The Creators Part 42

At half-past three she was seated at her place in Brodrick's library. A table was set apart for her and her type-writer on a corner by the window.

The editor was at work at his own table in the centre of the room. He did not look up at her as she came in. His eyes were lowered, fixed on the proof he was reading. Once, as he read, he shrugged his shoulders slightly, and once he sighed. Then he called her to him.

She rose and came, moving dreamily as if drawn, yet holding herself stiffly and aloof. He continued to gaze at the proof.

"You sat up half the night to correct this, I suppose?"

"Have I done it very badly?"

He did not tell her that she had, that he had spent the best part of his morning correcting her corrections. She was an inimitable housekeeper, and a really admirable secretary. But her weakness was that she desired to be considered admirable and inimitable in everything she undertook.

It would distress her to know that this time she had not succeeded, and he did not like distressing people who were dependent on him. It used to be so easy, so mysteriously easy, to distress Miss Collett; but she had got over that; she was used to him now; she had settled down into the silent and serene performance of her duties. And she had brought to her secretarial work a silence and serenity that were invaluable to a man who detested argument and agitation.

So, instead of insisting on her failure, he tried to diminish her disturbing sense of it; and when she inquired if she had done her work very badly, he smiled and said, No, she had done it much too well.

"Too well?" She flushed as she echoed him.

"Yes. You've corrected all Mr. Tanqueray's punctuation and nearly all his grammar."

"But it's all wrong. Look there--and there."

"How do you know it's all wrong?"

"But--it's so simple. There are rules."

"Yes. But Mr. Tanqueray's a great author, and great authors are born to break half the rules there are. What you and I have got to know is when they _may_ break them, and when they mayn't."

A liquid film swam over Gertrude's eyes, deepening their shallows. It was the first signal of distress.

"It's all right," he said. "I wanted you to do it. I wanted to see what you could do." He considered her quietly. "It struck me you might perhaps prefer it to your other duties."

"What made you think that?"

"I didn't think. I only wondered. Well----"

The next half-hour was occupied with the morning's correspondence, till Brodrick announced that they had no time for more.

"It's only just past four," she said.

"I know; but----Is there anything for tea?" He spoke vaguely like a man in a dream.

"What an opinion you have of my housekeeping," she said.

"Your housekeeping, Miss Collett, is perfection."

She flushed with pleasure, so that he kept it up.

"Everything," he said, "runs on greased wheels. I don't know how you do it."

"Oh, it's easy enough to do."

"And it doesn't matter if a lady comes to tea?"

He took up a pencil and began to sharpen it.

"Is there," said Miss Collett, "a lady coming to tea?"

"Yes. And we'll have it in the garden. Tea, I mean."

"And who," said she, "is the lady?"

"Miss Jane Holland." Brodrick did not look up. He was absorbed in his pencil.

"Another author?"

"Another author," said Brodrick to his pencil.

She smiled. The editor's att.i.tude to authors was one of prolonged amus.e.m.e.nt. Prodigious people, authors, in Brodrick's opinion. More than once, by way of relieving his somewhat perfunctory communion with Miss Collett, he had discussed the eccentricity, the vanity, the inexhaustible absurdity of authors. So that it was permissible for her to smile.

"You are not," he said, "expecting either of my sisters?"

He said it in his most casual, most uninterested voice. And yet she detected an undertone of anxiety. He did not want his sisters to be there when Miss Holland came. She had spent three years in studying his inflections and his wants.

"Not specially to-day," she said.

Brodrick became manifestly entangled in the process of his thought. The thought itself was as yet obscure to her. She inquired, therefore, where Miss Holland was to be "shown in." Was she a drawing-room author or a library author?

In the perfect and unspoken conventions of Brodrick's house the drawing-room was Miss Collett's place, and the library was his. Tea in the drawing-room meant that he desired Miss Collett's society; tea in the library that he preferred his own. There were also rules for the reception of visitors. Men were shown into the library and stayed there.

Great journalistic ladies like Miss Caroline Bickersteth were shown into the drawing-room. Little journalistic ladies with dubious manners, calling, as they did, solely on business, were treated as men and confined strictly to the library.

Brodrick's stare of surprise showed Gertrude that she had blundered. He had a superst.i.tious reverence for those authors who, like Mr. Tanqueray, were great.

"My dear Miss Collett, do you know who she is? The drawing-room, of course, and all possible honour."

She laughed. She had cultivated for Brodrick's sake the art of laughter, and prided herself upon knowing the precise moments to be gay.

"I see," she said. And yet she did not see. How could there be any honour if he did not want his sisters to be there? "That means the best tea-service and my best manners?"

He didn't know, he said, that she had any but the best.

How good they were she let him see when he presented Miss Holland on her arrival, her trailing, conspicuous arrival. Gertrude had never given him occasion to feel that his guests could have a more efficient hostess than his secretary. She spoke of the pleasure it gave her to see Miss Holland, and of the honour that she felt, and of how she had heard of Miss Holland from Mr. Brodrick. There was no becoming thing that Gertrude did not say. And all the time she was aware of Brodrick's eyes fixed on Miss Holland with that curious lack of diffuseness in their vision.

Brodrick was carrying it off by explaining Gertrude to Miss Holland.

"Miss Collett," he said, "is a wonderful lady. She's always doing the most beautiful things, so quietly that you never knew they're done."

"Does anybody," said Jane, "know how the really beautiful things are done?"

"There's a really beautiful tea," said Miss Collett gaily, "in the garden. There are scones and the kind of cake you like."