The Creators Part 106

Her hands that held her dropped.

"But you're right, Gertrude. I'm a brute and you're an angel."

She turned from her and left her there.

LIV

She knew that she had dealt a wound, and she was sorry for it. It was awful to see Gertrude going about the house in her flagrant secrecy. It was unbearable to Jane, Gertrude's soft-flaming, dedicated face, and that little evasive, sacred look of hers, as if she had her hand for ever on her heart, hiding her wound. It was a look that reminded Jane, and was somehow, she felt, intended to remind her, that Gertrude was pure spirit as well as pure womanhood in her too discernible emotion.

Was it not spiritual to serve as she served, to spend as she spent herself, so angelically, bearing the dreadful weight of Brodrick's marriage--the consequences, so to speak, of that corporeal tie--on her winged shoulders?

She could see that Hugh looked at it in that light (as well he might) when one evening he spoke remorsefully of the amount they put on her.

A month had pa.s.sed since he had given the care of his children into Gertrude's hands. She was up-stairs now superintending their disposal for the night. He and Jane were alone in a half-hour before dinner, waiting for John and Henry and the Protheros to come and dine. The house was very still. Brodrick could not have believed that it was possible, the perfection of the peace that had descended on them. He appealed to Jane. She couldn't deny that it was peace.

Jane didn't deny it. She had nothing whatever to say against an arrangement that had turned out so entirely for the children's good. She kept her secret to herself. Her secret was that she would have given all the peace and all the perfection for one scream of Hughy's and the child's arms round her neck.

"You wouldn't know," Brodrick said, "that there was a child in the house."

Jane agreed. Ah, yes, if _that_ was peace, they had it.

Well, wasn't it? After that infernal row he made? You couldn't say anything when the poor little chap was ill and couldn't help it, but you couldn't have let him cultivate screaming as a habit. It was wonderful the effect that woman had on him. He couldn't think how she did it. It was as if her mere presence in a room----

He thought that Jane was going to admit that as she had admitted everything, but as he looked at her he saw that her mouth had lifted at its winged corners, and her eyes were darting their ominous light.

"It's awful of me, I know," she said, "but her presence in a room--in the house, Hugh--makes me feel as if _I_ could scream the roof off."

(He glanced uneasily at her.)

"She makes me want to _do_ things."

"What things?" he inquired mildly.

"The things I mustn't--to break loose--to kick over the traces----"

"You don't surprise me." He smoothed his face to the expression proper to a person unsurprised, dealing imperturbably with what he had long ago foreseen.

"Sometimes I think that if Gertrude were not so good, I might be more so. You're all so good," she said. "_You_ are so good, so very, very good."

"I observe," said Brodrick, "a few elementary rules, as you do yourself."

"But I don't want," she said, "to observe them any more. I want to put my foot through all the rules."

The front door bell rang as the chiming clock struck eight.

"That's John," he said, "and Henry."

"Did you ever put your foot through a rule? Did John? Did Henry? Fancy John setting out on an adventure with his hair brushed like that and his spectacles on----"

They were announced. She rose to greet them. They waited. The clock with its soft silver insistence struck the quarter. It was awful, she said, to have to live with a clock that struck the quarter; and Henry shook his head at her and said, "Nerves, Jinny, nerves."

John looked at his watch. "I thought," said John, "you dined at eight."

"So did I," said Brodrick. He turned to Jane. "Your friend Prothero does not observe the rule of punctuality."

"If they won't turn up in time," said Henry, "I should dine without them."

They did dine ultimately. Prothero turned up at a quarter to nine, entering with the joint. Laura was not with him. Laura couldn't, he said, "get off."

He was innocent and unconscious of offence. They were not to bring back the soup or fish. Roast mutton was enough for him. He expected he was a bit late. He had been detained by Tanqueray. Tanqueray had just come back.

Involuntarily Brodrick looked at Jane.

Prothero had to defend her from a reiterated charge of neurosis brought against her by Henry, who observed with disapproval her rejection of roast mutton.

Over coffee and cigarettes Prothero caught him up and whirled him in a fantastic flight around his favourite subject.

There were cases, he declared, where disease was a higher sort of health. "Take," he said, "a genius with a p.r.o.nounced neurosis. His body may be a precious poor medium for all ordinary purposes. But he couldn't have a more delicate, more lyrical, more perfectly adjusted instrument for _his_ purposes than the nervous system you call diseased."

When he had gone Henry shook off the discomfort of him with a gesture.

"I've no patience with him," he said.

"He wouldn't expect you to have any," said Jane. "But you've no idea of the patience he would have with _you_."

She herself was conscious of a growing exasperation.

"I've no use for him. A man who deliberately constructs his own scheme of the universe, in defiance," said Henry, "of the facts."

"Owen couldn't construct a scheme of anything if he tried. Either he sees that it's so, or he feels that it's so, or he knows that it's so, and there's nothing more to be said. It's not a bit of good arguing with him."

"I shouldn't attempt to argue with him, any more than I should argue with a lunatic."

"You consider him a lunatic, do you?"

"I consider him a very bad neurotic."

"If you can't have genius without neurosis," said Jane, "give me neurosis. You needn't look at me like that, Henry. I know you think I've got it."

"My dear Jane----"

"You wouldn't call me your dear Jane if you didn't."

"We're wandering from the point. I think all I've ever said was that Prothero may be as great a poet, and as neurotic as you please, but he's nothing of a physiologist, nor, I should imagine, of a physician."