XX

Brodrick, living on Putney Heath, was surrounded by his family. It was

only fifteen minutes' walk from his front door to his brother John's

house in Augustus Road, Wimbledon; only five minutes from his back door

to Henry's house in Roehampton Lane. You went by a narrow foot-track

down the slope to get to Henry. You crossed the Heath by Wimbledon

Common to get to John. If John and Henry wanted to get to each other,

they had to pass by Brodrick's house.

Moor Grange was a half-way house, the great meeting-place of all the

Brodricks.

One fine warm Sunday in mid-May, about four o'clock, all the Brodricks

except Hugh were assembled on Hugh's lawn. There was Mr. John Brodrick,

the eldest brother, the head of the firm of Brodrick and Brodrick,

Electrical Engineers. There was Dr. Henry Brodrick, who came next to

John. He had brought Mrs. Heron, their sister (Mrs. Heron lived with

Henry, because Mr. Heron had run away with the governess, to the

unspeakable scandal of the Brodricks). There was Mrs. Louis Levine, who

came next to Mrs. Heron. There was Mrs. John Brodrick, not to be

separated from her husband, who, in a decorous dumbness and secrecy,

adored her; and Mr. Louis Levine, who owed his position among the

Brodricks to the very properly apparent devotion of his wife.

And there were children about. Eddy and Winny Heron, restless,

irrepressible in their young teens, sprawled at their mother's feet and

hung over her in attitudes of affection. One very small Levine trotted

to and fro on fat legs over the lawn. The other, too small to run, could

be seen in the background, standing in Gertrude Collett's lap and

trampling on her.

The Levines had come over from St. John's Wood, packed tight in their

commodious brand-new motor-car, the symbol of Levine's prosperity. So

that all Brodrick's family were at Putney this afternoon.

They were sitting in the delicate shadow of the lime-tree. Outside, the

lawn was drenched with light, light that ran quivering into the little

inlets and pools among the shadows. The cropped grass shone clear as

emerald, and all the garden showed clear-cut and solid and stable in its

propriety and order.

Still more distinct, more stable and more solid, more ineradicably fixed

in order and propriety, were the four figures of the Brodricks. Sitting

there, in a light that refused, in spite of the lime-tree, to lend

itself to any mystery or enchantment, they maintained themselves in a

positively formidable reality. All these Brodricks had firm,

thick-skinned faces in which lines came slowly, and were few but strong.

Faces, they were, of men who have lived in absolute sobriety and sanity,

untorn by any temptation to live otherwise; faces of women to whom

motherhood has brought the ultimate content.

Comfortably material persons, sitting in a deep peace, not to be rapt

from it by any fantasy, nor beguiled by any dream, they paid only in a

high morality their debt to the intangible.

This afternoon, in spite of themselves, they were roused somewhat from

the peace they sat in. They were expecting somebody.

"I suppose, when she arrives, we shall all have to sit at the lady's

feet," said Mrs. Levine.

"_I_'ve no objection," said the Doctor; "after what she's done."

"It was pretty decent of her," said Levine. He was dark, nervous and

solemn-eyed, a lean man of his race, and handsome. Sophy Brodrick had

not loved her husband when she married him. She adored him now, because

of the beauty that had passed from him into her children.

"I say, Uncle Louis, you _might_ tell me what she _did_ do," said Eddy

Heron.

"She got your Uncle Hughy out of a tight place, my boy."

"I say, what's _he_ been doing?"

Mr. Levine smiled inscrutably, while his wife shook her head at him.

"He's been going it, has he? Good old Uncle Hughy!"

Eddy's mother thought it would be nice if he and Winny went down the

Heath road to meet Uncle Hughy and Miss Holland. Whereupon Eddy embraced

his mother, being unable to agree with her.

"You really believe," said Mr. John Brodrick, who seemed anxious to be

sure of his facts before he committed himself, "you really believe that

if it had not been for this lady he'd have had to give it up?"

"Well," said Levine judicially, "she practically saved it. You see he

_would_ start it with George Tanqueray. And who cares about George

Tanqueray? That's what wrecked him. I told him at the time it was sheer

lunacy, but he wouldn't listen to me. _Why_" (Levine spoke in a small

excited voice with sudden high notes), "he hadn't subscriptions enough

to float the thing for twenty-four hours. As soon as he gets Miss

Holland they go up by leaps and bounds, and it's bin goin' steady ever

since. How long it'll keep goin's another thing."

"I understood Hugh to say," said John, "that the arrangements involved

some considerable sacrifice to the lady."

"Well, you see, he'd been a bit of an ass. He'd made her a ridiculous

offer, an offer _we_ simply couldn't afford, and we had to tell her so."

"And then," said Sophy, "you might as well mention that she gave it him

for what you _could_ afford."

"She certainly let him have it very cheap." He ruminated. "Uncommonly

cheap--considering what her figure is."

Eddy wanted to know what Miss Holland's figure had to do with his Uncle

Hughy. Winny, round-eyed with wonder, inquired if it was beautiful, and

was told that it was fairly beautiful, a tidy figure, a nice round

figure, like her Aunt Sophy's.

"That," said John, "was _very_ decent of her."

"Very," said the gentle lady, Mrs. John.

"It was splendid," said Mrs. Heron.

The Doctor meditated. "I wonder _why_ she did it," said the Doctor.

His brother-in-law explained. "Oh, she thought she'd let him in for

Tanqueray."

"Let him _in_?"

"Don't you see," said Mrs. Heron, "it was her idea of honour."

"A woman's idea of honour," said the Doctor.

"You needn't criticize it," said his sister Sophy.

"I don't," said the Doctor.

"I can tell you," said Levine, "what with her idea of honour and Hugh's

idea of honour, the office had a pretty rough time of it till they got

the business fixed."

"With Hugh's _ideas_," said John, "he's hardly likely to make this thing

pay, is he? Especially if he's going to bar politics."

He said it importantly. By a manner, by wearing spectacles, and brushing

his hair back in two semi-circles from his forehead, Mr. John Brodrick

contrived to appear considerably more important than he was.

"Ah, he's made a mistake there," said the Doctor.

"That's what _I_ tell him." Levine was more excited than ever.

"I should think he might be allowed to do what he likes," said Sophy.

"After all, it's _his_ magazine."

Mr. Levine's face remained supernaturally polite while it guarded his

opinion that it wasn't his brother-in-law's magazine at all. They had

disagreed about Tanqueray. They had disagreed about everything connected

with the magazine, from the make-up of the first number to the salary of

the sub-editor. They had almost quarreled about what Levine called "Miss

Holland's price." And now, when his wife said that it was Sunday--and if

they were going to talk business all the afternoon--she was told that

Hugh's magazine wasn't business. It was Hugh's game. (His dreadfully

expensive, possibly ruinous game.)

"Then," she said, "you might let him play it. I'm sure he works hard

enough on your horrid old 'Telegraph.'"

Sophy invariably stood up for her family against her husband. But she

would have stood up for her husband against all the world.

"Thank you, my pet." She stooped to the little three-year-old girl who

trotted to and fro, offering to each of these mysteriously, deplorably

preoccupied persons a flower without a stalk.

It was at this moment that Brodrick arrived from the station with Miss

Holland.

"Is it a garden-party?" Jane inquired.

"No," said Brodrick, "it's my family."

She came on with him over the lawn. And the group rose to its feet; it

broke up with little movements and murmurs, in a restrained, dignified

expectancy. Jane had the sense of being led towards some unaccountable

triumph and acclamation.

They closed round her, these unknown Brodricks, inaudibly stirred, with

some unspoken, incomprehensible emotion in the men's gaze and in the

women's touch. The big boy and girl shared it as they came forward in

their shyness, with affectionate faces and clumsy, abortive encounters

of the hand.

It was the whole Brodrick family moved to its depths, feeling as one. It

could only be so moved by the spectacle of integrity and honour and

incorruptible loyalty to It.

Still moved, it was surrounding Jane when a maid arrived with the

tea-table, and the white cloth waved a signal to Miss Collett across the

lawn. There was then a perceptible pause in the ovation as Brodrick's

secretary appeared.

Even across the lawn Jane could discern trouble in Miss Collett's face.

But Miss Collett's face was plastic in readjustments, and by the time

she was fairly on the scene it had recaptured the habit of its smile.

The smile, in greeting, covered and carried off the betraying reluctance

of her hand. It implied that, if Miss Holland was to be set up in a high

place and worshipped, Miss Collett was anxious to observe the

appropriate ritual. Having observed it, she took, with her quiet,

inconspicuous assurance, the place that was her own. She gave but one

sign of her trouble when Dr. Brodrick was heard congratulating their

guest on the great serial which, said he, by "saving" the magazine, had

"saved" his brother. Then Gertrude quivered slightly, and the blood

flushed in her set face and passed as fierce heat passes through iron.

While they were talking Jane had opportunity to watch and wonder at the

firm, consolidated society that was Brodrick's family. These faces

proclaimed by their resemblance the material link. Mr. John Brodrick was

a more thick-set, an older, graver-lined, and grizzled Hugh, a Hugh who

had lost his sombre fixity of gaze. Dr. Henry Brodrick was a tall,

attenuated John, with a slightly, ever so slightly receding chin. Mrs.

Heron was Hugh again made feminine and slender. She had Hugh's features,

refined and diminished. She had Hugh's eyes, filled with some tragic

sorrow of her own. Her hair was white, every thread of it, though she

could not have been more than forty-five.

These likenesses were not so apparent at first sight in Mrs. Levine, the

golden, full-blown flower of the Brodricks. They had mixed so thoroughly

and subtly that they merged in her smoothness and her roundness. And

still the facial substance showed in the firm opacity of her skin, the

racial soul asserted itself in her poised complacence and decision.

"You don't know," she was saying, "how we're all sitting at your feet."

"We are indeed," said Mr. John Brodrick.

"Very much so," said the Doctor.

"Even little Cissy," said Hugh.

For little Cissy was bringing all her stalkless flowers to Jane; smiling

at her as if she alone possessed the secret of this play. Brodrick

watched, well-pleased, the silent traffic of their tendernesses.

The others were talking about Hambleby now. They had all read him. They

had all enjoyed him. They all wanted more of him.

"If we could only have had Hambleby, Miss Holland," said Levine. "It

wasn't my fault that we didn't get him."

Jane remembered that this was the brother-in-law whom Brodrick had

wanted to keep out. He had the air of being persistently, permanently

in.

"Of course it wasn't your fault," said she.

Levine then thought it necessary to say things about Jane's celebrity

till Brodrick cut him short.

"Miss Holland," he said, "doesn't like her celebrity. You needn't talk

about it."

John and Henry looked graver than ever, and Sophy made sweet eyes at

Jane. Sophy's eyes--when they looked at you--were very sweet. It was

through her eyes only that she apologized for her husband, whose own

eyes were manifestly incapable of apologizing for anything. The

Brodricks seemed to tolerate their brother-in-law; and he seemed, more

sublimely, to tolerate their tolerance.

Great efforts were now made to divert Levine from the magazine. Mr. John

Brodrick headed him off with motors and their makers; the Doctor kept

his half-resentful spirit moving briskly round the Wimbledon golf-links;

and Hugh, with considerable dexterity, landed him securely on the fiscal

question, where he might be relied upon to stay.

But it was the Baby who saw what was to be done if his parent was to be

delivered from his own offensiveness.

"Oh, look!" cried Winny. "Look at Baby. Making such a ducky angel of

himself."

The Baby, having sat down abruptly on the grass, was making a ducky

angel of himself by wriggling along it, obliquely, as he sat.

At the sight of him all the Brodricks instantaneously lost their

seriousness and sanity. He was captured and established as the centre of

the group. And, in the great act of adoration of the Baby, Levine was

once more united to his wife's family.

His wife's family, like his wife, could forgive anything to Louis Levine

because of the babies. It reserved its disapproval for Mrs. John

Brodrick who had never had any; who had never done anything that was

expected of her. Mrs. John looked as if she had cried a great deal

because of the things she had not done. She had small hazel eyes with

inflamed lids, and a small high nose that was always rather red. She was

well born, and she carried her low-browed, bird-like head among the

Brodricks with a solitary grace, and the motions of a dignified,

distinguished bird.

And now, in mute penitence and wistful worship, she prostrated herself

before their divinity, the Baby.

And in the middle of it all, with amazing smiles and chuckles, the Baby

suddenly renounced his family and held out his arms to Jane. And

suddenly all the Brodricks laughed. His mother laughed more than any of

them. She took the Baby, and set him at Jane's feet; and he sat there,

looking at Jane, as at some object of extraordinary interest and wonder

and fascination. And Brodrick looked at both of them with something of

the same naif expression, and the Doctor, the attenuated, meditative

Doctor, looked at all three, but especially at his brother. Gertrude

Collett looked, now at Brodrick and now at Jane.

Brodrick did not see the Doctor or Gertrude either. It had just struck

him that Jane was not in the least like her portrait, _the_ portrait. He

was thinking, as Tanqueray had once thought, that Gisborne, R. A., was

an ass, and that if he could have her painted he would have her painted

as she looked now.

As he was trying to catch the look, Gertrude came and said it was the

Baby's tea-time, and carried him away. And the look went from Jane's

face, and Brodrick felt annoyed with Gertrude because she had made it

go.

Then Mrs. John came up and tried very hard to talk to Jane. She was

nervously aware that conversation was expected of her as the wife of the

head of the family, and that in this thing also she had failed him. She

was further oppressed by Miss Holland's celebrity, and by the idea she

had that Miss Holland must be always thinking of it and would not like

to see it thus obscured by any other interest.

And while Mrs. John sat beside her, painfully and pensively endeavouring

to converse, Jane heard Brodrick talking to Mrs. Levine.

"Where's Gertrude gone?" he said.