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.
And she had not cherished any resentment, she had not owed him any
grudge. She had withdrawn herself, still prettily, still innocently, so
that she seemed, with an absurd prettiness, to be making room for Jane.
He had even a vague recollection of himself as acquiescing in her
withdrawal, on those grounds. It was almost as if there had been an
understanding between him and Laura, between Jane and Laura, between
him and Jane. They had behaved perfectly, all three. What made their
perfection was that in all these withdrawals, acquiescences and
understandings not one of them had given any outward sign. They had kept
their spoken compact. They had left each other free.
As for his mere marriage, he was certain with all of them to be
understood. It was their business, as they had so often told each other,
to understand. But he was not sure that he wanted to be understood with
the lucidity, the depth, the prodigious thoroughness of which they were
capable.
He said to himself, "The blood of these women is in their brains." That
was precisely what he had against them.