Jane had been married for three months, married with a completeness that
even Tanqueray had not foreseen. She herself had been unaware of her
capacity for surrender. She rejoiced in it like a saint who beholds in
himself the mystic, supreme transmutation of desire. One by one there
fell from her the things that had stood between her and the object of
her adoration.
For the forms of imagination had withdrawn themselves; once visible,
audible, tangible, they became evasive, fugitive presences, discernible
on some verge between creation and oblivion. This withdrawal had once
been her agony, the dissolution of her world; she had struggled against
it, striving with a vain and ruinous tension to hold the perishing
vision, to preserve it from destruction. Now she contemplated its
disappearance with a curious indifference. She had no desire to recover
it.
She remembered how she had once regarded the immolation of her genius as
the thing of all things most dangerous, most difficult, a form of
terrible self-destruction, the sundering of passionate life from life.
That sacrifice, she had said, would be the test of her love for Hugh
Brodrick. And now, this thing so difficult, so dangerous, so impossible,
had accomplished itself without effort and without pain. Her genius had
ceased from violence and importunity; it had let go its hold; it no
longer moved her.
Nothing moved her but Brodrick; nothing mattered but Brodrick; nothing
had the full prestige of reality apart from him. Her heart went out to
the things that he had touched or worn; things that were wonderful,
adorable, and at the same time absurd. His overcoat hanging in the hall
called on her for a caress. Henry, arriving suddenly one afternoon,
found her rubbing her cheek against its sleeve. His gloves, which had
taken on the shape of Brodrick's hands, were things to be stroked
tenderly in passing.
And this house that contained him, white-walled, green-shuttered,
red-roofed, it wore the high colours of reality; the Heath was drenched
in the poignant, tender light of it.
That house on the Heath continued in its incomprehensible beauty. It was
not to be approached without excitement, a beating of the heart. She
marvelled at the power that, out of things actual and trivial, things
ordinary and suburban, had made for her these radiances and
immortalities. She could not detect the work of her imagination in the
production of this state. It was her senses that were so exquisitely
acute. She suffered an exaltation of all the powers of life. Her state
was bliss. She loved these hours, measured by the silver-chiming clock.
She had discovered that it struck the quarters. She said to herself how
odd it was that she could bear to live with a clock that struck the
quarters.
She was trying hard to be as punctual and perfect as Gertrude Collett.
She had gone to Gertrude to learn the secret of these ordered hours. She
had found out from Gertrude what Brodrick liked best for dinner. She had
listened humbly while Gertrude read to her and expounded the legend of
the sacred Books. She had stood like a child, breathless with attention,
when Gertrude unlocked the inner door of the writing-table and showed
her the little squat god in his shrine.
She played with this house of Brodrick's like a child, making believe
that she adored the little squat god and respected all the paraphernalia
of his service. She knew that Gertrude doubted her seriousness and
sincerity in relation to the god.
And all the time she was overcome by the pathos of Gertrude who had been
so serious and so sincere, who was leaving these things for ever. But
though she was sorry for Gertrude, her heart exulted and cried out in
her, "Do you think He cares for the little squat god? He cares for
nothing in the world but me!"
All would have been well if Brodrick had not committed the grave error
of asking to look at the Books, just to see that she had got them all
right. Like Gertrude he doubted.
She brought them to him; presenting first the Book marked "Household."
He turned from the beginning of this Book to the end. The pages of
Gertrude's housekeeping looked like what they were, a perfect and simple
system of accounts. Jinny's pages looked like a wild, straggling lyric,
flung off in a rapture and meticulously revised.
Brodrick smiled at it--at first.
"At any rate," said she, "it shows how hard I've tried."
For all answer he laid before her Gertrude's flawless work.
"Is it any use trying to bring it up to Gertrude's standard?" she said.
"Wouldn't it be better just to accept the fact that she was wonderful?"
(He ignored the suggestion.)
"I suppose you never realized till now how wonderful that woman was?"
Brodrick said gravely he would have to go into it to see.
Brodrick, going in deeper, became very grave. It seemed that each week
Jane's expenditure overlapped her allowance with appalling regularity.
It was the only regularity she had.
"Have you any idea, Jinny, how it goes?"
She shook her head sadly.
"If it's gone, it's gone. Why should we _seek_ to know?"
"Just go into it with me," he said.
She went into it and emerged with an idea.
"It looks," said Jinny, "as if I ate more than Gertrude. Do I?"
Still abstracted, he suggested the advisability of saving.
"Can it be done?" said Jinny.
"It can," said Brodrick, "because Gertrude did it."
"Must I do it?"
"Not if it bothers you. I was only saying it can be done."
"And you'd like it?"
"Well--I should like to know where I am."
"But--darling--It's _so_ much better not to."
He sighed. So did Jinny.
"I can see," she said, "what I've done. I've crumpled _all_ the
rose-leaves, and you'll never be able to lie on them any more."
Then she had another idea.
"Hugh! It's just occurred to me. Talk of saving! I've been saving all
the time like fury. I save you Gertrude's salary."
At this Brodrick became angry, as Jane might have seen, only she was too
entirely taken up with her discovery to look at him.
"Here I have been working for months, trying how not to be extravagant,
and thinking how incompetent I am and how much more advantageous it
would have been for you to have married Gertrude. And I come lots
cheaper. I really do. Wasn't it funny of us never to have thought of it
before?"
He was very angry, but he had to smile. Then by way of correction he
reminded her that the servants were getting rather slack. Didn't she
think it was about time to haul them up?
She didn't. She didn't like the poor things to feel that they were
driven. She liked to see happy faces all around her.
"But they're so unpunctual--those faces," Brodrick said. And while they
_were_ on the subject there was the clock. The clock that Gertrude
always used to wind, that Brodrick sometimes forgot to wind, but that
Jinny never by any chance wound at all.
"I'm happier," said Jane, "when it's not wound."
"But why----" His face was one vast amazement.
"Because," she said, "it chimes. And it strikes the quarters."
He had thought that was the great merit of his incomparable clock.
She seemed incorrigible. Then, miraculously, for two months all went
well, really well.
It was not for nothing that Hambleby sold and was selling. The weekly
deficit continued, appalling, palpable even to Jane; but she made it up
secretly. Secretly, she seemed to save.
But Brodrick found that out and stopped it. Jane was not allowed, and
she knew it, to use her own income for the house or for anything else
but herself and her people. It wasn't for that he had married her.
Besides, he objected to her method. It was too expensive.
Jane was disposed to argue the matter.
"Don't you see, dear, that it's the price of peace? Peace is the most
expensive thing on this earth--any stupid politician will tell you that.
If you won't pay for peace, what will you pay for?"
"My dear child, there used to be more peace and considerable less pay
when Miss Collett did things."
"Yes. But she was wonderful."
(Her lips lifted at the corners. There was a flash of irony in her tone,
this time.)
"Not half so wonderful as you," he said.
"But--Hugh--angel--as long as it's _me_ who pays----"
"That's what I won't have--your paying."
"It's for _my_ peace," she said.
"It certainly isn't for mine," said Brodrick.
She considered him pensively. She knew that he didn't care a rap about
the little squat god, but he abhorred untidiness--in other people.
"Poor darling--how uncomfy he is, with all his little rose-leaves
crumpled under him. Irritating him."
She came and hung over him and stroked his hair till he smiled.
"I told you at the time you ought to have married Gertrude. What on
earth possessed you to go and marry me?"
He kissed her, just to show what possessed him.
The question of finance was settled by his going into it again and
finding out her awful average and making her an allowance large enough
to cover it. And at the end of another two months she came to him in
triumph.
"Look there," she said. "I've saved a halfpenny. It isn't much, but it
shows that I _can_ save when I give my mind to it."
He said he would hang it on his watch-chain and cherish it for ever.
As before, he kissed her. He loved her, as men love a disastrous thing,
desperately, because of her divine folly.
In all these things her genius had no part. It was as if they had agreed
to ignore it. But people were beginning to talk now of the Event of
nineteen-five, the appearance of Hambleby's successor, said to be
greater than Hambleby.
She was conscious then of a misgiving, almost a dread. Still, it hardly
concerned her. This book was the work of some one unfamiliar,
unrecognizable, forgotten by the happy woman that she was. So immense
was the separation between Jane Holland and Jane Brodrick.
She was aware of the imminence of her loss without deploring it. She
spoke of it to Brodrick.
They were sitting together, one night in June, under the lime-tree on
the lawn, only half visible to each other in the falling darkness.
"Would you mind very much," she said, "if I never wrote anything again?"
He turned to her. "What makes you think you can't write? (He too had a
misgiving.) You've plenty of time. You've all day, in fact."
"Yes, all day long."
"It's not as if I bothered you--I say, _they_ don't bother you, do
they?"
She understood him as referring to the frequent, the very frequent
incursions of his family.
"You mustn't let them. You must harden your heart."
"It isn't they. It isn't anybody."
"What is it then?"
"Only that everything's different. I'm different."
He regarded her for a long time. She _was_ different. It was part of her
queerness, this capacity she had for being different. He could see
nothing now but her wild fawn look, the softness and the flush of life.
It was his miracle on her.
He remained silent, brooding over it. In the stillness she could hear
his deep breathing; she could just discern his face, heavy but tender.
"It doesn't mean that you're not well, Jinny?" He remembered that once
or twice since he had known her it had meant that.