Their eyes met in conflict. It was as if they were measuring each other"s moral value.
"I should make you a bigger offer, Miss Holland," he said; "only I believe you don"t want that."
"No. Certainly I don"t want that."
He paused. "Do you mind telling me if you"ve any other chance?"
"None. Not the ghost of one."
"So that, but for this all-important question of the date, I might have had you?"
"You might have had me."
"I"m almost glad," he said, "to have lost you--that way."
"Which way?" said she.
At that moment a servant of the house brought in tea. She announced that Mr. Nicholson was down-stairs and would like to see Miss Holland.
"Very well. You"ll stay?" Jane said to Brodrick.
He did. He was, Jane reflected, the sort of man who stayed.
"Here"s Mr. Brodrick," said she, as Nicky entered. "He"s going to make all our fortunes."
"His own, too, I hope," said Brodrick. But he looked sulky, as if he resented Nicholson"s coming in.
"Of course," he said, "they tell me the whole thing"s a dream, a delusion, that it won"t pay. But I know how to make it pay. The reason why magazines go smash is because they"re owned by men with no business connections, no business organization, no business capacity. I couldn"t do it if I hadn"t the "Telegraph" at my back. Practically I make the paper pay for the magazine."
And he went into it, in his quick, quiet voice, expounding and expanding his scheme, laying it down fairly and squarely, with lucidity but no apparent ardour.
It was Nicky who was excited. Jane could see cupidity in Nicky"s eyes as Brodrick talked about his magazine. Brodrick dwelt now on the commercial side of it which had no interest for Nicky. Yet Nicky was excited. He wanted badly to get into Brodrick"s magazine, and Brodrick wanted, Brodrick was determined to keep him out. There was a brief struggle between Nicky"s decency and his desire; and then Nicky"s desire and Brodrick"s determination fairly skirmished together in the open.
Brodrick tried heavily to keep Nicky off it. But Nicky hovered airily, intangibly about it. He fanned it as with wings; when Brodrick dropped it he picked it up, he sustained it, he kept it flying high. Every movement intimated in Nicky"s most exquisite manner that if Brodrick really meant it, if he had positively surrendered to the expensive dream, if he wanted, in short, to keep it up and keep it high, he couldn"t be off letting Nicky in.
Brodrick"s shameless intention had been to out-stay Nicky. And as long as Nicky"s approaches were so delicate as to provoke only delicate evasions, Brodrick stayed. But in the end poor Nicky turned desperate and put it to him point-blank. "Was there, or was there not to be a place for poets in the magazine?"
At that Brodrick got up and went.
"Nicky," said Jane, as the door closed on the retreating editor, "he came for my book, and I"ve made him take George Tanqueray"s instead."
"I wish," said he, "you"d make him take my poems. But you can"t. n.o.body can _make_ Brodrick do anything he doesn"t want to."
"Oh----" said Jane, and dismissed Brodrick. "It"s ages since I"ve seen you."
"I heard that you were immersed, and so I kept away."
"That was very good of you," said she.
It struck her when she had said it that perhaps it was not altogether what Nicky would have liked her to say.
"I _was_ immersed," she said, "in Hambleby."
"Is he finished?"
"All but. I"m waiting to put a crown upon his head."
"Were you by any chance making it--the crown?"
"I haven"t even begun to make it."
"I shan"t spoil him then if I stay?"
"No. I doubt if anything could spoil him now."
"You"ve got him so safe?"
"So safe. And yet, Nicky, there are moments when I can hardly bear to think of Hambleby for fear he shouldn"t be all right. It"s almost as if he came too easily."
"He couldn"t. All my best things come," said Nicky "--like _that_!"
A furious sweep of Nicky"s arm simulated the onrush of his inspiration.
"Oh, Nicky, how splendid it must be to be so certain."
"It is," said Nicky solemnly.
After all, it argued some divine compensation somewhere that a thing so dest.i.tute should remain unaware of its dest.i.tution, that a creature so futile and diminutive should be sustained by this conviction of his greatness. For he _was_ certain. Nothing could annihilate the illusion by which Nicky lived. But it was enough to destroy all certainty in anybody else, and there were moments when the presence of Nicky had this shattering effect on Jane. She could not have faced him until Hambleby was beyond his power to slay.
But Nicky, so far from enlarging on his certainty, meditated with his eyes fixed on the clock.
"You don"t dine, do you," he said suddenly, "till half-past seven?"
"You"ll stay, won"t you?"
"I think I mustn"t, thanks. I only wanted to know how long I had."
"You"ve really half-an-hour, if you _won"t_ dine."
"I say, you"re not expecting anybody else?"
"I didn"t expect Mr. Brodrick. I"ve kept everybody out so long that they"ve left off coming."
"I wonder," said he, still meditating, "if _I_"ve come too soon."
She held her breath. Nicky"s voice was charged with a curious emotion.
"I knew," he went on, "it wasn"t any use my coming as long as you were immersed. I wouldn"t for worlds do anything that could possibly injure your career."