XVI
A week after his visit to Jane Holland, Tanqueray was settled, as he called it, in rooms in Bloomsbury. He had got all his books and things sent down from Hampstead, to stay in Bloomsbury for ever, because Bloomsbury was cheap.
It had not occurred to him to think what Rose was to do with herself in Bloomsbury or he with Rose. He had brought her up out of the little village of Sussex where they had lodged, in a farmhouse, ever since their marriage. Rose had been happy down in Sussex.
And for the first few weeks Tanqueray had been happy too. He was never tired of playing with Rose, caressing Rose, talking nonsense to Rose, teasing and tormenting Rose for ever. The more so as she provoked him by turning an imperturbable face to the attack. He liked to lie with his head in Rose's lap, while Rose's fingers played with his hair, stirring up new ideas to torment her with. He was content, for the first few weeks, to be what he had become, a sane and happy animal, mated with an animal, a dear little animal, superlatively happy and incorruptibly sane.
He might have gone on like that for an interminable number of weeks but that the mere rest from all intellectual labour had a prodigiously recuperative effect. His genius, just because he had forgotten all about it, began with characteristic perversity to worry him again. It wouldn't let him alone. It made him more restless than Rose had ever made him. It led him into ways that were so many subtle infidelities to Rose. It tore him from Rose and took him out with it for long tramps beyond the Downs; wherever they went it was always too far for Rose to go. He would try, basely, to get off without her seeing him, and managed it, for Rose was so sensible that she never saw.
Then it made him begin a book. He wrote all morning in a room by himself. All afternoon he walked by himself. All evening he lay with his head in Rose's lap, too tired even to tease her.
But, because she had Tanqueray's head to nurse in the evenings, Rose had been happy down in Sussex. She went about the farm and stroked all the animals. She borrowed the baby at the farm and nursed it half the day. And in the evening she nursed Tanqueray's head. Tanqueray's head was never bothered to think what Rose was doing when she was not nursing it.
Then, because his book made him think of Jane Holland, he sat down one day and wrote that letter to Jinny.
He did not know that it was because of Jinny that he had come back to live in Bloomsbury.
They had been a month in Bloomsbury, in a house in Torrington Square. Rose was sitting alone in the ground-floor room that looked straight on to the pavement. Sitting with her hands before her waiting for Tanqueray to come to lunch. Tanqueray was up-stairs, two flights away, in his study, writing. She was afraid to go and tell him lunch was ready. She had gone up once that morning to see that he didn't let his fire out, and he hadn't liked it; so she waited. There was a dish of cutlets keeping hot for him on the hearth. Presently he would come down, and she would have the pleasure of putting the cutlets on the table and seeing him eat them. It was about the only pleasure she could count on now.