What impressed her was Brodrick's serene acceptance of her friends, his authors. He was wonderful in his brilliant, undismayed enthusiasm, as he followed the reckless charge, the shining onset of the talents. He accepted even Tanqueray's murderous, amazing ironies. If Brodrick's lifted eyebrows confessed that Tanqueray was amazing, they also intimated that Brodrick remained perpetually unamazed.
But, as an editor, he drew the line at Arnott Nicholson.
It was the sensitive Nicky who first perceived and pointed out a change in Jane. She moved among them abstractedly, with mute, half alienated eyes. She seemed to have suffered some spiritual disintegration that was pain. She gave herself to them no longer whole, but piecemeal. At times she seemed to hold out empty, supplicating hands, palms outward, showing that she could give no more. There was, she seemed to say, no more left of her.
Only Tanqueray knew how much was left; knew of her secret, imperishable resources, things that were hidden profoundly even from herself; so hidden that, even if she gave him nothing, it was always possible to him to help himself. To him she could not change. His creed had always been the unchangeableness, the indestructibility of Jinny.
Still, he assented, smiling, when little Laura confided to him that to see Jane Brodrick in Brodrick's house, among Brodricks, was not seeing Jinny. There was too much Brodrick. It would have been better, said Laura, if she had married Nicky.
He agreed. There would never have been too much of Nicky. But Laura shook her head.
"It isn't a question of proportion," she said. "It isn't that there's too much Brodrick and too little Jinny. It's simply that Jinny isn't there."
Jane knew how she struck them. There was sadness for her, not in their reproaches, for they had none, but in their recognition of the things that were impossible. They had always known how it would be if she married, if she was surrounded by a family circle.
There was no denying that she was surrounded, and that the circle was drawing rather tight. And she was planted there in the middle of it, more than ever under observation. She always had been; she had known it; only in the beginning it had not been quite so bad. Allowances had been made for her in the days when she did her best, when she was seen by all of them valiantly struggling, deplorably handicapped; in the days when, as Brodrick said, she was pathetic.
For the Brodricks as a family were chivalrous. Even Frances and Sophy were chivalrous; and it had touched them, that dismal spectacle of Jane doing her sad best. But now she was in the position of one to whom all things have been conceded. She was in for all the consequences of concession. Everything had been done for her that could be done. She was more than ever on her honour, more than ever pledged to do her part. If she failed Brodrick now at any point she was without excuse. Every nerve in her vibrated to the touch of honour.