Chapter 19

Every Brodrick, once he had passed the privileged years of his minority, knew that grave things were expected of him. It was expected of him, first of all, that he should marry; and that, not with the levity of infatuation, but soberly and seriously, for the good and for the preservation of the race of Brodricks in its perfection. As it happened, in the present generation of Brodricks, not one of them had done what was expected of them, except Sophy. John had fallen in love with a fragile, distinguished lady, and had incontinently married her; and she had borne him no children. Henry, who should have known better, had fallen in love with a lady so excessively fragile that she had died before he could marry her at all. And because of his love for her he had remained unmarried. Frances had set her heart on a rascal who had left her for the governess. And now Hugh, with his Jane Holland, bid fair to be similarly perverse.

For every Brodrick took, not delight, so much as a serious and sober satisfaction, in the thought that he disappointed expectation. Each one believed himself the creature of a solitary and majestic law. His actions defied prediction. He felt it as an impertinence that anybody, even a Brodrick, should presume to conjecture how a Brodrick would, in any given circumstances, behave. He held it a special prerogative of Brodricks, this capacity for accomplishing the unforeseen. Nobody was surprised when the unforeseen happened; for this family made it a point of honour never to be surprised. The performances of other people, however astounding, however eccentric, appeared to a Brodrick as the facilely calculable working of a law from which a Brodrick was exempt. Whatever another person did, it was always what some Brodrick had expected him to do. Even when Frances's husband ran away with the governess and broke the heart Frances had set on him, it was only what John and Henry and Sophy and Hugh had known would happen if she married him. If it hadn't happened to a Brodrick, they would hardly have blamed Heron for his iniquity; it was so inherent in him and predestined.

So, when it seemed likely that Hugh would marry Jane Holland, the Brodricks were careful to conceal from each other that they were unprepared for this event. They discussed it casually, and with less emotion than they had given to the wild project of the magazine.

It was on a Sunday evening at the John Brodricks', shortly after Jane had left Putney.

"It strikes me," said John who began it, "that one way or another Hugh is seeing a great deal of Miss Holland."

"My dear John, why shouldn't he?" said Frances Heron.

"I'm not saying that he shouldn't. I'm saying that one way or another, he does."

"He has to see her on business," said Frances.

"_Does_ he see her on business?" inquired John.

"He says he does," said Frances.

"Of course," said the Doctor, "he'd _say_ he did."

"Why," said Sophy, "does he say anything at all? That's the suspicious circumstance, to my mind."

"He's evidently aware," said the Doctor, "that something wants explaining."

"So it does," said Sophy; "when Hugh takes to seeing any woman more than once in five months."

"But she's the last woman he'd think of," said Frances.

"It's the last woman a man thinks of that he generally ends by marrying," said John.

"If he'd only think of her," said the Doctor, "he'd be safe enough."

"I know. It's his not thinking," said John; "it's his dashing into it with his eyes shut."

"Do you think," said Frances, "we'd better open his eyes?"

"If you do that," said Levine, "he'll marry her to-morrow."

"Yes," said the Doctor; "much better encourage him, give him his head."

"And fling her at it?" suggested Sophy.

"Well, certainly, if we don't want it to happen, we'd better assume that it will happen."

"Supposing," said Frances presently, "it did happen--what then?"

"My dear Frances, it would be most undesirable," said John.

"By all means," said Levine, "let us take the worst for granted. Then possibly he'll think better of it."

The family, therefore, adopted its characteristic policy of assuming Hugh's intentions to be obvious, of refusing to be surprised or even greatly interested.

Only the Doctor, watching quietly, waited for his moment. It came the next evening when he dropped in to dine with Hugh. He turned the conversation upon Jane Holland, upon her illness, upon its cause and her recovery.

"I shouldn't be surprised," said he, "if some time or other she was to have a bad nervous break-down."

Hugh laughed. "My dear Henry, you wouldn't be surprised if everybody had a bad nervous break-down. It's what you're always expecting them to have."

Henry said he _did_ expect it in women of Miss Holland's physique, who habitually over-drive their brains beyond the power of their body. He became excessively professional as he delivered himself on this head.

It was his subject. He was permitted to enlarge upon it from time to time, and Hugh was not in the least surprised at his entering on it now. It was what he had expected of Henry, and he said so.

Henry looked steadily at his brother.

"I have had her," said he, "under very close observation."

"So have I," said Hugh. "You forget that she is an exceptional woman."

"On the contrary, I think her so very exceptional as to be quite abnormal. Geniuses generally are."

"I don't know. For a woman to live absolutely alone, as she does, and thrive on it, and turn out the work she does--It's a pretty fair test of sanity."

"That she should have chosen to do so is itself abnormal."

"It's not a joyous or a desirable life for her, if that's what you mean," said Hugh.

But that was not what the Doctor meant, and he judged it discreet to drop the discussion at that point.

And, as for several weeks he saw and heard no more of Miss Holland, he judged that Hugh had begun to think, and that he had thought better of it.

For the Doctor knew what he was talking about. When a Brodrick meant to marry, he did not lose his head about a woman, he married sanely, soberly and decorously, for the sake of children. It was so that their father had married. It was so that John--well, John had been a little unfortunate. It was so that he, the Doctor----

He stopped short in his reflections, remembering how it was that he had remained unmarried. Like every other Brodrick he had reserved for himself the privilege of the unexpected line.

XXXII

Every year, about the middle of August, Brodrick's family dispersed for the summer holidays. Every year, about the middle of September, its return was celebrated at a garden-party given by the Levines.

Brodrick's brother-in-law lived with an extreme simplicity in one of those square white houses in St. John's Wood, houses secluded behind high, mysterious walls, where you entered, as by secret, through a narrow door.

The party had streamed through this door, over the flagged path and through the house, into the small, dark, green garden at the back, a garden that seemed to guard, like the house, its secret and its mystery. There, on this yearly festival, you were certain to find all the Brodricks, packed rather tight among a crowd of Levines and their collaterals from Fitzjohn's Avenue, a crowd of very dark, very large-eyed, very curly-haired persons, persons attired with sobriety, almost with austerity, by way of protest against the notorious excesses of their race.

And with them there was always, on this occasion, a troop of little boys and girls, dark, solemn-eyed little boys and girls, with incredibly curly hair, and strange, unchildlike noses.

Moving restlessly among them, or grouped apart, you came upon friends of the Brodricks and Levines, and here and there a few journalists, conspicuously tired young men who toiled nocturnally on the "Morning Telegraph."

This year it was understood that the party would be brilliant. The young men turned up in large numbers and endeavoured to look for the occasion a little less tired than they were. All the great writers on the "Monthly Review" had been invited and many of them came.

Caro Bickersteth was there; she came early, and Sophy Levine, in a discreet aside, implored her to give her a hand with the authors. Authors, Sophy intimated, were too much for her, and there would be a lot of them. There was Miss Lempriere and Miss Gunning, and Jane Holland, of course----

"Of course," said Caro, twinkling.

"And Mr. Tanqueray."

At that name Caro raised her eyebrows and remarked that Sophy was a lucky lady to get Him, for He never went anywhere. Then Caro became abstracted, wondering why George Tanqueray was coming, and to this particular show.

"Will his wife be here?" she inquired.

"Dear me," said Sophy, "I never asked her. You don't somehow think of him as married."

"I doubt," said Caro; "if he thinks so of himself. There never was a man who looked it less."

Most singularly unattached he looked, as he stood there, beside Nina Lempriere and Laura Gunning, drawn to them, but taking hardly more notice of them than of any Brodrick or Levine. He was watching Jinny as she moved about in the party. She had arrived somewhat conspicuously, attended by Brodrick, by Winny Heron and by Eddy, with the two elder little Levines clinging to her gown.

Jane was aware that Nina and Laura were observing her; she was aware of a shade of anxiety in their concentration. Then she knew that Tanqueray was there, too, that he was watching her, that his eyes never left her.

He did not seek her out after their first greeting. He preferred to stand aside and watch her. He had arrived later and he was staying late. Jane felt that it would become her not to stay. But Brodrick would not let her go. He took possession of her. He paraded her as his possession under Tanqueray's eyes; eyes that were fixed always upon Jane, vigilantly, anxiously, as if he saw her caught in the toils.

An hour passed. The party dwindled and dissolved around them. The strangers were gone. The hordes of Levines had scattered to their houses in Fitzjohn's Avenue. The little Levines had been gathered away by their nurses from the scene. Only Brodrick and his family remained, and Jane with them, and Tanqueray who kept on looking at the two while he talked vaguely to Levine.

Brodrick's family was not less interested or less observant. It had accepted without surprise what it now recognized as inevitable. It could no longer hope that Hugh would cease from his insane pursuit of Jane Holland, after making the thing thus public, flourishing his intentions in the face of his family. With a dexterity in man[oe]uvre, an audacity, an obstinacy that was all his own, Hugh had resisted every attempt to separate him from Miss Holland. He only let go his hold when Sophy Levine, approaching with an admirable air of innocence in guile, announced that Baby was being put to bed. She suggested that Jane might like to see him in his--well, in his perfection. It was impossible, Sophy maintained, for anybody not to desire above all things to see him.

Up-stairs in the nursery, Winny and Mrs. Heron were worshipping Baby as he lay on the nurse's lap, in his perfection, naked from his bath. Sophy could not wait till he was given up to her. She seized him, in the impatience of maternal passion. She bent over him, hiding her face with his soft body.

Presently her eyes, Sophy's beautiful, loving eyes, looked up at Jane over the child's shoulder, and their gaze had guile as well as love in it. Jane stood before it motionless, impassive, impenetrable.

Winny fell on her knees in a rapture.

"Oh, Miss Holland!" she cried. "Don't you love him?"

Jane admitted that she rather liked him.

"She's a wretch," said Sophy. "Baby duckums, she says she rather likes you."

Baby chuckled as if he appreciated the absurdity of Jane's moderation.

"Oh, don't you want," said Winny, "don't you want to kiss his little feet? Wouldn't you love to have him for your very own?"

"No, Winny, I shouldn't know what to do with him."

"Wouldn't you?" said Mrs. Heron.

"Feel," said Winny, "how soft he is. He's got teeny, teeny hairs, like down, golden down, just there, on his little back."

Jane stooped and stroked the golden down. And at the touch of the child's body, a fine pain ran from her finger-tips to her heart, and she drew back, as one who feels, for the first time, the touch of life, terrible and tender.

"Oh, Jane," said Sophy, "what are you made of?"

"I wonder----" said Mrs. Heron.

Jane knew that the eyes of the two women were on her, searching her, and that Sophy's eyes were not altogether kind. She continued in her impassivity, smiling a provoking and inscrutable smile.

"She looks," said Sophy, "as if she knew a great deal. And she doesn't know, Baby dear, she doesn't know anything at all."

"Wait," said Mrs. Heron, "till she's got babies of her own. Then she'll know."

"I know now," said Jane calmly.

"Not you," said Sophy almost fiercely, as she carried the little thing away to his bed beside her own. Winny and the nurse followed her. Jane was alone with Frances Heron.

"No woman," said Frances, "knows anything till she's had a child."

"Oh, you married women!"

"Even a married woman. She doesn't know what her love for her husband is until she's held his child at her breast. And she may be as stupid as you please; but she knows more than you."

"I know what she knows--I was born knowing. But if I were married, if I had children, I should know nothing, nothing any more."

Frances was silent.

"They--they'd press up so close to me that I should see nothing--not even them."

"Don't you want them to press?"

"It doesn't matter what I want. It's what I see. And they wouldn't let me see."

"They'd make you feel," said Frances.

"Feel? I should think they would. I should feel _them_, I should feel for them, I should feel nothing else besides."

"But," persisted Frances, "you would feel."

"Do you think I don't?" said Jane.

"Well, there are some things--I don't see how you can--without experience."

"Experience? Experience is no good--the experience you mean--if you're an artist. It spoils you. It ties you hand and foot. It perverts you, twists you, blinds you to everything but yourself and it. I know women--artists--who have never got over their experience, women who'll never do anything again because of it."

"Then, my dear," said Frances, "you would say that geniuses would do very much better not to marry?" Her voice was sweet, but there was a light of sword-play in her eyes.

"I do say it--if they're thinking of their genius."

"Would you say it to Hugh?"

The thrust flashed sharp and straight.

"Why not?" said Jane, lightly parrying the thrust.

Sophy appeared again at that moment and said good-bye. They held her at parting with a gaze that still searched her and found her impenetrable. Their very embrace dismissed her and disapproved.

Tanqueray was waiting for her at the gate. He was going to see her home, he said. He wanted to talk to her. They could walk through Regent's Park towards Baker Street.

They had left the Levines' some way behind them when he turned to her.

"Jinny," he said, "what are you doing in that galley?"

"What are you doing in it yourself, George?"

"I? I came to see you. I was told you would be there. You know, you _do_ let yourself in for people."

"Do I?"

"You do. And these Brodricks aren't your sort. No good can come of your being mixed up with them. Why do you do these things?" he persisted.

"They're kind to me," she pleaded.

"Kind? Queer sort of kindness, when you're working yourself to death for that fellow and his magazine."

"I'm not. He'll let me off any day. He said he'd rather his magazine smashed than I did."

"And you believed him?"

"I believed him."

"Then," said Tanqueray, "it's more serious than I thought."

His eyes rested on her, their terrible lucidity softened by some veil. "Do you like him, Jinny?" he said.

"Do I like him? Yes."

"Why do you like him?"

"I think, perhaps, because he's good."

"That's how he has you, is it?"

He paused.

"Brodrick doesn't know you, Jinny, as I know you."

"That's it," she said. "I wonder if you do."

"I think I do. Better, perhaps, in some ways, than you know yourself."

He was silent for a little time. The sound of his slow feet on the gravel measured the moments of his thought.

"Jinny," he said at last, "I'm going to talk truth to you." Again he paused. "Because I don't think anybody else will."

"There are things," he said, "that are necessary to women like Mrs. Levine and Mrs. Heron, that are not necessary to you. You have moments when your need of these things is such that you think life isn't worth living unless you get them. Those moments are bound to come, because you're human. But they pass. They pass. Especially if you don't attend to them. The real, permanent, indestructible thing in you is the need, the craving, the impulse to create Hamblebys. It can't pass. You know that. What you won't admit is that you're mistaking the temporary, passing impulse for a permanent one. No woman will tell you that it's temporary. They'll all take the sentimental view of it, as you do. Because, Jinny, the devilish thing about it is that, when this folly falls upon a woman, she thinks it's a divine folly."

He looked at her again with the penetrating eyes that saw everything.

"It may be," he said. "It may be. But the chances are it isn't."

"Tanks," she said, "you're very hard on me."

"That's just what I'm not. I'm tenderer to you than you are yourself."

It was hard to take in, the idea of his tenderness to her.

"Think--think, before you're drawn in."

"I am thinking," she said.

Tanqueray's voice insisted. "It's easy to get in; but it isn't so jolly easy to get out."

"And if I don't want," she murmured, "to get out----?"

He looked at her and smiled, reluctantly, as if compelled by what he saw in her.

"It's your confounded Jinniness!"

At last he had acknowledged it, her quality. He revolted against it, as a thing more provoking, more incorrigible than mere womanhood.

"It'll always tug you one way and your genius another. I'm only asking you which is likely to be stronger?"

"Do I know, George? Do _you_ know?"

"I've told you," he said. "I think I do."

XXXIII

Three weeks later, one afternoon in October, Jane found herself going at a terrific pace through Kensington Gardens. Brodrick had sent word that he would see her at five o'clock, and it wanted but a few minutes of that hour.

When Tanqueray sounded his warning, he did not measure the effect of the illumination that it wrought. The passion he divined in her had had a chance to sleep as long as it was kept in the dark. Now it was wide awake, and superbly aware of itself and of its hour.

After she had parted from him Jane saw clearly how she had been drawn, and why. There was no doubt that the folly had come upon her; the folly that Tanqueray told her she would think divine. She not only thought it divine, she felt it to be divine with a certainty that Tanqueray himself could not take away from her.

Very swiftly the divine folly had come upon her. She could not say precisely at what moment, unless it were three weeks ago, when she had stood dumb before the wise women, smitten by a mortal pang, invaded by an inexplicable helplessness and tenderness. It was then that she had been caught in the toils of life, the snares of the folly.

For all its swiftness, she must have had a premonition of it. That was why she had tried so desperately to build the house of life for Brodrick and Miss Collett. She had laboured at the fantastic, monstrous fabrication, as if in that way only she could save herself.

She had been afraid of it. She had fought it desperately. In the teeth of it she had sat down to write, to perfect a phrase, to finish a paragraph abandoned the night before; and she had found herself meditating on Brodrick's moral beauty.

She knew it for the divine folly by the way it dealt with her. It made her the victim of preposterous illusions. The entire district round about Putney became for her a land of magic and of splendour. She could not see the word Putney posted on a hoarding without a stirring of the spirit and a beating of the heart. When she closed her eyes she saw in a vision the green grass plots and sinuous gravel walks of Brodrick's garden, she heard as in a vision the silver chiming of the clock, an unearthly clock, measuring immortal hours.

The great wonder of this folly was that it took the place of the creative impulse. Not only did it possess her to the exclusion of all other interests, but the rapture of it was marvellously akin to the creative ecstasy.

It drove her now at a furious pace through the Gardens and along the High Street. It caused her to exult in the face of the great golden October sunset piled high in the west. It made her see Brodrick everywhere. The Gardens were a green paradise with the spirit of Brodrick moving in them like a god. The High Street was a golden road with Brodrick at the end of it. The whole world built itself into a golden shrine for Brodrick. He was coming to see her at five o'clock.

He was not there, in her room, when she arrived. But he had been there so often that he pervaded and dominated the place, as Tanqueray had once dominated and pervaded it. He had created such a habit, such a superstition of himself that his bodily presence was no longer necessary to its support. There was a chair by the fireplace, next the window. She could not see it now without seeing Brodrick, without seeing a look he had, when, as he sat there silent, his eyes had held her, covered her, caressed her. There were times when he had the gestures and the manner of a man sitting by his own fireside, taking her and all that she signified for granted, establishing between them a communion in which the poignant, ultimate things were not said because they were so profoundly felt.

She caught herself smiling now at the things she was going to say to him.

Her bell rang with the dreadful, startling noise that made her heart leap in her breast.

He came in slowly like a man preoccupied with grave business of his own. And at the sight of him Jane's heart, which had leaped so madly, dragged in her breast and drew the tide of her blood after it.

He took her hand, but not with any eagerness. His face was more than ever sombre, as if with some inward darkness and concern. He turned from her and became interested in finding a suitable place for his hat. (Jane noticed that it was a new one.) Then he sat down and remained seated.

He let her get up and cross the room and ring the bell for herself, so fixed was he in his dream. Only, as her gown brushed him in her passing back, he was aware of it and shrank. She heard him draw in a hard breath, and when she looked at him again she saw the sweat standing on his forehead.

"You've hurried," she said.

"I haven't," said Brodrick. "I never hurry."

"Of course not. You never do anything undignified."

That was not one of the things that she had meant to say.

"Never," said Brodrick, "if I can help it." And he wiped his forehead.

Jane caught herself smiling at Brodrick's hat. She felt a sudden melting, enervating tenderness for Brodrick's hat. The passion which, in the circumstances, she could not permit herself to feel for Brodrick, she felt, ridiculously, for Brodrick's hat.

It was, of course, ridiculous, that she, Jane Holland, should feel a passion for a man's hat, a passion that brought her heart into her mouth, so that she could not say any of the things that she had thought of.

Brodrick's hat on an arm-chair beside him was shining in the firelight. On his uncomfortable seat Brodrick lowered and darkened, an incarnate gloom.

"How happy your hat looks," said Jane, smiling at it again.

"I'm glad it amuses you," said Brodrick.

Jane made tea.