Tanqueray's book was out. Times and seasons mattered little in a case so
hopeless. There was no rivalry between George Tanqueray and his
contemporaries; therefore, his publishers had not scrupled to produce
him in the same month as Jane Holland. They handled any work of his with
the apathy of despair.
He himself had put from him all financial anxiety when he banked the
modest sum, "on account," which was all that he could look for. The
perturbing question for him was, not whether his sales would be small or
great, but whether this time the greatness of his work would or would
not be recognized. He did not suppose for a moment that it would be.
_His_ tide would never turn.
His first intimation that it was turning came from Jane, in a pencil
note enclosed with a newspaper cutting, his first favourable review.
"Poor George," she wrote, "you thought you could escape it. But it's
coming--it's come. You needn't think you're going to be so very
posthumous, after all." He marvelled that Jinny should attach so much
importance to the printed word.
But Jinny had foreseen those mighty lunar motions that control the
tides. It looked really as if it had come, years before he had expected
it, as if (as dear Jinny put it) he would not have a chance of being
posthumous. Not only was he aware that this book of his was a
masterpiece, but other people were aware. There was one man, even
Tanqueray admitted, who cared and knew, whose contemporary opinion
carried the prestige of posterity; and he had placed him where he would
be placed. And lesser men followed, praising him; some with the
constrained and tortured utterances of critics compelled into eating
their own words; some with the cold weight of a verdict delivered
unwillingly under judicial pressure. And there were others, lesser
still, men who had hated Tanqueray. They postured now in attitudes of
prudery and terror; they protested; they proclaimed themselves victims
of diabolic power, worshippers of the purity, the sanctity of English
letters, constrained to an act of unholy propitiation. They would, if
they could, have passed him by.
It was Caro Bickersteth who said of Tanqueray that he played upon the
imaginations of his critics as he played upon women's hearts.
And so it went on. One took off a conventional hat to Mr. Tanqueray's
sincerity; and one complained of "Mr. Tanqueray's own somewhat undraped
attitude toward the naked truth," observing that truth was not nearly so
naked as "Mr. Tanqueray would have us think." Another praised "his large
undecorated splendour." They split him up into all his attributes and
antitheses. They found wonder in his union of tenderness and brutality.
They spoke of "the steady beat of his style," and his touch, "the
delicate, velvet stroke of the hammer, driven by the purring dynamo."
Articles appeared ("The Novels of George Tanqueray;" "George Tanqueray:
an Appreciation;" "George Tanqueray: an Apology and a Protest"); with
the result that his publishers reported a slight, a very slight
improvement in his sales.
Besides this alien tribute there was Caro Bickersteth's large column in
the "Morning Telegraph," and Nicky's inspired eulogy in the "Monthly
Review." For, somehow, by the eternal irony that pursued him, Nicky's
reviews of other people could get in all right, while his own poems
never did and never would. And there was the letter that had preceded
Jinny's note, the letter that she wrote to him, as she said, "out of the
abyss." It brought him to her feet, where he declared he would be glad
to remain, whether Jinny's feet were in or out of the abyss.
Rose revived a little under this praise of Tanqueray. Not that she said
very much about it to him. She was too hurt by the way he thrust all his
reviews into the waste-paper basket, without showing them to her. But
she went and picked them out of the waste-paper basket when he wasn't
looking, and pasted all the good ones into a book, and burnt all the
bad ones in the kitchen fire. And she brought the reviews, and made her
boast of him to Aunt and Uncle, and told them of the nice sum of money
that his book had "fetched," this time. This was all he had been waiting
for, she said, before he took a little house at Hampstead.
For he had taken it at last, that little house. It was one of a terrace
of three that stood high above the suburb, close to the elm-tree walk
overlooking the West Heath. A diminutive brown-brick house, with jasmine
climbing all over it, and a little square of glass laid like a mat in
front of it, and a little garden of grass and flower-borders behind.
Inside, to be sure, there wasn't any drawing-room; for what did Rose
want with a drawing-room, she would like to know? But there was a
beautiful study for Tanqueray up-stairs, and a little dining-room and a
kitchen for Rose below.
Rose had sought counsel in her furnishing; with the result that
Tanqueray's study bore a remarkable resemblance to Laura Gunning's room
in Camden Town, while Rose's dining-room recalled vividly Mrs.
Henderson's dining-room at Fleet.
Though it was such a little house, there had been no difficulty about
getting the furniture all in. The awful thing was moving Tanqueray and
his books. It was a struggle, a hostile invasion, and it happened on his
birthday. And in the middle of it all, when the last packing-case was
hardly emptied, and there wasn't a carpet laid down anywhere, Tanqueray
announced that he had asked some people to dine that night.
"Wot, a dinner-party?" said Rose (she was trying not to cry).
"No, not a party. Only six."
"Six," said Rose, "_is_ a dinner-party."
"Twenty-six might be."
Rose sat down and looked at him and said, "Oh dear, oh dear." But she
had begun to smooth her hair in a kind of anticipation.
Then Tanqueray stooped and put his arm around her and kissed her and
said it was his birthday. He always did ask people to dine on his
birthday. There would only be the Brodricks and Nicky and Nina Lempriere
and Laura Gunning--No, Laura Gunning couldn't come. That, with
themselves, made six.
"Well----" said Rose placidly.
"I can take them to a restaurant if you'd rather. But I thought it would
be so nice to have them in our own house. When it's my birthday."
She smiled. She was taking it all in. In her eyes, for once, he was like
a child, with his birthday and his party. How could she refuse him
anything on his birthday? And all through the removal he had been so
good.
Already she was measuring spaces with her eye.
"It'll 'old six," she said--"squeezin'."
She sat silent, contemplating in a vision the right sequence of the
dinner.
"There must be soup," she said, "an' fish, an' a hongtry an' a joint,
an' a puddin' an' a sav'ry, an' dessert to follow."
"Oh Lord, no. Give 'em bread and cheese. They're none of 'em greedy."
"I'll give you something better than that," said Rose; "on your
birthday--the idea!"
Dinner was to be at eight o'clock. The lateness of the hour enabled Mr.
and Mrs. Eldred to come up and give a hand with the waiting and the
dishing-up. They had softened towards Tanqueray since he had taken that
little house. That he should give a dinner-party in it during the middle
of the removal was no more than they expected of his eccentricity.
The dinner went off very well. Rose was charming in a pink silk blouse
with lace at her throat and wrists. Her face too was pink with a flush
of anxiety and excitement. As for George, she had never seen him look so
handsome. She could hardly take her eyes off him, as he sat there in his
beautiful evening suit and white shirt-front. He was enjoying his
birthday like a child, and laughing--she had never heard him laugh like
that in her life before. He laughed most at the very things she thought
would vex him, the little accidents, such as the sliding of all the
dinner-plates from Mr. Nicholson's hands on to the floor at Uncle's feet
in the doorway, and Uncle's slamming of the door upon the fragments. The
dinner, too; she had been afraid that George wouldn't like all his
friends to know she'd cooked it. But he told them all straight out,
laughing, and asking them if she wasn't very clever? And they all said
that she was, and that her dinner was delicious; even the dishes that
she had worried and trembled over. And though she had cooked the dinner,
she hadn't got to wait. Not one of the gentlemen would let her. Rose
became quite gay with her small triumph, and by the time the sweets came
she felt that she could talk a little.
For Nicky was the perfection of admirable behaviour. His right ear,
patient and attentive, leaned toward Tanqueray's wife, while his left
strained in agony to catch what Tanqueray was saying. Tanqueray was
talking to Jane. He had said he supposed she had seen the way "they had
been going for him," and she had asked him was it possible he minded?
"Minded? After your letter? When a big full-fledged arch-angel gets up
on the tips of its toes, and spreads its gorgeous wings in front of me,
and sings a hymn of praise out loud in my face, do you think I hear the
little beasts snarling at my feet and snapping at the calves of my
legs?"
Rose at Nicky's right was saying, "It's over small for a dinin'-room.
But you should see 'is study."
He bowed an ear that did not hear her.
"Nicky did me well," said Tanqueray.
"I told you all the time," said Jane, "that Nicky knew."
"'E couldn't do anything without 'is study."
"Ah?" Nicky returned to the little woman, all attention.
"Aren't you proud of him? Isn't it splendid how he's brought them round?
How they're all praising him?"
"So they'd ought to," Rose said. "'E's worked 'ard enough for it. The
way 'e works! He'll sit think-thinkin' for hours, before 'e seems as if
'e could get fair hold of a word----"
They had all stopped talking to Tanqueray and were listening to
Tanqueray's wife.
"Then 'e'll start writin', slow-like; and 'e'll go over it again and
again, a-scratchin' out and a-scratchin' out, till all 'is papers is a
marsh of ink; and 'e'll 'ave to write all that over again. And the study
and the care 'e gives to it you'd never think."
Nicky's ear leaned closer than ever, as if to shelter and protect her;
and Rose became aware that George's forehead was lowering upon her from
the other end of the table and trying to scowl her into silence.
After that Rose talked no more. She sat wondering miserably what it was
that she had done. It did not occur to her that what had annoyed him was
her vivid revelation of his method. The dinner she was enjoying so much
had suddenly become dreadful to her.
Her wonder and her dread still weighed on her, long after it was over,
when she was showing Mrs. Brodrick the house. Her joy and her pride in
it were dashed. Over all the house there hung the shadow of George's
awful scowl. It seemed to her that George's scowl must have had
something to do with Mrs. Brodrick; that she must have shamed him in
some way before the lady he thought so much of, who thought so much of
him. A little too much, Rose said to herself, seeing that she was a
married woman.
And for the first time there crept into Rose's obscurely suffering soul,
a fear and a jealousy of Mrs. Brodrick.
Jane felt it, and divined beneath it the suffering that was its cause.
It was not as if she had not known how George could make a woman suffer.
Her acutest sense of it came to her as they stood together in the
bedroom that she had been called on to admire. Rose's bedroom was a
wonder of whiteness; so was the great smooth double bed; but the
smoothest and the whitest thing in it was Tanqueray's pillow where
Tanqueray's head had never lain. There was a tiny dressing-room beyond,
and through the open door Jane caught a sight of the low camp-bed where,
night after night, Tanqueray's genius flung its victim down to sleep off
the orgy of the day's work. The dressing-room was a place where he could
hide from Rose by night as he hid from her by day.
And Rose, when they took the house, had been so proud of the
dressing-room.
Jane, seeing these things, resolved to remove the fear and jealousy. She
must let Rose see that she was not dangerous; and she knew how.
She began by asking Rose when she was coming out to Putney? And Rose
answered that she was busy and couldn't say for sure.
"You won't be busy in August, will you? If you'll come then I'll show
you a room you haven't seen, the prettiest room in the house."
Rose drew in her breath. Her face had the soft flush in it that came
when she was deeply moved.
"I've got some of its dear little things all ready for it now," said
Jane. "You must see them."
"I should dearly love to."
"I never thought, Rose, that I should have it."
Rose meditated. "They come," said she, "mostly to them that doesn't
think."
"There's only one thing, Rose. I'm afraid. Oh, I'm so dreadfully
afraid."
"I shouldn't be afraid," said Rose, "if it was me."
"It's because I've been so happy."
"You'll be 'appier still when it's come. It'd make all the difference to
me if I 'ad a child. But that's what I haven't and never shall have."
"You don't know. You don't know."
"Yes. I do know." Rose's mouth trembled. She glanced unaware at the
pillow that lay so smooth beside her own. "I 'aven't let on to him how
much I want it. I wouldn't" (Rose steadied her mouth to get the words
out). "Not if it was ever so."
"You darling," said Jane, and kissed her, and at that Rose burst into
tears.
"I oughtn't to be keeping you here," she said. And they left the
bedroom.
"Aren't you coming in?" said Jane.
Rose had turned away from her at Tanqueray's door.
"I can't," she whispered. "Not with me eyes all swelled up like this."
She went down-stairs to her little kitchen, where in the half-darkness
she crouched down beside Minny who, with humped shoulders and head that
nodded to the fender, dozed before the fire.