She moved with such soft feet, on so fine and light a wing that, but for
the blessed effects of it, they were hardly aware of her presence in the
house. Owing to her consummate genius for self-effacement, Brodrick
remained peculiarly unaware. The bond of her secretaryship no longer
held them. It had lapsed when Brodrick married, and Gertrude found
herself superseded as the editor grew great.
For more than a year Brodrick's magazine had had a staff of its own, and
its own office where Miss Addy Ranger sat in Gertrude's seat. Addy no
longer railed at the impermanence and mutability of things. Having
attained the extreme pitch of speed and competence, she was now
established as Brodrick's secretary for good. She owed her position to
Jane, a position from which, Addy exultantly declared, not even
earthquakes could remove her.
You would have said nothing short of an earthquake could remove the
"Monthly Review." It looked as if Brodrick's magazine, for all its
dangerous splendour, had come to stay, as if Brodrick, by sheer fixity
and the power he had of getting what he wanted, would yet force the
world to accept his preposterous dream. He had gone straight on, deaf to
his brother-in-law's warning and remonstrance; he had not checked for
one moment the flight of his fantasy, nor changed by one nervous
movement his high attitude. Month after month, the appearance of the
magazine was punctual, inalterable as the courses of the moon.
Bold as Brodrick was, there was no vulgar audacity about his venture.
The magazine was not hurled at people's heads; it was not thrust on
them. It was barely offered. By the restraint and dignity of his
advertisements the editor seemed to be saying to his public, "There it
is. You take it or you leave it. In either case it is there; and it will
remain there."
And strangely, inconceivably, it did remain. In nineteen-six Brodrick
found himself planted with apparent security on the summit of his
ambition. He had a unique position, a reputation for caring, caring with
the candid purity of high passion, only for the best. He counted as a
power unapproachable, implacable to mediocrity. Authors believed in him,
adored, feared, detested him, according to their quality. Other editors
admired him cautiously; they praised him to his face; in secret they
judged him preposterous, but not absurd. They all prophesied his
failure; they gave him a year, or at the most three years.
Some wondered that a man like Brodrick, solid, if you like, but after
all, well, of no more than ordinary brilliance, should have gone so far.
It was said among them that Jane Holland was the power behind Brodrick
and his ordinary brilliance and his most extraordinary magazine. The
imagination he displayed, the fine, the infallible discernment, the
secret for the perfect thing, were hers, they could not by any
possibility be Brodrick's.
Caro Bickersteth, who gathered these impressions in her continuous
intercourse with the right people, met them with one invariable
argument. If Brodrick wasn't fine, if he wasn't perceptive, if he hadn't
got the scent, Caro challenged them, how on earth did he discern Jane
Holland? His appreciation of her, Caro informed one or two eminent
critics, had considerably forestalled their own. He was the first to
see; he always was the first. He had taken up George Tanqueray when
other editors wouldn't look at him, when he was absolutely unknown. And
when Caro was reminded that there, at any rate, Jane Holland had been
notoriously behind Brodrick's back, and that the editor was, notoriously
again, in love with her, Caro made her point triumphantly, maintaining
that to be in love with Jane Holland required some subtlety, if it came
to that; and pray how, if Brodrick was devoid of it, did Jane Holland
come to be in love with _him_?
It was generous of Caro, for even as sub-editor she was no longer
Brodrick's right hand. To the right and to the left of him, at his back
and perpetually before him, all round about him she saw Jane.
The wonder was that she saw her happy. It was Jane who observed to Caro
how admirably they all of them, she, Addy Ranger, Gertrude, Brodrick,
and those two queer women, Jane Brodrick and Jane Holland, were settled
down into their right places, with everything about them incomparably
ordered and adjusted.
Jane marvelled at the concessions that had been made to her, at the
extent to which things were being done for her. Her hours were no longer
confounded and consumed in supervising servants, interviewing
tradespeople, and struggling with the demon of finance. They were all,
Jane's hours, serenely and equitably disposed. She gave her mornings to
her work, a portion of the afternoon to her son, and her evenings to her
husband. Sometimes she sat up quite late with him, working on the
magazine. Brodrick and the baby between them divided the three hours
which were hers before dinner. The social round had ceased for Jane.
Brodrick had freed her from the destroyers, from the pressure of the
dreadful, clever little people. She was hardly yet aware of the more
formidable impact of his family.
What impressed her was Brodrick's serene acceptance of her friends, his
authors. He was wonderful in his brilliant, undismayed enthusiasm, as he
followed the reckless charge, the shining onset of the talents. He
accepted even Tanqueray's murderous, amazing ironies. If Brodrick's
lifted eyebrows confessed that Tanqueray was amazing, they also
intimated that Brodrick remained perpetually unamazed.
But, as an editor, he drew the line at Arnott Nicholson.
It was the sensitive Nicky who first perceived and pointed out a change
in Jane. She moved among them abstractedly, with mute, half alienated
eyes. She seemed to have suffered some spiritual disintegration that was
pain. She gave herself to them no longer whole, but piecemeal. At times
she seemed to hold out empty, supplicating hands, palms outward,
showing that she could give no more. There was, she seemed to say, no
more left of her.
Only Tanqueray knew how much was left; knew of her secret, imperishable
resources, things that were hidden profoundly even from herself; so
hidden that, even if she gave him nothing, it was always possible to him
to help himself. To him she could not change. His creed had always been
the unchangeableness, the indestructibility of Jinny.
Still, he assented, smiling, when little Laura confided to him that to
see Jane Brodrick in Brodrick's house, among Brodricks, was not seeing
Jinny. There was too much Brodrick. It would have been better, said
Laura, if she had married Nicky.
He agreed. There would never have been too much of Nicky. But Laura
shook her head.
"It isn't a question of proportion," she said. "It isn't that there's
too much Brodrick and too little Jinny. It's simply that Jinny isn't
there."
Jane knew how she struck them. There was sadness for her, not in their
reproaches, for they had none, but in their recognition of the things
that were impossible. They had always known how it would be if she
married, if she was surrounded by a family circle.
There was no denying that she was surrounded, and that the circle was
drawing rather tight. And she was planted there in the middle of it,
more than ever under observation. She always had been; she had known it;
only in the beginning it had not been quite so bad. Allowances had been
made for her in the days when she did her best, when she was seen by all
of them valiantly struggling, deplorably handicapped; in the days when,
as Brodrick said, she was pathetic.
For the Brodricks as a family were chivalrous. Even Frances and Sophy
were chivalrous; and it had touched them, that dismal spectacle of Jane
doing her sad best. But now she was in the position of one to whom all
things have been conceded. She was in for all the consequences of
concession. Everything had been done for her that could be done. She was
more than ever on her honour, more than ever pledged to do her part. If
she failed Brodrick now at any point she was without excuse. Every nerve
in her vibrated to the touch of honour.
Around her things went with the rhythm of faultless mechanism. There was
no murmur, no perceptible vibration at the heart of the machine. You
could not put your finger on it and say that it was Gertrude. Yet you
knew it. Time itself and the awful punctuality of things were in
Gertrude's hand. You would have known it even if, every morning at the
same hour, you had not come upon Gertrude standing on a chair winding up
the clock that Jane invariably forgot to wind. You felt that by no
possibility could Gertrude forget to wind up anything. She herself was
wound up every morning. She might have been a clock. She was wound up by
Brodrick; otherwise she was self-regulating, provided with a
compensation balance, and so long as Brodrick wound her, incapable of
going wrong. Jane envied her her secure and secret mechanism, her
automatic rhythm, the delicate precision of her ways. Compared with them
her own performance was dangerous, fantastic, a dance on a tight-rope.
She marvelled at her own preternatural poise.
She was steady; they could never say she was not steady. And they could
never say it was not difficult. She had so many balls to keep going.
There was her novel; and there was Brodrick, and the baby, and
Brodrick's family, and her own friends. She couldn't drop one of them.
And at first there came on her an incredible, effortless dexterity. She
was a fine juggler on her tight-rope, keeping in play her golden balls
that multiplied till you could have sworn that she must miss one. And
she never missed. She kept her head; she held it high; she fixed her
eyes on the tossing balls, and simply trusted her feet not to swerve by
a hair's-breadth. And she never swerved.
But now she was beginning to feel the trembling of the perfect balance.
It was as if, in that marvellous adjustment of relations, she had
arrived at the pitch where perfection topples over. She moved with tense
nerves on the edge of peril.
How tense they were she hardly realized till Tanqueray warned her.
It was on Friday, that one day of the week when Brodrick was kept late
at the office of the "Morning Telegraph." And it was August, two months
after the coming of Gertrude Collett. Tanqueray, calling to see Jane, as
he frequently did on a Friday, about five o'clock in the afternoon,
found her in her study, playing with the baby.
She had the effrontery to hold the baby up, with his little naked legs
kicking in Tanqueray's face. At ten months old he was a really charming
baby, and very like Brodrick.
"Do you like him?" she said.
He stepped back and considered her. She had put her little son down on
the floor, where, by an absurd rising and falling motion of his rosy
hips, he contrived to travel across the room towards the fireplace.
Tanqueray said that he liked the effect of him.
"The general effect? It _is_ heartrending."
"I mean his effect on you, Jinny. He makes you look like some nice,
furry animal in a wood."
At that she snatched the child from his goal, the sharp curb of the
hearthstone, and set him on her shoulder. Her face was turned up to him,
his hands were in her hair. Mother and child they laughed together.
And Tanqueray looked at her, thinking how never before had he seen her
just like that; never before with her body, tall for sheer slenderness,
curved backwards, with her face so turned, and her mouth, fawn-like,
tilting upwards, the lips half-mocking, half-maternal.
It was Jinny, shaped by the powers of life.
"Now," he said, "he makes you look like a young Maenad; mad, Jinny, drunk
with life, and dangerous to life. What are you going to do with him?"
At that moment Gertrude Collett appeared in the doorway.
She returned Tanqueray's greeting as if she hardly saw him. Her face was
set towards Jane Brodrick and the child.
"I am going," said Jane, "to give him to any one who wants him. I am
going to give him to Miss Collett. There--you may keep him as long as
you like."
Gertrude advanced, impassive, scarcely smiling. But as she took the
child from Jane, Tanqueray saw how the fine lines of her lips tightened,
relaxed, and tightened again, as if her tenderness were pain.
She laid the little thing across her shoulder and went from them without
a word.
"He goes like a lamb," said Jane. "A month ago he'd have howled the
house down."
"So that's how you've solved your problem?" said Tanqueray, as he closed
the door behind Miss Collett.
"Yes. Isn't it simple?"
"Very. But you always were."
From his corner of the fireside lounge, where he seated himself beside
her, his eyes regarded her with a grave and dark lucidity. The devil in
them was quiet for a time.
"That's a wonderful woman, George," said she.
"Not half so wonderful as you," he murmured. (It was what Brodrick had
once said.)
"She's been here exactly two months and--it's incredible--but I've begun
another book. I'm almost half through."
His eyes lightened.
"So it's come back, Jinny?"
"You said it would."
"Yes. But I think I told you the condition. Do you remember?"
She lowered her eyes, remembering.
"What was it you said?"
"That you'd have to pay the price."
"Not yet. Not yet. And perhaps, after all, I shan't have to. I mayn't be
able to finish."
"What makes you think so?"
"Because I've been so happy over it."
Of a sudden there died out of her face the fawn-like, woodland look, the
maternal wildness, the red-blooded joy. She was the harassed and
unquiet Jinny whom he knew. It was so that her genius dealt with her.
She had been swung high on a strong elastic, luminous wave; and now she
was swept down into its trough.
He comforted her as he had comforted her before. It was, he assured her,
what he was there for.
"We're all like that, Jinny, we're all like that. It's no worse than I
feel a dozen times over one infernal book. It's no more than what you've
felt about everything you've ever done--even Hambleby."
"Yes." She almost whispered it. "It _is_ worse."
"How?"
"Well, I don't know whether it is that there isn't enough time--yet, or
whether I've really not enough strength. Don't tell anybody I said so.
Above all, don't tell Henry."
"I shouldn't dream of telling Henry."
"You see, sometimes I feel as if I was walking on a tight-rope of time,
held for me, by somebody else, over an abyss; and that, if somebody else
were suddenly to let go, there I should be--precipitated. And sometimes
it's as if I were doing it all with one little, little brain-cell that
might break any minute; or with one little tight nerve that might snap.
It's the way Laura used to feel. I never knew what it was like till now.
Poor little Laura, don't you remember how frightened we always were?"
He was frightened now. He suggested that she had better rest. He tried
to force from her a promise that she would rest. He pointed out the
absolute necessity of rest.
"That's it. I'm afraid to rest. Lest--later on--there shouldn't be any
time at all."
"Why shouldn't there be?"
"Things," she said wildly and vaguely, "get hold of you. And yet, you'd
have thought I'd cut myself loose from most."
"Cut yourself looser."
"But--from what?"
"Your relations."
"How can I. I wouldn't if I could."
"Your friends, then--Nina, Laura, Prothero, Nicky--me."
"You? I can't do without you."