A YEAR passed and half a year, and she had not found an answer to
Tanqueray's question.
She had gone on somehow. He himself had made it easier for her by his
frequent disappearances. He had found a place somewhere on Dartmoor
where he hid himself from the destroyers, from the dreadful little
people, where he hid himself from Rose. It helped her--not to have the
question raised.
Now (they were in August of nineteen-ten) Tanqueray was back again with
his question. He had left her, about eleven o'clock in the evening, in
her study, facing it. Not but that he had provided her with a solution,
a positive solution. "Jinny," he had said, "why don't you do as I do?
Why don't you go away, if it was only for a few months every year?"
It seemed so simple, Tanqueray's solution, that at first she wondered
why it had not occurred to her before. But as she looked back over the
last three years she saw why. It could not have occurred to her as long
as she had had the charge of her own children. She would not be
entertaining it now if Gertrude were not there, looking after them. And
it would not have been possible if the baby, the little girl, her third
child, had lived. She had wanted to have a little girl, just to show
what she could do. She had said, "There shall be one happy woman in the
world and she shall be my daughter."
But the little girl had never lived at all. She had been brought forth
dead in the night that followed Mabel Brodrick's death. Jane had been
with Mabel when she died. That was in January six months ago.
After that there had come the great collapse, the six weeks when she lay
quiet and Gertrude, like an angel, waited on her. She had been allowed
to have the little boys with her for hours at a time then, she being
utterly unable to excite them. Sometimes, when she was not well enough
to have them very long, Gertrude would bring them in to look at her, the
little solemn-eyed, quiet boys, holding Gertrude's hands. Every day
brought her a moment of pain when she saw them going out of the room
with Gertrude, led by her hand.
For six weeks Brodrick had been left very much to Gertrude. And
Gertrude's face in that time had flowered softly, as if she had entered
herself into the peace she made.
But in March Jane was on her feet again. In April Brodrick took her to
the Riviera, and her return (in May) was the return of that brilliant
and distracting alien who had invaded Brodrick's house seven years ago.
Jane having nothing to do but to recover had done it so completely that
Henry admitted that he would not have known her. To which she had rather
ominously replied that she knew herself, only too well.
Even before she went away, even lying quiet, she had been aware that
life was having its triumphant will of her. She had known all along, of
course, that (as Owen Prothero had told her) she was sound through and
through. Her vitality was unconquerable. Nothing could wreck her. Even
Henry would own that her body, when they gave it a chance, was as fine a
physical envelope as any woman could wish to have. Lying quiet, she had
been inclined to agree with Henry that genius--her genius at any
rate--was a neurosis; and she was not going to be neurotic any more.
Whatever it was, it had made things terribly complicated. And to Jane
lying quiet they had become absurdly simple. She herself was simplified.
She had been torn in pieces; and in putting herself together again she
had left out the dangerous, disintegrating, virile element. Whatever
happened now, she would no longer suffer from the presence in her of two
sexes contending for the mastery. Through it all, through all her
dreadful virility, she had always been persistently and preposterously
feminine. And lying quiet she was more than ever what George Tanqueray
had said she was not to be--a mere woman.
Therefore to Jane, lying quiet, there had been no question of how she
was to go on.
But to Jane on her feet again, in all her ungovernable, disastrous
energy, the question was as insistent as Tanqueray himself. Her genius
had recognized its own vehicle in her body restored to perfect health,
and three years' repression had given it ten times its power to dominate
and torture. It had thriven on the very tragedies that had brought her
low.
It knew its hour and claimed her. She was close upon thirty-nine. It
would probably claim her without remission for the next seven years. It
had been relentless enough in its youth; it would be terrible in its
maturity. The struggle, if she struggled, would tear her as she had
never yet been torn. She would have to surrender, or at any rate to make
terms with it. It was useless to fall back upon the old compromises and
adjustments. Tanqueray's solution was the only possible, the only
tolerable one. But it depended perilously upon Hugh's consent.
She went to him in his study where he sat peaceably smoking in the
half-hour before bed-time.
Brodrick merely raised his eyebrows as she laid it before him--her
monstrous proposal to go away--for three months. He asked her if three
months was not rather a long time for a woman to leave her home and her
children?
"I know," she said, "but if I don't----"
"Well?"
"I shall go to pieces."
He looked at her critically, incredulously.
"Why can't you say at once what's wrong?" he said. "Is there anything
you want that you don't have here? Is there any mortal thing that can be
done that isn't done?"
"Not any mortal thing."
"What is it then?"
"Hugh dear, did it never strike you that you are a very large family?
And that when it comes down on me it's in the proportion of about seven
to one?"
"Whoever _does_ come down on you?"
"John," said she, "was with me for two hours yesterday."
Brodrick lent his ear as to a very genuine grievance. John, since his
bereavement, was hardly ever out of the house.
"And I suppose," he said, "he bored you?"
"No, but he will call when I'm writing."
"Why on earth don't you send him away?"
"I would, if Mabel hadn't died. But how can you when he's unhappy? It
would hurt him so. And yet, supposing you were to die, what would John
say if I were to call on him at the works every day, and play with his
dynamos to distract my mind, or sit with him in his office rumpling his
hair, and dislocating his ideas till he didn't know the difference
between a steam-roller and an internal combustion engine? That's more or
less what John does to me. The only thing is to get away."
However, it was for Brodrick to decide, she said. And Brodrick said he
couldn't decide until he had thought it over.
She was very soon aware that she had caused a scandal in her husband's
family by her proposal to go away for three months. The scandal was not
altogether unconnected with George Tanqueray, since it was at his
suggestion that she proposed to take this unprecedented step. If she had
proposed to take it with him they could hardly have shown themselves
more horrified.
She knew how monstrous her conduct must appear to them. She could see it
all so clearly from their point of view. That had always been after all
her poor merit, that she could see things from other people's point of
view. Her vision indeed of them, of the way they took things, was apt to
be so vivid, so engrossing that it left her with no point of view of her
own. She carried into life itself and all its relations her virtue as an
artist, that effacement of her observing self in favour of the thing
observed.
That, Nina told her, was her danger. Nina happened to be with her on the
day when another family committee met and sat upon her case. They were
sitting on it now, up-stairs with Brodrick in his study. She knew
infallibly what their judgment would be. Just as she had seemed to them
so long a creature of uncertain health, she must seem now inconstant,
insincere, the incarnation of heartlessness, egotism and caprice. She
said to herself that it was all very well for Nina to talk. This insight
was a curse. It was terrible to know what people were thinking, to feel
what they were feeling. And they were seven to one, so that when she
gave them pain she had to feel seven times the pain she gave.
But after all they, her judges, could take care of themselves. This
family, that was one consolidated affection, was like a wall, it would
shelter and protect her so long as she was content to be sheltered and
protected; if she dashed herself against it it would break her in
pieces.
And Nina was saying, "Can't you take it into your own hands? Why should
you let these people decide your fate for you?"
"Hugh will decide it," she said. "He's with them up-stairs now."
"Is he asking their advice?"
"No, they're giving it him. That's my chance, Nina."
"Your chance?"
"My one chance. They'll put his back up and, if it's only to show them,
he'll let me go."
"Do you mean to say, Jinny, that if he didn't you wouldn't go?"
"I don't even know that I'd go if he minded very much."
"I wish to goodness George Tanqueray was here. He might make you----"
"What has he ever made me do?"
"He might make you see it."
"I do see it," said Jane.
She closed her eyes as one tired with much seeing. Nina's presence
hardly helped her. Nina was even more profoundly disturbing than George
Tanqueray; she had even less of consolation to offer to one torn and
divided, she herself being so supreme an instance of the glory of the
single flame.
The beauty and the wonder of it--in Nina--was its purity. Nina showed to
what a pitch it had brought her, the high, undivided passion of her
genius. Under it every trace of Nina's murkiness had vanished. She had
lost that look of restless, haggard adolescence, that horrible
intentness, as if her hand was always on the throat of her wild beast.
You saw, of course, that she had suffered; but you saw too that her
genius was appeased by her suffering. It was just, it was compassionate;
it had rewarded her for every pang.
Jane found herself saying beautiful things about Nina's genius. It was
the flame, unmistakably the pure flame. If solitude, if virginity, if
frustration could do that----She knew what it had cost Nina, but it was
worth it, seeing what she had gained.
Nina faced her with the eyes that had grown so curiously quiet.
"Ah, Jinny," she said, "could _you_ have borne to pay my price?"
She owned that she could not.
Up-stairs Brodrick faced his family where it sat in judgment upon Jane.
"What does she complain of?" said John.
"Interruption," said Hugh. "She says she never has any time to herself,
with people constantly running in and out."
"She doesn't mind," said Sophy, "how much time she gives to the
Protheros and the rest of them. Nina Lempriere's with her now. She's
been here three solid hours. As for George Tanqueray----"
John shook his head.
"That's what I don't like, Hugh, Tanqueray's hanging about the house at
all hours of the day and night. However you look at it, it's a most
undesirable thing."
"Oh--Tanqueray," said Brodrick, "_he_'s all right."
"He's anything but all right," said Henry. "A fellow who notoriously
neglects his wife."
"Well," said Brodrick, "I don't neglect mine."
"If you give her her head," said Henry.
He scowled at Henry.
"You know, Hugh," said Frances, "she really will be talked about."
"She's being talked about now," said Brodrick, "and I don't like it."
"There's no use talking," said John sorrowfully, and he rose to go.
They all rose then. Two by two they went across the Heath to John's
house, Sophy with Henry and Frances with John; and as they went they
leaned to each other, talking continuously about Hugh, and Tanqueray,
and Jane.
"If Hugh gives in to her in this," said Henry, "he'll always have to
give in."
"I could understand it," said Sophy, "if she had too much to do in the
house."
"It's not," said Frances, "as if there was any struggle to make ends
meet. She has everything she wants."
"Children----" said John.
"It's preposterous," said Henry.
When Nina had gone Brodrick came to Jane.
"Well," he said, "do you still want to go away for three months?"
"It's not that I want to, but I must."
"If you must," he said, "of course you may. I dare say it will be a very
good thing for you."
"Shall you mind, Hugh?"
"Oh dear me, no. I shall be very comfortable here with Gertrude."
"And Gertrude," she murmured, "will be very comfortable here with you."
That evening, about nine o'clock, the parlour-maid announced to Brodrick
in his study that Miss Winny and Mr. Eddy had called. They were in the
dining-room. When Brodrick asked if Mrs. Brodrick was with them he was
told that the young gentlemen had said expressly that it was Mr.
Brodrick whom they wished to see.
Brodrick desired that they should be brought to him. They were going
away, to stay somewhere with a school-fellow of Winny's, and he supposed
that they had looked in to say good-bye.
As they entered something told him, as he had not been told before, that
his young niece and nephew had grown up. It was not Winny's ripening
form and trailing gown, it was not the golden down on Eddy's upper lip;
it was not altogether that the outline of their faces had lost the
engaging and tender indecision of its youth. It was their unmistakable
air of inward assurance and maturity.
After the usual greetings (Brodrick was aware of a growing restraint in
this particular) Eddy, at the first opening, made for his point--_their_
point, rather. His uncle had inquired with urbane irony at what hour the
family was to be bereaved of their society, and how long it would have
to languish----
They were going, Eddy said, at ten in the morning, and a jolly good
thing too. They weren't coming back, either, any sooner than they could
help. They--well, they couldn't "stick it" at home just now.
They'd had (Winny interpolated) a row with Uncle Henry, a gorgeous row
(the colour of it was in Winny's face).
Brodrick showed no sign of surprise, not so much as a raised eyebrow. He
asked in quiet tones what it was all about?
Eddy, standing up before his uncle and looking very tall and manly,
gazed down his waistcoat at his boots.
"It was about Jin-Jin," Winny said.
(Eddy could almost have sworn that his uncle suffered a slight shock.)
"We can't stick it, you know, the way they're going on about her. The
fact is," said the tall youth, "we told Uncle Henry that, and he didn't
like it."
"You did, did you?"
"Yes. I know you'll say it isn't our business, but you see----"
"You see" (Winny explained), "we're so awfully fond of her."
Brodrick knew that he ought to tell the young rascals that their being
fond of her didn't make it any more their business. But he couldn't.
"What did you say to your Uncle Henry?"
He really wanted to know.
"Oh, we said it was all humbug about Jinny being neurotic. He's neurotic
himself and so he thinks everybody else is. He's got it regularly on the
brain."
(If, Brodrick thought, Henry could have heard him!)
"You can't think," said Winny, "how he bores us with it."
"I said he couldn't wonder if she _was_ neurotic, when you think what
she's got to stand. The boresomeness----" He left the idea to its own
immensity.
"Of what?" said Brodrick.
"Well, for one thing, you know, of living everlastingly with Gertrude."