He smiled his old teasing and tormenting smile.
"Are you sure you"re not just a little bit in love with that little banker"s clerk?"
"I was never in love with a banker"s clerk in my life. I"ve never even seen one except _in_ banks and tubes and places."
"I don"t care. It"s the way you"ll be had. It"s the way you"ll be had by Hambleby if you don"t look out. It"s the way," he said, "that"s absolutely forbidden to any artist. You"ve got to know Hambleby outside and inside, as G.o.d Almighty knows him."
"Well?" Jinny"s mind was working dangerously near certain personal matters. George himself seemed to be approaching the same borders. He plunged in an abyss of meditation and emerged.
"You can"t know people, you can"t possibly hope to know them, if you once allow yourself to fall in love with them."
"Can"t you?" she said quietly.
"No, you can"t. If G.o.d Almighty had allowed himself to fall in love with you and me, Jinny, he couldn"t have made us all alive and kicking. You must be G.o.d Almighty to Hambleby or he won"t kick."
"Doesn"t he kick?"
"Oh, Lord, yes. You haven"t gone in deep enough to stop him. I"m only warning you against a possible danger. It"s always a possible danger when I"m not there to look after you."
He rose. "Anything," he said, "is possible when I"m not there."
She rose also. Their hands and their eyes met.
"That"s it," she said, "you weren"t there, and you won"t be."
"You"re wrong," said he, "I"ve always been there when you wanted me."
He turned to go and came back again.
"If I don"t like to see you celebrated, Jinny, it"s because I want to see you immortal."
"You don"t want to be alone in your immortality?"
"No. I don"t want to be alone--in my immortality."
With that he left her. And he had not said a word about his wife.
Neither for that matter had Jane. She wondered why she had not.
"At any rate," she thought, "_I_ haven"t hurt his immortality."
XVI
A week after his visit to Jane Holland, Tanqueray was settled, as he called it, in rooms in Bloomsbury. He had got all his books and things sent down from Hampstead, to stay in Bloomsbury for ever, because Bloomsbury was cheap.
It had not occurred to him to think what Rose was to do with herself in Bloomsbury or he with Rose. He had brought her up out of the little village of Suss.e.x where they had lodged, in a farmhouse, ever since their marriage. Rose had been happy down in Suss.e.x.
And for the first few weeks Tanqueray had been happy too. He was never tired of playing with Rose, caressing Rose, talking nonsense to Rose, teasing and tormenting Rose for ever. The more so as she provoked him by turning an imperturbable face to the attack. He liked to lie with his head in Rose"s lap, while Rose"s fingers played with his hair, stirring up new ideas to torment her with. He was content, for the first few weeks, to be what he had become, a sane and happy animal, mated with an animal, a dear little animal, superlatively happy and incorruptibly sane.
He might have gone on like that for an interminable number of weeks but that the mere rest from all intellectual labour had a prodigiously recuperative effect. His genius, just because he had forgotten all about it, began with characteristic perversity to worry him again. It wouldn"t let him alone. It made him more restless than Rose had ever made him. It led him into ways that were so many subtle infidelities to Rose. It tore him from Rose and took him out with it for long tramps beyond the Downs; wherever they went it was always too far for Rose to go. He would try, basely, to get off without her seeing him, and managed it, for Rose was so sensible that she never saw.
Then it made him begin a book. He wrote all morning in a room by himself. All afternoon he walked by himself. All evening he lay with his head in Rose"s lap, too tired even to tease her.
But, because she had Tanqueray"s head to nurse in the evenings, Rose had been happy down in Suss.e.x. She went about the farm and stroked all the animals. She borrowed the baby at the farm and nursed it half the day.
And in the evening she nursed Tanqueray"s head. Tanqueray"s head was never bothered to think what Rose was doing when she was not nursing it.
Then, because his book made him think of Jane Holland, he sat down one day and wrote that letter to Jinny.
He did not know that it was because of Jinny that he had come back to live in Bloomsbury.
They had been a month in Bloomsbury, in a house in Torrington Square.
Rose was sitting alone in the ground-floor room that looked straight on to the pavement. Sitting with her hands before her waiting for Tanqueray to come to lunch. Tanqueray was up-stairs, two flights away, in his study, writing. She was afraid to go and tell him lunch was ready. She had gone up once that morning to see that he didn"t let his fire out, and he hadn"t liked it; so she waited. There was a dish of cutlets keeping hot for him on the hearth. Presently he would come down, and she would have the pleasure of putting the cutlets on the table and seeing him eat them. It was about the only pleasure she could count on now.
For to Rose, as she sat there, the thought had come that for all she saw of her husband she might as well not be married to him. She had been better off at Hampstead when she waited on him hand and foot; when she was doing things for him half the day; when, more often than not, he had a minute to spare for a word or a look that set her heart fairly dancing. She had agreed to their marriage chiefly because it would enable her to wait on him and n.o.body but him, to wait on him all day long.
And he had said to her, first thing, as they dined together on their wedding-day, that he wasn"t going to let his wife wait on him. That was why they lived in rooms (since he couldn"t afford a house and servant), that she might be waited on. He had hated to see her working, he said; and now she wouldn"t have to work. No, never again. And when she asked him if he liked to see her sitting with her hands before her, doing nothing, he said that was precisely what he did like. And it had been all very well so long as he had been there to see her. But now he wasn"t ever there.
It was worse than it was down in Suss.e.x. All morning he shut himself up in his study to write. After lunch he went up there again to smoke. Then he would go out by himself, and he might or might not come in for dinner. All evening he shut himself up again and wrote. At midnight or after he would come to her, worn out, and sleep, lying like a dead man at her side.
She was startled by the sound of the postman"s knock and the flapping fall of a letter in the letter-box. It was for Tanqueray, and she took it up to him and laid it beside him without a word. To speak would have been fatal. He had let his fire go out (she knew he would); so, while he was reading his letter, she knelt down by the hearth and made it up again. She went to work very softly, but he heard her.
"What are you doing there?" he said.
"I thought," said she, "I was as quiet as a mouse."
"So you were. Just about. A horrid little mouse that keeps scratching at the wainscot and creeping about the room and startling me."
"Do I startle you?"
"You do. Horribly."
Rose put down the poker without a sound.
He had finished his letter and had not begun writing again. He was only looking at his letter. So Rose remarked that lunch was ready. He put the letter into a drawer, and they went down.
About half-way through lunch he spoke.
"Look here," he said, "you _must_ keep out of the room when I"m writing."
"You"re always writing now."
Yes. He was always writing now; because he did not want to talk to Rose and it was the best way of keeping her out of the room. But as yet he did not know that was why, any more than he knew that he had come to live in London because he wanted to talk to Jinny. The letter in his drawer up-stairs was from Jinny, asking him if she might not come and see his wife. He was not sure that he wanted her to come and see his wife. Why should she?
"You"ll "urt your brain," his wife was saying, "if you keep on writ-writin", lettin" the best of the day go by before you put your foot out of doors. It would do you all the good in the world if you was to come sometimes for a walk with me----"