The Creators Part 15

"But you know?"

"I dare say Uncle does."

"Better dressed--decidedly more handsome----"

"Well--he _is_ that."

"A bigger income. Rose, do you want Mr. Robinson to be found dead in his shop--horribly dead--among the collars and the handkerchiefs--spoiling them, and--not--looking--handsome--any more?"

"Oh, Mr. Tanqueray!"

"Then don't talk about him."

He turned his face to hers. She put up her hands and drew his head down into the hollow of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s that were warm with the sun on them.

"Rose," he said, "if you stroke my hair too much it'll come off, like Joey's. Would you love me if my hair came off?"

She kissed his hair.

"When did you begin to love me, Rose?"

"I don't know. I think it must have been when you were ill."

"I see. When I was bowled over on my back and couldn't struggle. What _made_ you love me?"

She was silent a long time, smiling softly to herself.

"I think it was because--because--because you were so kind to Joey."

"So you thought I would be kind to you?"

"I didn't--I didn't think at all. I just----"

"So did I," said Tanqueray.

VII

It had been arranged that Rose was to be married from the house of her mistress, and that she was to remain there until her wedding-day. There were so many things to be seen to. There was the baby. You couldn't, Rose said, play fast and loose with _him_. Rose, at her own request, had come to take care of the baby for a month, and she was not going back on that, not if it was ever so. Then there were all the things that her mistress, Rose said, was going to learn her. So many things, things she was not to do, things she was not to say, things she was on no account to wear. Rose, buying her trousseau, was not to be trusted alone for a minute.

It had been put to Rose, very gently by her mistress, very gravely by her master, whether she would really be happy if she married this eccentric young gentleman with the band-box. Was it not possible that she might be happier with somebody rather less eccentric? And Rose replied that she knew her own mind; that she couldn't be happy at all with anybody else, and that, if she could, she'd rather be unhappy with Mr. Tanqueray, eccentricity, band-box and all. Whereas, if he was to be unhappy with _her_, now----But, when it came to that, they hadn't the heart to tell her that he might, and very probably would be.

If Rose knew her own mind, Tanqueray knew his. The possibility of being unhappy with Rose (he had considered it) was dim compared with the certainty that he was unhappy without her. To be deprived of the sight and sound of her for six days in the week, to go down to Fleet, like the butcher, on a Sunday, and find her rosy and bright-eyed with affection, with a little pa.s.sion that grew like his own with delay, that grew in silence and in secret, making Rose, every Sunday, more admirably shy; to be with her for two hours, and then to be torn from her by a train he had to catch; all this kept Tanqueray in an excitement incompatible with discreet reflection.

Rose would not name a day before the fourteenth of July, not if it was ever so. He adored that little phrase of desperate negation. He was in a state of mind to accept everything that Rose did and said as adorable.

Rose had strange audacities, strange embarra.s.sments. Dumbness would come upon Rose in moments which another woman, Jane for instance, would have winged with happy words. She had a look that was anything but dumb, a look of innocent tenderness, which in another woman, Jane again, would not have been allowed to rest upon him so long. He loved that look. In her very lapses, her gentle elision of the aitch, he found a foreign, an infantile, a pathetic charm.

So the date of the wedding was fixed for the fourteenth.

It was now the twelfth, and Tanqueray had not yet announced his engagement.

On the morning of the twelfth two letters came which made him aware of this omission. One was from young Arnott Nicholson, who wanted to know when, if ever, he was coming out to see him. The other was from Jane's little friend, Laura Gunning, reminding him that the twelfth was Jane's birthday.

He had forgotten.

Yet there it stood in his memorandum-book, entered three months ago, lest by any possibility he should forget.

How, in the future, was he going to manage about birthdays? For, whenever any of the three had a birthday, they all celebrated it together. Last time it had been Tanqueray's birthday, and they had made a day of it, winding up with supper in little Laura's rooms. Such a funny, innocent supper that began with maccaroni, and ended, he remembered, with bread and jam. Before that, it had been Laura's birthday, and Tanqueray had taken them all to the play. But on Jane's birthday (and on other days, _their_ days) it was their custom to take the train into the country, to tramp the great white roads, to loiter in the fields, to climb the hillsides and lie there, p.r.o.ne, with slackened limbs, utterly content with the world, with each other and themselves.

As he thought of those days, their days, he had a sudden vision of his marriage-day as a dividing line, sundering him from them, their interests and their activities. He could not think of Rose as making one of that company.

Laura now inquired innocently what his plans were for that day. Would he meet them (she meant, would he meet her and Jane Holland) at Marylebone, by the entrance, at eleven o'clock, and go with them somewhere into the country?

Would he? He thought about it for five minutes, and decided that on the whole he would rather go than not. He was restless in these days before his wedding. He could not stand the solitude of this house where Rose had been and was not. And he wanted to see Jane Holland again and make it right with her. He was aware that in many ways he had made it wrong.

He would have to tell her. He would have to tell Nicholson. And Nicholson, why, of course, Nicholson would have to see him through. He must go to Nicholson at once.

Nicholson lived at Wendover. There was a train from Marylebone about eleven. It was possible to combine a festival for Jane with a descent upon Nicky.

By the entrance, at eleven, Laura Gunning waited for him, punctually observant of the hour. Beyond, on the pavement before the station, he saw the tall figure of another woman. It was Nina Lempriere. She was not waiting--Nina never waited--but striding impatiently up and down. He would have to reckon, then, with Nina Lempriere, too. He was glad that Jane was with her.

Little Laura, holding herself very straight, greeted him with her funny smile, a smile that was hardly more than a tremor of her white lips.

Laura Gunning, at twenty-seven, had still in some of her moods the manner of a child. She was now like a seven-year-old made shy and serious by profound excitement. She was a very small woman and she had a small face, with diminutive features in excessively low relief, a face shadowless as a child's. Everything about Laura Gunning was small and finished with an innocent perfection. She had a small and charming talent for short stories, little novels, perfect within the limits of their kind.

Tanqueray laid before her his Wendover scheme. Laura said he must ask Jane. It was Jane's birthday. Jane, being asked, said, No, she didn't mind where they went, provided they went somewhere. She supposed there was a gate they could sit on, while Tanqueray called on Nicky. Tanqueray said he thought he saw Nicky letting her sit on a gate. Considering that Nicky had been pestering him for the last six months (he had) to bring her out to have tea with him on one of their days.

"And we've never been," said he.

Jane let it pa.s.s. But Nina Lempriere, as Tanqueray well knew, had a devil in her. Nina's eyes had the trick of ignoring your position in the s.p.a.ce they traversed, which made it the more disconcerting when they came back and fixed you with their curious, hooded stare. They were staring at Tanqueray now.

"Where have you been?" said she. "We haven't heard of you for ages."

"I've been ill."

Jane looked at him and said nothing.

"Ill? And you never told us?" said Nina.

"I was all right. I was well looked after."

"Who looked after you?"

He did not answer her. For in that instant there rose before him the image of Rose Eldred, tender and desirable, and it kept him dumb.

Nina, whose devil was nothing if not persistent, repeated her question.

He divined already in Nina a secret, subtle hostility.