"None. Not the ghost of one."
"So that, but for this all-important question of the date, I might have
had you?"
"You might have had me."
"I'm almost glad," he said, "to have lost you--that way."
"Which way?" said she.
At that moment a servant of the house brought in tea. She announced that
Mr. Nicholson was down-stairs and would like to see Miss Holland.
"Very well. You'll stay?" Jane said to Brodrick.
He did. He was, Jane reflected, the sort of man who stayed.
"Here's Mr. Brodrick," said she, as Nicky entered. "He's going to make
all our fortunes."
"His own, too, I hope," said Brodrick. But he looked sulky, as if he
resented Nicholson's coming in.
"Of course," he said, "they tell me the whole thing's a dream, a
delusion, that it won't pay. But I know how to make it pay. The reason
why magazines go smash is because they're owned by men with no business
connections, no business organization, no business capacity. I couldn't
do it if I hadn't the 'Telegraph' at my back. Practically I make the
paper pay for the magazine."
And he went into it, in his quick, quiet voice, expounding and expanding
his scheme, laying it down fairly and squarely, with lucidity but no
apparent ardour.
It was Nicky who was excited. Jane could see cupidity in Nicky's eyes as
Brodrick talked about his magazine. Brodrick dwelt now on the commercial
side of it which had no interest for Nicky. Yet Nicky was excited. He
wanted badly to get into Brodrick's magazine, and Brodrick wanted,
Brodrick was determined to keep him out. There was a brief struggle
between Nicky's decency and his desire; and then Nicky's desire and
Brodrick's determination fairly skirmished together in the open.
Brodrick tried heavily to keep Nicky off it. But Nicky hovered airily,
intangibly about it. He fanned it as with wings; when Brodrick dropped
it he picked it up, he sustained it, he kept it flying high. Every
movement intimated in Nicky's most exquisite manner that if Brodrick
really meant it, if he had positively surrendered to the expensive
dream, if he wanted, in short, to keep it up and keep it high, he
couldn't be off letting Nicky in.
Brodrick's shameless intention had been to out-stay Nicky. And as long
as Nicky's approaches were so delicate as to provoke only delicate
evasions, Brodrick stayed. But in the end poor Nicky turned desperate
and put it to him point-blank. "Was there, or was there not to be a
place for poets in the magazine?"
At that Brodrick got up and went.
"Nicky," said Jane, as the door closed on the retreating editor, "he
came for my book, and I've made him take George Tanqueray's instead."
"I wish," said he, "you'd make him take my poems. But you can't. Nobody
can _make_ Brodrick do anything he doesn't want to."
"Oh----" said Jane, and dismissed Brodrick. "It's ages since I've seen
you."
"I heard that you were immersed, and so I kept away."
"That was very good of you," said she.
It struck her when she had said it that perhaps it was not altogether
what Nicky would have liked her to say.
"I _was_ immersed," she said, "in Hambleby."
"Is he finished?"
"All but. I'm waiting to put a crown upon his head."
"Were you by any chance making it--the crown?"
"I haven't even begun to make it."
"I shan't spoil him then if I stay?"
"No. I doubt if anything could spoil him now."
"You've got him so safe?"
"So safe. And yet, Nicky, there are moments when I can hardly bear to
think of Hambleby for fear he shouldn't be all right. It's almost as if
he came too easily."
"He couldn't. All my best things come," said Nicky "--like _that_!"
A furious sweep of Nicky's arm simulated the onrush of his inspiration.
"Oh, Nicky, how splendid it must be to be so certain."
"It is," said Nicky solemnly.
After all, it argued some divine compensation somewhere that a thing so
destitute should remain unaware of its destitution, that a creature so
futile and diminutive should be sustained by this conviction of his
greatness. For he _was_ certain. Nothing could annihilate the illusion
by which Nicky lived. But it was enough to destroy all certainty in
anybody else, and there were moments when the presence of Nicky had this
shattering effect on Jane. She could not have faced him until Hambleby
was beyond his power to slay.
But Nicky, so far from enlarging on his certainty, meditated with his
eyes fixed on the clock.
"You don't dine, do you," he said suddenly, "till half-past seven?"
"You'll stay, won't you?"
"I think I mustn't, thanks. I only wanted to know how long I had."
"You've really half-an-hour, if you _won't_ dine."
"I say, you're not expecting anybody else?"
"I didn't expect Mr. Brodrick. I've kept everybody out so long that
they've left off coming."
"I wonder," said he, still meditating, "if _I_'ve come too soon."
She held her breath. Nicky's voice was charged with a curious emotion.
"I knew," he went on, "it wasn't any use my coming as long as you were
immersed. I wouldn't for worlds do anything that could possibly injure
your career."
"Oh--my career----"
"The question is," he meditated, "would it?"
"Your coming, Nicky?"
"My not keeping away. I suppose I ought to be content to stand aside and
watch it, your genius, when it's so tremendous. I've no right to get in
its way----"
"You don't--you don't."
"I wouldn't. I always should be standing aside and watching. That," said
Nicky, "would be, you see, my attitude."
"Dear Nicky," she murmured, "it's a beautiful attitude. It
couldn't--your attitude--be anything but beautiful."
"Only, of course," he added, "I'd be there."
"But you are. You are there. And it's delightful to have you."
His face, which had turned very white, flushed, but not with pleasure.
It quivered with some sombre and sultry wave of pain.
"I meant," he said, "if I were always there."
His eyes searched her. She would not look at him.
"Nobody," she said, "can be--always."
"You wouldn't know it. You wouldn't see me--when you were immersed."
"I'm afraid," she said, "I always am, I always shall be--immersed."
"Won't there be moments?"
"Oh, moments! Very few."
"I wouldn't care how few there were," he said. "I know there can't be
many."
She understood him. There was nothing on earth like Nicky's delicacy. He
was telling her that he would accept any terms, the very lowest; that he
knew how Tanqueray had impoverished her; that he could live on moments,
the moments Tanqueray had left.
"There are none, Nicky. None," she said.
"I see this isn't one of them."
"All the moments--when there are any--will be more or less like this.
I'm sorry," she said.
"So am I," said he. It was as if they were saying they were sorry he
could not dine.
So monstrous was Nicky's capacity for illusion that he went away
thinking he had given Jane up for the sake of her career.
And Jane tried to think of Nicky and be sorry for him. But she couldn't.
She was immoderately happy. She had given up Brodrick's magazine and
Brodrick's money for Tanqueray's sake. Tanks would have his chance. He
would be able to take a house, and then that little wife of his wouldn't
have to sit with her hands before her, fretting her heart away because
of Tanks. She was pleased, too, because she had made Brodrick do what he
hadn't meant and didn't want to do.
But as she lay in bed that night, not thinking of Brodrick, she saw
suddenly Brodrick's eyes fixed on her with a look in them which she had
not regarded at the time; and she heard him saying, in that queer, quiet
voice of his, "I'm almost glad to have lost you this way."
"I wonder," she said to herself, "if he really spotted me."