She had wrung it from him, the thing that six days ago he had come to her to say
"How do you know? And why should I?"
"Because there's nothing else that you can do for me."
She had wrung it from him, the thing that six days ago he had come to her to say.
XXIX
That was a solid, practical idea of Brodrick's. All that he had heard of Owen Prothero connected him securely with foreign countries. By the fact that he had served in South Africa, to say nothing of his years in the Indian Medical Service, he was pointed out as the right man to send to the Russian army in Manchuria; add to this the gift of writing and your War Correspondent was complete. It was further obvious that Prothero could not possibly exist in England on his poems.
At the same time Brodrick was aware that he had reasons for desiring to get the long, ugly poet out of England as soon as possible. His length and his ugliness had not deterred Jane Holland from taking a considerable interest in him. Brodrick's reasons made him feel extremely uncomfortable in offering such a dangerous post as War Correspondent to young Prothero. Therefore when it came to Prothero's accepting it, he did his best to withdraw the offer. It wasn't exactly an offer. He had merely mentioned it as a possible opening, a suggestion in the last resort. He pointed out to Prothero the dangers and the risks, among them damage to his trade as a poet. Poets were too precious. There were, he said, heaps of other men.
But Prothero had leaped at it; he had implored Brodrick not to put another man in; and the more he leaped and implored the more Brodrick tried to keep him off it.