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 grat.i.tude. He had always been aware of that. But in that fortnight his grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sion for Jane Holland had converged to whip it up. It flagged with the dying down of pa.s.sion 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 hara.s.sed 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 embarra.s.sment, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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."