Three weeks later, one afternoon in October, Jane found herself going at
a terrific pace through Kensington Gardens. Brodrick had sent word that
he would see her at five o'clock, and it wanted but a few minutes of
that hour.
When Tanqueray sounded his warning, he did not measure the effect of the
illumination that it wrought. The passion he divined in her had had a
chance to sleep as long as it was kept in the dark. Now it was wide
awake, and superbly aware of itself and of its hour.
After she had parted from him Jane saw clearly how she had been drawn,
and why. There was no doubt that the folly had come upon her; the folly
that Tanqueray told her she would think divine. She not only thought it
divine, she felt it to be divine with a certainty that Tanqueray himself
could not take away from her.
Very swiftly the divine folly had come upon her. She could not say
precisely at what moment, unless it were three weeks ago, when she had
stood dumb before the wise women, smitten by a mortal pang, invaded by
an inexplicable helplessness and tenderness. It was then that she had
been caught in the toils of life, the snares of the folly.
For all its swiftness, she must have had a premonition of it. That was
why she had tried so desperately to build the house of life for Brodrick
and Miss Collett. She had laboured at the fantastic, monstrous
fabrication, as if in that way only she could save herself.
She had been afraid of it. She had fought it desperately. In the teeth
of it she had sat down to write, to perfect a phrase, to finish a
paragraph abandoned the night before; and she had found herself
meditating on Brodrick's moral beauty.
She knew it for the divine folly by the way it dealt with her. It made
her the victim of preposterous illusions. The entire district round
about Putney became for her a land of magic and of splendour. She could
not see the word Putney posted on a hoarding without a stirring of the
spirit and a beating of the heart. When she closed her eyes she saw in a
vision the green grass plots and sinuous gravel walks of Brodrick's
garden, she heard as in a vision the silver chiming of the clock, an
unearthly clock, measuring immortal hours.
The great wonder of this folly was that it took the place of the
creative impulse. Not only did it possess her to the exclusion of all
other interests, but the rapture of it was marvellously akin to the
creative ecstasy.
It drove her now at a furious pace through the Gardens and along the
High Street. It caused her to exult in the face of the great golden
October sunset piled high in the west. It made her see Brodrick
everywhere. The Gardens were a green paradise with the spirit of
Brodrick moving in them like a god. The High Street was a golden road
with Brodrick at the end of it. The whole world built itself into a
golden shrine for Brodrick. He was coming to see her at five o'clock.
He was not there, in her room, when she arrived. But he had been there
so often that he pervaded and dominated the place, as Tanqueray had once
dominated and pervaded it. He had created such a habit, such a
superstition of himself that his bodily presence was no longer necessary
to its support. There was a chair by the fireplace, next the window. She
could not see it now without seeing Brodrick, without seeing a look he
had, when, as he sat there silent, his eyes had held her, covered her,
caressed her. There were times when he had the gestures and the manner
of a man sitting by his own fireside, taking her and all that she
signified for granted, establishing between them a communion in which
the poignant, ultimate things were not said because they were so
profoundly felt.
She caught herself smiling now at the things she was going to say to
him.
Her bell rang with the dreadful, startling noise that made her heart
leap in her breast.
He came in slowly like a man preoccupied with grave business of his own.
And at the sight of him Jane's heart, which had leaped so madly, dragged
in her breast and drew the tide of her blood after it.
He took her hand, but not with any eagerness. His face was more than
ever sombre, as if with some inward darkness and concern. He turned from
her and became interested in finding a suitable place for his hat. (Jane
noticed that it was a new one.) Then he sat down and remained seated.
He let her get up and cross the room and ring the bell for herself, so
fixed was he in his dream. Only, as her gown brushed him in her passing
back, he was aware of it and shrank. She heard him draw in a hard
breath, and when she looked at him again she saw the sweat standing on
his forehead.
"You've hurried," she said.
"I haven't," said Brodrick. "I never hurry."
"Of course not. You never do anything undignified."
That was not one of the things that she had meant to say.
"Never," said Brodrick, "if I can help it." And he wiped his forehead.
Jane caught herself smiling at Brodrick's hat. She felt a sudden
melting, enervating tenderness for Brodrick's hat. The passion which, in
the circumstances, she could not permit herself to feel for Brodrick,
she felt, ridiculously, for Brodrick's hat.
It was, of course, ridiculous, that she, Jane Holland, should feel a
passion for a man's hat, a passion that brought her heart into her
mouth, so that she could not say any of the things that she had thought
of.
Brodrick's hat on an arm-chair beside him was shining in the firelight.
On his uncomfortable seat Brodrick lowered and darkened, an incarnate
gloom.
"How happy your hat looks," said Jane, smiling at it again.
"I'm glad it amuses you," said Brodrick.
Jane made tea.
He rose, wrapped in his dream, and took his cup from her. He sat down
again, in his dream, and put his cup on the arm-chair and left it there
as an offering to the hat. Then, with an immense, sustained politeness,
he began to talk.
Now that Hambleby had become a classic; he supposed that her ambition
was almost satisfied.
It was so much so, Jane said, that she was tired of hearing about
Hambleby. Whereupon Brodrick inquired with positively formidable
politeness, how the new serial was getting on.
"Very well," said Jane. "How's the 'Monthly Review'?"
Brodrick intimated that the state of the "Monthly Review" was prosperity
itself, and he asked her if she had heard lately from Mr. Prothero?
Jane said that she had had a long letter from Mr. Prothero the other
day, and she wished that a suitable appointment could be found for Mr.
Prothero at home. Brodrick replied, that, at the moment, he could not
think of any appointment more suitable for Mr. Prothero than the one he
had already got for him.
Then there was a silence, and when Jane with competitive urbanity
inquired after Brodrick's sisters, Brodrick's manner gave her to
understand that she had touched on a subject by far too intimate and
personal. And while she was wondering what she could say next Brodrick
took up his hat and said good-bye and went out hurriedly, he who never
hurried.
Jane stood for a moment looking at the seat he had left and the place
where his hat had been. And her heart drew its doors together and shut
them against Brodrick.
She had heard the sound of him going down her stairs, and the click of
the latch at the bottom, and the slamming of the front door; and then,
under her windows, his feet on the pavement of the Square. She went to
the window, and stared at the weeping ash-trees in the garden and
thought of how Brodrick had said that it was no wonder that they wept.
And at the memory of his voice she felt a little pricking, wounding pain
under her eyelids, the birth-pang of unwilling tears.
There were feet, hurrying feet on the pavement again, and again the bell
cried out with its nervous electric scream. Her staircase door was
opened quickly and shut again, but Jane heard nothing until Brodrick
stood still in the room and spoke her name.
She turned, and he came forward, and she met him, holding her head high
to keep back her tears. She came slowly, with shy feet and with fear in
her eyes, and the desire of her heart on her lips, lifting them like
wings.
He took her two hands, surrendered to his, and raised and kissed them.
For a moment they stood so, held together, without any movement or any
speech.
"Jinny," he said thickly, and she looked down and saw her own tears,
dreadful drops, rolling off Brodrick's hands.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to do that."
Her hands struggled in his, and for pity he let them go.
"You can't be more surprised at me than I am myself," said she.
"But I'm not surprised," said Brodrick. "I never am."
And still she doubted.
"What did you come back for?"
"This, of course."
He had drawn her to the long seat by the fireplace.
"Why did you go away," she said, "and make me cry?"
"Because, for the first time in my life, I was uncertain."
"Of yourself?" Doubt, dying hard, stabbed her.
"I am never uncertain of myself," said Brodrick.
"Of what, then?"
"Of you."
"But you never told me."
"I've been trying to tell you the whole time."
Yet even in his arms her doubt stirred.
"What are you going to do now?" she whispered.
"_You're_ going to marry me," he said.
He had been certain of it the whole time.
"I thought," she said an hour later, "that you were going to marry
Gertrude."
"Oh, so that was it, was it? You were afraid----"
"I wasn't afraid. I knew it was the best thing you could do."
"The best thing I could do? To marry Gertrude?"
"My dear--it would be far, far better than marrying me."
"But I don't want," said he, "to marry Gertrude."
"Of course, _she_ doesn't want to marry you."
"I never supposed for a moment that she did."
"All the same, I thought it was going to happen."
"If it was going to happen," he said, "it would have happened long ago."