A bell rang. It was four o"clock. Somebody was calling.
As to one preoccupied with a bereavement, it seemed to her incredible that anybody _could_ call so soon. She was then reminded that she had a large acquaintance who would be interested in seeing how she took it.
She had got to meet all these people as if nothing had happened. She remembered now that she had promised Caroline Bickersteth to go to tea with her to-day. If she wanted to present an appearance of nothing having happened, she couldn"t do better than go to Caro"s for tea. Caro expected her and would draw conclusions from her absence.
So might her caller if she declared herself not at home.
It was Nicky, come, he said, to know if she were going to Miss Bickersteth"s, and if he might have the pleasure of taking her there.
That was all he cared to go for, the pleasure of taking her.
Jane had never thought of Nicky being there. He was a barrister and he had chambers, charming chambers, in the Temple, where he gave little tea-parties and (less frequently) looked up little cases. But on Sundays he was always a little poet down at Wendover.
They needn"t start at once, he said, almost as if he knew that Jane was dreading it. He sat and talked; he talked straight on end; talked, not literature, but humble, innocent ba.n.a.lities, so unlike Nicky who cared for nothing that had not the literary taint.
It was a sign of supreme embarra.s.sment, the only one he gave. He did not mention Tanqueray, and for a moment she wondered if he had heard. Then she remembered. Of course, it was Nicky who had seen Tanqueray through.
Nicky was crowning his unlikelihood by refraining from the slightest allusion to the event. He was, she saw with dreadful lucidity, afraid of hurting her. And yet, he was (in his exquisite delicacy) behaving as if nothing had happened. They were going together to Miss Bickersteth"s as if nothing had happened. His manner suggested that they were moving together in a world where nothing could happen; a world of delightful and amicable superficialities. She was not to be afraid of him; he was, as it were, looking another way; he wasn"t even aware of any depths. The sheer beauty and gentleness of him showed her that he had seen and understood thoroughly what depths there were.
It was her certainty of Nicky"s vision that drove her to the supreme act of courage.
"Why aren"t we talking," she said, "about George Tanqueray?"
Nicky blushed in a violent distress. Even so, in the house of mourning, he would have blushed at some sudden, unsoftened reference to the deceased.
"I didn"t know," he said, "whether he had told you."
"Why shouldn"t he?"
Poor Nicky, she had made him blunder, so upset was he by the spectacle of her desperate pluck. He really _was_ like a person calling after a bereavement. He had called on account of it, and yet it was the last thing he was going to talk about. He had come, not to condole, but to see if there was any way in which he could be of use.
"Well," said Nicky, "he seemed to have kept it so carefully from all his friends----"
"He told _you_----Why, you were there, weren"t you?"
It was as if she had said, "You were there--you saw him die."
"Yes." Nicky"s face expressed a tender relief. If she could talk about it----"But it was only at the last minute."
"I wonder," said she, "why he didn"t tell us."
"Well, you know, I think it was because she--the lady----"
He hesitated. He knew what would hurt most; and he shrank almost visibly from mentioning Her.
"Yes--you"ve forgotten the lady."
She smiled, and he took courage. "There it is. The lady, you see, isn"t altogether a lady."
"Oh, Nicky----"
He did not look at her. He seemed to be a partaker in what he felt to be her suffering and Tanqueray"s shame.
"Has he known her long?" she said.
"About two months."
She was right then. It had been since that night. It had been her own doing. She had driven him to her.
"Since he went to Hampstead then?"
"Yes."
"Who was she?"
"His landlady"s daughter, I think, or a niece. She waited on him and--she nursed him when he was ill."
Jane drew in her breath with an almost audible sound. Nicky had sunk into his chair in his att.i.tude of vicarious, shamefaced misery.
It made her rally. "Nicky," she said, "why do you look like that? I don"t think it"s nice of you to sit there, giving him away by making gloomy faces, in a chair. Why shouldn"t he marry his landlady"s daughter if he likes? You ought to stand up for him and say she"s charming. She is. She must be; or he wouldn"t have done it."
"He ought not to have done it."
"But he has. It had to happen. Nothing else could have happened."
"You think so? It seems to me the most unpredestined, the most horribly, fantastically fortuitous occurrence."
"It was what he wanted. Wouldn"t you have given him what he wanted?"
"No," said Nicky, "not if it wasn"t good for him."
"Oh, Nicky, how do you know what"s good for him? You"re not George Tanqueray."
"No. If I were I"d have----" He stopped. His pa.s.sion, growing suddenly, recklessly, had brought him to the verge of the depth they were trying to avoid.
"If you were," said she, with amazing gaiety, "you"d have married this lady who isn"t a lady. And then where would you have been?"
"Where indeed?" said Nicky bitterly.
Jane"s face, so gay, became suddenly tragic. She looked away, staring steadily, dumbly, at something that she saw. Then he knew that he had raised a vision of the abyss, and of Tanqueray, their Tanqueray, sinking in it. He must keep her from contemplating that, or she would betray herself, she would break down.
He searched his heart for some consoling inspiration, and found none. It was his head which suggested that irrelevance was best.
"_When_," said he, by way of being irrelevant, "are you going to give us another big book?"
"I don"t know," she said. "Never, I think."
He looked up. Her eyes shone perilously over trembling pools of tears.
He had not been irrelevant at all.
"You don"t _think_ anything of the sort," he said, with a sharp tenderness.