The Creators: A Comedy

by May Sinclair

"There is no reason," he said; and having said it, he left the room.

He had paused to gather patience in exasperation. Gertrude interpreted the pause as the impressive stop before the final, irrevocable decision; a decision favourable to her continuance.

She was not appeased by it. Her anxiety rather had taken shape, resolving itself into a dreadful suspicion as to the relations between Brodrick and Miss Holland.

He was not thinking of marrying Miss Holland. But there was something between them, something which by no means necessitated her own departure, which indeed rendered superfluous any change in the arrangements she had made so perfect. It was not likely that Brodrick, at his age, should desire to change them. He might be in love with Jane Holland. He was wedded to order and tranquillity and peace. And she never would be. There was wild, queer blood in her. Her writings proved her lawless, defiant, contemptuous of propriety. She had, no doubt, claimed the right of genius to make its own rules.

Gertrude's brain, which had been passive to the situation, now worked with uncontrolled activity. She found herself arguing it out. If it were so, whatever was, or had been, or would be between them, it was transitory. It would run its course and period, and she would remain, and he would return to her. She had only to wait and serve; to serve and wait. It seemed to her then that her passion rose above theirs, white with renunciation, a winged prayer, a bloodless, bodiless longing, subtler than desire, sounding a poignant spiritual cry.

And all the time she knew that her suspicion was not justified. Jane Holland was honest; and as for him, she was not even sure that he cared for her.

Every instinct in her was now subdued to the craving to be sure, to know how far the two were going or had gone. Whatever was between them, it was something that Brodrick desired to conceal, to thrust out of her sight, as he had thrust the thing he had held in his hand.

Up-stairs overhead, she heard the door of his room opening and shutting. She saw the light from his windows lengthening on the gravel path outside. He was not coming back.

She opened the drawer where she divined that it lurked hidden, the thing that was the sign and symbol of their secret. She found lying there, face downwards, a portrait of Jane Holland, a photograph of the painting by Gisborne. She took it in her hand and looked at the queer, half-plain, half-beautiful, wholly fascinating face; and it was as if she looked for the first time on the face of her own passion, dully, stupidly, not knowing it for the thing it was. She had a sudden vision of their passion, Jane's and Brodrick's, as it would be; she saw the transitory, incarnate thing, flushed in the splendour of its moment, triumphant, exultant and alive.

She laid the portrait in its drawer again, face downwards, and turned from it. And for a moment she stood there, clutching her breasts with her hands, so that she hurt them, giving pain for intolerable pain.