Whatever Tanqueray thought of Brodrick's chill, it and the fear it
inspired in Gertrude had been grave enough to keep him in the house. For
three days (the last of September) he had not been in Fleet Street, in
his office.
There was agitation there, and agitation in the mind of the editor and
of his secretary. Tanqueray's serial was running its devastating course
through the magazine, and the last instalment of the manuscript was
overdue (Tanqueray was always a little late with his instalments).
Brodrick was worried, and Gertrude, at work with him in his study, tried
to soothe him. They telephoned to the office for the manuscript. The
manuscript was not there. The clerk suggested that it was probably still
with the type-writer, Miss Ranger. They telephoned to Miss Ranger, who
replied that the manuscript had been typed and sent to the author three
weeks ago for revision.
Brodrick sent a messenger to Tanqueray's house for the manuscript. He
returned towards evening with a message that Mrs. Tanqueray was out, Mr.
Tanqueray was in the country and the servant did not know his address.
They telegraphed to Addy Ranger's rooms for his address. The reply came,
"Post Office, Okehampton, Devon."
Brodrick repeated it with satisfaction as he wrote it down: "Post
Office, Okehampton, Devon."
Gertrude was silent.
"He's got friends somewhere in Devonshire," Brodrick said.
"At the Post Office?" she murmured.
"Of course--if they're motoring."
Gertrude was again silent (she achieved her effects mainly by silences).
"We'd better send the wire there," said Brodrick.
They sent it there first thing in the morning.
Before noon a message came from Mrs. Tanqueray: "Address, 'The Manor,
Wilbury, Wilts.' Have sent your message there."
Admirable Mrs. Tanqueray!
"We've sent _our_ wire to the wrong address," said Brodrick.
"It's the right one, I fancy, if Miss Ranger has it."
"Mrs. Tanqueray's got the wrong one, then?"
They looked at each other. Gertrude's face was smooth and still, but her
eyes searched him, asking what his thoughts were.
They sent a wire to Wilbury.
Three days passed. No answer to their wires and no manuscript.
"He's left Okehampton, I suppose," said Brodrick.
"Or has he left Wilbury?"
"We'll send another wire there, to make sure."
She wrote out the form obediently. Then she spoke again.
"Of course he's at Okehampton." Her voice had an accent of joyous
certainty.
"Why 'of course'?"
"Because he went to Wilbury first. Mrs. Tanqueray said she sent our
message there--the one we sent three days ago. So he's left Wilbury and
he's staying in Okehampton."
"It looks like it."
"And yet--you'd have thought he'd have let his wife know if he was
staying."
"He probably isn't."
"He must be. The manuscript went there."
"Let's hope so, then we may get it to-morrow."
It was as if he desired to impress upon her that the manuscript was the
important thing.
It came as he had anticipated the next day. Miss Ranger sent it up by
special messenger.
"Good!" said Brodrick.
He undid the parcel hurriedly. The inner cover was addressed to Miss
Ranger in Tanqueray's handwriting. It bore the post-mark, Chagford.
"He's been at Chagford all the time!" said Gertrude.
(She had picked up the wrapper which Brodrick had thrown upon the
floor.)
Silence.
"T-t-t. It would have saved a day," she said, "if he'd sent this direct
to you instead of to Miss Ranger. Why couldn't he when he knew we were
so rushed?"
"Why, indeed?" he thought.
"There must have been more corrections," he said.
"She can't have typed them in the time," said Gertrude. She was
examining the inner cover. "Besides, she has sent it on unopened."
"Excellent Miss Ranger!"
He said it with a certain levity. But even as he said it his brain
accepted the inference she forced on it. If Tanqueray had not sent his
manuscript to Camden Town for corrections, he had sent it there for
another reason. The parcel was registered. There was no letter inside
it.
Brodrick's hand trembled as he turned over the pages of the manuscript.
Gertrude's eyes were fixed upon its trembling.
A few savage ink-scratches in Tanqueray's handwriting told where Miss
Ranger had blundered; otherwise the manuscript was clean. Tanqueray had
at last satisfied his passion for perfection.
All this Brodrick's brain took in while his eyes, feverish and intent,
searched the blank spaces of the manuscript. He knew what he was looking
for. It would be there, on the wide margin left for her, that he would
find the evidence that his wife and Tanqueray were together. He knew the
signs of her. Not a manuscript of Tanqueray's, not one of his last great
books, but bore them, the queer, delicate, nervous pencil-markings that
Tanqueray, with all his furious erasures, left untouched. Sometimes
(Brodrick had noticed) he would enclose them in a sort of holy circle of
red ink, to show that they were not for incorporation in the text. But
it was not in him to destroy a word that she had written.
But he could find no trace of her. He merely made out some humble
queryings of Miss Ranger, automatically erased.
The manuscript was in three Parts. As he laid down each, Gertrude put
forth a quiet hand and drew it to herself. He was too much preoccupied
to notice how minutely and with what intent and passionate anxiety she
examined it.
He was arranging the manuscript in order. Gertrude was absorbed in Part
Three. He had reached out for it when he remembered that the original
draft of Part Two had contained a passage as to which he had endeavoured
to exercise an ancient editorial right. He looked to see whether
Tanqueray had removed it.
He had not. The passage stood, naked and immense, tremendous as some
monument of primeval nature, alone in literature, simple, superb,
immortal; irremovable by any prayer. Brodrick looked at it now with a
clearer vision. He acknowledged its grandeur and bowed his head to the
power that was Tanqueray. Had he not been first to recognize it? It was
as if his suspicion of the man urged him to a larger justice towards the
writer.
He turned to Gertrude. "There are no alterations to be made, thank
heaven----"
"How about this?"
She slid the manuscript under his arm; her finger pointed to the margin.
He saw nothing.
"What?" He spoke with some irritation.
"This."
She turned up the lamp so that the light fell full upon the page. He
bent closer. On the margin, so blurred as to be almost indecipherable,
he saw his wife's sign, a square of delicate script. To a careless
reader it might have seemed to have been written with a light pencil and
to have been meant to stand. Examined closely it revealed the firm
strokes of a heavy lead obliterated with india-rubber. Gertrude's finger
slid away and left him free to turn the pages. There were several of
these marks in the same handwriting, each one deliberately erased. The
manuscript had been in his wife's hand within the last three days; for
three days certainly Tanqueray had been in Chagford, and for three weeks
for all Brodrick knew.
There was no reason why he should not be there, no reason why they
should not be together. Then why these pitiable attempts at concealment,
at the covering of the tracks?
And yet, after all, they had not covered them. They had only betrayed
the fact that they had tried. Had they? And which of them? Tanqueray in
the matter of obliteration would at any rate have been aware of the
utter inadequacy of india-rubber. To dash at a thing like india-rubber
was more the sudden, futile inspiration of a woman made frantic by her
terror of detection.
It was clear that Jane had not wanted him to know that Tanqueray was at
Chagford. She had not told him. Why had she not told him? She knew of
the plight they were in at the office, of the hue and cry after the
unappearing manuscript.
So his brain worked, with a savage independence. He seemed to himself
two men, a man with a brain that worked, following a lucid argument to
an obscure conclusion, and a man who looked on and watched its working
without attaching the least importance to it. It was as if _this_ man
knew all the time what the other did not know. He had his own light, his
own secret. He had never thought about it before (his secret), still
less had he talked about it. Thinking about it was a kind of profanity;
talking would have been inconceivable sacrilege. It was self-evident as
the existence of God to the soul that loves him; a secret only in that
it was profounder than appearances, in that it stood by the denial of
appearances, so that, if appearances were against it, what of that?
He was thinking about it now, obscurely, without images, barely with
words, as if it had been indeed a thing occult and metaphysical.
Thinking about it--that meant, of course, that he had for a moment
doubted it? It was coming back to him now, clothed with the mortal
pathos of its imperfection. She was dearer to him--unspeakably dearer,
for his doubt.
The man with the brain approached slowly and unwillingly the conclusion
that now emerged, monstrous and abominable, from the obscurity. If that
be so, he said, she is deliberately deceiving me.
And he who watched, he with the illuminating, incommunicable secret,
smiled as he watched, in scorn and pity. Scorn of the slow and ugly
movements of the intellect, and pity for a creature so mean as to employ
them.
In the silence that he kept he had not heard the deep breathing of the
woman at his side. Now he was aware of it and her.
He was positively relieved when the servant announced Mrs. Levine.
There was a look on Sophy's face that Brodrick knew, a look of
importance and of competence, a look it always had when Sophy was about
to deal with a situation. Gertrude's silent disappearance marked her
sense of a situation to be dealt with.
Brodrick rose heavily to greet his sister. There was a certain
consolation in her presence, since it had relieved him of Gertrude's.
Sophy, by way of prelude, inquired about Brodrick and the children and
the house, then paused to attack her theme.
"When's Jane coming back?" said she.
"I don't know," said Brodrick.
"She's been away two months."
"Seven weeks," said Brodrick.
"Isn't it about time she _did_ come back?"
"She's the best judge of that," said Brodrick.
Sophy's face was extraordinarily clear-eyed and candid as it turned on
him.
"George Tanqueray's at Chagford."
"How do you know?" (He really wondered.)
"Miss Ranger let it out to Louis this morning."
"Let it out? Why on earth should she keep it in?"
"Oh well, I don't suppose _she_ sees anything in it."
"No more do I," said Brodrick.
"You never saw anything," said Sophy. "I don't say there's anything to
see--all the same----"
She paused.
"Well?" He was all attention and politeness.
"All the same I should insist on her coming back."
He was silent, as though he were considering it.
"Or better still, go down and fetch her."
"I shall do nothing of the sort."
"Well, if you think it's wise to give her her head to that extent--a
woman with Jane's temperament----"
"What do you know about her temperament?"
Sophy shifted her ground. "I know, and you know the effect he has on
her, and the influence; and if you leave her to him--if you leave them
to themselves, down there--for weeks like that--you'll have nobody but
yourself to thank if----"
He cut her short.
"I have nobody but myself to thank. She shall please herself about
coming back. It she didn't come--I couldn't blame her."
Sophy was speechless. Of all the attitudes that any Brodrick could take
she had not expected this.
"We have made things too hard for her----" he said.
"We?"
"You and I--all of us. We've not seen what was in her."
Sophy repressed her opinion that they very probably would see now. As
there was no use arguing with him in his present mood (she could see
_that_), she left him.
Brodrick heard her motor hooting down Roehampton Lane. She was going to
dine at Henry's. Presently all the family would be in possession of the
situation, of Jane's conduct and his attitude. And there was Gertrude
Collett. He understood now that she suspected.
Gertrude had come back into her place.
He picked up some papers and took them to the safe which stood in
another corner of the room behind his writing-table. He wanted to get
away from Gertrude, to be alone with his secret and concealed, without
betraying his desire for solitude, for concealment. He knelt down by the
safe and busied himself there quite a long time. He said to himself, "It
couldn't happen. She was always honest with me. But if it did I
couldn't wonder. The wonder is why she married me."