That was a solid, practical idea of Brodrick's. All that he had heard of
Owen Prothero connected him securely with foreign countries. By the fact
that he had served in South Africa, to say nothing of his years in the
Indian Medical Service, he was pointed out as the right man to send to
the Russian army in Manchuria; add to this the gift of writing and your
War Correspondent was complete. It was further obvious that Prothero
could not possibly exist in England on his poems.
At the same time Brodrick was aware that he had reasons for desiring to
get the long, ugly poet out of England as soon as possible. His length
and his ugliness had not deterred Jane Holland from taking a
considerable interest in him. Brodrick's reasons made him feel extremely
uncomfortable in offering such a dangerous post as War Correspondent to
young Prothero. Therefore when it came to Prothero's accepting it, he
did his best to withdraw the offer. It wasn't exactly an offer. He had
merely mentioned it as a possible opening, a suggestion in the last
resort. He pointed out to Prothero the dangers and the risks, among them
damage to his trade as a poet. Poets were too precious. There were, he
said, heaps of other men.
But Prothero had leaped at it; he had implored Brodrick not to put
another man in; and the more he leaped and implored the more Brodrick
tried to keep him off it.
But you couldn't keep him off. He was mad, apparently, with the sheer
lust of danger. He _would_ go. "If you do," Brodrick had said finally,
"you go at your own risk."
And he had gone, leaving the editor profoundly uncomfortable. Brodrick,
in these days, found himself reiterating, "He _would_ go, he _would_
go." And all the time he felt that he had sent the poor long poet to his
death, because of Jane Holland.
He saw a great deal of Jane Holland in the weeks that followed
Prothero's departure.
They had reached the first month of autumn, and Jane was sitting out on
the lawn in Brodrick's garden. The slender, new-born body of Prothero's
Poems lay in her lap. Eddy Heron stretched himself at her feet. Winny
hung over her shoulder. Every now and then the child swept back her long
hair that brushed Jane's face, in the excitement of her efforts to see
what, as she phrased it, Mr. Prothero had done. Opposite them Mrs. Heron
and Gertrude Collett sat quietly sewing.
Eddy, who loved to tease his mother, was talking about Jane as if she
wasn't there.
"I say, Mummy, don't you like her awfully?"
"Of course I like her," said Mrs. Heron, smiling at her son.
"Why do you like me?" said Jane, whose vision of Owen Prothero was again
obscured by Winny's hair.
"Why do we like anybody?" said Mrs. Heron, with her inassailable
reserve.
"You can't get out of it that way, Mum. You don't just go liking
anybody. You like jolly few. We're an awful family for not liking
people. Aren't we, Gee-Gee?"
"I didn't know it," said Miss Collett.
"Oh, but Gee-Gee's thinking of Uncle Hugh," said Winny.
Miss Collett's face stiffened. She _was_ thinking of him.
"Uncle Hugh? Why, he's worse than any of us. With
women--ladies--anyhow."
"Eddy, dear!" said Eddy's mother.
"Well, have you ever seen a lady Uncle Hugh could really stand--except
Miss Holland?"
Gertrude bent so low over her work that her face was hidden.
"I say! look at that kid. Can't you take your hair out of Miss Holland's
face? She doesn't want your horrid hair."
"Yes, I do," said Jane. She was grateful for the veil of Winny's hair.
They had not arrived suddenly, the five of them, at this intimacy. It
had developed during the last fortnight, which Jane, fulfilling a
promise, had spent with Dr. Brodrick and Mrs. Heron.
Jane had been ill, and Brodrick had brought her to his brother's house
to recover. Dr. Henry had been profoundly interested in her case. So had
his sister, Mrs. Heron, and Mr. John Brodrick and Mrs. John, and Sophy
Levine and Gertrude Collett, and Winny and Eddy Heron.
Since the day when they had first received her, the Brodricks had
established a regular cult of Jane Holland. It had become the prescribed
event for Jane to spend every possible Sunday at Putney Heath with the
editor of the "Monthly Review." Her friendship with his family had
advanced from Sunday to Sunday by slow, well-ordered steps. Jane had no
illusions as to its foundation. She knew that Brodrick's family had
begun by regarding her as part of Brodrick's property, the most
eligible, the most valuable part. It was interested in contemporary
talent merely as a thing in which Brodrick had a stake. It had hardly
been aware of Jane Holland previous to her appearance in the "Monthly
Review." After that it had been obliged to recognize her as a power
propitious to the editor's ambition and his dream. For though his family
regarded the editor of the "Monthly Review" as a dreamer, a fantastic
dreamer, it was glad to think that a Brodrick should have ambition,
still more to think that it could afford a dream. They had always
insisted upon that, there being no end to the things a Brodrick could
afford. They had identified Jane Holland with his dream and his
ambition, and were glad again to think that he could afford her. As for
her dreadful, her conspicuous celebrity, the uncomfortably staring fact
that she was Jane Holland, Jane was aware that it struck them chiefly as
reflecting splendour upon Brodrick. But she was aware that her unique
merit, her supreme claim, was that she had done a great thing for
Brodrick. On that account, if she had been the most obscure, the most
unremarkable Jane Holland, they would have felt it incumbent on them to
cherish her. They had incurred a grave personal obligation, and could
only meet it by that grave personal thing, friendship.
How grave it was, Jane, who had gone into it so lightly, was only just
aware. This family had an immense capacity for disapproval; it was
awful, as Eddy had observed, for not liking people. It was bound, in its
formidable integrity, to disapprove of her. She had felt that she had
disarmed its criticism only by becoming ill and making it sorry for her.
She had not been a week in Dr. Brodrick's house before she discovered
that these kind people had been sorry for her all the time. They were
sorry for her because she had to work hard, because she had no home and
no family visible about her. They refused to regard Nina and Laura as a
family, or the flat in Kensington Square as in any reasonable sense a
home. Jane could see that they were trying to make up to her for the
things that she had missed.
And in being sorry for Jane Holland they had lost sight of her
celebrity. They had not referred to it since the day, three months ago,
when she had first come to them, a brilliant, distracting alien. They
were still a little perturbed by the brilliance and distraction, and it
was as an alien that she moved among them still.
It was as an alien (she could see it plainly) that they were really
sorry for her. They seemed to agree with her in regarding her genius as
a thing tacked on to her, a thing disastrous, undesirable. They were
anxious to show her that its presence did not destroy for any of them
her personal charm. They betrayed their opinion that her charm existed
in spite rather than because of it.
Thus, by this shedding of her celebrity, Jane in the houses of the
Brodricks had found peace. She was secure from all the destroyers, from
the clever little people, from everything that carried with it the
dreadful literary taint. Brodrick's family was divinely innocent of the
literary taint. The worst that could be said of Brodrick was that he
would have liked to have it; but, under his editorial surface, he was
clean.
It was in Hugh Brodrick's house, that the immunity, the peace was most
profound. Hugh was not gregarious. Tanqueray could not have more
abhorred the social round. He had come near it, he had told her, in his
anxiety to know _her_, but his object attained, he had instantly dropped
out of it.
She knew where she was with him. In their long, subdued confidences he
had given her the sense that she had become the dominant interest, the
most important fact in his social life. And that, again, not because of
her genius, but, he almost definitely intimated, because of some mystic
moral quality in her. He did not intimate that he found her charming.
Jane had still serious doubts as to her charm, and Brodrick's monstrous
sincerity would have left her to perish of her doubt. She would not have
had him different. It was because of _his_ moral quality, his sincerity,
that she had liked him from the first.
Most certainly she liked him. If she had not liked him she would not
have come out so often to Roehampton and Wimbledon and Putney. She could
not help but like him when he so liked her, and liked her, not for the
things that she had done for literature, not for the things she had done
for him, but for her own sake. That was what she had wanted, to be liked
for her own sake, to be allowed to be a woman.
Unlike Tanqueray, Brodrick not only allowed her, he positively
encouraged her to be a woman. Evidently, in Brodrick's opinion she was
just like any other woman. He could see no difference between her and,
well, Gertrude Collett. Gertrude, Jane was sure, stood to Brodrick for
all that was most essentially and admirably feminine. Why he required so
much of Jane's presence when he could have Gertrude Collett's was more
than Jane could understand. She was still inclined to her conjecture
that he was using her to draw Miss Collett, playing her off against Miss
Collett, stinging Miss Collett to the desired frenzy by hanging that
admirable woman upon tenter-hooks. That was why Jane felt so safe with
him; because, she argued, he couldn't do it if he had not felt safe with
her. He was not in love with her. He was not even, like Tanqueray, in
love with her genius.
If she had had the slightest doubt about his attitude, his behaviour on
the day of her arrival had made it stand out sharp and clear. She had
dined at Moor Grange, and Caro Bickersteth had been there. Caro had
insisted on dragging Jane's genius from its temporary oblivion, and
Brodrick had turned silent and sulky, positively sulky then.
And in that mood he had remained for the two weeks that she had stayed
at Roehampton. He had betrayed none of the concern so evidently felt for
her by Eddy and Winny and Gertrude Collett and Mrs. Heron and the
doctor. They had all contended with each other in taking care of her, in
waiting on her hand and foot. But Brodrick, after bringing her there;
after, as she said, dumping her down, suddenly and heavily, on his
family, Brodrick had refused to compete; he had hung back; he had
withdrawn himself from the scene, maintaining his singular sulkiness and
silence.
She forgave him, for of course he was disturbed about Gertrude Collett.
If he wanted to marry Gertrude, why on earth couldn't he marry her and
have done with it? Jane thought.
In order to think better she had closed her eyes. When she opened them
again she found Brodrick seated in an opposite chair, quietly regarding
her. She was alone with him. The others had all gone.
"I wasn't asleep," said Jane.
"I didn't suppose you were," said Brodrick; "if you were reading
Prothero."
Brodrick's conscience was beginning to hurt him rather badly. There were
moments when he connected Jane's illness with Prothero's departure. He,
therefore, by sending Prothero away, was responsible for her illness.
"If you want to read," he said, "I'll go."
"I don't want to read. I want to talk."
"About Prothero?"
"No, not about Mr. Prothero. About that serial----"
"What serial?"
"My serial. Your serial," said she.
Brodrick said he wasn't going to talk shop on Sunday. He wanted to
forget that there were such things as serials.
"I wish _I_ could forget," said she.
She checked the impulse that was urging her to say, "You really ought to
marry Gertrude."
"I wish you could," he retorted, with some bitterness.
"How can I?" she replied placably, "when it was the foundation of our
delightful friendship?"
Brodrick said it had nothing whatever to do with their friendship.
"Well," said Jane, "if it wasn't that it was Hambleby."
At that Brodrick frowned so formidably that Jane could have cried out,
"For goodness' sake go and marry her and leave off venting your bad
temper upon me."
"It had to be something," said she. "Why shouldn't it be Hambleby? By
the way, George Tanqueray was perfectly right. I was in love with him. I
mean, of course, with Hambleby."
"You seem," said Brodrick, "to be in love with him still, as far as I
can make out."
"That's why," said Jane, "I can't help feeling that there's something
wrong with him. George says you never really know the people you're in
love with."
There was a gleam of interest now in Brodrick's face. He was evidently,
Jane thought, applying Tanqueray's aphorism to Gertrude.
"It doesn't make any difference," he said.
"I should have thought," said she, "it would have made _some_."
"It doesn't. If anything, you know them rather better."
"Oh," said she, "it makes _that_ difference, does it?"
Again she thought of Gertrude. "I wonder," she said pensively, "if you
really know."
"At any rate I know as much as Tanqueray."
"Do I bore you with Tanqueray?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"You don't deny his genius?"
"I don't deny anybody's genius," said Brodrick furiously.
Jane looked at him.
"I don't think it's nice of you," said she, "to talk that way to me when
I've been so ill."
"You've no right to be ill," said Brodrick, with undiminished rancour.
"I have," said Jane. "A perfect right. I can be as ill as ever I
please."
She looked at him again and caught him smiling surreptitiously under his
heavy gloom.
"I mean," he said, "you needn't be. You wouldn't be if you didn't work
so hard."
She crumpled her eyelids like one who fails to see.
"If I didn't what?"
"Work so hard."
He really wanted to know whether it was that or Prothero. First it had
been Tanqueray, and she had got over Tanqueray. Now he could only
suppose that it was Prothero. He would have to wait until she had got
over Prothero.
"I like that," said she, "when it's your serial I'm working on."
"Do you mean to tell me," said Brodrick, "that it's that?"
"I was trying to tell you, but you wouldn't let me talk about it. Not
that I wanted to talk about it when the bare idea of it terrifies me.
It's awful to have it hanging over me like this."
"Forget it. Forget it," he said.
"I can't. I'm afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Of not being able to finish it--of letting you down."
He turned and looked at her intently.
"That's why you've been killing yourself, is it?"
She did not answer.
"I didn't know. I didn't think," he said. "You should have told me."
"It's my fault. I ought to have known. I ought never to have tried."
"Why did you?" His sulkiness, his ferocity, was gone now; he was
gentleness itself.
"Because I wanted to please you."
There was an inarticulate murmur from Brodrick, a happy sound.
"Well," he said, "you shan't go on."
"But what can we do?"
"We'll do something. There are plenty of things that can be done."
"But--there's the magazine."
"I don't care," said the editor, "if the abominable thing goes smash."
"What? You can contemplate it's going smash?"
"I can't contemplate your being worried like this."
"It's people that worry me," she said--"if I only could have peace!"
She sketched for him as she had sketched for Tanqueray the horrors
brought on her by her celebrity.
"That's London," he said, as Tanqueray had said. "You should live out of
it."
"Nothing comes to me in the country."
He pondered a long time upon that saying.
"You wouldn't call this country, would you?" he said at last.
"Oh dear me, no."
"Well--what would you think of Putney or Wimbledon as a compromise?"
"There can't be any compromise."
"Why not? It's what we all have to come to."
"Not I. I can only write if I'm boxed up in my funny little square, with
the ash-trees weeping away in the middle."
"I don't wonder," said Brodrick, "that they weep."
"You think it's so terrible?"
"Quite terrible."