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.