"And Prothero" (he laid beauty upon beauty), "he"ll tell you himself.
He"s on his knees."
The moments pa.s.sed. Nicky in his beauty and his pain wandered outside in the garden, leaving her to Prothero and Laura.
And in the drawing-room, where Tanqueray waited for his turn, Jane"s family appraised her triumph. Henry, to Caro Bickersteth in a corner, was not sure that he did not, on the whole, regret it. These books wrecked her nerves. She was, Henry admitted, a great genius; but great genius, what was it, after all, but a great Neurosis?
Not far from them Louis Levine, for John"s benefit, calculated the possible proceeds of the new book. Louis smiled his mobile smile as he caught the last words of Henry"s diagnosis. Henry might say what he liked. Neurosis, to that extent, was a valuable a.s.set. He could do, Louis said, with some of it himself.
Brodrick, as he surveyed with Tanqueray the immensity of his wife"s achievement, wondered whether, for all that, she had not paid too high a price. And Sophy Levine, who overheard him, whispered to Frances that it was he, poor dear, who paid.
Tanqueray got up and left the room. He had heard through it all the signal that he waited for, the sound of the opening of Jane"s door.
Her eyes searched his at the very doorway. "Is it all right, George?"
she whispered. Her hand, her thin hand, held his until he answered.
"It"s tremendous."
"Do you remember two years ago--when you wouldn"t drink?"
"I drank this time. I"m drunk, Jinny, drunk as a lord."
"I swore I"d make you drink, this time; if I died for it."
She leaned back in the corner of her couch, looking at him.
"Thank heaven you"ve never lied to me; because now I know."
"I wonder if you do. It"s alive, Jinny; it"s organic; it"s been conceived and born." He brought his chair close to the table that stood beside her couch, a barrier between them. "It"s got what we"re all praying for--that divine unity----"
"I didn"t think it could have it. _I_"m torn in pieces."
"You? I knew you would be."
"It wasn"t the book."
"What was it?" he said fiercely.
"It was chiefly, I think, Mabel Brodrick"s illness."
"_Whose_ illness?"
"John"s wife"s. You don"t know what it means."
"I can see. You let that woman prey on you. She sucks your life. You"re white; you"re thin; you"re ill, too."
She shook her head. "Only tired, George."
"Why do you do it? Why do you do it, Jinny?" he pleaded.
"Ah--I must."
He rose and walked up and down the room; and each time as he turned to face her he burst out into speech.
"What"s Brodrick doing?"
She did not answer. He noticed that she never answered him when he spoke of Brodrick now. He paid no heed to the warning of her face.
"Why does he let his beastly relations worry you? You didn"t undertake to marry the whole lot of them."
He turned from her with that, and she looked after him. The set of his shoulders was square with his defiance and his fury.
He faced her again.
"I suppose if _he_ was ill you"d have to look after him. I don"t see that you"re bound to look after his sisters-in-law. Why can"t the Brodricks look after her?"
"They do. But it"s me she wants."
He softened, looking down at her. But she did not see his look.
"You think," said she, "that it"s odd of her--the last thing anybody could want?"
His face changed suddenly as the blood surged in it. He sat down, and stretched his arms across the table that was the barrier between them.
His head leaned towards her with its salient thrust, its poise of impetus and forward flight.
"If you knew," he said, "the things you say----"
His hands made a sudden movement, as if they would have taken hers that lay nerveless and helpless, almost within their grasp.
She drew her hands back.
"It"s nearly ten o"clock," she said.
"Do you want me to go?"
She smiled. "No. Only--they"ll say, if I sit up, that that"s what tires me."
"And does it? Do _I_ tire you?"
"You never tire me."
"At any rate I don"t destroy you; I don"t prey on you."
"We all prey on each other. _I_ prey on you."
"You? Oh--Jinny!"
Again there was a movement of his hands, checked, this time, by his own will.