XVI

A week after his visit to Jane Holland, Tanqueray was settled, as he

called it, in rooms in Bloomsbury. He had got all his books and things

sent down from Hampstead, to stay in Bloomsbury for ever, because

Bloomsbury was cheap.

It had not occurred to him to think what Rose was to do with herself in

Bloomsbury or he with Rose. He had brought her up out of the little

village of Sussex where they had lodged, in a farmhouse, ever since

their marriage. Rose had been happy down in Sussex.

And for the first few weeks Tanqueray had been happy too. He was never

tired of playing with Rose, caressing Rose, talking nonsense to Rose,

teasing and tormenting Rose for ever. The more so as she provoked him by

turning an imperturbable face to the attack. He liked to lie with his

head in Rose's lap, while Rose's fingers played with his hair, stirring

up new ideas to torment her with. He was content, for the first few

weeks, to be what he had become, a sane and happy animal, mated with an

animal, a dear little animal, superlatively happy and incorruptibly

sane.

He might have gone on like that for an interminable number of weeks but

that the mere rest from all intellectual labour had a prodigiously

recuperative effect. His genius, just because he had forgotten all about

it, began with characteristic perversity to worry him again. It wouldn't

let him alone. It made him more restless than Rose had ever made him. It

led him into ways that were so many subtle infidelities to Rose. It tore

him from Rose and took him out with it for long tramps beyond the Downs;

wherever they went it was always too far for Rose to go. He would try,

basely, to get off without her seeing him, and managed it, for Rose was

so sensible that she never saw.

Then it made him begin a book. He wrote all morning in a room by

himself. All afternoon he walked by himself. All evening he lay with his

head in Rose's lap, too tired even to tease her.

But, because she had Tanqueray's head to nurse in the evenings, Rose had

been happy down in Sussex. She went about the farm and stroked all the

animals. She borrowed the baby at the farm and nursed it half the day.

And in the evening she nursed Tanqueray's head. Tanqueray's head was

never bothered to think what Rose was doing when she was not nursing it.

Then, because his book made him think of Jane Holland, he sat down one

day and wrote that letter to Jinny.

He did not know that it was because of Jinny that he had come back to

live in Bloomsbury.

They had been a month in Bloomsbury, in a house in Torrington Square.

Rose was sitting alone in the ground-floor room that looked straight on

to the pavement. Sitting with her hands before her waiting for Tanqueray

to come to lunch. Tanqueray was up-stairs, two flights away, in his

study, writing. She was afraid to go and tell him lunch was ready. She

had gone up once that morning to see that he didn't let his fire out,

and he hadn't liked it; so she waited. There was a dish of cutlets

keeping hot for him on the hearth. Presently he would come down, and she

would have the pleasure of putting the cutlets on the table and seeing

him eat them. It was about the only pleasure she could count on now.

For to Rose, as she sat there, the thought had come that for all she saw

of her husband she might as well not be married to him. She had been

better off at Hampstead when she waited on him hand and foot; when she

was doing things for him half the day; when, more often than not, he had

a minute to spare for a word or a look that set her heart fairly

dancing. She had agreed to their marriage chiefly because it would

enable her to wait on him and nobody but him, to wait on him all day

long.

And he had said to her, first thing, as they dined together on their

wedding-day, that he wasn't going to let his wife wait on him. That was

why they lived in rooms (since he couldn't afford a house and servant),

that she might be waited on. He had hated to see her working, he said;

and now she wouldn't have to work. No, never again. And when she asked

him if he liked to see her sitting with her hands before her, doing

nothing, he said that was precisely what he did like. And it had been

all very well so long as he had been there to see her. But now he wasn't

ever there.

It was worse than it was down in Sussex. All morning he shut himself up

in his study to write. After lunch he went up there again to smoke. Then

he would go out by himself, and he might or might not come in for

dinner. All evening he shut himself up again and wrote. At midnight or

after he would come to her, worn out, and sleep, lying like a dead man

at her side.

She was startled by the sound of the postman's knock and the flapping

fall of a letter in the letter-box. It was for Tanqueray, and she took

it up to him and laid it beside him without a word. To speak would have

been fatal. He had let his fire go out (she knew he would); so, while he

was reading his letter, she knelt down by the hearth and made it up

again. She went to work very softly, but he heard her.

"What are you doing there?" he said.

"I thought," said she, "I was as quiet as a mouse."

"So you were. Just about. A horrid little mouse that keeps scratching at

the wainscot and creeping about the room and startling me."

"Do I startle you?"

"You do. Horribly."

Rose put down the poker without a sound.

He had finished his letter and had not begun writing again. He was only

looking at his letter. So Rose remarked that lunch was ready. He put the

letter into a drawer, and they went down.

About half-way through lunch he spoke.

"Look here," he said, "you _must_ keep out of the room when I'm

writing."

"You're always writing now."

Yes. He was always writing now; because he did not want to talk to Rose

and it was the best way of keeping her out of the room. But as yet he

did not know that was why, any more than he knew that he had come to

live in London because he wanted to talk to Jinny. The letter in his

drawer up-stairs was from Jinny, asking him if she might not come and

see his wife. He was not sure that he wanted her to come and see his

wife. Why should she?

"You'll 'urt your brain," his wife was saying, "if you keep on

writ-writin', lettin' the best of the day go by before you put your foot

out of doors. It would do you all the good in the world if you was to

come sometimes for a walk with me----"

It all went in at one ear and out of the other.

So all morning, all afternoon, all evening, Rose sat by herself in the

room looking on the pavement. She had nothing to do in this house that

didn't belong to them. When she had helped the little untidy servant to

clear away the breakfast things; when she had dusted their sitting-room

and bedroom; when she had gone out and completed her minute marketings,

she had nothing to do. Nothing to do for herself; worse than all,

nothing to do for Tanqueray. She would hunt in drawers for things of his

to mend, going over his socks again and again in the hope of finding a

hole in one of them. Rose, who loved taking care of people, who was born

in the world and fashioned by Nature to that end, Rose had nothing to

take care of. You couldn't take care of Tanqueray.

Sometimes she found herself wishing that he were ill. Not dangerously

ill, but ill enough to be put to bed and taken care of. Not that Rose

was really aware of this cruel hope of hers. It came to her rather as a

picture of Tanqueray, lying in his sleeping-suit, adorably helpless, and

she nursing him. Her heart yearned to that vision.

For she saw visions. From perpetual activities of hands and feet, from

running up and down stairs, from sweeping and dusting, from the making

of beds, the washing of clothes and china, she had passed to the life of

sedentary contemplation. She was always thinking. Sometimes she thought

of nothing but Tanqueray. Sometimes she thought of Aunt and Uncle, of

Minnie and the seven little dogs. She could see them of a Sunday

evening, sitting in the basement parlour, Aunt in her black cashmere

with the gimp trimmings, Uncle in his tight broadcloth with his pipe in

his mouth, and Mrs. Smoker sleeping with her nose on the fender. Mr.

Robinson would come in sometimes, dressed as Mr. Robinson could dress,

and sit down at the little piano and sing in his beautiful voice, "'Ark,

'Ark, my Soul," and "The Church's one Foundation," while Joey howled at

all his top notes, and the smoke came curling out of Uncle's pipe, and

Rose sat very still dreaming of Mr. Tanqueray. (She could never hear

"Hark, Hark, my Soul," now, without thinking of Tanqueray.)

Sometimes she thought of that other life, further back, in her

mistress's house at Fleet, all the innocent service and affection, the

careful, exquisite tending of the delicious person of Baby, her humble,

dutiful intimacy with Baby's mother. She would shut her eyes and feel

Baby's hands on her neck, and the wounding pressure of his body against

her breasts. And then Rose dreamed another dream.

She no longer cared to sew now, but when Tanqueray's mending was done,

she would sit for hours with her hands before her, dreaming.

He found her thus occupied one evening when he had come home after

seeing Jane. After seeing Jane he was always rather more aware of his

wife's existence than he had been, so that he was struck now by the

strange dejection of her figure. He came to her and stood, leaning

against the chimney-piece and looking down at her, as he had stood once

and looked down at Jane.

"What is it?" he said.

"It's nothing. I've a cold in me head."

"Cold in your head! You've been crying. There's a blob on your dress."

(He kissed her.) "What are you crying about?"

"I'm not cryin' about _anything_."

"But--you're crying." It gave him pain to see Rose crying.

"If I am it's the first time I've done it."

"Are you quite sure?"

"Certain. I never _was_ one for cryin', nor for bein' seen cry. It's

just--it's just sittin' here with me 'ands before me, havin' nothing to

do."

"I suppose there isn't very much for you to do."

"I've done all there is and a great deal there isn't."

"I say, shall we go to the play to-night?"

She smiled with pleasure at his thought for her. Then she shook her

head. "It's not plays I want--it's work. I'd like to have me hands full.

If we had a little house----"

"Oh no. No--no--no." He looked terrified.

"It would come a lot cheaper. Only a _little_ house, where I could do

all the work."

"I've told you before I won't let you."

"With a girl," she pleaded, "to scrub. A little house up Hampstead way."

"I don't want to live up Hampstead way."

"If you mean Uncle and Aunt," she said, "they wouldn't think of

intrudin'. We settled that, me and Uncle. I'd be as happy as the day is

long."

"You're _not_? And the day is very long, is it?"

He kissed her, first on her mouth and then on the lobe of the ear that

was next to him.

"Kissin' 's all very well," said Rose. "You never kissed me at

Hampstead, and you don't know how happy I was there. Doin' things for

you."

"I don't want things done for me."

"No. I wish you did."

"And, Rose, I don't want to be bothered with a house; to be tied to a

house; to have anything to do with a house."

"Would it worry you?"

"Abominably. And think of the horrors of moving!"

"I'd move you," said Rose.

"I couldn't. Look here. It would kill that book. I must have peace. This

is a beastly hole, I know, but there's peace in it. You don't know what

that damned book _is_."

She gave up the idea of a house; and seven months after her marriage,

she fell into a melancholy.

Sometimes, now, on a fine afternoon, she would go out into the streets

and look listlessly through shop-windows at hats and gowns and all the

pretty things she would have thought it sin so much as to desire to

wear. Where Rose lingered longest was outside those heavenly places

where you saw far off a flutter of white in the windows, which turned

out to be absurd, tiny, short-waisted frocks and diminutive

under-garments, and little heartrending shoes; things of desire, things

of impossible dream, to be approached with a sacred dumbness of the

heart.

The toy-shops, too, they carried her away in a flight; so that Rose

caught herself saying to herself, "Some day, perhaps, I shall be here

buying one of them fur animals, or that there Noah's ark."

Then, p'raps, she said to her very inmost self, things might be

different.

Sometimes she would go up to Hampstead, ridin', as she phrased it, in a

bus, to see her Aunt and Uncle and a friend she had, Polly White. Not

often; for Rose did not hold with gadding about when you had a husband;

besides, she was afraid of Aunt asking her, "Wot's _'E_ doin'?" (By

always referring to Tanqueray as "'E," Mrs. Eldred evaded the problem of

what she was expected to call the gentleman who had so singularly

married her husband's niece.) Most of all Rose dreaded the question,

"Wen is 'E goin' to take a little 'ouse?" For in Rose's world it is

somewhat of a reflection on a married man if he is not a householder.

And last time Mrs. Eldred's inquiries had taken a more terrible and

searching form. "Is 'E lookin' for anything to do besides 'Is writin'?"

Rose had said then that no, he needn't, they'd got enough; an answer

that brought Mrs. Eldred round to her point again. "Then why doesn't 'E

take a little 'ouse?"

Sometimes Polly White came to tea in Bloomsbury. Very seldom, though,

and only when Tanqueray was not there. Rose knew and Polly knew that her

friends had to keep away when her husband was about. As for _his_

friends, she had never caught a sight of them.

Then, all of a sudden, when Rose had given up wondering whether things

would ever be different, Tanqueray, instead of going up-stairs as usual,

sat down and lit a pipe as if he were going to spend the evening with

her. Rose did not know whether she would be allowed to talk. He seemed

thoughtful, and Rose knew better than to interrupt him when he was

thinking.

"Rose," he said at last, apparently as the result of his meditation, "a

friend of mine wants to call on you to-morrow."

"To call on _me_?"

"On you, certainly."

"Shall I have to see him?"

"She, Rose, she. Yes; I think you'll have to see her."

"I didn't know," said Rose, "you had a friend."

She meant what she would have called a lady friend.

"I've dozens," said Tanqueray, knowing what she meant.

"You haven't told me this one's name yet."

"Her name is Jane Holland."

It was Rose who became thoughtful now.

"'As she anything to do with the Jane Holland that's on those books of

yours?"

"She wrote 'em."

"You didn't tell me you knew her."

"Didn't I?"

"I suppose that's how you knew her."

"Yes. That's how I knew her."

"What made 'er take to writin'? Is she married?"

"No."

"I see," said Rose, almost as if she really saw. "And wot shall I've to

do?"

"You'll write a pretty little note to her and ask her to tea."

"Oh dear!"

"You needn't be afraid of her."

"I'm not afraid; but goodness knows what I shall find to talk about."

"You can talk about me."

"I suppose I _shall_ 'ave to talk to her?"

"Well--yes. Or--I can talk to her."

Rose became very thoughtful indeed.

"Wot's she like?"

He considered. What _was_ Jinny like? Like nothing on earth that Rose

had ever seen.

"I mean," said Rose, "to look at."

"I don't know that I can tell you what she's like."

"Is she like Miss Kentish? You remember Miss Kentish at Hampstead?"