They were saying now that Jane left her husband too much to Gertrude
Collett, and that it was hard on Hugh.
They supposed, in their unastonished acceptance of the facts, that
things would have to go on like this indefinitely. It was partly Hugh's
own fault. That was John Brodrick's view of it. Hugh had given her her
head and she was off. And when Jane was off (Sophy declared) nothing
could stop her.
And yet she was stopped.
Suddenly, in the full fury of it, she stopped dead.
She had given herself ten months. She had asked for ten months; not a
day more. But she had not allowed for friction or disturbance from the
outside. And the check--it was a clutch at the heart that brought her
brain up staggering--came entirely from the outside, from the uttermost
rim of her circle, from Mabel Brodrick.
In January, the last but three of the ten months, Mabel became ill. All
autumn John Brodrick's wife had grown slenderer and redder-eyed, her
little high-nosed, distinguished face thinned and drooped, till she was
more than ever like a delicate bird.
Jane heard from Frances vague rumours of the source of Mabel's malady.
The powers of life had been cruel to the lady whom John Brodrick had so
indiscreetly married.
It was incredible to all of them that poor Mabel should have the power
to stay Jinny in her course. But it was so. Mabel had became attached to
Jinny. She clung, she adhered; she drew her life through Jinny. It was
because she felt that Jane understood, that she was the only one of them
who really knew. It was, she all but intimated, because Jane was not a
Brodrick. When she was with the others, Mabel was reminded perpetually
of her failure, of how horribly she had made John suffer. Not that they
ever said a word about it, but they made her feel it; whereas Jinny had
seen from the first that she suffered too; she recognized her perfect
right to suffer. And when it all ended, as it was bound to end, in a bad
illness, the only thing that did Mabel any good was seeing Jinny.
That was in January (they put it all down to the cold of January); and
every day until the middle of February when Mabel was about again, Jane
tramped across the Heath to Augustus Road, always in weather that did
its worst for Mabel, always in wind or frost or rain. She never missed a
day.
Sometimes Henry was with her. He made John's house the last point of his
round that he might sit with Mabel. He had never sat with her before; he
had never paid very much attention to her. It was the change in Henry
that made Jane alive to the change in Mabel; for the long, lean, unhappy
man, this man of obstinate distastes and disapprovals, had an extreme
tenderness for all physical suffering.
Since Mabel's illness he had dropped his disapproving attitude to Jane.
She could almost have believed that Henry liked her.
One day as they turned together into the deep avenue of Augustus Road,
she saw kind grey eyes looking down at her from Henry's height.
"You're very good to poor Mabel, Jinny," he said.
"I can't do much."
"Do what you can. We shan't have her with us very long."
"Henry----"
"She doesn't know it. John doesn't know it. But I thought I'd tell you."
"I'm glad you've told me."
"It's a kindness," he went on, "to go and see her. It takes her mind off
herself."
"She doesn't complain."
"No. She doesn't complain. But her mind turns in on itself. It preys on
her. And of course it's terrible for John."
She agreed. "Of course, it's terrible--for John." But she was thinking
how terrible it was for Mabel. She wondered, did they say of her and of
_her_ malady, how terrible it was for Hugh?
"This is a great interruption to your work," he said presently, with the
peculiar solemnity he accorded to the obvious.
Her pace quickened. The frosty air stung her cheeks and the blood
mounted there.
"It won't hurt you," he said. "You're better when you're not working."
"Am I?" said she in a voice that irritated Henry.