The Creators: A Comedy

by May Sinclair

She moved with such soft feet, on so fine and light a wing that, but for the blessed effects of it, they were hardly aware of her presence in the house. Owing to her consummate genius for self-effacement, Brodrick remained peculiarly unaware. The bond of her secretaryship no longer held them. It had lapsed when Brodrick married, and Gertrude found herself superseded as the editor grew great.

For more than a year Brodrick's magazine had had a staff of its own, and its own office where Miss Addy Ranger sat in Gertrude's seat. Addy no longer railed at the impermanence and mutability of things. Having attained the extreme pitch of speed and competence, she was now established as Brodrick's secretary for good. She owed her position to Jane, a position from which, Addy exultantly declared, not even earthquakes could remove her.

You would have said nothing short of an earthquake could remove the "Monthly Review." It looked as if Brodrick's magazine, for all its dangerous splendour, had come to stay, as if Brodrick, by sheer fixity and the power he had of getting what he wanted, would yet force the world to accept his preposterous dream. He had gone straight on, deaf to his brother-in-law's warning and remonstrance; he had not checked for one moment the flight of his fantasy, nor changed by one nervous movement his high attitude. Month after month, the appearance of the magazine was punctual, inalterable as the courses of the moon.

Bold as Brodrick was, there was no vulgar audacity about his venture. The magazine was not hurled at people's heads; it was not thrust on them. It was barely offered. By the restraint and dignity of his advertisements the editor seemed to be saying to his public, "There it is. You take it or you leave it. In either case it is there; and it will remain there."

And strangely, inconceivably, it did remain. In nineteen-six Brodrick found himself planted with apparent security on the summit of his ambition. He had a unique position, a reputation for caring, caring with the candid purity of high passion, only for the best. He counted as a power unapproachable, implacable to mediocrity. Authors believed in him, adored, feared, detested him, according to their quality. Other editors admired him cautiously; they praised him to his face; in secret they judged him preposterous, but not absurd. They all prophesied his failure; they gave him a year, or at the most three years.

Some wondered that a man like Brodrick, solid, if you like, but after all, well, of no more than ordinary brilliance, should have gone so far. It was said among them that Jane Holland was the power behind Brodrick and his ordinary brilliance and his most extraordinary magazine. The imagination he displayed, the fine, the infallible discernment, the secret for the perfect thing, were hers, they could not by any possibility be Brodrick's.

Caro Bickersteth, who gathered these impressions in her continuous intercourse with the right people, met them with one invariable argument. If Brodrick wasn't fine, if he wasn't perceptive, if he hadn't got the scent, Caro challenged them, how on earth did he discern Jane Holland? His appreciation of her, Caro informed one or two eminent critics, had considerably forestalled their own. He was the first to see; he always was the first. He had taken up George Tanqueray when other editors wouldn't look at him, when he was absolutely unknown. And when Caro was reminded that there, at any rate, Jane Holland had been notoriously behind Brodrick's back, and that the editor was, notoriously again, in love with her, Caro made her point triumphantly, maintaining that to be in love with Jane Holland required some subtlety, if it came to that; and pray how, if Brodrick was devoid of it, did Jane Holland come to be in love with him?

It was generous of Caro, for even as sub-editor she was no longer Brodrick's right hand. To the right and to the left of him, at his back and perpetually before him, all round about him she saw Jane.

The wonder was that she saw her happy. It was Jane who observed to Caro how admirably they all of them, she, Addy Ranger, Gertrude, Brodrick, and those two queer women, Jane Brodrick and Jane Holland, were settled down into their right places, with everything about them incomparably ordered and adjusted.

Jane marvelled at the concessions that had been made to her, at the extent to which things were being done for her. Her hours were no longer confounded and consumed in supervising servants, interviewing tradespeople, and struggling with the demon of finance. They were all, Jane's hours, serenely and equitably disposed. She gave her mornings to her work, a portion of the afternoon to her son, and her evenings to her husband. Sometimes she sat up quite late with him, working on the magazine. Brodrick and the baby between them divided the three hours which were hers before dinner. The social round had ceased for Jane. Brodrick had freed her from the destroyers, from the pressure of the dreadful, clever little people. She was hardly yet aware of the more formidable impact of his family.