For six weeks Brodrick had been left very much to Gertrude. And Gertrude"s face in that time had flowered softly, as if she had entered herself into the peace she made.
But in March Jane was on her feet again. In April Brodrick took her to the Riviera, and her return (in May) was the return of that brilliant and distracting alien who had invaded Brodrick"s house seven years ago.
Jane having nothing to do but to recover had done it so completely that Henry admitted that he would not have known her. To which she had rather ominously replied that she knew herself, only too well.
Even before she went away, even lying quiet, she had been aware that life was having its triumphant will of her. She had known all along, of course, that (as Owen Prothero had told her) she was sound through and through. Her vitality was unconquerable. Nothing could wreck her. Even Henry would own that her body, when they gave it a chance, was as fine a physical envelope as any woman could wish to have. Lying quiet, she had been inclined to agree with Henry that genius--her genius at any rate--was a neurosis; and she was not going to be neurotic any more.
Whatever it was, it had made things terribly complicated. And to Jane lying quiet they had become absurdly simple. She herself was simplified.
She had been torn in pieces; and in putting herself together again she had left out the dangerous, disintegrating, virile element. Whatever happened now, she would no longer suffer from the presence in her of two s.e.xes contending for the mastery. Through it all, through all her dreadful virility, she had always been persistently and preposterously feminine. And lying quiet she was more than ever what George Tanqueray had said she was not to be--a mere woman.
Therefore to Jane, lying quiet, there had been no question of how she was to go on.
But to Jane on her feet again, in all her ungovernable, disastrous energy, the question was as insistent as Tanqueray himself. Her genius had recognized its own vehicle in her body restored to perfect health, and three years" repression had given it ten times its power to dominate and torture. It had thriven on the very tragedies that had brought her low.
It knew its hour and claimed her. She was close upon thirty-nine. It would probably claim her without remission for the next seven years. It had been relentless enough in its youth; it would be terrible in its maturity. The struggle, if she struggled, would tear her as she had never yet been torn. She would have to surrender, or at any rate to make terms with it. It was useless to fall back upon the old compromises and adjustments. Tanqueray"s solution was the only possible, the only tolerable one. But it depended perilously upon Hugh"s consent.
She went to him in his study where he sat peaceably smoking in the half-hour before bed-time.
Brodrick merely raised his eyebrows as she laid it before him--her monstrous proposal to go away--for three months. He asked her if three months was not rather a long time for a woman to leave her home and her children?
"I know," she said, "but if I don"t----"
"Well?"
"I shall go to pieces."
He looked at her critically, incredulously.
"Why can"t you say at once what"s wrong?" he said. "Is there anything you want that you don"t have here? Is there any mortal thing that can be done that isn"t done?"
"Not any mortal thing."
"What is it then?"
"Hugh dear, did it never strike you that you are a very large family?
And that when it comes down on me it"s in the proportion of about seven to one?"
"Whoever _does_ come down on you?"
"John," said she, "was with me for two hours yesterday."
Brodrick lent his ear as to a very genuine grievance. John, since his bereavement, was hardly ever out of the house.
"And I suppose," he said, "he bored you?"
"No, but he will call when I"m writing."
"Why on earth don"t you send him away?"
"I would, if Mabel hadn"t died. But how can you when he"s unhappy? It would hurt him so. And yet, supposing you were to die, what would John say if I were to call on him at the works every day, and play with his dynamos to distract my mind, or sit with him in his office rumpling his hair, and dislocating his ideas till he didn"t know the difference between a steam-roller and an internal combustion engine? That"s more or less what John does to me. The only thing is to get away."
However, it was for Brodrick to decide, she said. And Brodrick said he couldn"t decide until he had thought it over.
She was very soon aware that she had caused a scandal in her husband"s family by her proposal to go away for three months. The scandal was not altogether unconnected with George Tanqueray, since it was at his suggestion that she proposed to take this unprecedented step. If she had proposed to take it with him they could hardly have shown themselves more horrified.
She knew how monstrous her conduct must appear to them. She could see it all so clearly from their point of view. That had always been after all her poor merit, that she could see things from other people"s point of view. Her vision indeed of them, of the way they took things, was apt to be so vivid, so engrossing that it left her with no point of view of her own. She carried into life itself and all its relations her virtue as an artist, that effacement of her observing self in favour of the thing observed.
That, Nina told her, was her danger. Nina happened to be with her on the day when another family committee met and sat upon her case. They were sitting on it now, up-stairs with Brodrick in his study. She knew infallibly what their judgment would be. Just as she had seemed to them so long a creature of uncertain health, she must seem now inconstant, insincere, the incarnation of heartlessness, egotism and caprice. She said to herself that it was all very well for Nina to talk. This insight was a curse. It was terrible to know what people were thinking, to feel what they were feeling. And they were seven to one, so that when she gave them pain she had to feel seven times the pain she gave.
But after all they, her judges, could take care of themselves. This family, that was one consolidated affection, was like a wall, it would shelter and protect her so long as she was content to be sheltered and protected; if she dashed herself against it it would break her in pieces.
And Nina was saying, "Can"t you take it into your own hands? Why should you let these people decide your fate for you?"
"Hugh will decide it," she said. "He"s with them up-stairs now."
"Is he asking their advice?"
"No, they"re giving it him. That"s my chance, Nina."
"Your chance?"
"My one chance. They"ll put his back up and, if it"s only to show them, he"ll let me go."
"Do you mean to say, Jinny, that if he didn"t you wouldn"t go?"
"I don"t even know that I"d go if he minded very much."
"I wish to goodness George Tanqueray was here. He might make you----"
"What has he ever made me do?"
"He might make you see it."
"I do see it," said Jane.
She closed her eyes as one tired with much seeing. Nina"s presence hardly helped her. Nina was even more profoundly disturbing than George Tanqueray; she had even less of consolation to offer to one torn and divided, she herself being so supreme an instance of the glory of the single flame.
The beauty and the wonder of it--in Nina--was its purity. Nina showed to what a pitch it had brought her, the high, undivided pa.s.sion of her genius. Under it every trace of Nina"s murkiness had vanished. She had lost that look of restless, haggard adolescence, that horrible intentness, as if her hand was always on the throat of her wild beast.
You saw, of course, that she had suffered; but you saw too that her genius was appeased by her suffering. It was just, it was compa.s.sionate; it had rewarded her for every pang.
Jane found herself saying beautiful things about Nina"s genius. It was the flame, unmistakably the pure flame. If solitude, if virginity, if frustration could do that----She knew what it had cost Nina, but it was worth it, seeing what she had gained.
Nina faced her with the eyes that had grown so curiously quiet.
"Ah, Jinny," she said, "could _you_ have borne to pay my price?"
She owned that she could not.
Up-stairs Brodrick faced his family where it sat in judgment upon Jane.
"What does she complain of?" said John.