The next day at four o'clock Rose had on her best gown and was
bright-eyed and pink. Brighter-eyed and pinker than Tanqueray had seen
her for many weeks. She was excited, not so much by the prospect of
seeing Miss Holland as by the beautiful vision of her tea-table. There
was a cake with sugar icing on it, and bread and butter rolled as Rose
had seen it rolled at Fleet. She had set out the tea-service that her
aunt had given her for a wedding-present. The table cloth had a lace
edge to it which gratified Rose whenever she thought of it. Tanqueray
had on his nicest suit, and Rose's gaze travelled up and down it, and
paused in ecstasy at his necktie.
"You do pay for dressin'," she said.
"I do indeed," said Tanqueray.
Rose got on very well at tea-time. It was marvellous how many things she
found to say. The conversation really made itself. She had only to sit
there and ask Miss Holland how she liked her tea, weak or strong, and if
she took so much milk or a little drop more, and sugar, one lump or two
lumps, and that sized lump or a little larger? She spun it out till
George was ready to begin talking. And there came a beautiful and sacred
silence while Rose made Tanqueray's tea and gave it him.
After seven months it was still impossible for Rose to hide her deep
delight in waiting on him. More than once her eyes turned from Jane to
watch him in the wonderful and interesting acts of eating and drinking.
For a moment Jane suffered an abominable pang as she realized the things
that were permissible to Rose, the things that she could say to
Tanqueray, the things that she might do for him. At first she had looked
away so that she might not see these tender approaches of Rose to
Tanqueray. Then she remembered that this was precisely what she had come
out to see,--that she had got to realize Rose. And thus, as she brought
herself round to face it fairly, she caught in a flash Rose's attitude
and the secret of it.
It was not a thing flung in her face to madden her, it had no bridal
insolence about it, and none of the consecrated folly of the bride. It
was a thing of pathos and of innocence, something between the
uncontrollable tenderness, the divine infatuation of a mother, and the
crude obsession of a girl uncertain of the man she has set her unhappy
heart on; a thing, Rose's attitude, stripped of all secrecy by its
sadness.
But there was nothing abject in it. It was strong; it was militant under
its pathos and its renunciation. With such a look Rose would have faced
gates of death closing between her and Tanqueray.
So Jane realized Rose.
And she said to herself, "What a good thing Tanks never did care for me.
It would be awful if I made her more uncertain of him."