"Don't tamper," said Miss Bickersteth, "with my witness. Uncommon?"
"Not in the least."
"Any aitches?"
"I decline," said Nicky, "to answer any more questions."
"Never mind. You've told us quite enough. I'm disgusted with Mr.
Tanqueray."
"But why?" said Jane imperturbably.
"Why? When one thinks of the women, the perfectly adorable women he
might have married--if he'd only waited. And he goes and does this."
"He knows his own business best," said Jane.
"A man's marriage is not his business."
"What is it, then?"
Miss Bickersteth was at a loss for once, and Laura helped her. "It's his
pleasure, isn't it?"
"He'd no right to take his pleasure this way."
Jane raised her head.
"He had. A perfect right."
"To throw himself away? My dear--on a little servant-girl without an
aitch in her?"
"On anybody he pleases."
"Can you imagine George Tanqueray," said Nina, "throwing himself away on
anybody?"
"_I_ can--easily," said Nicholson.
"Whatever he throws away," said Nina, "it won't be himself."
"My dear Nina, look at him," said Miss Bickersteth. "He's done for
himself--socially, at any rate."
"Not he. It's men like George Tanqueray who can afford to do these
things. Do you suppose anybody who cares for him will care a rap whom he
marries?"
"I care," said Nicky. "I care immensely."
"You needn't. Marriage is not--it really is not--the fearfully important
thing you think it."
Nicholson looked at his boots, his perfect boots.
"It's _the_ most important act of a man's life," he said. "An ordinary
man's--a curate's--a grocer's. And for Tanqueray--for any one who
creates----"
"For any one who creates," said Nina, "nothing's important outside his
blessed creation."
"And this lady, I imagine," said Miss Bickersteth, "will be very much
outside it."
Nicky raised his dark eyes and gazed upon them. "Good heavens! But a man
wants a woman to inspire him."
"George doesn't," said Jane. "You may trust him to inspire himself."
"You may," said Nina. "In six months it won't matter whether George is
married or not. At least, not to George."
She rose, turning on Nicky as if something in his ineffectual presence
maddened her. "Do you suppose," she said, "that woman counts? No woman
counts with men like George Tanqueray."
"She can hold you back," said Nicky.
"You think so? You haven't got a hundred horse-power genius pulling you
along. When he's off, fifty women hanging on to him couldn't hold him
back."
She smiled. "You don't know him. The first time that wife of his gets in
his way he'll shove her out of it. If she does it again he'll knock her
down and trample her under his feet."
Her smile, more than ever ironic, lashed Nicky's shocked recoil.
"Creators are a brutal crew, Mr. Nicholson. We're all the same. You
needn't be sorry for us."
She looked, over Nicky's head as it were, at Jane and Laura. It was as
if with a sweep of her stormy wing she gathered them, George Tanqueray
and Jane and Laura, into the spaces where they ran the superb course of
the creators.
The movement struck Arnott Nicholson aside into his place among the
multitudes of the uncreative. Who was he to judge George Tanqueray? If
_she_ arraigned him she had a right to. She was of his race, his kind.
She could see through Nicky as if he had been an innocent pane of glass.
And at the moment Nicky's soul with its chivalry and delicacy enraged
her. Caroline Bickersteth enraged her, everybody enraged her except Jane
and little Laura.
She stood beside Jane, who had risen and was about to say good-bye.
Caro would have kept them with her distressed, emphatic "_Must_ you go?"
She was expecting, she said, Mr. Brodrick.
Jane was not interested in Mr. Brodrick. She could not stay and did not,
and, going, she took Nina with her.
Laura would have followed, but Miss Bickersteth held her with a hand
upon her arm. Nicholson left them, though Laura's eyes almost implored
him not to go.
"My dear," said Miss Bickersteth. "Tell me. Have you any idea how much
she cares for him?"
"She?"
"Jane."
"You've no reason to suppose she cares."
"Do you think he cared in the very least for her?"
"I think he may have--without knowing it."
"My dear, there's nothing that man doesn't know. He knows, for instance,
all about _us_."
"Us?"
"You and I. We've both of us been there. And Nina."
"How _do_ you know?"
"She was flagrant!"
"Flagrant?"
"Flagrant isn't the word for it. She was flamboyant, magnificent,
superb!"
"You forget she's my friend," said little Laura.
"She's mine. I'm not traducing her. Look at George Tanqueray. I defy any
woman not to care for him. It's nothing to be ashamed of--like an
infatuation for a stockbroker who has no use for you. It's--it's your
apprenticeship at the hands of the master."