Chapter 4

"Anyhow," said Mrs. Eldred, "you let 'im see as 'ow we wasn't any way snatchin' at 'im?"

"I did, missis."

VI

Mr. Eldred, groom and dog fancier, profoundly musing upon human nature and illuminated by his study of the lower animals, had hit upon a truth. Once let him know that another man desired to take Rose away from him and Mr. Tanqueray would be ten times more desirous to have her. What Mr. Eldred did not see was the effect upon Mr. Tanqueray of Rose's taking herself away, or he would not have connived at her departure. "Out o' sight, out o' mind," said Mr. Eldred, arguing again from his experience of the lower animals.

But with Tanqueray, as with all creatures of powerful imagination, to be out of sight was to be perpetually in mind.

All night, in this region of the mind, Rose's image did battle with Jane's image and overcame it.

It was not only that Jane's charm had no promise for his senses. She was unfit in more ways than one. Jane was in love with him; yet her attitude implied resistance rather than surrender. Rose's resistance, taking, as it did, the form of flight, was her confession of his power. Jane held her ground; she stood erect. Rose bowed before him like a flower shaken by the wind. He loved Rose because she was small and sweet and subservient. Jane troubled and tormented him. He revolted against the tyranny of Jane.

Jane was not physically obtrusive, yet there were moments when her presence in a room oppressed him. She had further that disconcerting quality of all great personalities, the power to pursue and seize, a power so oblivious, so pure from all intention or desire, that there was no flattery in it for the pursued. It persisted when she was gone. Neither time nor space removed her. He could not get away from Jane. If he allowed himself to think of her he could not think of anything else. But he judged that Rose's minute presence in his memory would not be disturbing to his other thoughts.

His imagination could play tenderly round Rose. Jane's imagination challenged his. It stood, brandishing its flaming sword before the gates of any possible paradise. There was something in Jane that matched him, and, matching, rang defiance to his supremacy. Jane plucked the laurel and crowned herself. Rose bowed her pretty head and let him crown her. Laurel crowns, crowns of glory, for Jane. The crown of roses for Rose.

He meant, of course, the wedding-wreath and the wedding-ring. His conversation with the Eldreds had shown him that marriage had not entered into their humble contemplations; also that if there was no question of marriage, there could be no question of Rose.

He had known that in the beginning, he had known it from the uncompromising little Rose herself. From the first flowering of his passion until now, he had seen marriage as the sole means to its inevitable end. Tanqueray had his faults, but it was not in him to bring the creature he loved to suffering and dishonour. And the alternative, in Rose's case, was not dishonour, but frustration, which meant suffering for them both. He would have to give Rose up unless he married her.

At the moment, and the moment's vision was enough for him, he saw no reason why he should not marry her. He wanted to obtain her at once and to keep her for ever. She was not a lady and she knew it; but she had a gentleness, a fineness of the heart which was the secret of her unpremeditated charm. Without it Rose might have been as pretty as she pleased, she would not have pleased Tanqueray. He could withstand any manifestly unspiritual appeal, restrained by his own fineness and an invincible disdain. Therefore, when the divine folly fell upon him, he was like a thing fresh from the last touch of the creator, every sense in him unworn and delicate and alert.

And Rose had come to him when the madness of the quest was on him, a madness so strong that it overcame his perception of her social lapses. It was impossible to be unaware of some of them, of certain phrases, of the sudden wild flight of her aspirates. But these things were entangled with her adorable gestures, with the soft ways of her mouth, with her look when she hung about him, nursing him; so that a sane judgment was impossible.

It was palpable, too, that Rose was not intellectual, that she was not even half-educated. But Tanqueray positively disliked the society of intellectual, cultivated women; they were all insipid after Jane. After Jane, he did not need intellectual companionship in his wife. He would still have Jane. And when he was tired of Jane there would, no doubt, be others; and when he was tired of all of them, there was himself.

What he did need in his wife was the obstinate, dumb devotion of a creature that had no life apart from him; a creature so small that in clinging it would hang no weight on his heart. And he had found it in Rose.

Why should he not marry her?

She was now, he had learned, staying with her former mistress at Fleet, in Hampshire.

The next morning he took a suitable train down to Fleet, and arrived, carrying the band-box, at the door of the house where Rose was. He sat a long time in the hall of the house with the band-box on his knees. He did not mind waiting. People went in and out of the hall and looked at him; and he did not care. He gloried in the society of the sacred band-box. He enjoyed the spectacle of his own eccentricity.

At last he was shown into a little room where Rose came to him. She came from behind, from the garden, through the French window. She was at his side before he saw her. He felt her then, he felt her fear of him.

He turned. "Rose," he said, "I've brought you the moon in a band-box."

"Oh," said Rose, and her cry had a thick, sobbing vibration in it.

He put his arm on her shoulder and drew her out of sight and kissed her, and she was not afraid of him any more.

"Rose," he said, "have you thought it over?"

"Yes, I have. Have you?"

"I've thought of nothing else."

"Sensible?"

"Oh, Lord, yes."

"You've thought of how I haven't a penny and never shall have?"

"Yes."

"And how I'm not clever, and how it isn't a bit as if I'd any head for studyin' and that?"

"Yes, Rose."

"Have you thought of how I'm not a lady? Not what you'd call a lady?"

There was no answer to that, and so he kissed her.

"And how you'd be if you was to marry some one who was a lady? Have you thought of that?"

"I have."

"Well then, it's this way. If you was a rich man I wouldn't marry you." She paused.

"But you will, because I'm a poor one?"

"Yes."

"Thank God I'm poor."

He drew her to him and she yielded, not wholly, but with a shrinking of her small body, and a soft, shy surrender of her lips.

She was thinking, "If he married a lady he'd have to spend ten times on her what he need on me."

All she said was, "There are things I can do for you that a lady couldn't."

"Oh--don't--don't!" he cried. That was the one way she hurt him.

"What are you going to do with me now?" said she.

"I'm going to take you for a walk. We can't stay here."

"Can you wait?"

"I have waited."

She ran away and stayed away for what seemed an interminable time. Then somebody opened the door and handed Rose in. Somebody kissed her where she stood in the doorway, and laughed softly, and shut the door upon Rose and Tanqueray.

Rose stood there still. "Do you know me?" said she, and laughed.

Somebody had transformed her, had made her slip her stiff white gown and dressed her in a muslin one with a belt that clipped her, showing her pretty waist. Somebody had taught her how to wear a scarf about her shoulders; and somebody had taken off that odious linen collar and bared the white column of her neck.

"_She_ made me put it on," said Rose. "She said if I didn't, I couldn't wear the hat."

Somebody, Rose's mistress, had been in Rose's secret. She knew and understood his great poem of the Hat.

Rose took it out of the band-box and put it on. Impossible to say whether he liked her better with it or without it. He thought without; for she had parted her hair in the middle and braided it at the back.

"Do you like my hair?" said she.

"Why didn't you do it like that before?"

"I don't know. I wanted to. But I didn't."

"Why not?"

Rose hid her face. "I thought," said she, "you'd notice, and think--and think I was after you."

No. He could never say that she had been after him, that she had laid a lure. No huntress she. But she had found him, the hunted, run down and sick in his dark den. And she had stooped there in the darkness, and tended and comforted him.

They set out.

"_She_ said I was to tell you," said Rose, "to be sure and take me through the pine-woods to the pond."

How well that lady knew the setting that would adorn his Rose; sunlight and shadow that made her glide fawn-like among the tall stems of the trees. Through the pine-woods he took her, his white wood-nymph, and through the low lands covered with bog myrtle, fragrant under her feet. Beyond the marsh they found a sunny hollow in the sand where the heath touched the pond. The brushwood sheltered them.

Side by side they sat and took their fill of joy in gazing at each other, absolutely dumb.

It was Tanqueray who broke that beautiful silence. He had obtained her. He had had his way and must have it to the end. He loved her; and the thing beyond all things that pleased him was to tease and torment the creatures that he loved.

"Rose," he said, "do you think I'm good-looking?"

"No. Not what you call good-looking."

"How do you know what I call good-looking?"

"Well--_me_. Don't you?"

"You're a woman. Give me your idea of a really handsome man."

"Well--do you know Mr. Robinson?"

"No. I do not know Mr. Robinson."

"Yes, you do. He keeps the shop in the High Street where you get your 'ankychiefs and collars. You bought a collar off of him the other day. He told me."

"By Jove, so I did. Of course I know Mr. Robinson. What about him?"

"Well--_he's_ what I call a _handsome_ man."

"Oh." He paused. "Would you love me more if I were as handsome as Mr. Robinson?"

"No. Not a bit more. I couldn't. I'd love you just the same if you were as ugly as poor Uncle. There, what more do you want?"

"What, indeed? Rose, how much have you seen of Mr. Robinson?"

"How much? Well--I see him every time I go into his shop. And every Sunday evening when I go to church. And sometimes he comes and has supper with us. 'E plays and 'e sings beautiful."

"The devil he does! Well, did he ever take you anywhere?"

"Once--he took me to Madame Tussaws; and once to the Colonial Exhibition; and once----"

"You minx. That'll do. Has he ever given you anything?"

"He gave me Joey."

"I always knew there was something wrong about that dog."

"And last Christmas he gave me a scented sashy from the shop."

"Never--anything else?"

"Never anything else." She smiled subtly. "I wouldn't let 'im."

"Well, well. And I suppose you consider Mr. Robinson a better dressed man than I am?"

"Yes, he was always a beautiful dresser. He makes it what you might call 'is hobby."

"Of course Mr. Robinson wants you to marry him?"

"Yes. Leastways he says so."

"And I suppose your uncle and aunt want you to marry him?"

"They were more for it than I was."

"Rose--he's got a bigger income than I have."

"He never told me what his income is."

"But you know?"

"I dare say Uncle does."

"Better dressed--decidedly more handsome----"

"Well--he _is_ that."

"A bigger income. Rose, do you want Mr. Robinson to be found dead in his shop--horribly dead--among the collars and the handkerchiefs--spoiling them, and--not--looking--handsome--any more?"

"Oh, Mr. Tanqueray!"

"Then don't talk about him."

He turned his face to hers. She put up her hands and drew his head down into the hollow of her breasts that were warm with the sun on them.

"Rose," he said, "if you stroke my hair too much it'll come off, like Joey's. Would you love me if my hair came off?"

She kissed his hair.

"When did you begin to love me, Rose?"

"I don't know. I think it must have been when you were ill."

"I see. When I was bowled over on my back and couldn't struggle. What _made_ you love me?"

She was silent a long time, smiling softly to herself.

"I think it was because--because--because you were so kind to Joey."

"So you thought I would be kind to you?"

"I didn't--I didn't think at all. I just----"

"So did I," said Tanqueray.

VII

It had been arranged that Rose was to be married from the house of her mistress, and that she was to remain there until her wedding-day. There were so many things to be seen to. There was the baby. You couldn't, Rose said, play fast and loose with _him_. Rose, at her own request, had come to take care of the baby for a month, and she was not going back on that, not if it was ever so. Then there were all the things that her mistress, Rose said, was going to learn her. So many things, things she was not to do, things she was not to say, things she was on no account to wear. Rose, buying her trousseau, was not to be trusted alone for a minute.

It had been put to Rose, very gently by her mistress, very gravely by her master, whether she would really be happy if she married this eccentric young gentleman with the band-box. Was it not possible that she might be happier with somebody rather less eccentric? And Rose replied that she knew her own mind; that she couldn't be happy at all with anybody else, and that, if she could, she'd rather be unhappy with Mr. Tanqueray, eccentricity, band-box and all. Whereas, if he was to be unhappy with _her_, now----But, when it came to that, they hadn't the heart to tell her that he might, and very probably would be.

If Rose knew her own mind, Tanqueray knew his. The possibility of being unhappy with Rose (he had considered it) was dim compared with the certainty that he was unhappy without her. To be deprived of the sight and sound of her for six days in the week, to go down to Fleet, like the butcher, on a Sunday, and find her rosy and bright-eyed with affection, with a little passion that grew like his own with delay, that grew in silence and in secret, making Rose, every Sunday, more admirably shy; to be with her for two hours, and then to be torn from her by a train he had to catch; all this kept Tanqueray in an excitement incompatible with discreet reflection.

Rose would not name a day before the fourteenth of July, not if it was ever so. He adored that little phrase of desperate negation. He was in a state of mind to accept everything that Rose did and said as adorable. Rose had strange audacities, strange embarrassments. Dumbness would come upon Rose in moments which another woman, Jane for instance, would have winged with happy words. She had a look that was anything but dumb, a look of innocent tenderness, which in another woman, Jane again, would not have been allowed to rest upon him so long. He loved that look. In her very lapses, her gentle elision of the aitch, he found a foreign, an infantile, a pathetic charm.

So the date of the wedding was fixed for the fourteenth.

It was now the twelfth, and Tanqueray had not yet announced his engagement.

On the morning of the twelfth two letters came which made him aware of this omission. One was from young Arnott Nicholson, who wanted to know when, if ever, he was coming out to see him. The other was from Jane's little friend, Laura Gunning, reminding him that the twelfth was Jane's birthday.

He had forgotten.

Yet there it stood in his memorandum-book, entered three months ago, lest by any possibility he should forget.

How, in the future, was he going to manage about birthdays? For, whenever any of the three had a birthday, they all celebrated it together. Last time it had been Tanqueray's birthday, and they had made a day of it, winding up with supper in little Laura's rooms. Such a funny, innocent supper that began with maccaroni, and ended, he remembered, with bread and jam. Before that, it had been Laura's birthday, and Tanqueray had taken them all to the play. But on Jane's birthday (and on other days, _their_ days) it was their custom to take the train into the country, to tramp the great white roads, to loiter in the fields, to climb the hillsides and lie there, prone, with slackened limbs, utterly content with the world, with each other and themselves. As he thought of those days, their days, he had a sudden vision of his marriage-day as a dividing line, sundering him from them, their interests and their activities. He could not think of Rose as making one of that company.

Laura now inquired innocently what his plans were for that day. Would he meet them (she meant, would he meet her and Jane Holland) at Marylebone, by the entrance, at eleven o'clock, and go with them somewhere into the country?

Would he? He thought about it for five minutes, and decided that on the whole he would rather go than not. He was restless in these days before his wedding. He could not stand the solitude of this house where Rose had been and was not. And he wanted to see Jane Holland again and make it right with her. He was aware that in many ways he had made it wrong.

He would have to tell her. He would have to tell Nicholson. And Nicholson, why, of course, Nicholson would have to see him through. He must go to Nicholson at once.

Nicholson lived at Wendover. There was a train from Marylebone about eleven. It was possible to combine a festival for Jane with a descent upon Nicky.

By the entrance, at eleven, Laura Gunning waited for him, punctually observant of the hour. Beyond, on the pavement before the station, he saw the tall figure of another woman. It was Nina Lempriere. She was not waiting--Nina never waited--but striding impatiently up and down. He would have to reckon, then, with Nina Lempriere, too. He was glad that Jane was with her.

Little Laura, holding herself very straight, greeted him with her funny smile, a smile that was hardly more than a tremor of her white lips. Laura Gunning, at twenty-seven, had still in some of her moods the manner of a child. She was now like a seven-year-old made shy and serious by profound excitement. She was a very small woman and she had a small face, with diminutive features in excessively low relief, a face shadowless as a child's. Everything about Laura Gunning was small and finished with an innocent perfection. She had a small and charming talent for short stories, little novels, perfect within the limits of their kind.

Tanqueray laid before her his Wendover scheme. Laura said he must ask Jane. It was Jane's birthday. Jane, being asked, said, No, she didn't mind where they went, provided they went somewhere. She supposed there was a gate they could sit on, while Tanqueray called on Nicky. Tanqueray said he thought he saw Nicky letting her sit on a gate. Considering that Nicky had been pestering him for the last six months (he had) to bring her out to have tea with him on one of their days.

"And we've never been," said he.

Jane let it pass. But Nina Lempriere, as Tanqueray well knew, had a devil in her. Nina's eyes had the trick of ignoring your position in the space they traversed, which made it the more disconcerting when they came back and fixed you with their curious, hooded stare. They were staring at Tanqueray now.

"Where have you been?" said she. "We haven't heard of you for ages."

"I've been ill."

Jane looked at him and said nothing.

"Ill? And you never told us?" said Nina.

"I was all right. I was well looked after."

"Who looked after you?"

He did not answer her. For in that instant there rose before him the image of Rose Eldred, tender and desirable, and it kept him dumb.

Nina, whose devil was nothing if not persistent, repeated her question. He divined already in Nina a secret, subtle hostility.

"Oh," he said abruptly. "I looked after myself."

Jane stared intently at a notice of the departure and arrival of trains.

Laura, aware of embarrassment somewhere, began to talk to him light-heartedly, in her fashion, and the moment passed.

In the train, going down to Wendover, Laura talked to Jane. Nina did not talk. Her queer eyes, when they looked at him, had a light in them of ironic devilry and suspicion. They left him speculating on the extent to which he was cutting himself off. This journey down to Wendover was a stage in the process. He was going down to tell Nicholson, to ask Nicholson to see him through.

How would Jane take it? How would Nina? How would Laura? He had said to himself, light-heartedly, that his marriage would make no difference, that he should retain them, all three, as an intellectual seraglio. Would this, after all, be possible? When they heard that he, George Tanqueray, was marrying a servant in a lodging-house?

Aware now, vividly aware, of the thing he was doing, he asked himself why, if he was not in love with Jane, he had not been in love with Nina? Nina had shown signs. Yes, very unmistakably she had shown signs. He could recall a time when there had lurked a betraying tenderness about her ironic mouth; when her queer eyes, as they looked at him, took on a certain softness and surrender. It had not touched him. To his mind there had always been something a little murky about Nina. It was the fault, no doubt, of her complexion. Not but what Nina had a certain beauty, a tempestuous, haggard, Roman eagle kind of beauty. She looked the thing she was, a creature of high courage and prodigious energy. Besides, she had a devil. Without it, he doubted whether even her genius (he acknowledged, a little grudgingly, her genius) could have done all it did.

It had entered into Tanqueray's head (though not his heart) to be in love with Jane. But never, even by way of fantasy, had it entered it to be in love with Nina; though it was to Nina that he looked when he wanted the highest excitement in his intellectual seraglio. He could not conceive any man being in love with her, to the extent, that is to say, of trying to marry her. Nina had the thing called temperament, more temperament and murkier than he altogether cared for; but, as for marrying, you might as well try to marry some bird of storm on the wing, or a flash of lightning on its career through heaven. Nina--career and all--was pre-eminently unfit.

She had shown, more than once, this ironic antagonism, as if she knew what he thought of her, and owed him a grudge.

If not Nina, why not Laura? She was small and she was pretty and she was pathetic, and he liked women to be so. Why was it that with all her feminine smallness and prettiness and pathos he had never cared for her?

They were talking.

"Tired, Laura?" Jane asked.

"Only sleepy. Papa had another dream last night."

They laughed. So did Laura, though her tragedy was there, the tragedy which had given her that indomitable face.

Laura lived under conditions which would have driven Tanqueray mad. She had a father; she who, as Jane said, could least of all of them afford a father. Her father had had a sunstroke, and it had made him dream dreams. He would get up a dozen times in the night and wander in and out of Laura's bedroom, and sit heavily on her bed and tell her his dreams, which terrified Laura.

"It wasn't funny, this time," said she. "It was one of his horrid ones."

Nobody laughed then. They were dumb with the pity and horror of it. Laura's father, when he was awake, was the most innocent, most uninspired, most uncreative of old gentlemen; but in his dreams he had a perfect genius for the macabre. The dreams had been going on for about a year, and they were making Laura ill. Tanqueray knew it, and it made him sad.

That was why he had not cared to care for Laura.

Yet little Laura, very prettily, very innocently, with an entire unconsciousness, had let him see where her heart was. And as prettily and innocently and unconsciously as he could, he had let her see that her heart was no concern of his, any more than Nina's.