She was aware how wonderful the thing was that had happened to her, how
it stood solitary in the world.
It was not so, she knew, with any of the others. It was not so with Nina
or with Tanqueray. It was not so even with Jane. Jane had taken into her
life an element of tumult and division. The Lord her God (as Tanqueray
had once told her) was a consuming fire. Married she served a double and
divided flame. For Laura and Prothero the plots of Eden lay green for
ever inside the iron gate, and all heaven was held within the four walls
of a room.
They had established themselves, strictly speaking, in three rooms, two
for work and one for sleep. From the standpoint of tangible
requirements, three rooms on a silent upper floor was their idea of a
perfect lodging. It was Nina's, it had been Tanqueray's and Jane's. A
house, Laura declared, was all very well for a poet like poor Nicky
(what would poor Nicky be without his house?); but Jinny's house was a
curse to her, and Tanks did not regard his as an unmixed blessing,
though she would have died rather than say so to Tank's wife.
Tank's wife had her own theory of Laura's attitude. Laura was making (as
she herself had once made) the best of a bad job. Rose had the worst
opinion of Mr. Prothero's job; the job that sent him into Fleet Street
in all weathers and at all hours of the day and night, and was yet
compatible with his hanging about at home, doing nothing, four days out
of the seven. Rose was very fond of Laura and of Prothero. She had
always felt that they were interesting persons, persons who might any
day be ill and require to be taken care of, who required a good deal of
being taken care of, as it was. Rose superintended their removal. Rose,
very earnestly and gravely, took Laura's housekeeping in hand. To Rose,
Laura's housekeeping was a childish thing. She enlightened its innocence
and controlled its ardours and its indiscretions. Spring chicken on a
Tuesday and a Wednesday, and all Thursday nothing but such stuff as rice
and macaroni was, said Rose, a flyin' outrageous to extremes. She taught
them the secret of a breast of veal, stewed in rice (if rice they must
have), and many another admirable and economical contrivance.
Rose, fertile in contrivances, came and went a great deal to the house
with the iron gate. She, who had once felt that there was nothing in
common between her and her husband's friends, was being gradually drawn
to them. Jane's baby had been the link with Jane; Mr. Gunning had been
the link with Laura; she shared with Laura and Prothero the rare genius
of devotion to a person. Rose was shocked and bewildered by many of the
little ways of the creators, but she understood _their_ way. They loved
each other more than they loved anything they created. They loved each
other as she loved Tanqueray, but with a perfect comprehension.
Their happiness was ominously perfect. And as time went on Rose shook
her wise head over them. They had been married six months, and Rose was
beginning to think what a difference it would make if Laura was to have
a little baby, and she could come in sometimes and take care of it. But
Laura hadn't a little baby, and wasn't going, she said, to have a little
baby. She didn't want one. Laura was elated because she had had a book.
She had thought she was never going to have another, and it was the best
book she had ever had. Perfection, within her limits, had come to her,
now that she had left off thinking about it.
She couldn't have believed that so many perfect things could come to her
at once. For Laura, in spite of her happiness, remained a sceptic at
heart. She went cautiously, dreading the irony of the jealous gods.
Tanqueray had bullied his publishers into giving a decent price for
Laura's book. And, to the utter overthrow of Laura's scepticism, the
book went well. It had a levity and charm that provoked and captured and
never held you for a minute too long. A demand rose for more of the
same kind from the same author, and for her earlier books, the ones that
she had got out of bed to write, and that didn't and wouldn't sell.
For her husband's poems there had been no demand at all. He was not
unknown, far from it. He fell conspicuously, illustriously, between the
reviewers who reviled him, and the public who would have none of him. If
they had only let him alone. But they didn't. There was no poet more
pursued and persecuted than Owen Prothero. He trailed bleeding feet,
like a scapegoat on all the high mountains. He brought reproach and
ridicule on the friends who defended him, on Jane Holland, and on Nina
Lempriere and Tanqueray, which was what he minded most of all.
He was beginning to wonder whether, at this rate, there would be any
continued demand for his paragraphs, or for any of the work he did for
the "Morning Telegraph." His editors were by no means satisfied. If only
he could write columns and paragraphs as Laura wrote them. But he
couldn't really write them properly at all. And the dreadful irony of it
was that when he ought to be writing paragraphs, poems would come; and
that when he was writing poems he would have to leave off, as often as
not, to finish a paragraph.
Laura said to herself that she was going to make an end of all that.
Her gift was so small that it couldn't in any way crown him; there was
no room on his head for anything besides his own stupendous crown. But,
if she couldn't put it on his head, her poor gift, she could lay it, she
could spread it out at his feet, to make his way softer. He had praised
it; he had said that in its minute way it was wonderful and beautiful;
and to her the beauty and the wonder of it were that, though it was so
small, it could actually make his gift greater. It could actually
provide the difficult material conditions, sleep and proper food, an
enormous leisure and a perfect peace.
She was a little sore as she thought how she had struggled for years to
get things for poor Papa, and how he had had to do without them. And she
consoled herself by thinking, after all, how pleased he would have been
if he had known; and how fond he had been of Owen, and how nice Owen had
always been to him.
One evening she brought all the publishers' letters and the cheques, and
laid them before Owen as he sat in gloom.
"It looks as if we were going to make lots of money."
"We!"
"Yes, we; you and I. Isn't it funny?"
"I don't think it's funny at all," said Owen. "It might be--a little
funny, if I made it and not you."
"Darling--that would be funnier than anything."
Her laughter darted at him, sudden and sweet and shrill, and it cut him
to the heart. His gravity was now portentous.
"The beauty of it is," she persisted, defying all his gravity, "that,
if I can go on, you won't have to make it. And I shall go on, I feel
it; I feel myself going. I've got a dream, Owen, such a beautiful
dream. Some day, instead of sitting there breaking your heart over
those horrid paragraphs, instead of rushing down to Fleet Street in
the rain and the sleet and the fog, you shall ramp up and down here,
darling, making poems, and it won't matter if you wear the carpet
out, if you wear ten carpets. You shall make poems all day long, and
you--shall--never--write--another--paragraph again. You do them very
badly."
"You needn't remind me of that," said Owen in his gloom.
"But, surely, you don't want to do them _well_?"
"You know what I want."
"You talk as if you hadn't got it."
She crouched down beside him and laid her face against his knee.
"I don't think it's nice of you," she said, "not to be pleased when I'm
pleased."
His eyes lightened. His hand slid down to her and caressed her hair.
"I _am_ pleased," he said. "That's what I wanted, to see you going
strong, doing nothing but the work you love. All the same----"
"Well?"
"Can't you understand that I don't want to see my wife working for me?"
She laughed again. "You're just like that silly old Tanks. He couldn't
bear to see his wife working when she wanted to; so he wouldn't let her
work, and the poor little soul got ill with not having what she wanted.
You didn't want me to get ill, did you?"
"I wanted to take care of you--well or ill. I wanted to work for you all
my life long."
"And you wanted me to be happy?"
"More than anything I wanted you to be happy."
"But you didn't, and you don't want me to be happy--in my own way?"
He rose and lifted her from the floor where she crouched, and held her
so tight to him that he hurt her.
"My little one," he murmured, "can't you understand it? Can't you see
it? You're so small--so small."