"Or," said she, "for my making you take Mr. Tanqueray?"
"You didn"t _make_ me," he said. "I took him to please you."
"Well," she said; "and you"ll take me now, to please me."
She rose.
"I must say good-bye to Miss Collett. How nice," she said, "Miss Collett is."
"Isn"t she?" said he.
He saw her politely to the station.
That evening he drank his coffee politely in the drawing-room with Miss Collett.
"Do you know," he said, "Miss Holland thinks you"re nice."
To his wonder Miss Collett did not look as if the information gave her any joy.
"Did she say so?"
"Yes. Do you think _her_ nice?"
"Of course I do."
"What," said he, "do you really think of her?" He was in the habit of asking Miss Collett what she thought of people. It interested him to know what women thought, especially what they thought of other women.
It was in the spirit of their old discussions that she now replied.
"You can see she is a great genius. They say geniuses are bad to live with. But I do not think she would be."
He did not answer. He was considering very profoundly the question she had raised.
Which was precisely what Miss Collett meant that he should do.
As the silver-chiming clock struck ten she rose and said good-night. She never allowed these sittings to be prolonged past ten. Neither did Brodrick.
"And I am not to read any more proofs?" she said.
"Do you like reading them?"
She smiled. "It"s not because I like it. I simply wanted to save you."
"You do save me most things."
"I try," she said sweetly, "to save you all."
He smiled now. "There are limits," he said, "even to your power of saving me. And to my capacity for being saved."
The words were charged with a significance that Brodrick himself was not aware of; as if the powers that worked in him obscurely had used him for the utterance of a divination not his own.
His secretary understood him better than he did himself. She had spent three years in understanding him. And now, for the first time in three years, her lucidity was painful.
She could not contemplate serenely the thing she thought she had seen.
Therefore she drew a veil over it and refused to believe that it was there.
"He did not mean anything," said Gertrude to herself. "He is not the sort of man who means things." Which was true.
XX
Brodrick, living on Putney Heath, was surrounded by his family. It was only fifteen minutes" walk from his front door to his brother John"s house in Augustus Road, Wimbledon; only five minutes from his back door to Henry"s house in Roehampton Lane. You went by a narrow foot-track down the slope to get to Henry. You crossed the Heath by Wimbledon Common to get to John. If John and Henry wanted to get to each other, they had to pa.s.s by Brodrick"s house.
Moor Grange was a half-way house, the great meeting-place of all the Brodricks.
One fine warm Sunday in mid-May, about four o"clock, all the Brodricks except Hugh were a.s.sembled on Hugh"s lawn. There was Mr. John Brodrick, the eldest brother, the head of the firm of Brodrick and Brodrick, Electrical Engineers. There was Dr. Henry Brodrick, who came next to John. He had brought Mrs. Heron, their sister (Mrs. Heron lived with Henry, because Mr. Heron had run away with the governess, to the unspeakable scandal of the Brodricks). There was Mrs. Louis Levine, who came next to Mrs. Heron. There was Mrs. John Brodrick, not to be separated from her husband, who, in a decorous dumbness and secrecy, adored her; and Mr. Louis Levine, who owed his position among the Brodricks to the very properly apparent devotion of his wife.
And there were children about. Eddy and Winny Heron, restless, irrepressible in their young teens, sprawled at their mother"s feet and hung over her in att.i.tudes of affection. One very small Levine trotted to and fro on fat legs over the lawn. The other, too small to run, could be seen in the background, standing in Gertrude Collett"s lap and trampling on her.
The Levines had come over from St. John"s Wood, packed tight in their commodious brand-new motor-car, the symbol of Levine"s prosperity. So that all Brodrick"s family were at Putney this afternoon.
They were sitting in the delicate shadow of the lime-tree. Outside, the lawn was drenched with light, light that ran quivering into the little inlets and pools among the shadows. The cropped gra.s.s shone clear as emerald, and all the garden showed clear-cut and solid and stable in its propriety and order.
Still more distinct, more stable and more solid, more ineradicably fixed in order and propriety, were the four figures of the Brodricks. Sitting there, in a light that refused, in spite of the lime-tree, to lend itself to any mystery or enchantment, they maintained themselves in a positively formidable reality. All these Brodricks had firm, thick-skinned faces in which lines came slowly, and were few but strong.
Faces, they were, of men who have lived in absolute sobriety and sanity, untorn by any temptation to live otherwise; faces of women to whom motherhood has brought the ultimate content.
Comfortably material persons, sitting in a deep peace, not to be rapt from it by any fantasy, nor beguiled by any dream, they paid only in a high morality their debt to the intangible.
This afternoon, in spite of themselves, they were roused somewhat from the peace they sat in. They were expecting somebody.
"I suppose, when she arrives, we shall all have to sit at the lady"s feet," said Mrs. Levine.
"_I_"ve no objection," said the Doctor; "after what she"s done."
"It was pretty decent of her," said Levine. He was dark, nervous and solemn-eyed, a lean man of his race, and handsome. Sophy Brodrick had not loved her husband when she married him. She adored him now, because of the beauty that had pa.s.sed from him into her children.
"I say, Uncle Louis, you _might_ tell me what she _did_ do," said Eddy Heron.
"She got your Uncle Hughy out of a tight place, my boy."
"I say, what"s _he_ been doing?"
Mr. Levine smiled inscrutably, while his wife shook her head at him.
"He"s been going it, has he? Good old Uncle Hughy!"