She saw that there was a devil in him that still longed to torment her.
"That," said she, "would have been very bad for Nicky."
"Yes. But it would have been very good for you."
She had her moment of torment; then she recovered.
"I thought," said she, "that was the one thing I was not to do."
"You're not to do it seriously. But you couldn't fall in love with Nicky
seriously. Could you? Could anybody?"
"Why are you so unkind to Nicky?"
"Because he's so ungovernably a man of letters."
"He isn't. He only thinks he is."
"He thinks he's Shelley, because his father's a squire."
"That saves him. No man of letters, if he tried all night, could think
anything so deliciously absurd. Don't you wish _you_ could feel like
that!"
He rose to it, his very excitement kindling his intellectual flame.
"To feel myself an immortal, a blessed god!"
They played together, profanely, with the idea that Nicky was after all
divine.
"Such a tragic little god," said Jane, with a pitiful mouth, "a little
god without a single apostle or a prophet--nobody," she wailed, "to
spread the knowledge of him."
"I say--_we_'ll build an altar on Wendover, to Nicky as the Unknown
God."
"He won't like that, our calling him unknown."
"Let's call him the Unapparent--the Undeveloped. He is the Undeveloped."
"In one aspect. In another he's a finished poem, an incarnate lyric----"
"An ode to immortality on legs----"
"Nicky hasn't any legs. He's a breath--a perpetual aspiration."
"Oh, at aspiring he beats Shelley into apoplexy."
"He stands for the imperishable illusion----"
"The stupendous hope----"
"And, after all, he adores _you_."
"And nobody else does," said Tanqueray.
"That's Nicky's achievement. He _does_ see what you are. It's his little
claim to immortality. Just think, George, when Nicky dies and goes to
heaven he'll turn up at the gates of the poets' paradise, and they'll
let him in on the strength of that. The angel of the singing stars will
come up to him and say, 'Nicky, you sing abominably, but you can see.
You saw George Tanqueray when nobody else could. Your sonnets and your
ballads are forgiven you; and we've got a nice place for you, Nicky,
near Keats and Shelley.' Because it wouldn't be heaven for Nicky if he
wasn't near them."
"How about _them_, though?"
"Oh, up in heaven you won't see anything of Nicky except his heart."
"I suppose he'll be stuck somewhere near you, too. It won't be heaven
for him if he isn't. The first thing he'll ask is, 'Where's Jane?'"
"And then they'll break it to him very gently--'Jane's in the other
place, Nicky, where Mr. Tanqueray is. We had to send her down, because
if she wasn't there it wouldn't be hell for Mr. Tanqueray.'"
"But why am _I_ down there?"
"Because you didn't see what Nicky was."
"If you don't take care, Jinny, he'll 'have' you like the rest. You're
laying up sorrow for yourself in the day when Nicky publishes his
poems."
"It's you he'll turn to."
"No. I'm not celebrated," said he grimly. "There, do you see the full
horror of it?"
"I do," she moaned.
Tanqueray's devil came back to him.
"Do you think he'll fall in love with Laura?"
"No, I don't." She said it coolly, though his gaze was upon her, and
they were both of them aware of Nicky's high infatuation.
"Why not?" he said lightly.
"Because Nicky'll never be in love with any woman as she is; and nobody
could be in love with Laura as she isn't."
She faced him in her courage. He might take it, if he liked, that she
knew Nicky was in love with her as she was not; that she knew Tanqueray
would never, like Nicky, see her as she was not, to be in love with
that.
"Oh, you're too subtle," he said. But he understood her subtlety.
He must tell her about Rose. Before the others could come up with them
he must tell her. And then he must tell Nicky.
"Jane," he said, "will you forgive me for never coming to see you? I
simply couldn't come."
"I know, George, I know."
"You don't. You don't know what I felt like."
"Perhaps not. And yet, I think, you might----"
But what she thought he might have done she would not tell him.
"At any rate," said he, "you'll let me come and see you now? Often; I
want to come often."
He meant to tell her that his marriage was to make no difference.
"Come as often as you want. Come as often as you used to."
"Was it so very often?"
"Not too often."
"I say, those were glorious times we had. We'll have them again, Jinny.
There are things we've got to talk about. Things we've got to do. Why,
we're hardly beginning."
"Do you remember saying, 'When you've made yourself an absolutely clear
medium, then you can begin'?"
"I remember."
He was content now to join her in singing the duet of remembrance.