She shrugged her thin shoulders. "There was nothing else," she said, "that I could do."
That night, while Prothero and Laura sat together holding each other's hands, Nina walked up and down outside on the Embankment, in the rain. She had said that she was more like a man than a woman; and with her stride that gave her garments recklessly to the rain, with her impetuous poise, and hooded, hungry eyes, she had the look of some lean and vehement adolescent, driven there by his youth.
The next day, very early, she went down into Wales, a virgin to her mountains.
She had done all she could.
XL
Laura was staying at the Brodricks. She was to stay, Jane insisted on it, until she was married. She would have to stay for ever then, Laura said. Her marriage seemed so far-off, so unlikely, so impossible.
For Prothero had offended the powers that governed his material destiny, the editors and proprietors of the "Morning Telegraph." A man who, without a moment's notice, could fling up his appointment, an appointment, mind you, that he had obtained, not by any merit of his own, but through the grace and favour of an editor's wife, an appointment that he held precariously, almost on sufferance, by mercy extended to him day by day and hour by hour, what could he hope for from sane, responsible men like Brodrick and Levine? Did he imagine that appointments hung on lamp-posts ready to his hand? Or that they only waited for his appearance, to fall instantly upon his head? And that, if they did fall on his head, he could take them on and off like his hat? And did he think that he could play the fool with a paper like the "Morning Telegraph"?
These questions Brodrick asked of Levine and Levine of Brodrick, before the unspeakably shocked, the unconditionally assenting faces of John and Henry.
All the Brodricks disapproved of Prothero and were annoyed with him for flinging up his appointment. Jane pleaded that he had flung it up because he was fond of Laura and wanted to marry her; and she was told that that was all the more reason why he should have stuck to it. They were annoyed with him for keeping Laura hanging on when he knew he couldn't marry her; and they were annoyed with him for wanting to marry her at all. They admitted that it was very sad for Laura; they liked Laura; they approved of Laura; she had done her duty by all the family she had, and had nearly died of it. And when Jane suggested that all Prothero wanted was to do the same, they replied that Prothero had no business to think of having a family—they supposed that was what it would end in—a man who couldn't keep himself, much less a delicate wife and half-a-dozen children. There would be half-a-dozen; there always were in cases like Prothero's. And at that Jane smiled and said they would be darlings if they were at all like Laura.