And Jane wrote back, "It is. Will you look at it?" "Nothing would please me better," said Tanqueray by return. Not a word about his wife. Jane sent Hambleby (by return also) and regretted it the moment after.
In two days a telegram followed. "Coming to see you to-day at four.
Tanqueray."
Absolutely as if nothing had happened, he came. Her blood sang a song in her brain; her heart and all her pulses beat with the joy and tumult of his coming. But when he was there, when he had flung himself into his old place by the fireside and sat smiling at her across the hearthrug, of a sudden her brain was on the watch, and her pulses and her heart were still.
"What"s been the matter?" he said. "You look worn out."
"I am worn out."
"With Book, Jinny?"
She smiled and shook her head. "No. With people, George. Everlasting people. I have to work like ten horses, and when I think I"ve got a spare minute, just to rest in, some one takes it. Look there. And there.
And there."
His eyes followed her wild gesture. Innumerable little notes were stacked on Jinny"s writing-table and lay littered among her ma.n.u.scripts.
Invitation cards, theatre tickets, telegrams were posted in every available s.p.a.ce about the room, schedules of the tax the world levies on celebrity.
Tanqueray"s brows crumpled as he surveyed the scene.
"Before I can write a line of Hambleby," said Jinny--"one little line--I"ve got to send answers to all that."
"You don"t mean to tell me," he said sternly, "that you dream of answering?"
"If it could only end in dreaming."
He groaned. "Here have I been away from you, how long? Six months, is it? Only six months, Jinny, just long enough to get married in, and you go and do the very things I told you not to. You"re not to be trusted by yourself for a single minute. I told you what it would be like."
"George dear, can"t you do something? Can"t you save me?"
"My dear Jinny, I"ve tried my level best to save you. But you wouldn"t _be_ saved."
"Ah," said she, "you don"t know how I"ve hated it."
"Haven"t you liked any of it."
"No," she said slowly. "Not any of it."
"The praise, Jinny, didn"t you like the praise? Weren"t you just a little bit intoxicated?"
"Did I look intoxicated?"
"No-no. You carried it fairly well."
"Just at first, perhaps, just at first it goes to your head a bit. Then you get sick of it, and you don"t want ever to have any more of it again. And all the time it makes you feel such a silly a.s.s."
"You were certainly not cut out for a celebrity."
"But the awful thing is that when you"ve swallowed all the praise you can"t get rid of the people. They come swarming and tearing and clutching at you, and bizzing in your ear when you want to be quiet. I feel as if I were being buried alive under awful avalanches of people."
"I told you you would be."
"If," she cried, "they"d only kill you outright. But they throttle you.
You fight for breath. They let go and then they"re at you again. They come telling you how wonderful you are and how they adore your work; and not one of them cares a rap about it. If they did they"d leave you alone to do it."
"Poor Jinny," he murmured.
"Why am I marked out for this? Why is it, George? Why should they take me and leave you alone?"
"It"s your emotional quality that fetches them. But it"s inconceivable how _you_"ve been fetched."
"I wanted to see what the creatures were like. Oh, George, that I should be so punished when I only wanted to see what they were like."
"Poor Jinny. Poor gregarious Jinny."
She shook her head.
"It was so insidious. I can"t think, I really can"t think how it began."
"It began with those two spluttering imbecilities you asked me to dine with."
"Oh no, poor things, they haven"t hurt me. They"ve gone on to dine at other tables. They"re in it, too. They"re torn and devoured. They dine and are dined on."
"But, my dear child, you must stop it."
"If I could. If I could only break loose and get away."
"Get away. What keeps you?"
"Everything keeps me."
"By everything you mean----?"
"London. London does something to your brain. It jogs it and shakes it; and all the little ideas that had gone to sleep in their little cells get up and begin to dance as if they heard music. Everything wakes them up, the streams of people, the eyes and the faces. It"s you and Nina and Laura. It"s ten thousand things. Can"t you understand, George?"
"It"s playing the devil with your nerves, Jinny."
"Not when I go about in it alone. That"s the secret."
"It looks as if you were alone a lot, doesn"t it?" He glanced significantly around him.
"Oh--that!"
"Yes," he said, "that. Will you really let me save you?"
"Can you?"
"I can, if I do it my own way."