"What can you expect when a man mates like that?"
"It's natural," she pleaded.
"Natural? It's one of the most unnatural marriages I've ever come
across. It's a crime against nature for a man like Tanqueray to have
taken that poor little woman--who is nature pure and simple--and condemn
her to----"
She drew back visibly. "I know. He doesn't see it," she said.
"He doesn't see anything. He doesn't even know she's there. How can he?
His genius runs to flesh and blood, and he hasn't room for any more of
it outside his own imagination. That's where you are with your great
realists."
She gazed at him, astonished, admiring. This visionary, this poet so
estranged from flesh and blood, had put his finger on the fact.
"You mean," she said, "a visionary would see more?"
He shrugged his shoulders at her reference.
"He would have more room," he said, "that would be all. He could at any
rate afford to take more risks."
They were silent again.
"I believe," he said presently, "somebody's coming. I shall have to go."
Jane turned her head. The sounds he heard so distinctly were inaudible
to her.
They proved to be footsteps on the staircase, footsteps that could never
have been Rose's nor yet Tanqueray's. They paused heavily at the door.
Some one was standing there, breathing.
A large woman entered very slowly, and Jane arrived, also slowly, at the
conclusion that it must be Mrs. Eldred, George's wife's aunt.
Mrs. Eldred acknowledged her presence and Prothero's by a vague movement
of respect. It was not till Prothero had gone that she admitted that she
would be glad to take a chair. She explained that she was Rose's aunt,
and that she had never been up them stairs before and found them tryin'.
Jane expressed sorrow for that fact and for Rose's illness.
Mrs. Eldred sighed an expository sigh.
"She's frettin' an' she's worritin'. She's worritin' about 'Im. It isn't
natch'ral, that life 'E leads, and it's tellin' on 'er."
"Something's telling on her."
Mrs. Eldred leaned forward and lowered her voice. "It's this way, miss.
'E isn't properly a 'usban' to 'er."
"You shouldn't say that, Mrs. Eldred. He's very fond of her."
"Fond of 'er I dare say 'E may be. But 'E neglec's 'er."
"You shouldn't say that, either."
"Well, miss, I can't 'elp sayin' it. Wot else _is_ it, when 'E shuts
'imself up with 'is writin' all day long and 'alf the night, and she
a-settin' and a-frettin'?"
She looked round the room, apparently recognizing with resentment the
scene of Tanqueray's perpetual infidelity.
"But," said Jane, "he'd be away as much if he was in business."
"'Ef 'E was in business there'd be the evenin's to look forward to. And
there'd be 'is Saturdays and Sundays. As it is, wot is there for her to
look forward to?"
"At any rate she knows he's there."
"It's knowin' that 'E's there wot does it. It's not as if she 'ad a
'ouse to look after, or a little baby to take 'er mind orf of 'im."
"No, it isn't."
A sound of yapping came faintly up from the ground-floor.
"That's Joey," said Mrs. Eldred tearfully, "'er Pom as she was so fond
of. I've brought 'im. And I've brought Minny too."
"Minny?" Jane had not heard of Minny.
"The cat, miss. They'll keep 'er company. It's but right as she should
'ave them."
Jane assented warmly that it was but right.
"It's not," Mrs. Eldred continued, "as if she came reg'lar, say once in
a week, to see 'er uncle and me. She'll go to Camden Town and set with
that poor old Mr. Gunning. Give Rose any one that's ill. But wot is that
_but_ settin'? And now, you see, with settin' she's ill. It's all very
well when you're brought up to it, but she isn't. Rose'd be well if she
'ad a 'ouse and did the work in it. And 'E won't let 'er 'ave it. 'E
won't 'ear of 'er workin', 'E says."
"Well, naturally, he wouldn't like to see his wife working."
"Then, miss, 'E should 'ave married a lady 'as wouldn't want to work.
That's wot 'E should have done. We were always against it from the
first, 'er uncle and me was. But they was set, bein' young-like."
Mrs. Eldred's voice ceased suddenly as Tanqueray entered. Jane
abstained from all observation of their greeting. She was aware of an
unnatural suavity in Tanqueray's manner. He carried it so far as to
escort Mrs. Eldred all the way down to the ground-floor sitting-room
where Rose was.
He returned with considerable impetus to Jane.
"Well, Jinny, so you've seen my aunt-in-law?"
"I have," said Jinny contumaciously, "and I like her."
"What do you think? She's brought a dog on a chain and a beast of a cat
in a basket."
Jinny abstained from sympathy, and Tanqueray grew grave.
"I wish I knew what was the matter with Rose," he said. "She doesn't
seem to get much better. The doctor swears it's only liver; but he's a
silly ass."
"Tanks, there's nothing the matter really, except--the poor little bird
wants to build its nest. It wants sticks and straws and feathers and
things----"
"Do you mean I've got to go and find a beastly house?"
"Let her go and find it."
"I would in a minute--only I'm so hard up."
"Of course you'll be hard up if you go on living in rooms like this."
"That's what she says. But when she talks about a house she means that
she'll do all the work in it."
"Why not?" said Jane.
"Why not? I married her because I wasn't going to have her worked to
death in that damned lodging-house of her uncle's."
"You married her because you loved her," said Jane quietly.
"Well--of course. And I'm not going to let my wife cook my dinner and
make my bed and empty my slops. How can I?"
"She'll die if you don't, George."
"Die?"
"She'll get horribly ill. She's ill now because she can't run about and
sweep and dust and cook dinners. She's dying for love of all the
beautiful things you won't let her have--pots and pans and
carpet-sweepers and besoms. You don't want her to die of an unhappy
passion for a besom?"
"I don't want to see her with a besom."
Jane pleaded. "She'd look so pretty with it, George. Just think how
pretty she'd look in a little house, playing with a carpet-sweeper."
"On her knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor----"
"You'd have a woman in to scrub."
"Carrying the coals?"
"_You'd_ carry the coals, George."
"By Jove, I never thought of that. I suppose I could." He pondered.
"You see," he said, "she wants to live at Hampstead."
"You can't cut her off from her own people."
"I'm not cutting her off. She goes to see them."
"She'll go to see them if you live at Hampstead. If you live here
they'll come and see you. For she'll be ill and they'll have to."
Tanqueray looked at her, not without admiration.
"Jinny, you're ten times cleverer than I."
"In some things, Tanks, I am. And so is that wife of yours."
"She's--very sensible. I suppose it's sensible to be in love with a
carpet-sweeper."
She shook her head at him.
"Much more sensible than being in love with _you_."
His eyes evaded her. She rose.
"Oh, Tanks, you goose. Can't you see that it's you she's in love
with--and that's why she _must_ have a carpet-sweeper?"
With that she left him.
He followed her to the doorstep where he turned abruptly from her
departure.
Rose in the sitting-room was kneeling by the hearth where she had just
set a saucer of milk. With one hand she was loosening very gently from
her shoulder the claws of Minny, the cat, who clung to her breast,
scrambling, with the passion and desperation of his kind. Her other
hand restrained with a soft caressing movement Joey's approaches to the
saucer. Joey, though trembling with excitement, sat fascinated, obedient
to her gesture. Joey was puny and hairless as ever, but in Rose's face
as she looked at him there was a flush of maternal tenderness and
gravity. A slightly sallow tinge under its sudden bloom told how Rose
had suffered from the sedentary life.
All this Tanqueray saw as he entered. It held him on the threshold,
unmoved by the rushing assault and lacerating bark of the little dog,
who resented his intrusion.
Rose got up and came to him, lifting a frightened, pleading face.
"Oh, George," she said, "don't make me send them away. Let me keep
them."
"I suppose you must keep them if you want them."
"I never said I wanted them. Aunt _would_ bring them. She thought they'd
be something to occupy my mind, like."
Tanqueray smiled, in spite of his gentleness, at the absurd idea of Rose
having a mind.
Rose made a little sound in her throat like a laugh. She had not
laughed, she had hardly smiled, for many months now.
"The doctor--'e's fair pleased. 'E says I'll 'ave to go out walkin' now,
for Joey's sake."
"Poor Joey."
He stooped and stroked the little animal, who stood on ridiculous
hind-legs, straining to lick his hand.
"His hair doesn't come on, Rose----"
"It hasn't been brushed proper. You should brush a Pom's 'air
backwards----"
"Of course, and it hasn't been brushed backwards. He can bark all right,
anyhow. There's nothing wrong with his lungs."
"He won't bark at you no more, now he knows you."
She leaned her face to the furry head on her shoulder, and he recognized
Minny by the strange pattern of his back and tail. Minny was not
beautiful.
"It's Minny," she said. "You used to like Minny."
It struck him with something like a pang that she held him like a child
at her breast. She saw his look and smiled up at him.
"I may keep him, too?"
At that he kissed her.
By the end of that evening Tanqueray had not written a word. He could
only turn over the pages of his manuscript, in wonder at the mechanical
industry that had covered so much paper with such awful quantities of
ink. Here and there he recognized a phrase, and then he was aware, very
miserably aware, that the thing was his masterpiece. He wondered, and
with agony, how on earth he was going to finish it if they came about
him like this and destroyed his peace.
It wasn't the idea of the house. The house was bad enough; the house
indeed was abominable. It was Rose. It was more than Rose; it was
everything; it was the touch, the intimate, unendurable strain and
pressure of life.
It was all very well for Prothero to talk. His genius was safe, it was
indestructible. It had the immunity of the transcendent. It worked, not
in flesh and blood, but in a divine material. Whatever Prothero did it
remained unmoved, untroubled by the impact of mortality. Prothero could
afford his descents, his immersions in the stuff of life. He, Tanqueray,
could not, for life was the stuff he worked in. To immerse himself was
suicidal; it was the dyer plunging into his own vat.
Because his genius was a thing of flesh and blood, flesh and blood was
the danger always at its threshold, the enemy in its house. For the same
reason it was sufficient to itself. It fulfilled the functions, it
enjoyed the excitements and the satisfactions of sense. It reproduced
reality so infallibly, so solidly, so completely, that it took reality's
place; it made him unconscious of his wife's existence and of the things
that went on beneath him in the ground-floor sitting-room.
Yet he was not and had never been indifferent to life itself. He
approached it, not with precaution or prejudice or any cold discretion,
but with the supreme restraint of passion on guard against its own
violence. If he had given himself to it, what a grip it would have had
on him, what a terrible, destructive grip; if, say, he had found his
mate; if he had married a woman, who, exulting in life, would have drawn
him into it.
Rose had not drawn him in. She had done nothing assailing and
destructive. She was, in some respects, the most admirable wife a man
bent on solitude could have selected. The little thing had never got in
his way. She was no longer disturbing to the intellect, nor agitating to
the heart; and she satisfied, sufficiently, the infrequent craving of
his senses. Up till now he would hardly have known that he was married;
it had been so easy to ignore her.
But to-day she had been forced on his attention. The truth about Rose
had been presented to him very plainly and boldly by Prothero, by the
doctor, by Mrs. Eldred and by Jane. It was the same naked truth that in
his novels he himself presented with the utmost plainness and boldness
to the British public. His genius knew no other law but truth to Nature,
trust in Nature, unbroken fidelity to Nature. And now it was Nature that
arraigned his genius for its frustration of her purposes in Rose. His
genius had made Rose the victim of its own incessant, inextinguishable
lust and impulse to create.
Eleven o'clock struck and he had not written a line. Through his window
he heard the front door open and Rose's little feet on the pavement, and
Rose's voice calling into the darkness her old call, "Puss--Puss--Puss.
Minny--Min--Min--Minny. Puss--Puss--Puss."
He sighed. He had realized for the first time that he was married.