so that Jane could never again smell sweet-peas in a hot
garden without hearing Brodrick's praise.

Mrs. Heron stopped abruptly, as if she could say no more, as if, indeed,
she had said too much, as if she were not used to saying such things.

"My brother thinks I may ask you to come and see me. Will you? Will you
come some day and stay with me?"

In spite of the voice that told her that she was being drawn, that this
family of Brodrick's was formidable, that she must be on her guard
against all arms, stretched out to her, before she knew what she was
doing Jane had said, Yes; she would be very glad.

Voices came to them then, and down the long alley between the sweet-peas
she saw Brodrick coming towards them with Miss Collett and Winny Heron;
and Jane was suddenly aware that it was getting late.

It was cold, too. She shivered. Miss Collett offered a wrap.

For a moment, in the hall of the house, Jane was alone with Brodrick's
secretary. Through the open door they could see Brodrick standing on the
lawn, talking to his sister. Mrs. Heron held him by one arm, Winny
dragged on the other.

"Those two seem devoted to Mr. Brodrick," said Jane.

"They ought to be," said Miss Collett, "with all he does for them. And
they are. The Brodricks are all like that." She looked hard at Jane. "If
you've done anything for them, they never forget it. They keep on paying
back."

Jane smiled.

"I imagine Mr. Hugh Brodrick would be quite absurd about it."

"Oh, _he_----" Gertrude raised her head. Her eyes adored him.

As if her pause were too profoundly revealing, she filled it up. "He'll
always give more than he gets. It isn't for _you_ he gives, it's for
himself. He likes giving. And when it comes to paying him back----."

"That's where he has you?"

"Yes."

And Jane thought, "My dear lady, if you wouldn't treat him quite so like
a god, he might have a chance to discover that he's mortal."

She would have liked to have said that to Miss Collett. She would have
liked to have taken Brodrick to the seat at the end of the alley and
have said to him, "It's all perfectly right. Don't be an idiot and miss
it. You can't do a better thing for yourself than marry her, and it's
the only way, you know, you can pay her back. Don't you see that you're
cruel to her? That it's you that's making her ill? She can't look pretty
when she's ill, but she'd be quite pretty if you made her happy."

But all she said was, "He's like that, is he?" And she went out to where
he waited for her.

"Have you _got_ to go?" he said.

She said, Yes, she was half expecting Nina Lempriere.

"The fiery lady?"

"Yes."

"You may as well stay. She won't be there," said Brodrick.

But Jane did not stay.

The whole family turned out on to the Heath to see them go. At the end
of the road they looked back and saw it there. Sophy Levine was holding
up the Baby to make him wave to Jane.

"Why did you tell them?" she said reproachfully to Brodrick.

"Because I wanted them to like you."

"Am I so disagreeable that they couldn't--without that?"

"I wanted you," he said, "to like _them_."

"I do like them."

He glanced at her sidelong and softly.

"Tell me," she said. "What have they done to look so happy, and so
perfectly at peace?"

"That's it. They haven't done anything."

"Not to do things--that's the secret, is it?"

"Yes," he said, "I almost think it is."

"I wonder," said she.




XXI


Brodrick was right. Nina was not there.

At the moment when Jane arrived, anxious and expectant, in Kensington
Square, Nina and Tanqueray were sitting by the window of the room in
Adelphi Terrace.

They were both silent, both immobile in the same attitude, bowed
forward, listening intently, the antagonistic pair made one in their
enchantment, their absorption.

A young man stood before Tanqueray. He stood a little behind Nina where
she sat in the window-seat. One shoulder leaned beside her against the
shutter. He was very tall, and as he stood there his voice, deep and
rhythmic, flowed and vibrated above them, giving utterance to the thing
that held them.

Nina could not see him where she sat. It was Tanqueray who kept on
looking at him with clear, contemplative eyes under brows no longer
irritable.

He was, Tanqueray thought, rather extraordinary to look at. Dressed in a
loosely-fitting suit of all seasons, he held himself very straight from
the waist, as if in defiance of the slackness of his build. His eyes,
his alien, star-gazing eyes, were blue and uncannily clear under their
dark and delicate brows. He had the face of a Celt, with high
cheek-bones, and a short high nose; the bone between the nostrils,
slightly prominent like a buttress, saved the bridge of it from the
final droop. He had the wide mouth of a Celt, long-lipped, but
beautifully cut. His thick hair, his moustache, his close-clipped,
pointed beard, were dark and dry. His face showed a sunburn whitening.
It had passed through strange climates. He had the look, this poet, of a
man who had left some stupendous experience behind him; who had left
many things behind him, to stride, star-gazing, on. His face revealed
him as he chanted his poems. Unbeautiful in detail, its effect as a
whole was one of extraordinary beauty, as of some marvellously pure
vessel for the spiritual fire. Beside him, it struck Tanqueray that Nina
showed more than ever a murky flame.

The voice ceased, but the two remained silent for a moment.

Then Tanqueray spoke one word, "Splendid!"

Nina turned her head and looked up at the poet. His eyes were still
following his vision. Her voice recalled him.

"Owen," she said, "will you bring the rest? Bring down all you've got."

Tanqueray saw as she spoke to him that there came again that betraying
tenderness about her mouth; as she looked at him, her eyes lifted their
hoods, revealing the sudden softness and surrender.

And as Tanqueray watched her he was aware that the queer eyes of the man
were turned on him, rather than on Nina. They looked through him, as if
they saw with a lucidity even more unendurable than his, what was going
on in Tanqueray's soul.

He said something inaudible to Nina and went out of the room with a
light, energetic stride.

"How can you stand his eyes?" said Tanqueray; "it's like being exposed
to the everlasting stare of God."

"It is, rather."

"What's his name again?"

"Owen Prothero."

"What do you know about him."

She told him what she knew. Prothero was, as Tanqueray saw, an unlicked
Celt. He had been, if Tanqueray would believe it, in the Indian Medical
Service, and had flung it up before he got his pension. He had been to
British Central Africa on a commission for investigating sleeping
sickness; he spoke of it casually as if it were the sort of thing you
naturally were on. He had volunteered as a surgeon in the Boer War. And
with it all he was what Tanqueray saw.

"And his address?" Tanqueray inquired.

"He lives here."

"Why shouldn't he?" He answered her challenging eyes. They shot light at
him.

"He is a great poet? I _was_ right?"

"Absolutely. He's great enough for anybody. How on earth did you get
hold of him?"

She was silent. She seemed to be listening for the sound of Prothero's
feet on the stair.

He was soon with them, bringing his sheaf of manuscript. He had brought
all he had got. The chanting began again and continued till the light
failed.

And as Tanqueray listened the restless, irritable devilry passed from
his face. Salient, thrust forward toward Prothero, it was the face of a
winged creature in adoration, caught suddenly into heaven, breasting the
flood of the supernal light. For Tanqueray could be cruel in his
contempt for all clevernesses and littlenesses, for all achievements
that had the literary taint; but he was on his knees in a moment before
the incorruptible divinities. He had the immortal's scent for
immortality.

When the chanting ceased they talked.

Tanqueray warned Prothero of the horrors of premature renown. Prothero
declared that he had none. Nobody knew his name.

"Good," said Tanqueray. "Celebrity's all very well at the end, when
you've done the things you want to do. It's a bad beginning. It doesn't
matter quite so much if you live in the country where nobody's likely to
know you're celebrated till you're dead. But if you _will_ live in
London, your only chance is to remain obscure."

"There are in London at this moment," he continued, "about one thousand
celebrated authors. There are, I imagine, about fifty distinct circles
where they meet. Fifty distinct hells where they're bound to meet each
other. Hells where they're driven round and round, meeting each other.
Steaming hells where they sit stewing in each other's sweat----"

"_Don't_, George!" cried Nina.

"Loathsome hells, where they swarm and squirm and wriggle in and out of
each other. Sanguinary, murderous hells, where they're all tearing at
each other's throats. How can you hope, how can you possibly hope to do
anything original, if you're constantly breathing that atmosphere?
Horrid used-up air that authors--beasts!--have breathed over and over
and over again."

"As if," said Nina, "_we_ weren't authors."

"My dear Nina, nobody would think it of us. Nobody would have thought it
of Jinny if she hadn't gone and got celebrated."

"You'll be celebrated yourself some day."

"I shall be dead," said he. "I shan't know anything about it."

At this point Prothero, with an exquisite vagueness, stated that he
wanted to get work on a paper. He was not, he intimated, looking to his
poems to keep him. On the contrary, he would have to keep them.

Tanqueray wondered if he realized how disastrous, how ruinous they were.
He had no doubt about Nina's poet. But there were poets and poets. There
were dubious, delicate splendours, for ever trembling on the verge of
immortality. And there were the infrequent, enormous stars that wheel on
immeasurable orbits, so distant that they seem of all transitory things
most transitory. Prothero was one of these. There was not much chance
for him in his generation. His poems were too portentously inspired.
They were the poems of a saint, a seer, an exile from life and time. He
stood alone on the ultimate, untrodden shores, watching strange tides
and the courses of unknown worlds. On any reasonable calculation he
could not hope to make himself heard for half a century, if then. There
was something about him alien and terrible, inaccessibly divine. The
form of his poems was uncouth, almost ugly. Their harmonies, stupendous
and unforeseen, struck the ear with the shock of discord.

It was, of course, absurd that he should want work on a paper; still
more absurd that he should think, or that Nina should think, that
Tanqueray could get it for him.

He didn't, it appeared, expect anybody to get it for him. He just wrote
things, things that he thought were adequately imbecile, and shot them
into letter-boxes. As to what became of them, Tanqueray had never seen
anybody more unsolicitous, more reckless of the dark event.

He went away with Prothero's poems in his pocket.

Nina followed him and held him on the doorstep.

"You do believe in him?" she said.

"What's the good of _my_ believing in him? I can't help him. I can't
help myself. He's got to wait, Nina, like the rest of us. It won't hurt
him."

"It will. He can't wait, George. He's desperately poor. You must do
something."

"What can I do?"

"There are things," she said, "that people always do."

"I could offer him a five-pound note; but he wouldn't take it."

"No. He wouldn't take it. You can do better than that. You can get him
to meet that man of yours."

"What man?"

"That magazine man, Brodrick."

He laughed. "Considering that I all but did for him and his magazine!
Brodrick's Jane Holland's man, not mine, you know. Have you told Jane
about Prothero?"

"No."

A faint flame leaped in her face and died.

"You'd better," he said. "She can do anything with Brodrick. She could
even make him take a poem. Why didn't you ask Prothero to meet her?"

"I haven't seen her for six months."

"Is that your fault or hers?"

"Neither."

"He's had to wait, then, six months?"

There was no escaping his diabolical lucidity.

"Go and see her at once," he went on, "and take Prothero. That's more to
the point, you know, than his seeing me. Jinny is a powerful person, and
then she has a way with her."

Again the flame leaped in her face and died, slowly, as under torture.

"Even Laura can do more for him than I. She knows people on papers. Take
him to see Laura." He was backing out of the doorway.

"It was you," she said, "that he wanted to see. I promised him."

Her face, haggard, restless with the quivering of her agonized nerves,
was as a wild book for him to read. He was sorry for her torture. He
lingered.

"I'd go and speak to Brodrick to-morrow, only he loathes the sight of
me, and I can't blame him, poor devil."

"It's no matter," she said. "I'll write to Jane Holland."

"Do. She'll get him work on Brodrick's paper."

He went away, meditating on Nina and her medical, surgical poet. She
would have to write to Jinny now. But she wouldn't take him to see her.
She was determined to keep him to herself. That was why none of them had
seen anything of Nina for six months. There was (he came back to it
again) something very murky about Nina. And Nina, with her murkiness,
was manifestly in love with this spiritual, this mystical young man. So
amazing was the part set her in the mortal comedy. He would give a good
deal to know what Prothero thought of Nina.

Prothero could have told him that he thought of Nina as he thought of
his own youth.

He was of her mother's race and from her country of the Marches. He knew
more about Nina than Tanqueray had ever known. He knew the Lemprieres, a
family of untamed hereditary wildness. He knew Nina as the survival of a
hereditary doom, a tragedy untiring, relentless, repeated year after
year and foreseen with a terrible certainty. He knew that it had left
her with her bare genius, her temperament and her nerves.

It was of all things most improbable that he should be here in London,
lodged in one room, with only the bare boards of it between him and Nina
Lempriere.

The improbability of it struck Nina as she went to and fro in the inner
room, preparing their supper.

There had been no acquaintance between her and young Prothero, the
medical student. If their ways met it was only by accident, at long
intervals, and always, she remembered, out of doors, on her mountains.
They used to pass each other with eyes unseeing, fixed in their own
dream. That was fifteen years ago. In all that time she had not seen
him.

He had drawn her now by his shyness, his horror of other people, his
perfect satisfaction in their solitary communion. Virgin from his wild
places, he had told her that she was the only woman he was not afraid
of. He had attached himself to her manifestly, persistently, with the
fidelity of a wild thing won by sheer absence of pursuit. She had let
him come and go, violently aware of him, but seeming unaware. He would
sit for hours in her room, reading while she wrote, forgetting that
up-stairs his fire was dying in the grate.

He had embraced Poverty like a saint. He regarded it as the blessed
state of every man who desired to obey his own genius at all costs. He
was all right, he said. He had lived on rice in the jungle. He could
live on rice at a pinch now. And he could publish his poems if he got
work on the papers. On this point Nina found him engagingly, innocently
open to suggestion. She had suggested a series of articles on the
problem of the East. He had written the articles, but in such a style
and in such a spirit that no editor had as yet dared to publish them.

It was possible that he would have a chance with Brodrick who was braver
than other editors. Brodrick was his one chance.

She would have suggested his meeting Brodrick, but that the way to
Brodrick lay through Jane Holland. She remembered that the gods had
thrust Jane Holland between her and George Tanqueray; and she was
determined that they should put no woman between her and Owen Prothero.
She had taken possession of him and she meant to keep him to herself.
The supreme, irresistible temptation was to keep him to herself. It
dominated her desire to serve his interests. But she had not refused him
when he owned, shyly, that he would like to see George Tanqueray, the
only living writer, he maintained, who had any passion for truth, any
sweep, any clearness of vision.

It was Tanqueray, with that passion, that diabolical lucidity, that
vision of his, who had made her realize the baseness of her secrecy. She
had no right to keep Owen to herself. He was too valuable.

His innocence had given a sting to her remorse. He had remained so
completely satisfied with what she had done for him, so wholly unaware
of having been kept obscure when celebrity was possible. Things came, he
seemed to say, or they didn't come. If you were wise you waited.

With his invincible patience he was waiting now, in her room up-stairs,
standing before the bookcase with his back to the door. He stood
absolutely still, his head and shoulders bowed over the book he was
manifestly not reading. In this attitude he had an air of masterly
indifference to time, of not caring how long he waited, being habituated
to extravagant expenditure of moments and of days. Absorbed in some
inward and invisible act, he was unaware of Nina as she entered.

She called him to the supper she had made ready for him. He swung round,
returning as it were from an immense distance, and followed her.

He was hungry, and she had a fierce maternal joy in seeing him eat. It
was after supper that they talked, as they sat by the window in the
outer room, looking at the river, a river of night, lamp-starred.

Nina began it. "Owen," she said, "how did George Tanqueray strike you?"

He paused before he spoke. "I think," he said, "I never in my life saw
anybody more on the look-out. It's terrible, that prowling genius,
always ready to spring."

"I know," she said, "he sees everything."

"No, Nina, he doesn't. He's a man whose genius has made away with one
half of his capacity for seeing. That's his curse! If your eyes are
incessantly looking out they lose the power of looking in."

"And yet, he's the only really great psychologist we've got. He and Jane
Holland."

"Yes, as they go, your psychologists. Tanqueray sees so much inside
other people that he can't see inside himself. What's worse, I shouldn't
think he'd see far inside the people who really touch him. It comes of
perpetually looking away."

"You don't know him. How can you tell?"

"Because I never look away."

"Can you see what's going on inside _me_?"

"Sometimes. I don't always look."

"Can you help looking?"

"Of course you can."

"You _may_ look. I don't think I mind your looking. Why," she asked
abruptly, "don't I mind?"

Her voice had an accent that betrayed her.

"Because there's nothing inside you that you're ashamed of."

She reddened with shame; shame of the fierce, base instinct that had
made her keep him to herself. She knew that nothing escaped him. He had
the keen, comprehending eyes of the physician who knows the sad secrets
of the body; and he had other eyes that saw inward, that held and drew
to confession the terrified, reluctant soul. She had an insane longing
to throw herself at his feet in confession.

"Yes," she said, "but there are _things_----And yet----"

He stopped her. "Nothing, Nina, if you really knew yourself."

"Owen--it's not that. It's not because I don't know myself. It's because
I know you. I know that, whatever there might be in me, whatever I did,
however low I sank--if I could sink--your charity would be there to hold
me up. And it wouldn't be your charity, either. I couldn't stand your
charity. It wouldn't even be understanding. You don't understand me. It
would be some knowledge of me that I couldn't have myself, that nobody
but you could have. As if whatever you saw you'd say, 'That isn't really
Nina.'"

"I should say, 'That's really Nina, so it's all right.'"

She paused, brooding on the possibilities he saw, that he was bound to
see, if he saw anything. Did he, she wondered, really see what was in
her, her hidden shames and insanities, the course of the wild blood that
he knew must flow from all the Lemprieres to her? She lived, to be sure,
the life of an ascetic and took it out in dreams. Yet he must see how
her savage, solitary passion clung to him, and would not let go. Did he
see, and yet did he not condemn her?

"Owen," she said suddenly, "do you mind seeing?"

"Sometimes I hate it. These aren't the things, you know, I want to see."

She lowered her eyes. Her nervous hand moved slowly to and fro along the
window-sill, measuring her next words.

"What--do you want--to see?"

He rose to his feet and looked at her. At her, not through her, and she
wondered, had he seen enough? It was as if he withdrew himself before
some thought that stirred in her, menacing to peace.

"I can't tell you," he said. "I can't talk about it."

Then she knew what he meant. He was thinking of his vision, his vision
of God.

He could not speak of it to her. She had never known him. This soul,
with which her own claimed kindred, was hidden from her by all the veils
of heaven.

"I know," she said. "Only tell me one thing. Was that what you went out
to India and Central Africa to see?"

That drew him.

"No. I went out not to see it. To get away from it. I meant to give
things their chance. That's why I went in for medicine. I wasn't going
to shirk. I wanted to be a man. Not a long-haired, weedy thing in a soft
hat."

"Was it any good?"

"Yes. I proved the unreality of things. I proved it up to the hilt. And
I _did_n't shirk."

"But you wanted to escape, all the time?"

"I didn't escape. I couldn't. I couldn't catch cholera, or plague, _or_
sleeping sickness. I couldn't catch anything."

"You tried?"

"Oh, yes, I gave _myself_ a chance. That was only fair. But it was no
use. I couldn't even get frightened."

"Owen--some people would say you were morbid."

"No, they wouldn't. They'd say I was mad. They _will_ say it when I've
published those poems."

"Did you mind my showing them to George Tanqueray?"

"No. But it's no use. Nobody knows my name."

"May I show them to Jane Holland?"

"Show them to any one you like. It'll be no use either."

"Owen--does it never occur to you that any human being can be of use?"

"No." He considered the point. "No, I can't say it ever does."

He stood before her, wrapped in his dream, removed from her, utterly
forgetful.

She had her moment of pain in contemplating him. He saw it in her face,
and as it were came back to her.

"Don't imagine," he said, "that I don't know what _you_'ve done. Now
that I do know you."

She turned, almost in anger. "I've done nothing. You don't know me." She
added, "I am going to write to Jane Holland."

When he had left her she sat a long while by the window, brooding on the
thing that had happened to her a second time.

She had fallen in love; fallen with the fatality of the Lemprieres, and
with the fine precipitate sweep of her own genius. And she had let
herself go, with the recklessness of a woman unaware of her genius for
loving, with the superb innocence, too, of all spontaneous forces.
Owen's nature had disarmed her of all subterfuges, all ordinary defences
of her sex. They were absurd in dealing with a creature so remote and
disembodied.

She knew that in his way, his remote and disembodied way, he cared for
her. She knew that in whatever place he held her she was alone there.
She was the only woman for whom as yet he had cared. His way was not
Tanqueray's way. It was a way that kept her safe. She had sworn that
there were to be no more George Tanquerays; and there were none. She had
done with that.

Not but that she was afraid of Owen. She had taken possession of him in
fear, a secret, unallowed possession, a holding with hands invisible,
intangible. For she had wisdom, the sad wisdom of the frustrate; it, and
the insight of her genius, told her that Owen would not endure a tie
less spiritual than friendship. She knew George Tanqueray's opinion of
her. He was justified.

But though she sacrificed so far to spirit, it was her flesh and blood
that shrank from the possible communion of Owen Prothero and Jane
Holland. For Jinny, as Tanqueray said, had a way with her; and she knew
Jinny's way. Jinny would take Owen Prothero from her as she had taken
George, not deliberately, not because she wanted to, but because she was
Jinny and had a way. Besides, Jane could do for him what she with her
bare genius could not do, and that thought was insupportable to Nina.
Yesterday she had been everything to him. Tomorrow Jane would be as
much, or more.

And there were other women. They would be as ready as she to take
possession. They would claim his friendship, and more than she had
claimed, as the reward of having recognized him. There was no reason why
she should give Owen up, and hand him over to them. And this was what
she would do if she wrote that letter to Jane Holland.

She rose, and went to her desk and wrote it.




XXII


Jane answered at once. If Nina would bring Prothero to Kensington on
Friday at four o'clock he would meet Hugh Brodrick.