She closed her eyes. "I'm quite happy."
"For heaven's sake be honest. What is the use of lying, to me of all people? Don't I know how happy you are?"
"But I am—I am, George. It's only this horrid, devilish thing that's been tacked on to me——"
"That beautiful, divine thing that God made part of you, the thing that you should have loved and made sacrifices to—if there were to have been sacrifices—the thing you've outraged and frustrated, and done your best to destroy, in your blind, senseless lust for what you call happiness. You've no right to make It suffer."
"They say suffering's the best thing that can happen to it."
"Not Its suffering. Your suffering is—the pain that makes you alive, that stings and urges and keeps you going—going till you drop. To feel the pull of the bit when you swerve on the road—Its road—to have the lash laid about your shoulders when you jib—that's good. You women need the lash more than we because you're more given to swerving and jibbing. Look at Nina. She was lashed into it if any woman ever was."
"She isn't the only one, George."
"I hope she isn't. God is good to the great artists sometimes, and he was good to her."
"Do you suppose Laura thinks so?"
"Laura's not a great artist."
"And do you suppose Owen was thinking of Nina's genius when he married Laura instead of her?"
"I don't think that Owen was thinking at all. It's not the thinkers who are tools in the hands of destiny, dear child."
His gaze fell on the manuscript she was packing.
"Jinny, you know—you've always known that you can't do anything without me."
"It seems as if I couldn't," she admitted.
"Well—be honest with me."
She looked at her watch. "There's not much time for me to be honest in, but I'll try."
She sat down. She meditated a moment, making it out.
"You're right. I can't do much without you. I'm not perfectly alive when you're not there. And I can't get away from you—as I can get away from Hugh. I believe I remember every single thing you ever said to me. I'm always wanting to talk to you. I don't want—always—to talk to Hugh. But—I think more of him."
It seemed to her that it was only now that she really made it out. Her fear had been no test, it threw no light on her, and it had passed. It was only now, with Tanqueray's passionately logical issue facing her, that she knew herself aright.
"There's another thing. I can't be sorry for you. I know I'm hurting you, and I don't seem to care a bit. You can't make me sorry for you. But I'm sorry for Hugh all the time."
"God forbid that you should be sorry for me, then."
"God does forbid it. It's not that Hugh makes me sorry for him; he never lets me know; but I do know. When his little finger aches I know it, and I ache all over—I think it's aching a bit now; that's what makes me want to go back to him."
"I see—Pity," said the psychologist.
"No. Not pity. It's simply that I know he needs me more than you do. That's why I need him more than I need you."
"Pity," he reiterated, with a more insistent stress.
"No."
"Never mind what it is, if it's something that you haven't got for me."
"It is something that I haven't got for you. There isn't time," she said, "to go into all that."
As she spoke he heard wheels grinding the stones in the upper lane, the shriek of the brake grinding the wheel, and the shuffling of men's feet on the flagged yard outside.
He shut the door and faced her, making his last stand.
"You know what you're going back to."
"I know."
"To suffer," he said, "and to cause suffering—to one—two—three—innocent people."
"No. Things will be different."
"They won't. We shall be the same."
She shook her head a little helplessly.
"At any rate," he said, "you won't be different."
"If I could—if I only could be——"
"But you can't. You know you can't."
"I can—if I give it up—once for all."
"What? Your divine genius?"
"Whatever it is. When I've killed that part of me I shall be all right. I mean—they'll be all right."
"You can't kill it. You can starve it, drug it, paralyze it, but you can't kill it. It's stronger than you. You'll go through hell—I know it, I've been there—you'll be like a drunkard trying to break himself of the drink habit."
"Yes. But some day I shall break myself, or be broken; and there'll be peace."
"Will there!"
"There'll be something."
She rose. The wheels sounded nearer, and stopped. The gate of the farmyard opened. The feet of the men were at the door.
LXIV
Whatever Tanqueray thought of Brodrick's chill, it and the fear it inspired in Gertrude had been grave enough to keep him in the house. For three days (the last of September) he had not been in Fleet Street, in his office.
There was agitation there, and agitation in the mind of the editor and of his secretary. Tanqueray's serial was running its devastating course through the magazine, and the last instalment of the manuscript was overdue (Tanqueray was always a little late with his instalments). Brodrick was worried, and Gertrude, at work with him in his study, tried to soothe him. They telephoned to the office for the manuscript. The manuscript was not there. The clerk suggested that it was probably still with the type-writer, Miss Ranger. They telephoned to Miss Ranger, who replied that the manuscript had been typed and sent to the author three weeks ago for revision.
Brodrick sent a messenger to Tanqueray's house for the manuscript. He returned towards evening with a message that Mrs. Tanqueray was out, Mr. Tanqueray was in the country and the servant did not know his address.
They telegraphed to Addy Ranger's rooms for his address. The reply came, "Post Office, Okehampton, Devon."
Brodrick repeated it with satisfaction as he wrote it down: "Post Office, Okehampton, Devon."
Gertrude was silent.
"He's got friends somewhere in Devonshire," Brodrick said.
"At the Post Office?" she murmured.
"Of course—if they're motoring."
Gertrude was again silent (she achieved her effects mainly by silences).
"We'd better send the wire there," said Brodrick.
They sent it there first thing in the morning.
Before noon a message came from Mrs. Tanqueray: "Address, 'The Manor, Wilbury, Wilts.' Have sent your message there."
Admirable Mrs. Tanqueray!
"We've sent our wire to the wrong address," said Brodrick.
"It's the right one, I fancy, if Miss Ranger has it."
"Mrs. Tanqueray's got the wrong one, then?"
They looked at each other. Gertrude's face was smooth and still, but her eyes searched him, asking what his thoughts were.
They sent a wire to Wilbury.
Three days passed. No answer to their wires and no manuscript.
"He's left Okehampton, I suppose," said Brodrick.
"Or has he left Wilbury?"
"We'll send another wire there, to make sure."
She wrote out the form obediently. Then she spoke again.
"Of course he's at Okehampton." Her voice had an accent of joyous certainty.
"Why 'of course'?"
"Because he went to Wilbury first. Mrs. Tanqueray said she sent our message there—the one we sent three days ago. So he's left Wilbury and he's staying in Okehampton."
"It looks like it."
"And yet—you'd have thought he'd have let his wife know if he was staying."
"He probably isn't."
"He must be. The manuscript went there."
"Let's hope so, then we may get it to-morrow."
It was as if he desired to impress upon her that the manuscript was the important thing.
It came as he had anticipated the next day. Miss Ranger sent it up by special messenger.
"Good!" said Brodrick.
He undid the parcel hurriedly. The inner cover was addressed to Miss Ranger in Tanqueray's handwriting. It bore the post-mark, Chagford.
"He's been at Chagford all the time!" said Gertrude.
(She had picked up the wrapper which Brodrick had thrown upon the floor.)
Silence.
"T-t-t. It would have saved a day," she said, "if he'd sent this direct to you instead of to Miss Ranger. Why couldn't he when he knew we were so rushed?"
"Why, indeed?" he thought.
"There must have been more corrections," he said.
"She can't have typed them in the time," said Gertrude. She was examining the inner cover. "Besides, she has sent it on unopened."
"Excellent Miss Ranger!"
He said it with a certain levity. But even as he said it his brain accepted the inference she forced on it. If Tanqueray had not sent his manuscript to Camden Town for corrections, he had sent it there for another reason. The parcel was registered. There was no letter inside it.
Brodrick's hand trembled as he turned over the pages of the manuscript. Gertrude's eyes were fixed upon its trembling.
A few savage ink-scratches in Tanqueray's handwriting told where Miss Ranger had blundered; otherwise the manuscript was clean. Tanqueray had at last satisfied his passion for perfection.
All this Brodrick's brain took in while his eyes, feverish and intent, searched the blank spaces of the manuscript. He knew what he was looking for. It would be there, on the wide margin left for her, that he would find the evidence that his wife and Tanqueray were together. He knew the signs of her. Not a manuscript of Tanqueray's, not one of his last great books, but bore them, the queer, delicate, nervous pencil-markings that Tanqueray, with all his furious erasures, left untouched. Sometimes (Brodrick had noticed) he would enclose them in a sort of holy circle of red ink, to show that they were not for incorporation in the text. But it was not in him to destroy a word that she had written.
But he could find no trace of her. He merely made out some humble queryings of Miss Ranger, automatically erased.
The manuscript was in three Parts. As he laid down each, Gertrude put forth a quiet hand and drew it to herself. He was too much preoccupied to notice how minutely and with what intent and passionate anxiety she examined it.
He was arranging the manuscript in order. Gertrude was absorbed in Part Three. He had reached out for it when he remembered that the original draft of Part Two had contained a passage as to which he had endeavoured to exercise an ancient editorial right. He looked to see whether Tanqueray had removed it.
He had not. The passage stood, naked and immense, tremendous as some monument of primeval nature, alone in literature, simple, superb, immortal; irremovable by any prayer. Brodrick looked at it now with a clearer vision. He acknowledged its grandeur and bowed his head to the power that was Tanqueray. Had he not been first to recognize it? It was as if his suspicion of the man urged him to a larger justice towards the writer.
He turned to Gertrude. "There are no alterations to be made, thank heaven——"
"How about this?"
She slid the manuscript under his arm; her finger pointed to the margin. He saw nothing.
"What?" He spoke with some irritation.
"This."
She turned up the lamp so that the light fell full upon the page. He bent closer. On the margin, so blurred as to be almost indecipherable, he saw his wife's sign, a square of delicate script. To a careless reader it might have seemed to have been written with a light pencil and to have been meant to stand. Examined closely it revealed the firm strokes of a heavy lead obliterated with india-rubber. Gertrude's finger slid away and left him free to turn the pages. There were several of these marks in the same handwriting, each one deliberately erased. The manuscript had been in his wife's hand within the last three days; for three days certainly Tanqueray had been in Chagford, and for three weeks for all Brodrick knew.
There was no reason why he should not be there, no reason why they should not be together. Then why these pitiable attempts at concealment, at the covering of the tracks?
And yet, after all, they had not covered them. They had only betrayed the fact that they had tried. Had they? And which of them? Tanqueray in the matter of obliteration would at any rate have been aware of the utter inadequacy of india-rubber. To dash at a thing like india-rubber was more the sudden, futile inspiration of a woman made frantic by her terror of detection.
It was clear that Jane had not wanted him to know that Tanqueray was at Chagford. She had not told him. Why had she not told him? She knew of the plight they were in at the office, of the hue and cry after the unappearing manuscript.
So his brain worked, with a savage independence. He seemed to himself two men, a man with a brain that worked, following a lucid argument to an obscure conclusion, and a man who looked on and watched its working without attaching the least importance to it. It was as if this man knew all the time what the other did not know. He had his own light, his own secret. He had never thought about it before (his secret), still less had he talked about it. Thinking about it was a kind of profanity; talking would have been inconceivable sacrilege. It was self-evident as the existence of God to the soul that loves him; a secret only in that it was profounder than appearances, in that it stood by the denial of appearances, so that, if appearances were against it, what of that?
He was thinking about it now, obscurely, without images, barely with words, as if it had been indeed a thing occult and metaphysical.
Thinking about it—that meant, of course, that he had for a moment doubted it? It was coming back to him now, clothed with the mortal pathos of its imperfection. She was dearer to him—unspeakably dearer, for his doubt.
The man with the brain approached slowly and unwillingly the conclusion that now emerged, monstrous and abominable, from the obscurity. If that be so, he said, she is deliberately deceiving me.
And he who watched, he with the illuminating, incommunicable secret, smiled as he watched, in scorn and pity. Scorn of the slow and ugly movements of the intellect, and pity for a creature so mean as to employ them.
In the silence that he kept he had not heard the deep breathing of the woman at his side. Now he was aware of it and her.
He was positively relieved when the servant announced Mrs. Levine.
There was a look on Sophy's face that Brodrick knew, a look of importance and of competence, a look it always had when Sophy was about to deal with a situation. Gertrude's silent disappearance marked her sense of a situation to be dealt with.
Brodrick rose heavily to greet his sister. There was a certain consolation in her presence, since it had relieved him of Gertrude's. Sophy, by way of prelude, inquired about Brodrick and the children and the house, then paused to attack her theme.
"When's Jane coming back?" said she.
"I don't know," said Brodrick.
"She's been away two months."
"Seven weeks," said Brodrick.
"Isn't it about time she did come back?"
"She's the best judge of that," said Brodrick.
Sophy's face was extraordinarily clear-eyed and candid as it turned on him.
"George Tanqueray's at Chagford."
"How do you know?" (He really wondered.)
"Miss Ranger let it out to Louis this morning."
"Let it out? Why on earth should she keep it in?"
"Oh well, I don't suppose she sees anything in it."
"No more do I," said Brodrick.
"You never saw anything," said Sophy. "I don't say there's anything to see—all the same——"
She paused.
"Well?" He was all attention and politeness.
"All the same I should insist on her coming back."
He was silent, as though he were considering it.
"Or better still, go down and fetch her."
"I shall do nothing of the sort."
"Well, if you think it's wise to give her her head to that extent—a woman with Jane's temperament——"
"What do you know about her temperament?"
Sophy shifted her ground. "I know, and you know the effect he has on her, and the influence; and if you leave her to him—if you leave them to themselves, down there—for weeks like that—you'll have nobody but yourself to thank if——"
He cut her short.
"I have nobody but myself to thank. She shall please herself about coming back. It she didn't come—I couldn't blame her."
Sophy was speechless. Of all the attitudes that any Brodrick could take she had not expected this.
"We have made things too hard for her——" he said.
"We?"
"You and I—all of us. We've not seen what was in her."
Sophy repressed her opinion that they very probably would see now. As there was no use arguing with him in his present mood (she could see that), she left him.
Brodrick heard her motor hooting down Roehampton Lane. She was going to dine at Henry's. Presently all the family would be in possession of the situation, of Jane's conduct and his attitude. And there was Gertrude Collett. He understood now that she suspected.
Gertrude had come back into her place.
He picked up some papers and took them to the safe which stood in another corner of the room behind his writing-table. He wanted to get away from Gertrude, to be alone with his secret and concealed, without betraying his desire for solitude, for concealment. He knelt down by the safe and busied himself there quite a long time. He said to himself, "It couldn't happen. She was always honest with me. But if it did I couldn't wonder. The wonder is why she married me."
He rose to his feet, saying to himself again, "It couldn't happen."
With that slight readjusting movement the two men in him became one, so that when the reasoning man reached slowly his conclusion he formulated it thus: "It couldn't happen. If it did, it wouldn't happen this way. He" (even to himself he could not say "they") "would have managed better, or worse." At last his intellect, the lazy, powerful beast, was roused and dealt masterfully with the situation.
He had to pass the fireplace to get back to his seat, which Gertrude guarded. As he passed he caught sight of his own face in the glass over the chimney-piece, a face with inflamed eyes and a forehead frowning and overcast, and cheeks flushed with shame. Gertrude, looking up at him from the manuscript she brooded over, instinctively made way for him to pass.
It was she who spoke first. Her finger was on the pencil-marks again.
"Then that," said she, pointing, "that is not to stand?"
"Of course it isn't." He answered coldly. "It wasn't meant to. It's rubbed out."
He looked at her for the first time with dislike. He did not suspect her as the source of abominable suggestion. He was only thinking that if it hadn't been for her he wouldn't have seen any of these things.
She shrank before his look. "Does he think I wanted him to see it?" she said to herself.
Already she was clean in her own eyes. Already she had persuaded herself that she had not wanted that. And in the same breath of thought she asked herself, "What did he see?"
She smiled as she answered his cold answer.
"I thought it was rubbed out, but I couldn't be quite sure."
They were so absorbed that they did not hear the door open.
Jane stood in the doorway quietly regarding them.
