Brodrick had been alone in the first fortnight that followed Jane's
extraordinary departure. Instead of settling down to be comfortable with
Gertrude, he had packed her off to the seaside with the children and
their nurse. He had often wondered what he should do without Gertrude.
Now he knew. He knew by incontrovertible experiment that he could not do
without her at all. Everything, even the silver-chiming clock, went
wrong in her absence.
If, before that fortnight, Brodrick had been asked suddenly with what
feelings he regarded Gertrude Collett, he would have replied that he was
unaware of regarding the lady with any feelings, or indeed of regarding
her intimately at all. And he would have told the simple truth; for
Brodrick was of all men the most profoundly unaware.
Of course, there was gratitude. He had always been aware of that. But in
that fortnight his gratitude took on immense proportions, it became a
monstrous and indestructible indebtedness. He would have said that such
a feeling, so far from making him comfortable with Gertrude, would have
made him very uncomfortable, much more uncomfortable than he cared to
be. But curiously it was not so. In his renewed intercourse with
Gertrude he found a vague, exquisite satisfaction. The idea of not
paying Gertrude back in any way would have been intolerable; but what he
felt now was so very like affection that it counted as in some measure a
return. It was as if he had settled it in his own mind that he could now
meet the innocent demands which the angelic woman seemed to make.
Goodness knew it wasn't much to ask, a little attention, a little
display of the feeling so very like affection, after all that she had
done.
It pleased him now when he came, mooning drearily, into the
drawing-room, to find Gertrude in possession. He was almost always
tired now, and he was glad to lie back in an easy-chair and have his tea
handed to him by Gertrude. He looked forward, in fancy, to the
children's hour that followed tea-time, and he had made a great point at
first of having them to himself. But as a matter of fact, being almost
always tired, he enjoyed their society far more sincerely when Gertrude
was there to keep them in order.
That was her gift. She had been the genius of order ever since she had
come into his house--good gracious, was it ten years ago? Her gift made
her the most admirable secretary an editor could have. But she was more
than that now. She was a perfect companion to a physically fatigued and
intellectually slightly deteriorated man. He owned to the deterioration.
Jane had once told him that his intellect was a "lazy, powerful beast."
It seemed to him now, humbly regarding it, that the beast was and always
had been much more lazy than powerful. It required constant stimulus to
keep it going. His young ambition and his young passion for Jane Holland
had converged to whip it up. It flagged with the dying down of passion
and ambition. Things latterly had come a bit too late. His dream had
been realized too late. And he hadn't realized it, either. Jane had
realized it for him. No sooner had he got his wonderful magazine into
his own hands than he found out how little he cared about it. He had
become more and more absorbed in its external and financial aspects. He
showed more and more as the man of business, the slightly hustled and
harassed father of a family. He had put off intellectual things. His
deterioration weighed on him when he thought of Jane. But Gertrude's
gentleness stood between him and any acute perception of his state.
Sometimes when they sat together over her fire, lit in the September
evenings, there would be long silences. Gertrude never broke a silence.
She was conscious of it; she, as it were, held it--he could almost feel
her holding it--tenderly, as if she loved it; she handled it gently as
if she were afraid that it would break. She gave him so much sense of
her presence and no more. She kept before him, humbly, veiled from his
vision, the fact that she was there to serve him.
Sometimes a curious shyness would come on her. It was not the poignant
shyness of her youth which Brodrick had once found so distressing. It
conveyed no fear and no embarrassment, only (so he made it out) the
quietest, subtlest hint of possible flight. Its physical sign was the
pale, suffused flame in Gertrude's face, and that web of air across her
eyes. There was a sort of charm about it.
Sometimes, coming upon Gertrude alone and unaware of him, he would find
her sad. He said to himself then that she had no great cause for gaiety.
It was a pretty heavy burden for her, this shouldering of another
woman's responsibilities. He thought that Jane had sometimes been a
little hard on her. He supposed that was her (Jane's) feminine way. The
question was whether he himself might not have been kinder; whether
there wasn't anything that he might yet do to make life sweeter to her.
He was, in fact, profoundly sorry for Gertrude, more profoundly sorry
than he had been ten years ago, when she had come to him, and he had
kept her, though he didn't want her, because he was sorry for her. Well,
he wanted her enough now in all conscience.
Then the horrible thought would occur to him: supposing Gertrude were to
go? It was not conceivable, her going.
For, above all her gifts, Gertrude was an incomparable mother to those
unfortunate children (since Jane's departure Brodrick had begun to think
definitely of his children as unfortunate). It was distinctly
pleasurable the feeling with which he watched her ways in gathering them
to her side and leading them softly from the room when "Daddy was busy,"
or when "poor Daddy was so tired." More than once he found himself
looking out of his study window at her quiet play with the little boys
in the garden. Solemn little boys they were; and sometimes he wondered
whether little Jacky were not _too_ solemn, too preternaturally quiet
for four and a half, and rather too fond of holding Gertrude's hand. He
remembered how the little beggar used to romp and laugh when
Jinny----And remembering he would turn abruptly from the window with a
sore heart and a set face.
Three weeks passed thus. There was a perceptible increase in Gertrude's
shyness and sadness.
One evening after dinner she came to him in his study. He rose and drew
forward a chair for her. She glanced at his writing-table and at the
long proof-sheets that hung from it, streaming.
"I mustn't," she said. "You're busy."
"Well--not so busy as all that. What is it?"
"I've been thinking that it would perhaps be better if I were to leave."
"To leave? What's put that into your head?"
She did not answer. She appeared to him dumb with distress.
"Have the children been too much for you?"
"Poor little darlings--no."
"Little monkeys. Send them to me if you can't manage them."
"It isn't that. It is--I don't think it's right for me to stay."
"Not _right_?"
"On the children's account, I mean."
He looked at her and a shade, a tremor, of uneasiness passed over his
face.
"I say," he said, "you don't think they're unhappy?"
(She smiled).
"--Without their mother?" He jerked it out with a visible effort.
"No. If they were I shouldn't be so uneasy."
"Come, you don't want them to be unhappy, do you?"
"No. I don't want anybody to be unhappy. That's why I think I'd better
go."
"On their account?" he repeated, hopelessly adrift.
"Theirs, and their mother's."
"But it's on their account--and--their mother's--that we want you."
"I know; but it isn't fair to them or to--Mrs. Brodrick that they should
be so dependent on me."
"But--they're babies."
"Not quite--now. It isn't right that I should be taking their mother's
place, that they should look to me for everything."
"But," he broke in irritably, "they don't. Why should they?"
"They do. They must. You see, it's because I'm on the spot."
"I see." He hid his frowning forehead with one hand.
"I know," she continued, "it can't be helped. It isn't anybody's fault.
It's--it's inevitable."
"Yes. For the present it's--inevitable."
They both paused on that word.
"I suppose," he said, "you're really afraid that they'll get too fond of
you?"
"Yes."
"They're very fond of their mother, aren't they?"
"Yes--if she were always here."
"Of course, it does make your position a little difficult. Still, we
don't want them to fret for her--we don't want them not to be fond of
you. Besides, if you went, what on earth would they do without you?"
"They must learn to do without me. They would have some one else."
"Yes, and they'll be fond of _her_."
"Not in the same way. I think perhaps I've given myself too much to
them. There's something unusual, something tragic in the way they cling
to me. I know it's bad for them. I try to check it, and I can't. And
I've no right to let it go on. Nobody has a right except their mother."
"Well, it's awfully nice of you to feel like that about it. But as you
say, I don't see how it's to be helped. I think you're taking an
exaggerated view--conscientiously exaggerated. They're too young, you
know, to be very tragic."
She smiled as through tears.
"I don't think you'll save tragedy by going. Besides, what should I do?"
"You?"
"Yes. You don't appear to have thought of me."
"Don't I?" She smiled again, as if at some secret, none too happy, of
her own.
"If I had not thought of you I should never have come here a second
time. If I had not thought of you I should not have thought of going."
"Did you think I wanted you to go?"
"I--was not quite sure."