Brodrick's house, Moor Grange, stood on the Roehampton side of Putney
Heath, just discernible between the silver and green of the birches.
With its queer, red-tiled roofs, pitched at every possible slope, white,
rough-cast, many-cornered walls, green storm-shutters, lattice windows
of many sorts and sizes, Brodrick's house had all the brilliant
eccentricity of the twentieth century.
But Brodrick's garden was at least a hundred years older than his house.
It had a beautiful green lawn with a lime-tree in the middle and a
stone-flagged terrace at the back overlooking the north end of the
Heath. Behind the house there was a kitchen garden that had survived
modernity.
Brodrick's garden was kept very smooth and very straight, no impudent
little flowers hanging out of their beds, no dissolute straggling of
creepers upon walls. Even the sweet-peas at the back were trained to a
perfect order and propriety.
And in Brodrick's house propriety and order were carried to the point of
superstition. Nothing in that queer-cornered, modern exterior was ever
out of place. No dust ever lay on floor or furniture. All the
white-painted woodwork was exquisitely white. Time there was measured by
a silver-chiming clock that struck the quiet hours with an infallible
regularity.
And yet Brodrick was not a tidy nor a punctual man. In his library the
spirit of order contended against fearful odds. For Brodrick lived in
his library, the long, book-lined, up-stairs room that ran half the
length of the house on the north side. But even there, violate as he
would his own sanctuary, the indestructible propriety renewed itself by
a diurnal miracle. He found books restored to their place, papers
sorted, everything an editor could want lying ready to his hand. For the
spirit of order rose punctually to perform its task.
But in the drawing-room its struggles and its triumph were complete.
It had been, so Brodrick's sisters told him, a man's idea of a
drawing-room. And now there were feminine touches, so incongruous and
scattered that they seemed the work of a person establishing herself
tentatively, almost furtively, by small inconspicuous advances and
instalments. A little work-table stood beside the low settle in the
corner by the fireplace. Gay, shining chintz covered the ugly chairs.
There were cushions here and there where a woman's back most needed
them. Books, too, classics in slender duo-decimo, bought for their
cheapness, novels (from the circulating library), of the kind that
Brodrick never read. On the top of a writing-table, flagrantly feminine
in its appointments, there stood, well in sight of the low chair, a
photograph of Brodrick which Brodrick could not possibly have framed and
put there.
The woman who entered this room now had all the air of being its
mistress; she moved in it so naturally and with such assurance, as in
her sphere. You would have judged her occupied with some mysterious
personal predilections with regard to drawing-rooms. She paused in her
passage to reinstate some article dishonoured by the parlour-maid, to
pat a cushion into shape and place a chair better to her liking. At each
of these small fastidious operations she frowned like one who resents
interference with the perfected system of her own arrangements.
She sat down at the writing-table and took from a pigeonhole a sheaf of
tradesmen's bills. These she checked and docketed conscientiously, after
entering their totals in a book marked "Household." From all these acts
she seemed to draw some secret enjoyment and satisfaction. Here she was
evidently in a realm secure from the interference of the incompetent.
With a key attached to her person she now unlocked the inmost shrine of
the writing-table. A small squat heap of silver and of copper sat there
like the god of the shrine. She took it in her hand and counted it and
restored it to its consecrated seat. She then made a final entry: "Cash
in Hand, thirty-five shillings."
She sat smiling in tender contemplation of this legend. It stood for the
savings of the last month, effected by her deft manipulation of the
household. There was no suggestion of cupidity in her smile, nor any
hint of economy adored and pursued for its own sake.
She was Gertrude Collett, the lady who for three years had acted as
Brodrick's housekeeper, or, as she now preferred to call herself, his
secretary. She had contrived, out of this poor material of his weekly
bills, to fashion for herself a religion and an incorporeal romance.
She raised her face to the photograph of Brodrick, as if spiritually she
rendered her account to him. And Brodrick's face, from the ledge of the
writing-table, looked over Gertrude's head with an air of being unmoved
by it all, with eyes intent on their own object.
She, Brodrick's secretary, might have been about five-and-thirty. She
was fair with the fairness which is treacherous to women of her age,
which suffers when they suffer. But Gertrude's skin still held the
colours of her youth as some strong fabric holds its dye. Her face
puzzled you; it was so broad across the cheek-bones that you would have
judged it coarse; it narrowed suddenly in the jaws, pointing her chin to
subtlety. Her nose, broad also across the nostrils and bridge, showed a
sharp edge in profile; it was alert, competent, inquisitive. But there
was mystery again in the long-drawn, pale-rose lines of her mouth. A
wide mouth with irregular lips, not coarse, but coarsely finished. Its
corners must once have drooped with pathos, but this tendency was
overcome or corrected by the serene habit of her smile.
It was not the face of a dreamer. Yet at the moment you would have said
she dreamed. Her eyes, light coloured, slightly prominent, stared
unsheltered under their pale lashes and insufficient brows. They were
eyes that at first sight had no depths in them. Yet they seemed to hold
vapour. They dreamed. They showed her dream.
She started as the silver-chiming clock struck the quarter.
She went up-stairs to the room that was her own, and examined herself
carefully in the looking-glass. Then she did something to her hair.
Waved slightly and kept in place by small amber-coloured combs,
Gertrude's hair, though fragile, sustained the effect of her almost
Scandinavian fairness. Next she changed her cotton blouse for an
immaculate muslin one. As she drew down the blouse and smoothed it under
the clipping belt, she showed a body flat in the back, sharp-breasted,
curbed in the waist; the body of a thoroughly competent, serviceable
person. Her face now almost suggested prettiness, as she turned and
turned its little tilted profile between two looking-glasses.
At half-past three she was seated at her place in Brodrick's library. A
table was set apart for her and her type-writer on a corner by the
window.
The editor was at work at his own table in the centre of the room. He
did not look up at her as she came in. His eyes were lowered, fixed on
the proof he was reading. Once, as he read, he shrugged his shoulders
slightly, and once he sighed. Then he called her to him.
She rose and came, moving dreamily as if drawn, yet holding herself
stiffly and aloof. He continued to gaze at the proof.
"You sat up half the night to correct this, I suppose?"
"Have I done it very badly?"
He did not tell her that she had, that he had spent the best part of his
morning correcting her corrections. She was an inimitable housekeeper,
and a really admirable secretary. But her weakness was that she desired
to be considered admirable and inimitable in everything she undertook.
It would distress her to know that this time she had not succeeded, and
he did not like distressing people who were dependent on him. It used to
be so easy, so mysteriously easy, to distress Miss Collett; but she had
got over that; she was used to him now; she had settled down into the
silent and serene performance of her duties. And she had brought to her
secretarial work a silence and serenity that were invaluable to a man
who detested argument and agitation.
So, instead of insisting on her failure, he tried to diminish her
disturbing sense of it; and when she inquired if she had done her work
very badly, he smiled and said, No, she had done it much too well.
"Too well?" She flushed as she echoed him.
"Yes. You've corrected all Mr. Tanqueray's punctuation and nearly all
his grammar."
"But it's all wrong. Look there--and there."
"How do you know it's all wrong?"
"But--it's so simple. There are rules."
"Yes. But Mr. Tanqueray's a great author, and great authors are born to
break half the rules there are. What you and I have got to know is when
they _may_ break them, and when they mayn't."
A liquid film swam over Gertrude's eyes, deepening their shallows. It
was the first signal of distress.
"It's all right," he said. "I wanted you to do it. I wanted to see what
you could do." He considered her quietly. "It struck me you might
perhaps prefer it to your other duties."
"What made you think that?"
"I didn't think. I only wondered. Well----"
The next half-hour was occupied with the morning's correspondence, till
Brodrick announced that they had no time for more.
"It's only just past four," she said.
"I know; but----Is there anything for tea?" He spoke vaguely like a man
in a dream.
"What an opinion you have of my housekeeping," she said.
"Your housekeeping, Miss Collett, is perfection."
She flushed with pleasure, so that he kept it up.
"Everything," he said, "runs on greased wheels. I don't know how you do
it."
"Oh, it's easy enough to do."
"And it doesn't matter if a lady comes to tea?"
He took up a pencil and began to sharpen it.
"Is there," said Miss Collett, "a lady coming to tea?"
"Yes. And we'll have it in the garden. Tea, I mean."
"And who," said she, "is the lady?"
"Miss Jane Holland." Brodrick did not look up. He was absorbed in his
pencil.
"Another author?"
"Another author," said Brodrick to his pencil.
She smiled. The editor's attitude to authors was one of prolonged
amusement. Prodigious people, authors, in Brodrick's opinion. More than
once, by way of relieving his somewhat perfunctory communion with Miss
Collett, he had discussed the eccentricity, the vanity, the
inexhaustible absurdity of authors. So that it was permissible for her
to smile.
"You are not," he said, "expecting either of my sisters?"
He said it in his most casual, most uninterested voice. And yet she
detected an undertone of anxiety. He did not want his sisters to be
there when Miss Holland came. She had spent three years in studying his
inflections and his wants.
"Not specially to-day," she said.
Brodrick became manifestly entangled in the process of his thought. The
thought itself was as yet obscure to her. She inquired, therefore, where
Miss Holland was to be "shown in." Was she a drawing-room author or a
library author?
In the perfect and unspoken conventions of Brodrick's house the
drawing-room was Miss Collett's place, and the library was his. Tea in
the drawing-room meant that he desired Miss Collett's society; tea in
the library that he preferred his own. There were also rules for the
reception of visitors. Men were shown into the library and stayed there.
Great journalistic ladies like Miss Caroline Bickersteth were shown into
the drawing-room. Little journalistic ladies with dubious manners,
calling, as they did, solely on business, were treated as men and
confined strictly to the library.
Brodrick's stare of surprise showed Gertrude that she had blundered. He
had a superstitious reverence for those authors who, like Mr. Tanqueray,
were great.
"My dear Miss Collett, do you know who she is? The drawing-room, of
course, and all possible honour."
She laughed. She had cultivated for Brodrick's sake the art of laughter,
and prided herself upon knowing the precise moments to be gay.
"I see," she said. And yet she did not see. How could there be any
honour if he did not want his sisters to be there? "That means the best
tea-service and my best manners?"
He didn't know, he said, that she had any but the best.
How good they were she let him see when he presented Miss Holland on her
arrival, her trailing, conspicuous arrival. Gertrude had never given him
occasion to feel that his guests could have a more efficient hostess
than his secretary. She spoke of the pleasure it gave her to see Miss
Holland, and of the honour that she felt, and of how she had heard of
Miss Holland from Mr. Brodrick. There was no becoming thing that
Gertrude did not say. And all the time she was aware of Brodrick's eyes
fixed on Miss Holland with that curious lack of diffuseness in their
vision.
Brodrick was carrying it off by explaining Gertrude to Miss Holland.
"Miss Collett," he said, "is a wonderful lady. She's always doing the
most beautiful things, so quietly that you never knew they're done."
"Does anybody," said Jane, "know how the really beautiful things are
done?"
"There's a really beautiful tea," said Miss Collett gaily, "in the
garden. There are scones and the kind of cake you like."
"You see," Brodrick said, "how she spoils me, how I lie on roses."
"You'd better come," said Miss Collett, "while the scones are still
hot."
"While," said Jane, "the roses are still fresh."
He held the door open for her, and on the threshold she turned to Miss
Collett who followed her.
"Are you sure," said she, "that he's the horrid Sybarite you think
him?"
"I am," said Brodrick, "whatever Miss Collett thinks me. If it pleases
her to think I'm a Sybarite I've got to _be_ a Sybarite."
"I see. And when the rose-leaves are crumpled you bring them to Miss
Collett, and she irons them out, and makes them all smooth again, so
that you don't know they're the same rose-leaves?"
"The rose-leaves never are crumpled."
"Except by some sudden, unconsidered movement of your own?"
"My movements," said Brodrick, "are never sudden and unconsidered."
"What? Never?"
Miss Collett looked a little surprised at this light-handed treatment of
the editor.
And Jane observed Brodrick with a new interest as they sat there in the
garden and Miss Collett poured out tea. "Mr. Brodrick," she said to
herself, "is going to marry Miss Collett, though he doesn't know it."
By the end of the afternoon it seemed to her an inevitable consummation,
the marriage of Mr. Brodrick and Miss Collett. She could almost see it
working, the predestined attraction of the eternally compatible, the
incomparably fit. And when Brodrick left off taking any notice of Miss
Collett, and finally lured Jane away into the library on the flimsiest
pretence, she wondered what game he was up to. Perhaps in his innocence
he was blind to Miss Collett's adoration. He was not sure of Miss
Collett. He was trying to draw her.
Jane, intensely interested, advanced from theory to theory of Brodrick
and Miss Collett while Brodrick removed himself to the writing-table,
and turned on her a mysterious back.
"I want to show you something," he said.
She went to him. In the bared centre of the writing-table he had placed
a great pile of manuscript. He drew out his chair for her, so that she
could sit down and look well at the wonder.
Her heart leaped to the handwriting and to George Tanqueray's name on
the title-page.
"You've seen it?" he said.
"No. Mr. Tanqueray never shows his work."
From some lair in the back of the desk he swept forward a prodigious
array of galley proofs. Tanqueray's novel was in the first number of the
"Monthly Review."
"Oh!" she cried, looking up at him.
"I've pleased you?" he said.
"You have pleased me very much."
She rose and turned away, overcome as by some desired and unexpected
joy. He followed her, making a cushioned place for her in the chair by
the hearth, and seated himself opposite her.
"I was very glad to do it," he said simply.
"It will do you more good than Hambleby," she said.
"You know I did not think so," said he. And there was a pause between
them.
"Mr. Brodrick," she said presently, "do you really want a serial from
me?"
"Do I want it!"
"As much as you think you do?"
"I always," said he, "want things as much as I think I do."
She smiled, wondering whether he thought he wanted Miss Collett as much
as he obviously did.
"What?" he said. "Are you going to let me have the next?"
"I had thought of it. If you really do----"
"Have you had any other offers?"
"Yes; several. But----"
"You must remember mine is only a new venture. And you may do
better----"
It was odd, but a curious uncertainty, a modesty had come upon him since
she last met him. He had been then so absurd, so arrogant about his
magazine.
"I don't want to do better."
"Of course, if it's only a question of terms----"
It was incredible, Brodrick's depreciating himself to a mere question of
terms. She flushed at this dreadful thought.
"It isn't," she said. "Oh! I didn't mean _that_."
"You never mean that. Which is why I must think of it for you. I can at
least offer you higher terms."
"But," she persisted, "I should hate to take them. I _want_ you to have
the thing. That's to say I want _you_ to have it. You must not go paying
me more for that."
"I see," he said, "you want to make up."
She looked at him. He was smiling complacently, in the fulness of his
understanding of her.
"My dear Miss Holland," he went on, "there must be no making up. Nothing
of that sort between you and me."
"There isn't," she said. "What is there to make up for? For your not
getting me?"
He smiled again as if that idea amused him.
"Or," said she, "for my making you take Mr. Tanqueray?"
"You didn't _make_ me," he said. "I took him to please you."
"Well," she said; "and you'll take me now, to please me."
She rose.
"I must say good-bye to Miss Collett. How nice," she said, "Miss Collett
is."
"Isn't she?" said he.
He saw her politely to the station.
That evening he drank his coffee politely in the drawing-room with Miss
Collett.
"Do you know," he said, "Miss Holland thinks you're nice."
To his wonder Miss Collett did not look as if the information gave her
any joy.
"Did she say so?"
"Yes. Do you think _her_ nice?"
"Of course I do."
"What," said he, "do you really think of her?" He was in the habit of
asking Miss Collett what she thought of people. It interested him to
know what women thought, especially what they thought of other women.
It was in the spirit of their old discussions that she now replied.
"You can see she is a great genius. They say geniuses are bad to live
with. But I do not think she would be."
He did not answer. He was considering very profoundly the question she
had raised.
Which was precisely what Miss Collett meant that he should do.
As the silver-chiming clock struck ten she rose and said good-night. She
never allowed these sittings to be prolonged past ten. Neither did
Brodrick.
"And I am not to read any more proofs?" she said.
"Do you like reading them?"