"How any one can be unkind to dumb animals," said Rose, musing.
She moved slowly to the door, gathering up the puppies in her arms, and calling to the rest to follow her. "Come along," she said, "and see what Pussy's doing."
He heard her voice going down-stairs saying, "Puss—Puss—Pussy—Min—Min—Min."
When she appeared to him the next day, Minny, the cat, was hanging by his claws on to her shoulder.
"Are you fond of cats, sir?"
"I adore them." (He did.)
"Would you like to have Minny, sir? He'll be nice company for you."
"Ought I to deprive you of his society?"
"I don't mind, sir. I've got the little dogs." She looked at him softly. "And you've got nothing."
"True, Rose. I've got nothing."
That evening, as he sat in his chair, with Rose's cat curled up on his knee, he found himself thinking, preposterously thinking, about Rose.
He supposed she was Mrs. Eldred's daughter. He did not like to think of her as Mrs. Eldred's daughter. She was charming now; but he had a vision of her as she might be in twenty years' time, grown shapeless and immense, and wheezing as Mrs. Eldred wheezed. Yet no; that was too horrible. You could not think of Rose as—wheezing. People did not always take after their mothers. Rose must have had a father. Of course, Eldred was her father; and Eldred was a small man, lean and brown as a beetle; and he had never heard him wheeze.
At dinner-time Rose solved his doubt.
"Aunt says, sir, do you mind my waitin' on you?"
"I do not mind it in the very least."
"It's beginning to be a trouble to Aunt now to get up-stairs."
"I wouldn't dream of troubling your aunt."
Her aunt? Mrs. Eldred was not her mother. Ah, but you could take after your aunt.
He found that this question absorbed him more than was becoming. He determined to settle it.
"Are you going to stay here, then?" he asked, with guile.
"Yes, sir. I've come back to live with Uncle."
"Have you always lived here?"
"Yes, sir. Father left me to Uncle when he died."
"Then, Rose, Mrs. Eldred is not your aunt?"
"Oh no, sir," said Rose eagerly.
Tanqueray felt a relief out of all proportion to its cause.
He continued the innocent conversation.
"And so you're going to look after me, are you?"
"Yes," said Rose. He noticed that when she dropped the "sir," it was because her voice drew itself back with a little gasping breath.
"And your aunt, you think, really won't be equal to it?"
"Well, sir, you see, she gets all of a flutter like, and then she w'eezes, and she knows that's irritating for you to hear." She paused. "And Aunt was afraid that if you was irritated, sir, you'd go. Nothin' could keep you."
(How thoroughly they understood him!)
"Well, I'm not irritated any more. But it is unfortunate, isn't it, that she—er—wheezes?"
He had tried before now to make Rose laugh. He wanted to see how she did it. It would be a test. And he perceived that, somewhere behind her propriety, Rose cherished a secret, iniquitous enjoyment of her aunt.
An imp of merriment danced in Rose's eyes, but the rest of her face was graver than ever. ("Good," he thought; "she doesn't giggle.")
"Oh, Mr. Tanqueray, talk of w'eezin', you should hear Aunt snore."
"I have heard her. In my dreams."
Rose, abashed at her own outburst, remained silent for several minutes. Then she spoke again.
"Do you think, sir, you could do without me on the tenth?"
"No. I don't think I could possibly do without you."
Her face clouded. "Not just for the tenth?"
"Why the tenth?"
"The Dog Show, sir. And Joey's in it."
"I forgot."
"Miss Kentish, the lady up-stairs, is going for her holiday on the tenth."
He saw that she was endeavouring to suggest that if he couldn't do without her, he and he alone would be keeping her from the superb spectacle of the Dog Show with Joey in it.
"So you want me to go for a holiday, too. Is that it?"
"Well, sir, if it's not inconvenient, and you don't really mind Aunt——"
"Doesn't she want to see Joey, too?"
"Not if you required her, sir."
"I don't require her. I don't require anybody. I'm going away, like the lady up-stairs, for the tenth. I shall be away all day."
"Oh, thank you, sir." She glowed. "Do you think, sir, Joey'll get a prize?"
"Certainly, if you bring his hair on."
"It's coming. I've put paraffin all over him. You'd laugh if you were to see Joey now, sir."
Rose herself was absolutely serious.
"No, Rose, I should not laugh. I wouldn't hurt Joey's feelings for the world."
Tanqueray had his face hidden under the table where he was setting a saucer of milk for Minny, the cat.
Rose rejoiced in their communion. "He's quite fond of you, sir," she said.
"Of course he's fond of me," said Tanqueray, emerging. "Why shouldn't he be?"
"Well, Minny doesn't take to everybody."
"I am more than honoured that he should take to me."
Rose accepted that statement with incorruptible gravity. It was the fifth day, and she had not laughed yet.
But on the seventh day he met her on the stairs going to her room. She carried a lilac gown over her arm and a large hat in her hand. She was smiling at the hat. He smiled at her.
"A new gown for the Rose Show?"
"The Dog Show, sir." She stood by to let him pass.
"It's the same thing. I say, what a howling swell you'll be."
At that Rose laughed (at last he had made her).
She ran up-stairs; and through a door ajar, he heard her singing in her own room.
III
In Tanqueray's memorandum-book for nineteen hundred and two there stands this note: "June 10th. Rose Show. Remember to take a holiday."
Rose, he knew, was counting the days till the tenth.
About a fortnight before the tenth, Tanqueray was in bed, ill. He had caught a cold by walking furiously, and then lying out on the grass in the chill of the May evening. There was a chance, Rose said, of its turning to influenza and bronchitis, and it did.
He was so bad that Mrs. Eldred dragged herself up-stairs to look at him.
"Bed's the best place, sir, for you," she said. "So just you lie quiet 'ere, sir, and Rose'll look after you. And if there's anything you fancy, sir, you tell Rose, and I'll make it you."
There was nothing that he fancied but to lie still there and look at Rose when, in a spare hour, she sat by his window, sewing. Bad as he was, he was not so far gone as to be ever oblivious of her presence. Even at his worst, one night when he had had a touch of fever, he was aware of her wandering in and out of his room, hanging over him with a thermometer, and sitting by his bedside. When he flung the clothes off she was there to cover him; when his pillow grew hot she turned it; when he cried out with thirst she gave him a cool drink.
In the morning she was pale and heavy-eyed; her hair was all unsleeked, and its round coils were flattened at the back. She had lain down on her bed, dressed, for five minutes at a time, but she had not closed her eyes or her ears all night.
In a week he was well enough to enjoy being nursed. He was now exquisitely sensitive to the touch of her hands, and to the nearness of her breathing mouth as her face bent over him, tender, absorbed, and superlatively grave. What he liked best of all was to hold out his weak hands to be washed and dried by hers; that, and having his hair brushed.
He could talk to her now without coughing. Thus—
"I say, what a bother I am to you."
Rose had taken away the basin and towels, and was arranging his hair according to her own fancy. And Rose's fancy was to part it very much on one side, and brush it back in a curl off his forehead. It gave him a faint resemblance to Mr. Robinson, the elegant young draper in the High Street, whom she knew.
"There's nothing I like so much," said she, "as tucking people up in bed and 'aving them lie there and nursing 'em. Give me anybody ill, and anybody 'elpless, and me lookin' after 'em, and I'm happy."
"And the longer I lie here, Rose, the happier you'll be?"
"Yes. But I want you to get well, too, sir."
"Because you're so unselfish."
"Oh no. There isn't anybody selfisher than me."
"I suppose," said Tanqueray, "that's why I don't get well."
Rose had a whole afternoon to spare that day. She spent it turning out his drawers and finding all the things there were to mend there. She was sitting by his bed when, looking up from her mending, she saw his eyes fixed on her.
"I don't irritate you, sittin' here, do I, sir?"
"Irritate me? What do you think I'm made of?"
Rose meditated for the fraction of a second.
"Brains, sir," said she.
"So you think you know a man of brains when you see him, do you?"
"Yes, sir."
"What were you, Rose, before you came here?"
"I was nurse in a gentleman's family. I took care of the baby."
"Did you like taking care of the baby?"
"Yes."
Rose blushed profoundly and turned away. He wondered why.
"I had a bad dream last night," said Tanqueray. "I dreamt that your aunt got into this room and couldn't get out again. I'm afraid of your aunt."
"I dare say, sir. Aunt is so very 'uge."
Rose dropped her g's and, when deeply moved, her aitches; but he did not mind. If it had to be done, it couldn't be done more prettily.
"Rose, do you know when I'm delirious and when I'm not?"
"Yes, sir. You see, I take your temperature."
"It must be up now to a hundred and eighty. You mustn't be alarmed at anything I say. I'm not responsible."
"No, sir." She rose and gravely took his temperature.
"Aren't you afraid of my biting the bulb off, and the quicksilver flying down my throat, and running about inside me for ever and ever?"
"No, sir."
"You don't seem to be afraid of anything."
"I'm not afraid of many things, and I would never be afraid of you, sir."
"Not if I went mad, Rose? Raving?"
"No. Not if you went mad. Not if you was to strike me, I wouldn't." She paused. "Not so long as I knew you was really mad, and didn't mean to hurt me."
"I wouldn't hurt you for the world."
He sighed deeply and closed his eyes.
That evening, when she was giving him his medicine, he noticed that her eyelids were red and her eyes gleaming.
"You've been crying. What's made you cry?"
Rose did not answer.
"What is it?"
"Miss Kentish keeps on callin' and callin' me. And she scolds me something awful when I don't come."
"Give my compliments to Miss Kentish, Rose, and tell her she's a beast."
"I 'ave told her that if it was she that was ill I'd nurse her just the same and be glad to do it."
"You consider that equivalent to calling her a beast, do you?"
Rose said, "Well——" It was a little word she used frequently.
"Well, I'm sorry you think I'm a beast."
Rose's face had a scared look. She could not follow him, and that frightened her. It is always terrifying to be left behind. So he spared her.
"Why would you be glad to nurse Miss Kentish?"
"Because," said Rose, "I like taking care of people."
"Do you like taking care of me?"
Rose was silent again. She turned suddenly away. It was the second time she had done this, and again he wondered why.
By the eighth day Tanqueray was strong enough to wash his own hands and brush his own hair. On the ninth the doctor and Rose agreed that he might sit up for an hour or two in his chair by the window. On the eleventh he came down-stairs for dinner. On the thirteenth Rose had nothing more to do for him but to bring him his meals and give him his medicine, which he would otherwise have forgotten.
At bed-time, therefore, he had two sovereigns ready for her in an envelope. Rose refused obstinately to take them; to have anything to do with sovereigns.
"No, sir, I couldn't," she reiterated.
But when he pressed them on her she began to cry.
And that left him wondering more.
IV
On the fourteenth day, Tanqueray, completely recovered, went out for a walk. And the first thing he did when he got back was to look at his note-book to see what day of the month it was.
It was the tenth, the tenth of June, the day of the Dog Show. And the memorandum stared him in the face: "Rose Show. Remember to take a holiday."
He looked in the paper. The show began at ten. And here he was at half-past one. And here was Rose, in her old green and brown, bringing in his luncheon.
"Rose," he said severely, "why are you not at the Rose Show?"
Rose lowered her eyes. "I didn't want to go, sir."
"How about the new gown?"
(He remembered it.)
"That don't matter. Aunt's gone instead of me."
"Wearing it? She couldn't. Get into it at once, and leave that confounded cloth alone and go. You've plenty of time."
She repeated that she did not want to go, and went on laying the cloth.
"Why not?" said he.
"I don't want to leave you, sir."
"Do you mean to say you've given up that Dog Show—with Joey in it—for me?"
"Joey isn't in it; and I'd rather be here looking after you."
"I won't be looked after. I insist on your going. Do you hear?"
"Yes, sir, I hear you."
"And you're going?"
"No, sir." She meditated with her head a little on one side; a way she had. "I've got a headache, and—and—and I don't want to go and see them other dogs, sir."
"Oh, that's it, is it? A feeling for Joey?"
But by the turn of head he knew it wasn't. Rose was lying, the little minx.
"But you must go somewhere. You shall go somewhere. You shall go—I say, supposing you go for a drive with me?"
"You mustn't take me for drives, sir."
"Mustn't I?"
"I don't want you to give me drives—or—or anything."
"I see. You are to do all sorts of things for me, and I'm not to be allowed to do anything for you."
She placed his chair for him in silence, and as he seated himself he looked up into her face.
"Do you want to please me, Rose?"
Her face was firm as she looked at him. It was as if she held him in check by the indomitable set of her chin, and the steady light of her eyes. (Where should he be if Rose were to let herself go?)
Her mouth trembled, it protested against these austerities and decisions. It told him dumbly that she did want, very much, to please him; but that she knew her place.
Did she? Did she indeed know her place? Did he know it?
"You're right, Rose. That isn't the way I ought to have put it. Will you do me the honour of going for a drive with me?"
She looked down, troubled and uncertain.
"It can be done, Rose," he said, answering her thoughts. "It can be done. The only thing is, would you like it?"
"Yes, sir, I would like it very much."
"Can you be ready by three o'clock?"
At three she was ready.
She wore the lilac gown she had bought for the Show, and the hat. It had red roses in it.
He did not like her gown. It was trimmed with coarse lace, and he could not bear to see her in anything that was not fine.
"Is anything wrong with my hair?" said Rose.
"No, nothing's wrong with your hair, but I think I like you better in the green and brown——"
"That's only for every day."
"Then I shall like you better every day."
"Why do you like my green and brown dress?"
He looked at her again and suddenly he knew why.
"Because you had it on when I first saw you. I say, would you mind awfully putting it on instead of that thing?"
She did mind, awfully; but she went and put it on. And still there was something wrong with her. It was her hat. It did not go with the green and brown. But he felt that he would be a brute to ask her to take that off, too.
They drove to Hendon and back. They had tea at "Jack Straw's Castle." (Rose's face surrendered to that ecstasy.) And then they strolled over the West Heath and found a hollow where Rose sat down under a birch-tree and Tanqueray stretched himself at her feet.
"Rose," he said suddenly, "do you know what a wood-nymph is?"
"Well," said Rose, "I suppose it's some sort of a little animal."
"Yes, it's a little animal. A delightful little animal."
"Can you catch it and stroke it?"
"No. If you tried it would run away. Besides, you're not allowed to catch it, or to stroke it. The wood-nymph is very strictly preserved."
Rose smiled; for though she did not know what a wood-nymph was, she knew that Mr. Tanqueray was looking at her all the time.
"The wood-nymphs always dress in green and brown."
"Like me?"
"Like you. Only they don't wear boots" (Rose hid her boots), "nor yet collars."
"You wouldn't like to see me without a collar."
"I'd like to see you without that hat."
Any difficulty in taking Rose about with him would lie in Rose's hat. He could not say what was wrong with it except that the roses in it were too red and gay for Rose's gravity.
"Would you mind taking it off?"
She took it off and put it in her lap. Surrendered as she was, she could not disobey. The eternal spell was on her.
Tanqueray removed her hat gently and hid it behind him. He laid his hands in her lap. It was deep delight to touch her. She covered his hands with hers. That was all he asked of her and all she thought of giving.
On all occasions which she was prepared for, Rose was the soul of propriety and reserve. But this, the great occasion, had come upon her unaware, and Nature had her will of her. Through Rose she sent out the sign and signal that he waited for. And Rose became the vehicle of that love which Nature fosters and protects; it was visible and tangible, in her eyes, and in her rosy face and in the naïf movements of her hands.
Sudden and swift and fierce his passion came upon him, but he only lay there at her feet, holding her hands, and gazing into her face, dumb, like any lover of her class.
Then Rose lifted her hands from his and spoke.
"What have you done with my hat?"
In that moment he had turned and sat on it.
Deliberately, yet impulsively, and without a twinge of remorse, he had sat on it. But not so that Rose could see him.
"I haven't done anything with it," said he, "I couldn't do anything with a hat like that."
"You've 'idden it somewhere."
He got up slowly, feigning a search, and produced what a minute ago had been Rose's hat.
It was an absurd thing of wire and net, Rose's hat, and it had collapsed irreparably.
"Well, I declare, if you haven't gone and sat on it."
"It looks as if I had. Can you forgive me?"
"Well—if it was an accident."
He looked down upon her tenderly.
"No, Rose, it was not an accident. I couldn't bear that hat."
He put his hand on her arm and raised her to her feet.
"And now," he said, "the only thing we can do is to go and get another one."
They went slowly back, she shamefaced and bareheaded, he leading her by the arm till they found themselves in Heath Street outside a magnificent hat-shop.
Chance took him there, for Rose, interrogated on the subject of hat-shops, was obstinately reticent.
But here, in this temple, in its wonderful window, before a curtain, on a stage, like actors in a gay drama, he saw hats; black hats and white hats; green and blue and rose-coloured hats; hats of all shapes and sizes; airily perched; laid upon velvet; veiled and unveiled; befeathered and beflowered. Hats of a beauty and a splendour before which Rose had stood many a time in awful contemplation, and had hurried past with eyes averted, leaving behind her the impermissible dream.
And now she had a thousand scruples about entering. He had hit, she said, on the most expensive shop in Hampstead. Miss Kentish wouldn't think of buying a hat there. No, she wouldn't have it. He must please, please, Mr. Tanqueray, let her buy herself a plain straw and trim it.
But he seized her by the arm and drew her in. And once in there was no more use resisting, it only made her look foolish.
Reality with its harsh conditions had vanished for a moment. It was like a funny dream to be there, in Madame Rodier's shop, with Mr. Tanqueray looking at her as she tried on innumerable hats, and Madame herself, serving her, putting the hats on the right way, and turning her round and round so that Mr. Tanqueray could observe the effect from every side of her.
Madame talked all the time to Mr. Tanqueray and ignored Rose.
Rose had a mortal longing for a rose-coloured hat, and Madame wouldn't let her have it. Madame, who understood Mr. Tanqueray's thoughts better than if he had expressed them, insisted on a plain black hat with a black feather.
"That's madame's hat, sir," said Madame. "We must keep her very simple."
"We must," said Tanqueray, with fervour. He thought he had never seen anything so enchanting in its simplicity as Rose's face under the broad black brim with its sweeping feather.
Rose had to wear the hat going home. Tanqueray carried the old one in a paper parcel.
At the gate of the corner house he paused and looked at his watch.
"We've half-an-hour yet before we need go in. I want to talk to you."
He led her through the willows, and up the green slope opposite the house. There was a bench on the top, and he made her sit on it beside him.
"I suppose," he said, "you think that when we go in I shall let you wait on me, and it'll be just the same as it was before?"
"Yes, sir. Just the same."
"It won't, Rose, it can't. You may wait on me to-night, but I shall go away to-morrow."
She turned her face to him, it was dumb with its trouble.
"Oh no—no, sir—don't go away."
"I must. But before I go, I want to ask you if you'll be my wife——"
The hands she held clasped in her lap gripped each other tight. Her mouth was set.
"I'm asking you now, Rose. To be my wife. My wife," he repeated fiercely, as if he repelled with violence a contrary suggestion.
"I can't be your wife, sir," she said.
"Why not?"
"Because," she said simply, "I'm not a lady."
At that Tanqueray cried, "Ah," as if she had hurt him.
"No, sir, I'm not, and you mustn't think of it."
"I shall think of nothing else, and talk of nothing else, until you say yes."
She shook her little head; and from the set of her chin he was aware of the extreme decision of her character.
He refrained from any speech. His hand sought hers, for he remembered how, just now, she had unbent at the holding of her hand.
But she drew it gently away.
"No," said she. "I look at it sensible. I can see how it is. You've been ill, and you're upset, and you don't know what you're doin'—sir."
"I do—madam."
She smiled and drew back her smile as she had drawn back her head. She was all for withdrawal.
Tanqueray in his attempt had let go the parcel that he held. She seized it in a practical, business-like manner which had the perfect touch of finality. Then she rose and went back to the house, and he followed her, still pleading, still protesting. But Rose made herself more than ever deaf and dumb. When he held the gate open for her she saw her advantage, darted in, and vanished (his divinity!) down the area steps.
She went up-stairs to her little garret, and there, first of all, she looked at herself in the glass. Her face was strange to her under the black hat with its sweeping feather. She shook her head severely at the person in the glass. She made her take off the hat with the feather and put it by with that veneration which attends the disposal of a best hat. The other one, the one with the roses, she patted and pulled and caressed affectionately, till she had got it back into something of the shape it had been, to serve for second best. Then she wished she had left it as it was.
She loved them both, the new one because he had given it her, and the old one because he had sat on it.
Finally she smoothed her hair to an extreme sleekness, put on a clean apron and went down-stairs.
In the evening she appeared to Tanqueray, punctual and subservient, wearing the same air of reticence and distance with which she had waited on him first. He was to see, it seemed to say, that she was only little Rose Eldred, his servant, to whom it was not proper that he should speak.
But he did speak. He put his back to the door she would have escaped by, and kept her prisoned there, utterly in his power.
Rose, thus besieged, delivered her ultimatum.
"Well," she said, "you take a year to think it over sensible."
"A year?"
"A year. And if you're in the same mind then as you are now, p'raps I won't say no."
"A year? But in a year I may be dead."
"You come to me," said Rose, "if you're dyin'."
"And you'll have me then?" he said savagely.
"Yes. I'll 'ave you then."
But, though all night Tanqueray by turns raged and languished, it was Rose who, in the morning, looked about to die. Not that he saw her. He never saw her all that day. And at evening he listened in vain for her call at the gate, her salutation to the night: "Min—Min—Minny! Puss—Puss—Puss!"
For in the afternoon Rose left the house, attended by her uncle, who carried by its cord her little trunk.
In her going forth she wore a clean white linen gown. She wore, not the Hat, nor yet the sad thing that Tanqueray had sat on, but a little black bonnet, close as a cap, with a black velvet bow in the front, and black velvet strings tied beneath her chin.
It was the dress she had worn when she was nurse in a gentleman's family.
V
Late in the evening of that day, Tanqueray, as he sat in miserable meditation, was surprised by the appearance of Mrs. Eldred. She held in her hand Rose's hat, the hat he had given her, which she placed before him on the table.
"You'll be good enough, sir," said Mrs. Eldred, "to take that back."
"Why should I take it back?" he replied, with that artificial gaiety which had been his habitual defence against the approaches of Mrs. Eldred.
"Because, it was all very well for you to offer Rose wot you did, sir, and she'd no call to refuse it. But a 'at's different. There's meanin'," said Mrs. Eldred, "in a 'at."
Tanqueray looked at the hat.
"Meaning? If you knew all the meaning there is in that hat, Mrs. Eldred, you'd feel, as I do, that you knew something. Half the poetry that's been written has less meaning in it than that hat. That hat fulfills all the requirements of poetry. It is simple—extremely simple—and sensuous and passionate. Yes, passionate. It would be impossible to conceive a hat less afflicted with the literary taint. It stands, as I see it, for emotion reduced to its last and purest expression. In short, Mrs. Eldred, what that hat doesn't mean isn't worth meaning."
"If you'd explain your meaning, sir, I should be obliged."
"I am explaining it. My meaning, Mrs. Eldred, is that Rose wore that hat."
"I know she did, sir, and she 'adn't ought to 'ave wore it. I'm only askin' you, sir, to be good enough to take it back."
"Take it back? But whatever should I do with it? I can't wear it. I might fall down and worship it, but—No, I couldn't wear it. It would be sacrilege."
That took Mrs. Eldred's breath away, so that she sat down and wheezed.
"Does Rose not know what that hat means?" he asked.
"No, sir. I'll say that for her. She didn't think till I arst her."
"Then—I think—you'd perhaps better send Rose to me."
"Sir?"
"Please send her to me. I want her."
"And you may want her, sir. Rose isn't here."
"Not here? Where is she? I must see her."
"Rose is visitin' in the country, for her 'ealth."
"Her health? Is she ill?"
Mrs. Eldred executed a vast gesture that dismissed Rose.
"Where is she?" he repeated. "I'll go down and see her."
"You will not, sir. Her uncle wouldn't hear of it."
"But, by God! he shall hear of it."
He rang the bell with fury.
"It's no use your ringin', sir. Eldred's out."
"What have you done this for?"
"To get the child out of harm's way, sir. We're not blamin' you, sir. We're blamin' 'er."
"Her? Her?"
"Properly speakin', we're not blamin' anybody. We're no great ones for blamin', me and Eldred. But, if you'll excuse my sayin' so, sir, there's a party would be glad of your rooms next month, a party takin' the 'ole 'ouse, and if you would be so good as to try and suit yourself elsewhere——Though we don't want to put you to no inconvenience, sir."
It was extraordinary, but the more Mrs. Eldred's meaning was offensive, the more her manner was polite. He reflected long afterwards that, really, a lady, in such difficult circumstances, could hardly have acquitted herself better.
"Oh, is that all? I'll go. But you'll give me Rose's address."
"You leave Rose alone, sir. Rose's address don't concern you."
"Rose's address concerns me a good deal more than my own, I can tell you. So you'd better give it me."
"Look 'ere, sir. Are you actin' honest by that girl, or are you not?"
"What the devil do you mean by asking me that?"
His violence made her immense bulk tremble; but her soul stood firm.
"I dessay you mean no 'arm, sir. But we can't 'ave you playin' with 'er. That's all."
"Playing with her? Playing?"
"Yes, playin'. Wot else is it? You know, sir, you ain't thinkin' of marryin' 'er."
"That's just what I am thinking of."
"You 'aven't told 'er that."
"I have told her. And, by Heaven! I'll do it."
"You mean that, sir?"
"Of course I mean it. What else should I mean?"
She sat meditating, taking it in slowly.
"You'll never make 'er 'appy, sir. Nor she you."
"She and I are the best judges of that."
"'Ave you spoke to 'er?"
"Yes. I told you I had."
"Not a word 'ave she said to me."
"Well, I dare say she wouldn't."
"Sir?"
"She wouldn't have me."
Mrs. Eldred's lower lip dropped, and she stared at Tanqueray.
"She wouldn't 'ave you? Then, depend upon it, that's wot made 'er ill."
"Ill?"
"Yes, ill, sir. Frettin', I suppose."
"Where's that address? Give it me at once."
"No, sir, I darsen't give it you. Eldred'd never forgive me."
"Haven't I told you I'm going to marry her?"
"I don't know, sir, as 'ow Rose'll marry you. When she's set, she's set. And if you'll forgive my saying it, sir, Rose is a good girl, but she's not in your class, sir, and it isn't suitable. And Rose, I dessay, she's 'ad the sense to see it so."
"She's got to see it as I see it. That address?"
Mrs. Eldred rose heavily. She still trembled.
"You'd best speak to her uncle. 'E'll give it you if 'e approves. And if 'e doesn't 'e won't."
He stormed. But he was impotent before this monument of middle-class integrity.
"When will Eldred be back?"
"We're expecting of 'im nine o'clock to-night."
"Mind you send him up as soon as he comes in."
"Very good, sir."
She paused.
"Wot am I to do with that 'at?"
He looked at her and at the hat. He laughed.
"You can leave the hat with me."
She moved slowly away. "Stop!" he cried; "have you got such a thing as a band-box?"
"I think I might 'ave, sir; if I could lay my 'and on it."
"Lay your hand on it, then, and bring it to me."
She brought it. An enormous band-box, but brown, which was a good colour. He lowered the hat into it with care and shut the lid on it, reverently, as if he were committing some sacred emblem to its shrine.
He sat at his writing-table, tried to work and accomplished nothing. His heart waited for the stroke of nine.
At nine there came to his summons the little, lean, brown man, Rose's uncle. Eldred, who was a groom, was attired with excessive horsiness. He refused to come further into the room than its threshold, where he stood at attention, austerely servile, and respectfully despotic.
The interview in all points resembled Tanqueray's encounter with Mrs. Eldred; except that the little groom, who knew his world, was even more firmly persuaded that the gentleman was playing with his Rose.
"And we can't 'ave that, sir," said Eldred.
"You're not going to have it."
"No, sir, we ain't," reiterated Eldred. "We can't 'ave any such goin's on 'ere."
"Look here—don't be an idiot—it isn't your business, you know, to interfere."
"Not my business? When 'er father left 'er to me? I should like to know what is my business," said Mr. Eldred hotly.
Tanqueray saw that he would have to be patient with him. "Yes, I know. That's all right. Don't you see, Eldred, I'm going to marry her."
But his eagerness woke in Eldred a ghastlier doubt. Rose's uncle stood firmer than ever, not turning his head, but casting at Tanqueray a small, sidelong glance of suspicion.
"And why do you want to marry her, sir? You tell me that."
Tanqueray saw.
"Because I want her. And it's the only way to get her. Do you need me to tell you that?"
The man reddened. "I beg your pardon, sir."
"You beg her pardon, you mean."
Eldred was silent. He had been hit hard, that time. Then he spoke.
"Are you certain sure of your feelin's, sir?"
"I'm certain of nothing in this world except my feelings."
"Because" (Eldred was slow but steady and indomitable in coming to his point), "because we don't want 'er 'eart broke."
"You're breaking it, you fool, every minute you stand there. Give me her address."
In the end he gave it.
Down-stairs, in the kitchen, by the ashes of the raked-out fire, he discussed the situation with his wife.
"Did you tell him plain," said Mrs. Eldred, "that we'd 'ave no triflin'?"
"I did."
"Did you tell 'im that if 'e was not certain sure 'e wanted 'er, there was a young man who did?"
Eldred said nothing to that question. He lit a pipe and began to smoke it.
"Did you tell 'im," his wife persisted, "about Mr. Robinson?"
"No, I didn't, old girl."
"Well, if it 'ad bin me I should have said, 'Mr. Tanqueray, for all you've fam'ly on your side and that, we're not so awful anxious for Rose to marry you. We'd rather 'ave a young man without fam'ly, in a good line o' business and steady risin'. And we know of such as would give 'is 'ead to 'ave 'er.' That's wot I should 'ave said."
"I dessay you would. I didn't say it, because I don't want 'im to 'ave 'er. That I don't. And if 'e was wantin' to cry off, and I was to have named Mr. Robinson, that'd 'ave bin the very thing to 'ave stirred 'im up to gettin' 'er. That's wot men is, missis, and women, too, all of 'em I've ever set eyes on. Dorgs wot'll leave the bone you give 'em, to fight for the bone wot another dorg 'e's got. Wot do you say to that, Mrs. Smoker, old girl?"
Mrs. Smoker, the Aberdeen, pricked up her ears and smiled, with her eyes only, after the manner of her breed.
"Anyhow," said Mrs. Eldred, "you let 'im see as 'ow we wasn't any way snatchin' at 'im?"
"I did, missis."
VI
Mr. Eldred, groom and dog fancier, profoundly musing upon human nature and illuminated by his study of the lower animals, had hit upon a truth. Once let him know that another man desired to take Rose away from him and Mr. Tanqueray would be ten times more desirous to have her. What Mr. Eldred did not see was the effect upon Mr. Tanqueray of Rose's taking herself away, or he would not have connived at her departure. "Out o' sight, out o' mind," said Mr. Eldred, arguing again from his experience of the lower animals.
But with Tanqueray, as with all creatures of powerful imagination, to be out of sight was to be perpetually in mind.
All night, in this region of the mind, Rose's image did battle with Jane's image and overcame it.
It was not only that Jane's charm had no promise for his senses. She was unfit in more ways than one. Jane was in love with him; yet her attitude implied resistance rather than surrender. Rose's resistance, taking, as it did, the form of flight, was her confession of his power. Jane held her ground; she stood erect. Rose bowed before him like a flower shaken by the wind. He loved Rose because she was small and sweet and subservient. Jane troubled and tormented him. He revolted against the tyranny of Jane.
Jane was not physically obtrusive, yet there were moments when her presence in a room oppressed him. She had further that disconcerting quality of all great personalities, the power to pursue and seize, a power so oblivious, so pure from all intention or desire, that there was no flattery in it for the pursued. It persisted when she was gone. Neither time nor space removed her. He could not get away from Jane. If he allowed himself to think of her he could not think of anything else. But he judged that Rose's minute presence in his memory would not be disturbing to his other thoughts.
His imagination could play tenderly round Rose. Jane's imagination challenged his. It stood, brandishing its flaming sword before the gates of any possible paradise. There was something in Jane that matched him, and, matching, rang defiance to his supremacy. Jane plucked the laurel and crowned herself. Rose bowed her pretty head and let him crown her. Laurel crowns, crowns of glory, for Jane. The crown of roses for Rose.
He meant, of course, the wedding-wreath and the wedding-ring. His conversation with the Eldreds had shown him that marriage had not entered into their humble contemplations; also that if there was no question of marriage, there could be no question of Rose.
He had known that in the beginning, he had known it from the uncompromising little Rose herself. From the first flowering of his passion until now, he had seen marriage as the sole means to its inevitable end. Tanqueray had his faults, but it was not in him to bring the creature he loved to suffering and dishonour. And the alternative, in Rose's case, was not dishonour, but frustration, which meant suffering for them both. He would have to give Rose up unless he married her.
At the moment, and the moment's vision was enough for him, he saw no reason why he should not marry her. He wanted to obtain her at once and to keep her for ever. She was not a lady and she knew it; but she had a gentleness, a fineness of the heart which was the secret of her unpremeditated charm. Without it Rose might have been as pretty as she pleased, she would not have pleased Tanqueray. He could withstand any manifestly unspiritual appeal, restrained by his own fineness and an invincible disdain. Therefore, when the divine folly fell upon him, he was like a thing fresh from the last touch of the creator, every sense in him unworn and delicate and alert.
And Rose had come to him when the madness of the quest was on him, a madness so strong that it overcame his perception of her social lapses. It was impossible to be unaware of some of them, of certain phrases, of the sudden wild flight of her aspirates. But these things were entangled with her adorable gestures, with the soft ways of her mouth, with her look when she hung about him, nursing him; so that a sane judgment was impossible.
It was palpable, too, that Rose was not intellectual, that she was not even half-educated. But Tanqueray positively disliked the society of intellectual, cultivated women; they were all insipid after Jane. After Jane, he did not need intellectual companionship in his wife. He would still have Jane. And when he was tired of Jane there would, no doubt, be others; and when he was tired of all of them, there was himself.
What he did need in his wife was the obstinate, dumb devotion of a creature that had no life apart from him; a creature so small that in clinging it would hang no weight on his heart. And he had found it in Rose.
Why should he not marry her?
She was now, he had learned, staying with her former mistress at Fleet, in Hampshire.
The next morning he took a suitable train down to Fleet, and arrived, carrying the band-box, at the door of the house where Rose was. He sat a long time in the hall of the house with the band-box on his knees. He did not mind waiting. People went in and out of the hall and looked at him; and he did not care. He gloried in the society of the sacred band-box. He enjoyed the spectacle of his own eccentricity.
At last he was shown into a little room where Rose came to him. She came from behind, from the garden, through the French window. She was at his side before he saw her. He felt her then, he felt her fear of him.
He turned. "Rose," he said, "I've brought you the moon in a band-box."
"Oh," said Rose, and her cry had a thick, sobbing vibration in it.
He put his arm on her shoulder and drew her out of sight and kissed her, and she was not afraid of him any more.
"Rose," he said, "have you thought it over?"
"Yes, I have. Have you?"
"I've thought of nothing else."
"Sensible?"
"Oh, Lord, yes."
"You've thought of how I haven't a penny and never shall have?"
"Yes."
"And how I'm not clever, and how it isn't a bit as if I'd any head for studyin' and that?"
"Yes, Rose."
"Have you thought of how I'm not a lady? Not what you'd call a lady?"
There was no answer to that, and so he kissed her.
"And how you'd be if you was to marry some one who was a lady? Have you thought of that?"
"I have."
"Well then, it's this way. If you was a rich man I wouldn't marry you." She paused.
"But you will, because I'm a poor one?"
"Yes."
"Thank God I'm poor."
He drew her to him and she yielded, not wholly, but with a shrinking of her small body, and a soft, shy surrender of her lips.
She was thinking, "If he married a lady he'd have to spend ten times on her what he need on me."
All she said was, "There are things I can do for you that a lady couldn't."
"Oh—don't—don't!" he cried. That was the one way she hurt him.
"What are you going to do with me now?" said she.
"I'm going to take you for a walk. We can't stay here."
"Can you wait?"
"I have waited."
She ran away and stayed away for what seemed an interminable time. Then somebody opened the door and handed Rose in. Somebody kissed her where she stood in the doorway, and laughed softly, and shut the door upon Rose and Tanqueray.
Rose stood there still. "Do you know me?" said she, and laughed.
Somebody had transformed her, had made her slip her stiff white gown and dressed her in a muslin one with a belt that clipped her, showing her pretty waist. Somebody had taught her how to wear a scarf about her shoulders; and somebody had taken off that odious linen collar and bared the white column of her neck.
"She made me put it on," said Rose. "She said if I didn't, I couldn't wear the hat."
Somebody, Rose's mistress, had been in Rose's secret. She knew and understood his great poem of the Hat.
Rose took it out of the band-box and put it on. Impossible to say whether he liked her better with it or without it. He thought without; for she had parted her hair in the middle and braided it at the back.
"Do you like my hair?" said she.
"Why didn't you do it like that before?"
"I don't know. I wanted to. But I didn't."
"Why not?"
Rose hid her face. "I thought," said she, "you'd notice, and think—and think I was after you."
No. He could never say that she had been after him, that she had laid a lure. No huntress she. But she had found him, the hunted, run down and sick in his dark den. And she had stooped there in the darkness, and tended and comforted him.
They set out.
"She said I was to tell you," said Rose, "to be sure and take me through the pine-woods to the pond."
How well that lady knew the setting that would adorn his Rose; sunlight and shadow that made her glide fawn-like among the tall stems of the trees. Through the pine-woods he took her, his white wood-nymph, and through the low lands covered with bog myrtle, fragrant under her feet. Beyond the marsh they found a sunny hollow in the sand where the heath touched the pond. The brushwood sheltered them.
Side by side they sat and took their fill of joy in gazing at each other, absolutely dumb.
It was Tanqueray who broke that beautiful silence. He had obtained her. He had had his way and must have it to the end. He loved her; and the thing beyond all things that pleased him was to tease and torment the creatures that he loved.
"Rose," he said, "do you think I'm good-looking?"
"No. Not what you call good-looking."
"How do you know what I call good-looking?"
"Well—me. Don't you?"
"You're a woman. Give me your idea of a really handsome man."
"Well—do you know Mr. Robinson?"
"No. I do not know Mr. Robinson."
"Yes, you do. He keeps the shop in the High Street where you get your 'ankychiefs and collars. You bought a collar off of him the other day. He told me."
"By Jove, so I did. Of course I know Mr. Robinson. What about him?"
"Well—he's what I call a handsome man."
"Oh." He paused. "Would you love me more if I were as handsome as Mr. Robinson?"
"No. Not a bit more. I couldn't. I'd love you just the same if you were as ugly as poor Uncle. There, what more do you want?"
"What, indeed? Rose, how much have you seen of Mr. Robinson?"
"How much? Well—I see him every time I go into his shop. And every Sunday evening when I go to church. And sometimes he comes and has supper with us. 'E plays and 'e sings beautiful."
"The devil he does! Well, did he ever take you anywhere?"
"Once—he took me to Madame Tussaws; and once to the Colonial Exhibition; and once——"
"You minx. That'll do. Has he ever given you anything?"
"He gave me Joey."
"I always knew there was something wrong about that dog."
"And last Christmas he gave me a scented sashy from the shop."
"Never—anything else?"
"Never anything else." She smiled subtly. "I wouldn't let 'im."
"Well, well. And I suppose you consider Mr. Robinson a better dressed man than I am?"
"Yes, he was always a beautiful dresser. He makes it what you might call 'is hobby."
"Of course Mr. Robinson wants you to marry him?"
"Yes. Leastways he says so."
"And I suppose your uncle and aunt want you to marry him?"
"They were more for it than I was."
"Rose—he's got a bigger income than I have."
"He never told me what his income is."
"But you know?"
"I dare say Uncle does."
"Better dressed—decidedly more handsome——"
"Well—he is that."
"A bigger income. Rose, do you want Mr. Robinson to be found dead in his shop—horribly dead—among the collars and the handkerchiefs—spoiling them, and—not—looking—handsome—any more?"
"Oh, Mr. Tanqueray!"
"Then don't talk about him."
He turned his face to hers. She put up her hands and drew his head down into the hollow of her breasts that were warm with the sun on them.
"Rose," he said, "if you stroke my hair too much it'll come off, like Joey's. Would you love me if my hair came off?"
She kissed his hair.
"When did you begin to love me, Rose?"
"I don't know. I think it must have been when you were ill."
"I see. When I was bowled over on my back and couldn't struggle. What made you love me?"
She was silent a long time, smiling softly to herself.
"I think it was because—because—because you were so kind to Joey."
"So you thought I would be kind to you?"
"I didn't—I didn't think at all. I just——"
"So did I," said Tanqueray.
VII
It had been arranged that Rose was to be married from the house of her mistress, and that she was to remain there until her wedding-day. There were so many things to be seen to. There was the baby. You couldn't, Rose said, play fast and loose with him. Rose, at her own request, had come to take care of the baby for a month, and she was not going back on that, not if it was ever so. Then there were all the things that her mistress, Rose said, was going to learn her. So many things, things she was not to do, things she was not to say, things she was on no account to wear. Rose, buying her trousseau, was not to be trusted alone for a minute.
It had been put to Rose, very gently by her mistress, very gravely by her master, whether she would really be happy if she married this eccentric young gentleman with the band-box. Was it not possible that she might be happier with somebody rather less eccentric? And Rose replied that she knew her own mind; that she couldn't be happy at all with anybody else, and that, if she could, she'd rather be unhappy with Mr. Tanqueray, eccentricity, band-box and all. Whereas, if he was to be unhappy with her, now——But, when it came to that, they hadn't the heart to tell her that he might, and very probably would be.
If Rose knew her own mind, Tanqueray knew his. The possibility of being unhappy with Rose (he had considered it) was dim compared with the certainty that he was unhappy without her. To be deprived of the sight and sound of her for six days in the week, to go down to Fleet, like the butcher, on a Sunday, and find her rosy and bright-eyed with affection, with a little passion that grew like his own with delay, that grew in silence and in secret, making Rose, every Sunday, more admirably shy; to be with her for two hours, and then to be torn from her by a train he had to catch; all this kept Tanqueray in an excitement incompatible with discreet reflection.
Rose would not name a day before the fourteenth of July, not if it was ever so. He adored that little phrase of desperate negation. He was in a state of mind to accept everything that Rose did and said as adorable. Rose had strange audacities, strange embarrassments. Dumbness would come upon Rose in moments which another woman, Jane for instance, would have winged with happy words. She had a look that was anything but dumb, a look of innocent tenderness, which in another woman, Jane again, would not have been allowed to rest upon him so long. He loved that look. In her very lapses, her gentle elision of the aitch, he found a foreign, an infantile, a pathetic charm.
So the date of the wedding was fixed for the fourteenth.
It was now the twelfth, and Tanqueray had not yet announced his engagement.
On the morning of the twelfth two letters came which made him aware of this omission. One was from young Arnott Nicholson, who wanted to know when, if ever, he was coming out to see him. The other was from Jane's little friend, Laura Gunning, reminding him that the twelfth was Jane's birthday.
He had forgotten.
Yet there it stood in his memorandum-book, entered three months ago, lest by any possibility he should forget.
How, in the future, was he going to manage about birthdays? For, whenever any of the three had a birthday, they all celebrated it together. Last time it had been Tanqueray's birthday, and they had made a day of it, winding up with supper in little Laura's rooms. Such a funny, innocent supper that began with maccaroni, and ended, he remembered, with bread and jam. Before that, it had been Laura's birthday, and Tanqueray had taken them all to the play. But on Jane's birthday (and on other days, their days) it was their custom to take the train into the country, to tramp the great white roads, to loiter in the fields, to climb the hillsides and lie there, prone, with slackened limbs, utterly content with the world, with each other and themselves. As he thought of those days, their days, he had a sudden vision of his marriage-day as a dividing line, sundering him from them, their interests and their activities. He could not think of Rose as making one of that company.
Laura now inquired innocently what his plans were for that day. Would he meet them (she meant, would he meet her and Jane Holland) at Marylebone, by the entrance, at eleven o'clock, and go with them somewhere into the country?
Would he? He thought about it for five minutes, and decided that on the whole he would rather go than not. He was restless in these days before his wedding. He could not stand the solitude of this house where Rose had been and was not. And he wanted to see Jane Holland again and make it right with her. He was aware that in many ways he had made it wrong.
He would have to tell her. He would have to tell Nicholson. And Nicholson, why, of course, Nicholson would have to see him through. He must go to Nicholson at once.
Nicholson lived at Wendover. There was a train from Marylebone about eleven. It was possible to combine a festival for Jane with a descent upon Nicky.
By the entrance, at eleven, Laura Gunning waited for him, punctually observant of the hour. Beyond, on the pavement before the station, he saw the tall figure of another woman. It was Nina Lempriere. She was not waiting—Nina never waited—but striding impatiently up and down. He would have to reckon, then, with Nina Lempriere, too. He was glad that Jane was with her.
Little Laura, holding herself very straight, greeted him with her funny smile, a smile that was hardly more than a tremor of her white lips. Laura Gunning, at twenty-seven, had still in some of her moods the manner of a child. She was now like a seven-year-old made shy and serious by profound excitement. She was a very small woman and she had a small face, with diminutive features in excessively low relief, a face shadowless as a child's. Everything about Laura Gunning was small and finished with an innocent perfection. She had a small and charming talent for short stories, little novels, perfect within the limits of their kind.
Tanqueray laid before her his Wendover scheme. Laura said he must ask Jane. It was Jane's birthday. Jane, being asked, said, No, she didn't mind where they went, provided they went somewhere. She supposed there was a gate they could sit on, while Tanqueray called on Nicky. Tanqueray said he thought he saw Nicky letting her sit on a gate. Considering that Nicky had been pestering him for the last six months (he had) to bring her out to have tea with him on one of their days.
"And we've never been," said he.
Jane let it pass. But Nina Lempriere, as Tanqueray well knew, had a devil in her. Nina's eyes had the trick of ignoring your position in the space they traversed, which made it the more disconcerting when they came back and fixed you with their curious, hooded stare. They were staring at Tanqueray now.
"Where have you been?" said she. "We haven't heard of you for ages."
"I've been ill."
Jane looked at him and said nothing.
"Ill? And you never told us?" said Nina.
"I was all right. I was well looked after."
"Who looked after you?"
He did not answer her. For in that instant there rose before him the image of Rose Eldred, tender and desirable, and it kept him dumb.
Nina, whose devil was nothing if not persistent, repeated her question. He divined already in Nina a secret, subtle hostility.
"Oh," he said abruptly. "I looked after myself."
Jane stared intently at a notice of the departure and arrival of trains.
Laura, aware of embarrassment somewhere, began to talk to him light-heartedly, in her fashion, and the moment passed.
In the train, going down to Wendover, Laura talked to Jane. Nina did not talk. Her queer eyes, when they looked at him, had a light in them of ironic devilry and suspicion. They left him speculating on the extent to which he was cutting himself off. This journey down to Wendover was a stage in the process. He was going down to tell Nicholson, to ask Nicholson to see him through.
How would Jane take it? How would Nina? How would Laura? He had said to himself, light-heartedly, that his marriage would make no difference, that he should retain them, all three, as an intellectual seraglio. Would this, after all, be possible? When they heard that he, George Tanqueray, was marrying a servant in a lodging-house?
Aware now, vividly aware, of the thing he was doing, he asked himself why, if he was not in love with Jane, he had not been in love with Nina? Nina had shown signs. Yes, very unmistakably she had shown signs. He could recall a time when there had lurked a betraying tenderness about her ironic mouth; when her queer eyes, as they looked at him, took on a certain softness and surrender. It had not touched him. To his mind there had always been something a little murky about Nina. It was the fault, no doubt, of her complexion. Not but what Nina had a certain beauty, a tempestuous, haggard, Roman eagle kind of beauty. She looked the thing she was, a creature of high courage and prodigious energy. Besides, she had a devil. Without it, he doubted whether even her genius (he acknowledged, a little grudgingly, her genius) could have done all it did.
It had entered into Tanqueray's head (though not his heart) to be in love with Jane. But never, even by way of fantasy, had it entered it to be in love with Nina; though it was to Nina that he looked when he wanted the highest excitement in his intellectual seraglio. He could not conceive any man being in love with her, to the extent, that is to say, of trying to marry her. Nina had the thing called temperament, more temperament and murkier than he altogether cared for; but, as for marrying, you might as well try to marry some bird of storm on the wing, or a flash of lightning on its career through heaven. Nina—career and all—was pre-eminently unfit.
She had shown, more than once, this ironic antagonism, as if she knew what he thought of her, and owed him a grudge.
If not Nina, why not Laura? She was small and she was pretty and she was pathetic, and he liked women to be so. Why was it that with all her feminine smallness and prettiness and pathos he had never cared for her?
They were talking.
"Tired, Laura?" Jane asked.
"Only sleepy. Papa had another dream last night."
They laughed. So did Laura, though her tragedy was there, the tragedy which had given her that indomitable face.
Laura lived under conditions which would have driven Tanqueray mad. She had a father; she who, as Jane said, could least of all of them afford a father. Her father had had a sunstroke, and it had made him dream dreams. He would get up a dozen times in the night and wander in and out of Laura's bedroom, and sit heavily on her bed and tell her his dreams, which terrified Laura.
"It wasn't funny, this time," said she. "It was one of his horrid ones."
Nobody laughed then. They were dumb with the pity and horror of it. Laura's father, when he was awake, was the most innocent, most uninspired, most uncreative of old gentlemen; but in his dreams he had a perfect genius for the macabre. The dreams had been going on for about a year, and they were making Laura ill. Tanqueray knew it, and it made him sad.
That was why he had not cared to care for Laura.
Yet little Laura, very prettily, very innocently, with an entire unconsciousness, had let him see where her heart was. And as prettily and innocently and unconsciously as he could, he had let her see that her heart was no concern of his, any more than Nina's.
And she had not cherished any resentment, she had not owed him any grudge. She had withdrawn herself, still prettily, still innocently, so that she seemed, with an absurd prettiness, to be making room for Jane.
He had even a vague recollection of himself as acquiescing in her withdrawal, on those grounds. It was almost as if there had been an understanding between him and Laura, between Jane and Laura, between him and Jane. They had behaved perfectly, all three. What made their perfection was that in all these withdrawals, acquiescences and understandings not one of them had given any outward sign. They had kept their spoken compact. They had left each other free.
As for his mere marriage, he was certain with all of them to be understood. It was their business, as they had so often told each other, to understand. But he was not sure that he wanted to be understood with the lucidity, the depth, the prodigious thoroughness of which they were capable.
He said to himself, "The blood of these women is in their brains." That was precisely what he had against them.
VIII
It was a perfect day, Jane's birthday, like a young June day, a day of the sun, of white distances and vivid foregrounds.
Wendover Hill looked over Arnott Nicholson's white house and over his green garden, where, summer and winter through, there brooded a heavenly quiet, a perfect peace. It was strange and sad, said Tanqueray, that a quiet and peace like that should be given to Nicky—to write poems in. Jane said it was sadder and stranger that verse so vile should flow from anything so charming, so perfect in its way as Nicky.
"Do you think," said she, as they crowded on his doorstep, "do you think he'll be at home?"
"Rather. We shall find him in his library, among his books and his busts, seething in a froth of abominable manuscripts, and feeling himself immortal."
Arnott Nicholson was at home, and he was in his library, with his books and his busts, and with Gisborne's great portrait of Jane Holland (the original) above his chimney-piece. He was, as Tanqueray had predicted, seething in his froth. Their names came to him there—Miss Holland and Mr. Tanqueray. In a moment Nicky was out of his library and into his drawing-room.
He was a singularly attractive person, slender, distinguished, highly finished in black and white. He was dressed, not like a candidate for immortality, but in the pink of contemporary perfection.
He was shyly, charmingly glad to see them. And delighted, of course, he said, to see Miss Lempriere and Miss Gunning. He insisted on their all staying to tea, to dinner, on their giving him, now that they had come, a day. He ordered whisky and soda and lemonade. He brought peaches and chocolates and cigarettes, and offered them diffidently, as things mortal and savouring of mortality.
He went to and fro, carrying himself humbly yet with triumph, like one aware that he entertained immortal guests. He couldn't get over it, he said, their dropping in on him like this, with a divine precipitance, out of their blue. Heavens! Supposing he had been out! He stood there glowing at them, the most perfect thing in his perfect drawing-room.
It was a room of old chintzes and old china, of fragile, distinguished furniture, of family portraits, of miniatures in medallions, and great bowls of roses everywhere. The whole house had a strange feminine atmosphere, a warm look as if a woman's hand had passed over it. Yet it was Nicky who was the soul of his house, a slender soul, three parts feminine.
Nicky was looking at Jane as she stooped over the roses. "Do you know," he said, "that you've come home? Come and see yourself."
He led the way into his library where her portrait looked down from its high place.
"You bought it?" said she.
"Rather. Gisborne painted it for me."
"Oh, Nicky!"
"It's your genius brooding over mine—I mean over me."
He looked at her again. When he looked at you Nicky's perfect clothes, his long chin, his nose that seemed all bridge, his fine little black moustache, Nicky himself retreated into insignificance beneath his enormous, prominent black eyes.
"I put you there," he said, "to inspire me."
Nicky's eyes gazed at you with a terrible solemnity whenever he talked about his inspiration.
"Do I?"
She did. They had caught him in the high act of creation. He'd been at it since ten o'clock; sitting there, with the blood, he said, beating so furiously in his brain that if he'd gone on like that he'd have destroyed himself. His head was burning now.
"We'll drag you, Nicky, to the top of Wendover Hill, and air you thoroughly. You reek," said Tanqueray.
His idea always was that they took Nicky out of doors to air him; he had so strongly the literary taint.
Nicky declared that he would have been willing to be dragged with them anywhere. Only, as it happened, he had to be at home. He was expecting Miss Bickersteth. They knew Miss Bickersteth?
They knew her. Nicky, for purposes of his own, was in the habit of cultivating, assiduously, the right people; and Miss Bickersteth was eminently right.
The lady, he said, might be upon them any minute.
"In that case," said Tanqueray, "we'll clear out."
"You clear out? But you're the very people he wants to see."
"He?"
Hugh Brodrick. Miss Bickersteth was bringing Hugh Brodrick.
They smiled. Miss Bickersteth was always bringing somebody or being brought.
Brodrick was the right man to bring. He implored them to stay and meet Brodrick.
"Who is Brodrick?"
Brodrick, said Nicky, was a man to be cultivated, to be cherished, to be clung to and never to be let go. Brodrick was on the "Morning Telegraph," and at the back of it, and everywhere about it. And the Jews were at the back of Brodrick. So much so that he was starting a monthly magazine—for the work of the great authors only. That was his, Brodrick's, dream. He didn't know whether he could carry it through. Nicky supposed it would depend on the authors. No, on the advertisements, Brodrick told him. That was where he had the pull. He could work the "Telegraph" agency for that. And he had the Jews at the back of him. He was going to pay his authors on a scale that would leave the popular magazines behind him.
"He sounds too good to be true," said Jane.
"Or is he," said Tanqueray, "too true to be altogether good?"
"He isn't true, in your sense, at all. That's the beauty of him. He's a gorgeous dream. But a dream that can afford to pay for itself."
"A dream with Jews at its back," said Tanqueray.
"And he wants—he told me—to secure you first, Miss Holland. And Mr. Tanqueray. And he's sure to want Miss Lempriere and Miss Gunning. You'll all be in it. It's the luckiest thing that you came in to-day, of all days."
In fact, Nicky suggested that if the finger of Providence was ever to be seen clearly working anywhere, it was working here.
A bell in the distance tinkled gently, with a musical silver note. It was one of the perfections of Nicky's house that it had no jarring noises in it.
"That's he," said Nicky solemnly. "Excuse me."
And he went out.
He came back, all glowing and quivering, behind Miss Bickersteth and Mr. Hugh Brodrick.
Miss Bickersteth they all knew, said Nicky. His voice was unsteady with his overmastering sense of great presences, of Jane Holland, of Tanqueray, of Brodrick.
Brodrick was a man of about thirty-five, square-built, with a torso inclined to a somewhat heavy slenderness, and a face with blunt but regular features, heavily handsome. One of those fair Englishmen who grow darker after adolescence; hair, moustache and skin acquiring a dull sombreness in fairness. But Brodrick's face gained in its effect from the dusky opacity that intensified the peculiar blueness of his eyes. They were eyes which lacked, curiously, the superficial social gaze, which fixed themselves, undeviating and intent, on the one object of his interest. As he entered they were fixed on Jane, turning straight to her in her corner.
This directness of aim rendered mediation almost superfluous. But Nicky, as the fervent adorer of Miss Holland, had brought to the ceremony of introduction a solemnity and mystery which he was in no mood to abate. It was wonderful how in spite of Brodrick he got it all in.
Brodrick was charged with a more formidable and less apparent fire. Yet what struck Jane first in Brodrick was his shyness, his deference, his positive timidity. There was something about him that appealed to her, pathetically, to forget that he was that important person, a proprietor of the "Morning Telegraph." She would have said that he was new to any business of proprietorship. New with a newness that shone in his slumbering ardour; that at first sight seemed to betray itself in the very innocence, the openness of his approach. If it could be called an approach, that slow, indomitable gravitation of Brodrick toward Jane.
"Do you often come over to Wendover?" he said.
"Not very often."
There was a pause, then Brodrick said something again, but in so low a voice that Jane had to ask him what he said.
"Only that it's an easy run down from Marylebone."
"It is—very," said she, and she tried to draw him into conversation with Miss Lempriere and Miss Gunning.
It was not easy to draw him where he had not previously meant to go. He was a creature too unswerving, inadaptable for purely social purposes. For Nina and Laura he had only a blank courtesy. Yet he talked to them, he talked fluently, in an abstracted manner, while he looked, now at Jane, and now at her portrait by Gisborne. He seemed to be wondering quietly what she was doing there, in Nicky's house.
Nicky, as became him, devoted himself to Miss Bickersteth. She was on the reviewing staff of the "Morning Telegraph," and very valuable to Nicky. Besides, he liked her. She interested him, amused, amazed him. As a journalist she had strange perversities and profundities. She had sharpened her teeth on the "Critique of Pure Reason" in her prodigious teens. Yet she could toss off, for the "Telegraph," paragraphs of an incomparable levity. In the country Miss Bickersteth was a blustering, full-blooded Diana of the fields. In town she was intellect, energy and genial modernity made flesh. Even Tanqueray, who drew the line at the dreadful, clever little people, had not drawn it at Miss Bickersteth. There was something soothing in her large and florid presence. It had no ostensible air of journalism, of being restlessly and for ever on the spot. You found it wherever you wanted it, planted fairly and squarely, with a look of having grown there.
Nicky, concealed beside Miss Bickersteth in a corner, had begun by trying to make her talk about Shelley (she had edited him). He hoped that thus he might be led on to talk about himself. To Nicky the transition was a natural one.
But Miss Bickersteth did not want to talk about Shelley. Shelley, she declared irreverently, was shop. She wanted to talk about people whom they knew, having reached the absolving age of forty, when you may say anything you please about anybody to an audience sufficiently discreet. And she had just seen Jane and Tanqueray going out together through the long window on to the lawn.
"I suppose," said she, "if they liked, they could marry now."
"Now?" repeated poor Nicky vaguely.
"Now that one of them has got an income."
"I didn't think he was a marrying man."
"No. And you wouldn't think, would you, she was a marrying woman?"
"I—I don't know. I haven't thought about it. He said he wasn't going to marry."
"Oh." Two small eyes looked at him, two liquid, luminous spots in the pinkness of Miss Bickersteth's face.
"It's got as far as that, has it? That shows he's been thinking of it."
"I should have thought it showed he wasn't."
Miss Bickersteth's mouth was decided in its set, and vague in its outline and its colouring. Her smile now appeared as a mere quiver of her face.
"How have you managed to preserve your beautiful innocence? Do you always go about with your head among the stars?"
"My head——?" He felt it. It was going round and round.
"Yes. Is a poet not supposed ever to see anything under his exquisite nose?"
"I am not," said Nicky solemnly, "always a poet. And when a person tells me he isn't going to do a thing, I naturally think he isn't."
"And I naturally think he is. Whatever you think about George Tanqueray, he's sure to do the other thing."
"Come—if you can calculate on that."
"You can't calculate on anything. Least of all with George Tanqueray. Except that he'll never achieve anything that isn't a masterpiece. If it's a masterpiece of folly."
"Mind you," she added, "I don't say he will marry Jane Holland, and I don't say it would be a masterpiece of folly if he did."
"What do you say?"
"That if he ever cares for any woman enough to marry her, it will be Jane."
"I see," said Nicky, after some reflection. "You think he's that sort?"
"I think he's a genius. What more do you want?"
"Oh, I don't want anything more," said Nicky, plunging head-first into a desperate ambiguity. He emerged. "What I mean is, when we've got Him, and when we've got Her—creators——" He paused before the immensity of his vision of Them. "What business have we——"
"To go putting one and one together so as to make two?"
"Well—it doesn't seem quite reverent."
"You think them gods, then, your creators?"
"I think I—worship them."
"Ah, Mr. Nicholson, you're adorable. And I'm atrocious."
"I believe," said Nicky, "tea is in the garden."
"Let us go into the garden," said Miss Bickersteth.
And they went.
Tea was served in a green recess shut in from the lawn by high yew hedges. Nicky at his tea-table was more charming than ever, surrounded by old silver and fine linen, making tea delicately, and pouring it into fragile cups and offering it, doing everything with an almost feminine dexterity and grace.
After tea the group scattered and rearranged itself. In Nicky's perfect garden, a garden of smooth grass plots and clipped yew-trees, of lupins and larkspurs, of roses that would have been riotous but for the restraining spirit of the place; in a green alley between lawn and orchard, Mr. Hugh Brodrick found himself with Miss Holland, and alone. Very quietly, very persistently, with eyes intent, he had watched for and secured this moment.
"You don't know," he was saying, "how I've wanted to meet you, and how hard I've worked for it."
"Was it so hard?"
"Hard isn't the word for it. If you knew the things I've done——" He spoke in his low, even voice, saying eager and impulsive things without a sign of eagerness or impulse.
"What things?"
"Mean things, base things. Going on my knees to people I didn't know, grovelling for an introduction."
"I'm sorry. It sounds awful."
"It was. I've been on the point of meeting you a score of times, and there's always been some horrid fatality. Either you'd gone when I arrived, or I had to go before you arrived. I believe I've seen you—once."
"I don't remember."
"At Miss Bickersteth's. You were coming out as I was going in." He looked at his watch. "And now I ought to be catching a train."
"Don't catch it."
"I shan't. For I've got to tell you how much I admire your work. I'm not going to ask how you do it, for I don't suppose you know yourself."
"I don't."
"I'm not even going to ask myself. I simply accept the miracle."
"If it's miracles you want, look at George Tanqueray."
He said nothing. And now she thought of it, he had not looked at George Tanqueray. He had looked at nobody but her. It was the look of a man who had never known a moment's uncertainty as to the thing he wanted. It was a look that stuck.
"Why aren't you at his feet?" she said.
"Because I'm not drawn—to my knees—by brutal strength and cold, diabolical lucidity."
"Oh," she cried, "you haven't read him."
"I've read all of him. And I prefer you."
"Me? You've spoilt it all. If you can't admire him, what is the use of your admiring me?"
"I see. You don't want me to admire you."
He said it with no emphasis, no emotion, as if he were indifferent as to what she wanted.
"No. I don't think I do."
"You see," he said, "you have a heart."
"Oh, if people would only leave my heart alone!"
"And Tanqueray, I believe, has a devil."
She turned on him.
"Give me George Tanqueray's devil!" She paused, considering him. "Why do you talk about my heart?"
