"Do you? There are moments when _I_ hate it."
Her face was set to the mood of hatred.
"Hugh dear, you"re a brave man to marry it."
"I wouldn"t marry it, if I didn"t think I could look after it."
"You needn"t bother. It can look after itself."
She paused, looking down where her finger traced and traced again the pattern of the sofa-cover.
"Did you think I cared for it so frightfully?" she said.
"I know you did."
"I care for it still." She turned to him with her set face. "But I could kill it if it came between you and me."
x.x.xIV
Jane had been married for three months, married with a completeness that even Tanqueray had not foreseen. She herself had been unaware of her capacity for surrender. She rejoiced in it like a saint who beholds in himself the mystic, supreme trans.m.u.tation of desire. One by one there fell from her the things that had stood between her and the object of her adoration.
For the forms of imagination had withdrawn themselves; once visible, audible, tangible, they became evasive, fugitive presences, discernible on some verge between creation and oblivion. This withdrawal had once been her agony, the dissolution of her world; she had struggled against it, striving with a vain and ruinous tension to hold the perishing vision, to preserve it from destruction. Now she contemplated its disappearance with a curious indifference. She had no desire to recover it.
She remembered how she had once regarded the immolation of her genius as the thing of all things most dangerous, most difficult, a form of terrible self-destruction, the sundering of pa.s.sionate life from life.
That sacrifice, she had said, would be the test of her love for Hugh Brodrick. And now, this thing so difficult, so dangerous, so impossible, had accomplished itself without effort and without pain. Her genius had ceased from violence and importunity; it had let go its hold; it no longer moved her.
Nothing moved her but Brodrick; nothing mattered but Brodrick; nothing had the full prestige of reality apart from him. Her heart went out to the things that he had touched or worn; things that were wonderful, adorable, and at the same time absurd. His overcoat hanging in the hall called on her for a caress. Henry, arriving suddenly one afternoon, found her rubbing her cheek against its sleeve. His gloves, which had taken on the shape of Brodrick"s hands, were things to be stroked tenderly in pa.s.sing.
And this house that contained him, white-walled, green-shuttered, red-roofed, it wore the high colours of reality; the Heath was drenched in the poignant, tender light of it.
That house on the Heath continued in its incomprehensible beauty. It was not to be approached without excitement, a beating of the heart. She marvelled at the power that, out of things actual and trivial, things ordinary and suburban, had made for her these radiances and immortalities. She could not detect the work of her imagination in the production of this state. It was her senses that were so exquisitely acute. She suffered an exaltation of all the powers of life. Her state was bliss. She loved these hours, measured by the silver-chiming clock.
She had discovered that it struck the quarters. She said to herself how odd it was that she could bear to live with a clock that struck the quarters.
She was trying hard to be as punctual and perfect as Gertrude Collett.
She had gone to Gertrude to learn the secret of these ordered hours. She had found out from Gertrude what Brodrick liked best for dinner. She had listened humbly while Gertrude read to her and expounded the legend of the sacred Books. She had stood like a child, breathless with attention, when Gertrude unlocked the inner door of the writing-table and showed her the little squat G.o.d in his shrine.
She played with this house of Brodrick"s like a child, making believe that she adored the little squat G.o.d and respected all the paraphernalia of his service. She knew that Gertrude doubted her seriousness and sincerity in relation to the G.o.d.
And all the time she was overcome by the pathos of Gertrude who had been so serious and so sincere, who was leaving these things for ever. But though she was sorry for Gertrude, her heart exulted and cried out in her, "Do you think He cares for the little squat G.o.d? He cares for nothing in the world but me!"
All would have been well if Brodrick had not committed the grave error of asking to look at the Books, just to see that she had got them all right. Like Gertrude he doubted.
She brought them to him; presenting first the Book marked "Household."
He turned from the beginning of this Book to the end. The pages of Gertrude"s housekeeping looked like what they were, a perfect and simple system of accounts. Jinny"s pages looked like a wild, straggling lyric, flung off in a rapture and meticulously revised.
Brodrick smiled at it--at first.
"At any rate," said she, "it shows how hard I"ve tried."
For all answer he laid before her Gertrude"s flawless work.
"Is it any use trying to bring it up to Gertrude"s standard?" she said.
"Wouldn"t it be better just to accept the fact that she was wonderful?"
(He ignored the suggestion.)
"I suppose you never realized till now how wonderful that woman was?"
Brodrick said gravely he would have to go into it to see.
Brodrick, going in deeper, became very grave. It seemed that each week Jane"s expenditure overlapped her allowance with appalling regularity.
It was the only regularity she had.
"Have you any idea, Jinny, how it goes?"
She shook her head sadly.
"If it"s gone, it"s gone. Why should we _seek_ to know?"
"Just go into it with me," he said.
She went into it and emerged with an idea.
"It looks," said Jinny, "as if I ate more than Gertrude. Do I?"
Still abstracted, he suggested the advisability of saving.
"Can it be done?" said Jinny.
"It can," said Brodrick, "because Gertrude did it."
"Must I do it?"
"Not if it bothers you. I was only saying it can be done."
"And you"d like it?"
"Well--I should like to know where I am."
"But--darling--It"s _so_ much better not to."
He sighed. So did Jinny.
"I can see," she said, "what I"ve done. I"ve crumpled _all_ the rose-leaves, and you"ll never be able to lie on them any more."