(They wondered had she heard?)
"I can trust him with Mrs. Brodrick."
(They thought it strange that she should not consider Mrs. Brodrick serious. They said nothing, and in a moment Rose explained.)
"She"s like all these writin" people. _I_ know "em."
"Yes," said Prothero. "We"re a poor lot, aren"t we?"
(It was a mercy that she didn"t take it seriously.)
"Oh you--you"re different."
She had always had a very clear perception of his freedom from the literary taint.
"But Mrs. Brodrick now--she doesn"t care for "im. She"s not likely to.
She"ll never care for anybody but herself."
"What makes you think so?"
"Well--a woman who could walk off like that and leave "er little children--to say nothing of "er husband----"
"Isn"t it," said Prothero, "what you"re proposing to do yourself?"
"I "aven"t got any little children. She"s leavin" "er "usband to get away from" im, to please "erself. I"m leavin" mine to bring "im to me."
She paused, pensive.
"Oh, no, I"m not afraid of Mrs. Brodrick. She "asn"t got a "eart."
"No?"
"Not wot _I_ should call a "eart."
"Perhaps not," said Laura.
"I used to hate her when she came about the place. Leastways I tried to hate her, and I couldn"t."
She meditated in their silence.
"If it"s got to be anybody it"d best be "er. She"s given "im all she"s got to give, and he sees "ow much it is. "E goes to "er, I know, and "e"ll keep on going; and she--she"ll "old "im orf and on--I can see "er doin" of it, and I don"t care. As long as she "olds" im she keeps other women orf of "im."
Their silence marvelled at her.
"Time and again I"ve cried my eyes out, and _that_"s no good. I"ve got,"
said Rose, "to look at it sensible. She"s really keepin" "im for me."
Down-stairs, alone with Laura, she revealed herself more fully.
"I dare say "e won"t ever ask me to come back," she said. "But once I"ve gone out of the house for good and all, "e"ll come to me now and again.
He"s bound to. You see, _she_"s no good to him. And maybe, if I was to "ave a child--I might----"
She sighed, but in her eyes there kindled a dim hope, shining through tears.
"Wot I shall miss is--workin" for "im."
Her mouth trembled. Her tears fell.
LXVI
Between seven and eight o"clock on Tuesday evening, Tanqueray, in an execrable temper, returned to his home.
The little house had an air of bright expectancy, not to say of festival; it was so intensely, so unusually illuminated. Each window, with its drawn blind, was a golden square in the ivy-darkened wall.
Tanqueray let himself in noiselessly with his latchkey. He took up the pile of letters that waited for him on the hat-stand in the hall, and turned into the dining-room.
It smiled at him brilliantly with all its lights. So did the table, laid for dinner; the very forks and spoons smiled, twinkling and limping in irrepressible welcome. A fire burned ostentatiously in the hearth-place.
It sent out at him eager, loquacious tongues of flame, to draw him to the insufferable endearments of the hearth.
He was aware now that what he was most afraid of in this horrible coming back was his wife"s insupportable affection.
He turned the lights down a little lower. All his movements were noiseless. He was afraid that Rose would hear him and would come running down.
He went up-stairs, treading quietly. He meant to take his letters to his study and read them there. He might even answer some of them. Anything to stave off the moment when he must meet Rose.
The door of her bedroom was wide open. The light flared so high that he judged that Rose was in there and about to appear. He swung himself swiftly and dexterously round the angle of the stair-rail, and so reached his own door.
She must have heard him go in, but there was no answering movement from her room.
With a closed door behind him he sat down and looked over his letters.
Bills, proofs from the "Monthly Review," a letter from Laura that saddened him (he had not realized that Prothero was so ill). Last of all, at the bottom of the pile, a little note from Rose.
She had got it all into five lines. Five lines, rather straggling, rather shapeless lines that told him with a surprising brevity that his wife had decided on an informal separation, for his good.
No resentment, no reproach, no pa.s.sion and no postscript.
He went down-stairs by no means noiselessly.
In the hall, as he was putting on his hat, Susan came to him. She gave him a queer look. Dinner was ready, she said. The mistress had ordered the dinner that he liked. (Irrepressibly, insistently, thick with intolerable reminiscence, the savour of it streamed through the kitchen door.) The mistress had cooked it herself, Susan said. The mistress had told Susan that she was to be sure and make him very comfortable, and to remember what he liked for dinner. Susan"s manner was a little shy and a little important, it suggested the inauguration of a new rule, a new order, a life in which Rose was not and never would be.
Tanqueray took no notice whatever of Susan as he strode out of the house.
The lights were dim in the corner house by the Heath, opposite the willows. Still, standing on the upper ground of the Heath, he could see across the road through the window of his old sitting-room, and there, in his old chair by the fireside he made out a solitary seated figure that looked like Rose.
He came out from under the willows and made for the front door. He pushed past the little maid who opened it and strode into the room. Rose turned.