He had to stoop to let her do it. So held, he couldn"t hope to escape from her candid, searching eyes.
"You aren"t afraid of me now? I haven"t made it go? You haven"t lost it through me?"
"You"ve made it stay."
"Have I? Have I done that for you?"
He drew in his breath with a sob of pa.s.sion. "Ah--the things you do!"
"None of them matter except that," she said.
She left him with that, turning on the threshold to add, "Why bother, then, about the other stupid things?"
It was as if she had said to him that since he owed that to her, a debt so unique, so enormous that he could never dream of paying it back in one lifetime, wasn"t it rather absurd and rather mean of him to make a fuss about the rest? How could he think of anything but that? Didn"t the one stupendous obligation cover everything, and lay him, everlastingly abject, at her feet? The only graceful act left him was to kneel down and kiss her feet. And that was what, in spirit, he was always doing. As for her, she would consider herself paid if she saw the difference and knew that she had made it.
It was only now, in the hour of achievement, that, looking back and counting all his flashes and his failures, he realized the difference she had made. It had seemed to him once that he held his gift, his vision, on a fragile and uncertain tenure, that it could not be carried through the tumult and shock of the world without great danger and difficulty. The thing, as he had said, was tricky; it came and went; and the fear of losing it was the most overpowering of all fears.
He now perceived that, from the beginning, the thing that had been most hostile, most dangerous to his vision was this fear. Time after time it had escaped him when he had hung on to it too hard, and time after time it had returned when he had let it go, to follow the thundering batteries of the world. He had not really lost it when he had left off clutching at it or had flung himself with it into the heart of the danger. He could not say that he had seen it in the reeking wards, and fields b.l.o.o.d.y with battle, or when his hands were at their swift and delicate work on the bodies of the wounded. But it had the trick of coming back to him in moments when he least looked for it. He saw now that its brief vanishings had been followed by brief and faint appearances, and that when it had left him longest it had returned to stay. The times of utter dest.i.tution were succeeded by perfect and continuous possession. He saw that nothing had been fatal to it except his fear.
He had tested it because of his fear. He had chosen his profession as the extreme test, because of his fear. He had given up his profession, again because of his fear, fear of success in it, fear of the world"s way of rewarding heroism, the dreadful fear of promotion, of being caught and branded and tied down. He had thought that to be forced into a line, to be committed to medicine and surgery, was to burn the ships of G.o.d, to cut himself off for ever from his vision.
Looking back, he saw that his fear of the world had been nothing to his fear of women, of the half-spiritual, half-sensual snare. He had put away this fear, and stood the ultimate test. He had tied himself to a woman and bowed his neck for her to cling to. He would have judged this att.i.tude perilous in the extreme, incompatible with vision, with seeing anything but two diminutive feet and the inches of earth they stood in.
And it was only since he had done this dangerous thing and done it thoroughly, only since he had staked his soul to redeem his body, that his vision had become secure. It really stayed. He could turn from it, but it was always with him; he could hold and command it at his will.
She was right. If he could take that from her, if he was in for it to that extent, why _did_ he bother about the other stupid things?
And yet he bothered. All that autumn he worked harder than ever at his journalism. He seemed to gather to himself all the jobs that were going on the "Morning Telegraph." He went the round of the theatres on first nights, reporting for the "Morning Telegraph" on plays that were beneath the notice of its official dramatic critic. He reviewed poetry and _belles lettres_ for the "Morning Telegraph;" and he did a great deal of work for it down in Fleet Street with a paste-pot and a pair of scissors.
Prothero"s genius had liberated itself for the time being in his last poem; it was detached from him; it wandered free, like a blessed spirit invisible, while Prothero"s brain agonized and journalized as Laura said. There was no compromise this time, no propitiation, no playing with the beautiful prose of his occasional essays. He plunged from his heavenly height sheer into the worst blackness of the pit; he contorted himself there in his obscure creation of paragraphs and columns. His spirit writhed like a fine flame, trammelled and tortured by the grossness of the stuff it kindled, and the more it writhed the more he piled on the paragraphs and columns. He seemed, Laura said, to take a pleasure in seeing how much he could pile on without extinguishing it.
In December he caught cold coming out of a theatre on a night of north wind and sleet, and he was laid up for three weeks with bronchitis.
And at night, that winter, when sounds of coughing came from the Consumption Hospital, they were answered through the open windows of the house with the iron gate. And Laura at Owen"s side lay awake in her fear.
LVIII
There was one thing that Prothero, in his journalism, drew the line at.
He would not, if they paid him more than they had ever paid him, more than they had ever dreamed of paying anybody, he would not review another poet"s work. For some day, he said, Nicky will bring out a volume of his poems, and in that day he will infallibly turn to me. If, in that day, I can lay my hand upon my heart and swear that I never review poetry, that I never have reviewed it and never shall, I can look Nicky in his innocent face with a clean soul.
But when Nicky actually did it (in the spring of nineteen-nine) Prothero applied to Brodrick for a holiday. He wanted badly to get out of town.
He could not--when it came to the agonizing point--he could not face Nicky.
At least that was the account of the matter which Tanqueray gave to Brodrick when the question of Prothero"s impossibility came up again at Moor Grange. Brodrick was indignant at Prothero"s wanting a holiday, and a month"s holiday. It was preposterous. But Jane had implored him to let him have it.
Jinny would give a good deal, Tanqueray imagined, to get out of town too. It was more terrible for her to face Nicky than for any of them.
Tanqueray himself was hiding from him at that moment in Brodrick"s study. But Jinny, with that superb and incomprehensible courage that women have, was facing him down there in the drawing-room.
It was in the drawing-room, later on in the afternoon, that Brodrick found his wife, shrunk into a corner of the sofa and mopping her face with a pocket-handkerchief. Tanqueray had one knee on the sofa and one arm flung tenderly round Jinny"s shoulder. He met, smiling, the husband"s standstill of imperturbable inquiry.
"It"s all right, Brodrick," he said. "I"ve revived her. I"ve been talking to her like a father."
He stood looking down at her, and commented--
"Nicky brought a book of poems out and Jinny cried."
"It was th--th--the last straw," sobbed Jinny.
Brodrick left them together, just to show how imperturbable he was.
"George," she said, "it was horrible. Poor Nicky stood there where you are, waiting for me to say things. And I couldn"t, I couldn"t, and he saw it. He saw it and turned white----"
"He _is_ white," said Tanqueray.
"He turned whiter. And he burst out into a dreadful perspiration. And then--oh, don"t laugh--it was so awful--he took my hand and wrung it, and walked out of the room, very dignified and stiff."
"My dear child, he only thought you were speechless with emotion."
But Jane was putting on her hat and coat which lay beside her.
"Let"s get out somewhere," she said, "anywhere away from this intolerable scene. Let"s tear over the Heath."
She tore and he followed. Gertrude saw them go.
She turned midway between Putney and Wimbledon. "Oh, how my heart aches for that poor lamb."
"It needn"t. The poor lamb"s heart doesn"t ache for itself."
"It does. I stabbed it."
"Not you!"
"But, George--they were dedicated to me. Could my cup of agony be fuller?"
"I admit it"s full."
"And how about Nicky"s?"
"Look here, Jinny. If you or I or Prothero had written those poems we should be drinking cups of agony. But there is _no_ cup of agony for Nicky. He believes that those poems are immortal, and that none of us can rob them of their immortality."
"But if he"s slaughtered--and he will be--if they fall on him and tear him limb from limb, poor innocent lamb!"
"He isn"t innocent, your lamb. He deserves it. So he won"t get it. It"s only poets like Prothero who are torn limb from limb."
"I don"t know. There are people who"d stick a knife into him as soon as look at him."