In February the interruption ceased. Mabel was better. She was well
enough for John to take her to the Riviera.
Jane was, as they said, "off" again. But not all at once; not without
suffering, for the seventh time, the supreme agony of the creator--that
going down into the void darkness, to recall the offended Power, to
endure the tortures that propitiate the revolted Will.
Her book was finished in March and appeared in April. Her terror of the
published thing was softened to her by the great apathy and fatigue
which now came upon her; a fatigue and an apathy in which Henry
recognized the beginning of the illness he had prophesied. He reminded
her that he had prophesied it long ago; and he watched her, sad and
unsurprised, but like the angel he invariably was in the presence of
physical suffering.
She was thus spared the ordeal of the birthday celebration. It was
understood that she would give audience in her study to her friends, to
Arnott Nicholson, to the Protheros and Tanqueray. Instead of all going
in at once, they were to take it in turns.
She lay there on her couch, waiting for Tanqueray to come and tell her
whether this time it was life or death.
Nicky's turn came first. Nicky was unspeakably moved at the sight of
her. He bent over her hand and kissed it; and her fear misread his mood.
"Dear Nicky," she said, "are you consoling me?"
He stood solemnly before her, inspired, positively flaming with
annunciation.
"Wait--wait," he said, "till you've seen Him. I won't say a word."
Nicky had never made himself more beautiful; he had never yet, in all
his high renouncing, so sunk, so hidden himself behind the splendour
that was Tanqueray.
"And Prothero" (he laid beauty upon beauty), "he'll tell you himself.
He's on his knees."
The moments passed. Nicky in his beauty and his pain wandered outside in
the garden, leaving her to Prothero and Laura.
And in the drawing-room, where Tanqueray waited for his turn, Jane's
family appraised her triumph. Henry, to Caro Bickersteth in a corner,
was not sure that he did not, on the whole, regret it. These books
wrecked her nerves. She was, Henry admitted, a great genius; but great
genius, what was it, after all, but a great Neurosis?
Not far from them Louis Levine, for John's benefit, calculated the
possible proceeds of the new book. Louis smiled his mobile smile as he
caught the last words of Henry's diagnosis. Henry might say what he
liked. Neurosis, to that extent, was a valuable asset. He could do,
Louis said, with some of it himself.
Brodrick, as he surveyed with Tanqueray the immensity of his wife's
achievement, wondered whether, for all that, she had not paid too high a
price. And Sophy Levine, who overheard him, whispered to Frances that it
was he, poor dear, who paid.
Tanqueray got up and left the room. He had heard through it all the
signal that he waited for, the sound of the opening of Jane's door.
Her eyes searched his at the very doorway. "Is it all right, George?"
she whispered. Her hand, her thin hand, held his until he answered.
"It's tremendous."
"Do you remember two years ago--when you wouldn't drink?"
"I drank this time. I'm drunk, Jinny, drunk as a lord."
"I swore I'd make you drink, this time; if I died for it."
She leaned back in the corner of her couch, looking at him.
"Thank heaven you've never lied to me; because now I know."
"I wonder if you do. It's alive, Jinny; it's organic; it's been
conceived and born." He brought his chair close to the table that stood
beside her couch, a barrier between them. "It's got what we're all
praying for--that divine unity----"
"I didn't think it could have it. _I_'m torn in pieces."
"You? I knew you would be."
"It wasn't the book."
"What was it?" he said fiercely.
"It was chiefly, I think, Mabel Brodrick's illness."
"_Whose_ illness?"
"John's wife's. You don't know what it means."
"I can see. You let that woman prey on you. She sucks your life. You're
white; you're thin; you're ill, too."