Chapter 23

The two had found a lodging in an old house in Hampstead, not far from the Consumption Hospital. Laura had objected to the hospital, but Owen refused to recognize it as a thing of fear. He had fallen in love with the house. It topped a rise, at the end of the precipitous lane that curls out of the great modern High Street. It stood back in its garden, its narrow, flat-eyed windows staring over the wall down the lane.

Laura wasn't sure that she quite liked it.

"What are you looking at?" she said, as he paused before this house.

"I'm looking at that," said Prothero.

He pointed to an old, disused iron gate, and to the design, curl within curl of slender, aspiring curves, that grew and branched and overflowed, in tendrils of almost tremulous grace, and in triple leaves, each less like a leaf than a three-tongued flame. Insubstantial as lace-work against the green background of the garden, it hung rather than stood between its brick pillars, its edges fretted and fringed with rust, consumed in a delicate decay. A stout iron railing guarded this miracle of art and time. Thus cut off from the uses of life, it gave to the place an air of almost unbearable mystery and isolation; it stirred the sense of mortality, of things that having passed through that doorway would not return.

"That house looks and feels as if it had ghosts in it," she said.

"So it has. Not the ghosts of people who have died. The ghosts of people who have never been born. The people," he said, "who come through the iron gate."

And as she looked at it again and at the untrodden grass behind it, she felt that this masterpiece of iron tortured into beauty was an appropriate symbol of their life. Of Owen's, rather than of hers. Closed as it was to all corporeal creatures, there yet went through it presences, intelligences, the august procession of the dreams.

It was flanked by a postern door, a little humble door in the wall of the garden. That was the door, Laura said, through which her little humble dreams would go out into the world to make their living.

"Poor Owen," she said, "it's the door _you'll_ have to go through."

He smiled.

"And the other," he said, "is the door I shall come back through when I'm gone."

That was what she couldn't bear to think of, the necessity she laid on him of going, as it were, for ever through the postern door. He was after all such a supernatural, such a disembodied thing. He had at times the eyes of a young divinity innocent of creation, untouched by the shames and terrors of the apparent world. And she knew it was the desire they had for each other that had brought him back from his divine borders and that held him in her world. There were moments when she felt that he maintained his appearance there by an effort so intense that it must be torture.

And he would have to work for her, doing dreadful things down in Fleet Street. Every day she would see him go down the green walk, and out through the postern gate, into the alien and terrible places of the incarnate. She felt that she had brought mortality upon an immortal thing. She had bound this winged and radiant spirit with the weight of her sad star.

But there came to her a wonderful day when he brought her home, through the little humble door in the wall of the garden; when, shut in their room, he took her to himself. He laid his hands on her shoulders, and she closed her eyes. He bowed his head over her and his breath was on her mouth and she gave her face to him. His hands trembled holding her, and she felt upon her their power and their passion.

And she knew that it was not her body alone that he sought for and held, but the soul that was her womanhood. It stood before him, a new-born Eve, naked and unafraid on the green plots of Eden. It looked at him, and its eyes were tender with desire and pity. It was tremulous as a body inhabited by leaping light and flame.

She knew that in them both the flame burned singly.

XLI

She was aware how wonderful the thing was that had happened to her, how it stood solitary in the world.

It was not so, she knew, with any of the others. It was not so with Nina or with Tanqueray. It was not so even with Jane. Jane had taken into her life an element of tumult and division. The Lord her God (as Tanqueray had once told her) was a consuming fire. Married she served a double and divided flame. For Laura and Prothero the plots of Eden lay green for ever inside the iron gate, and all heaven was held within the four walls of a room.

They had established themselves, strictly speaking, in three rooms, two for work and one for sleep. From the standpoint of tangible requirements, three rooms on a silent upper floor was their idea of a perfect lodging. It was Nina's, it had been Tanqueray's and Jane's. A house, Laura declared, was all very well for a poet like poor Nicky (what would poor Nicky be without his house?); but Jinny's house was a curse to her, and Tanks did not regard his as an unmixed blessing, though she would have died rather than say so to Tank's wife.

Tank's wife had her own theory of Laura's attitude. Laura was making (as she herself had once made) the best of a bad job. Rose had the worst opinion of Mr. Prothero's job; the job that sent him into Fleet Street in all weathers and at all hours of the day and night, and was yet compatible with his hanging about at home, doing nothing, four days out of the seven. Rose was very fond of Laura and of Prothero. She had always felt that they were interesting persons, persons who might any day be ill and require to be taken care of, who required a good deal of being taken care of, as it was. Rose superintended their removal. Rose, very earnestly and gravely, took Laura's housekeeping in hand. To Rose, Laura's housekeeping was a childish thing. She enlightened its innocence and controlled its ardours and its indiscretions. Spring chicken on a Tuesday and a Wednesday, and all Thursday nothing but such stuff as rice and macaroni was, said Rose, a flyin' outrageous to extremes. She taught them the secret of a breast of veal, stewed in rice (if rice they must have), and many another admirable and economical contrivance.

Rose, fertile in contrivances, came and went a great deal to the house with the iron gate. She, who had once felt that there was nothing in common between her and her husband's friends, was being gradually drawn to them. Jane's baby had been the link with Jane; Mr. Gunning had been the link with Laura; she shared with Laura and Prothero the rare genius of devotion to a person. Rose was shocked and bewildered by many of the little ways of the creators, but she understood _their_ way. They loved each other more than they loved anything they created. They loved each other as she loved Tanqueray, but with a perfect comprehension.

Their happiness was ominously perfect. And as time went on Rose shook her wise head over them. They had been married six months, and Rose was beginning to think what a difference it would make if Laura was to have a little baby, and she could come in sometimes and take care of it. But Laura hadn't a little baby, and wasn't going, she said, to have a little baby. She didn't want one. Laura was elated because she had had a book. She had thought she was never going to have another, and it was the best book she had ever had. Perfection, within her limits, had come to her, now that she had left off thinking about it.

She couldn't have believed that so many perfect things could come to her at once. For Laura, in spite of her happiness, remained a sceptic at heart. She went cautiously, dreading the irony of the jealous gods.

Tanqueray had bullied his publishers into giving a decent price for Laura's book. And, to the utter overthrow of Laura's scepticism, the book went well. It had a levity and charm that provoked and captured and never held you for a minute too long. A demand rose for more of the same kind from the same author, and for her earlier books, the ones that she had got out of bed to write, and that didn't and wouldn't sell.

For her husband's poems there had been no demand at all. He was not unknown, far from it. He fell conspicuously, illustriously, between the reviewers who reviled him, and the public who would have none of him. If they had only let him alone. But they didn't. There was no poet more pursued and persecuted than Owen Prothero. He trailed bleeding feet, like a scapegoat on all the high mountains. He brought reproach and ridicule on the friends who defended him, on Jane Holland, and on Nina Lempriere and Tanqueray, which was what he minded most of all.

He was beginning to wonder whether, at this rate, there would be any continued demand for his paragraphs, or for any of the work he did for the "Morning Telegraph." His editors were by no means satisfied. If only he could write columns and paragraphs as Laura wrote them. But he couldn't really write them properly at all. And the dreadful irony of it was that when he ought to be writing paragraphs, poems would come; and that when he was writing poems he would have to leave off, as often as not, to finish a paragraph.

Laura said to herself that she was going to make an end of all that.

Her gift was so small that it couldn't in any way crown him; there was no room on his head for anything besides his own stupendous crown. But, if she couldn't put it on his head, her poor gift, she could lay it, she could spread it out at his feet, to make his way softer. He had praised it; he had said that in its minute way it was wonderful and beautiful; and to her the beauty and the wonder of it were that, though it was so small, it could actually make his gift greater. It could actually provide the difficult material conditions, sleep and proper food, an enormous leisure and a perfect peace.

She was a little sore as she thought how she had struggled for years to get things for poor Papa, and how he had had to do without them. And she consoled herself by thinking, after all, how pleased he would have been if he had known; and how fond he had been of Owen, and how nice Owen had always been to him.

One evening she brought all the publishers' letters and the cheques, and laid them before Owen as he sat in gloom.

"It looks as if we were going to make lots of money."

"We!"

"Yes, we; you and I. Isn't it funny?"

"I don't think it's funny at all," said Owen. "It might be--a little funny, if I made it and not you."

"Darling--that would be funnier than anything."

Her laughter darted at him, sudden and sweet and shrill, and it cut him to the heart. His gravity was now portentous.

"The beauty of it is," she persisted, defying all his gravity, "that, if I can go on, you won't have to make it. And I shall go on, I feel it; I feel myself going. I've got a dream, Owen, such a beautiful dream. Some day, instead of sitting there breaking your heart over those horrid paragraphs, instead of rushing down to Fleet Street in the rain and the sleet and the fog, you shall ramp up and down here, darling, making poems, and it won't matter if you wear the carpet out, if you wear ten carpets. You shall make poems all day long, and you--shall--never--write--another--paragraph again. You do them very badly."

"You needn't remind me of that," said Owen in his gloom.

"But, surely, you don't want to do them _well_?"

"You know what I want."

"You talk as if you hadn't got it."

She crouched down beside him and laid her face against his knee.

"I don't think it's nice of you," she said, "not to be pleased when I'm pleased."

His eyes lightened. His hand slid down to her and caressed her hair.

"I _am_ pleased," he said. "That's what I wanted, to see you going strong, doing nothing but the work you love. All the same----"

"Well?"

"Can't you understand that I don't want to see my wife working for me?"

She laughed again. "You're just like that silly old Tanks. He couldn't bear to see his wife working when she wanted to; so he wouldn't let her work, and the poor little soul got ill with not having what she wanted. You didn't want me to get ill, did you?"

"I wanted to take care of you--well or ill. I wanted to work for you all my life long."

"And you wanted me to be happy?"

"More than anything I wanted you to be happy."

"But you didn't, and you don't want me to be happy--in my own way?"

He rose and lifted her from the floor where she crouched, and held her so tight to him that he hurt her.

"My little one," he murmured, "can't you understand it? Can't you see it? You're so small--so small."

XLII

For six months Jane concentrated all her passion on her little son. The Brodricks, who had never been surprised at anything, owned that this was certainly not what they had expected. Jane seemed created to confound their judgments and overthrow their expectations. Neither Frances Heron nor Sophy Levine was ever possessed by the ecstasy and martyrdom of motherhood. They confessed as much. Frances looked at Sophy and said, "Whoever would have thought that Jinny----?" And Sophy looked at Frances and replied, "My dear, I didn't even think she could have had one. She's a marvel and a mystery."

The baby was a link binding Jane to her husband's family. She was a marvel and a mystery to them more than ever, but she was no longer an alien. The tie of the flesh was strong. She was Hugh's wife, who had gone near to death for him, and had returned in triumph. She was glorified in their eyes by all the powers of life.

The baby himself had an irresistible attraction for them. From John's house in Augustus Road, from Henry's house in Roehampton Lane, from the house of the Levines in St. John's Wood, there was now an incessant converging upon Brodrick's house. The women took an unwearying and unwandering interest in Hugh's amazing son. (It was a girl they had expected.) First thing in the morning, or at noon, or in the early evening at his bed-time, John's wife, Mabel, came with her red-eyed, sad-hearted worship. Winny Heron hung about him and Jane for ever. Jane discovered in Sophy and in Frances an undercurrent of positive affection that set from her child to her.

John Brodrick regarded her with solemn but tender approval, and Henry (who might have owed her a grudge for upsetting his verdict), Henry loved her even more than he approved. She had performed her part beyond all hope; she linked the generations; she was wedded and made one with the solidarity of the Brodricks.

Jane with a baby was a mystery and a marvel to herself. She spent days in worshipping the small divinity of his person, and in the contemplation of his heartrending human attributes. She doubted if there were any delirium of the senses to compare with the touch of her hands upon his body, or of his fingers on her breast. She fretted herself to fever at his untimely weaning. She ached with longing for the work of his hands upon her, for the wonder of his eyes, opening at her for a moment, bright and small, over the white rim of her breast.

In his presence there perished in her all consciousness of time. Time was nothing to him. He laid his diminutive hands upon the hours and destroyed them for his play.

You would have said that time was no more to Jane than it was to the baby. For six months she watched with indifference the slaughter and ruin of the perfect hours. For six months she remained untormented by the desire to write. Brodrick looked upon her as a woman made perfect, wholly satisfied and appeased.

At the end of six months she was attacked by a mysterious restlessness and fatigue. Brodrick, at Henry's suggestion, took her to the seaside. They were away six weeks.

She came back declaring herself strong.

But there was something about her that Henry did not like. She was if anything more restless; unnaturally (he said) abstracted when you spoke to her; hardly aware of you at times. John had noticed that, too, and had not liked it. They had all noticed it. They were afraid it must be worrying Hugh. She seemed, Sophy said, to be letting things go all round. Frances thought she was not nearly so much taken up with the baby. When she mentioned it to Henry he replied gravely that it was physical. It would pass.

And yet it did not pass.

The crisis came in May of nineteen-six, when the baby was seven months old. It all turned on the baby.

Every morning about nine o'clock, now that summer was come, you found him in the garden, in his perambulator, barefooted and bareheaded, taking the air before the sun had power. Every morning his nurse brought him to his mother to be made much of; at nine when he went out, and at eleven when he came in, full of sleep. In and out he went through the French window of Jane's study, which opened straight on to the garden. He was wheeled processionally up and down, up and down the gravel walk outside it, or had his divine seat under the lime-tree on the lawn. Always he was within sight of Jane's windows.

One Sunday morning (it was early, and he had not been out for five minutes, poor lamb) Jane called to the nurse to take him away out of her sight.

"Take him away," she said. "Take him down to the bottom of the garden, where I can't see him."

Brodrick heard her. He was standing on the gravel path, contemplating his son. It was his great merit that at these moments, and in the presence of other people, he betrayed no fatuous emotion. And now his face, fixed on the adorable infant, was destitute of all expression. At Jane's cry it flushed heavily.

The flush was the only sign he gave that he had heard her. Without a word he turned and followed, thoughtfully, the windings of the exiled perambulator. From her place at the writing-table where she sat tormented, Jane watched them go.

Ten minutes later Brodrick appeared at the window. He was about to enter.

"Oh, no, no!" she cried. "_Not_ you!"

He entered.

"Jinny," he said gently, "what's the matter with you?"

His voice made her weak and tender.

"I want to write a book," she said. "Such a pretty book."

"It's that, is it?"

He sighed and stood contemplating her in ponderous thought.

Jane took up some pens and played with them.

"I can't write if you look at me like that," she said.

"I won't look at you; but I'm going to talk to you."

He sat down. She saw with terror his hostility to the thing she was about to do.

"Talking's no good," she said. "It's got to be done."

"I don't see the necessity."

"It's not one of those things that can be seen."

"No. But look here----" He was very gentle and forbearing. "Need you do it quite so soon?"

"So soon? If I don't do it now, when _shall_ I do it?"

He did not answer her. He sat looking at her hands in their nervous, restless play.

Her grave eyes, under their flattening brows, gazed thoughtfully at him. The corners of her mouth lifted a little with their wing-like, quivering motion. Two moods were in her; one had its home in her brooding, tragic eyes, one in her mysterious, mocking lips.

"It's no use, dear," she said. "You'll never turn me into that sort of woman."

"What sort of woman?"

"The sort of woman you like."

He waited in silence for what she would say next.

"It's not my fault, it's yours and Henry's. You shouldn't have made me go away and get strong. The thing always comes back to me when I get strong. It's _me_, you see."

"No, Jinny, the whole point is that you're not strong. You're not fit for anything creative."

At that she laughed.

"You're not, really. Why, how old is that child?"

"Six months. No--seven."

"Well, Henry said it would take you a whole year to get over it."

"_I_ thought I should never get over it. We were both wrong."

"My child, it's palpable. You're nervy to the last degree. I never saw you so horribly restless."

"Not more so than when I first knew Baby was coming."

"Well, quite as much."

She gave him a little look that he did not understand.

"Quite as much," she said. "And you were patient with me then."

He maintained a composure that invited her to observe how extremely patient he was now.

"And do you remember--afterwards--before he came--how quiet I was and how contented? I wasn't a bit nervy, or restless, or--or troublesome."

He smiled, remembering.

"Can't you see that anything creative--everything creative must be like that?"

He became grave again, having failed to follow her.

"Presently, if this thing goes all right, I shall be quite, quite sane. That's the way it takes you just at first. Then, when you feel it coming to life and shaping itself, you settle down into a peace."

Now he understood.

"Yes," he said, "and you pay for it after."

"My dear, we pay for everything--after."

She leaned back in her chair. The movement withdrew her a little from Brodrick's unremitting gaze.

"There are women--angels naturally--who become devils if they can't have children. I'm an angel--you know I'm an angel--but I shall be a devil if I can't have this. Can't you see that it's just as natural and normal--for me?"

"It's pretty evident," he said, "that you can't have both. You weren't built to stand the double strain----"

"And you mean--you mean----"

"I mean that it would be better for you if you could keep off it for a while. At any rate while the child's young."

"But he'll be young, though, for ages. And if--if there are any more of him, there'll be no end to the keeping off."

"You needn't think about that," he said.

"It would be all very well," she said, "if it were simpler; if either you or I could deal with the thing, if we could just wring its neck and destroy it. I would if it would make you any happier, but I can't. It's stronger than I. I _can't_ keep off it."

He pondered. He was trying, painfully, to understand the nature of this woman whom he thought he knew, whom, after all, it seemed, he did not know.

"You used to understand," she said. "Why can't you now?"

Why couldn't he? He had reckoned with her genius when he married her. He had honestly believed that he cared for it as he cared for her, that Jinny was not to be thought of apart from her genius. He had found Henry's opinion of it revolting, absurd, intolerable. And imperceptibly his attitude had changed. In spite of himself he was coming round to Henry's view, regarding genius as a malady, a thing abnormal, disastrous, not of nature; or if normal and natural--for Jinny--a thing altogether subordinate to Jinny's functions as a wife and mother. There was no sane man who would not take that view, who would not feel that nature was supreme. And Jinny had proved that left to nature, to her womanhood, she was sound and perfect. Jinny's genius had had, as he put it, pretty well its fling. It was nature's turn.

Under all his arguments there lurked, unrecognized and unsuspected, the natural man's fear of the thing not of nature, of its dominion, coming between him and her, slackening, perhaps sundering the tie of flesh. Through the tie of flesh, insensibly, he had come to look on Jinny as his possession.

"What would you do," he said, "if the little chap were to get ill?"

She turned as if he had struck her.

"Ill? Why couldn't you _tell_ me he was ill?"

"But he isn't. I was only----"

"Does Henry say he's ill?"

"Henry? Oh Lord, no."

"You're lying. I'll go to him and see----"

She made a rush for the window. He sprang after her and caught her. She struggled in his arms.

"Jinny, you little fool. There's nothing--nothing----He's bursting with health."

"What did you mean, then?"

"I meant--supposing he were ill----"

"You meant to frighten me?"

She sat down and he saw her fighting for her breath. He knelt beside her and took her in his arms, murmuring inarticulate things in his terror. At his touch she turned to him and kissed him.

"Hugh, dear," she said, "don't frighten me again. It's not necessary."

All that week, and for many weeks, she busied herself with the child and with the house. It was as if she were trying, passionately, to make up for some brief disloyalty, some lapse of tenderness.