The Creators Part 60

The day was drawing to its end when the group drifted and divided.

Brodrick, still imperturbable, took possession of Jane, and Prothero, with his long swinging stride, set off in pursuit of the darting Laura.

Tanqueray, thus left behind with Nina, watched him as he went.

"He's off, Nina. Bolted." His eyes smiled at her, suave, deprecating, delighted eyes and recklessly observant.

"So has Jane," said Nina, with her dangerous irony.

Apart from them and from their irony, Prothero was at last alone with Laura on the top of Wendover Hill. She had ceased to dart and to plunge.

He found for her a hidden place on the green slope, under a tree, and there he stretched himself at her side.

"Do you know," he said, "this is the first time I've seen you out of doors."

"So it is," said she in a strange, even voice.

She drew off her gloves and held out the palms of her hands as if she were bathing them in the pure air. Her face was turned from him and lifted; her nostrils widened; her lips parted; her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s heaved; she drank the air like water. To his eyes she was the white image of mortal thirst.

"Is it absolutely necessary for you to live in Camden Town?" he said.

She sat up very straight and stared steadily in front of her, as if she faced, unafraid, the invincible necessity.

"It is. Absolutely." She explained that Baxter, her landlord, had been an old servant of Papa's, and that _the_ important thing was to be with people who would be nice to him and not mind, she said, his little ways.

He sighed.

"Do you know what I should do with you if I could have my way? I should turn you into a green garden and keep you there from nine in the morning till nine at night. I should make you walk a mile with me twice a day--not too fast. All the rest of the time you should lie on a couch on a lawn, with a great rose-bush at your head and a bed of violets at your feet. I should bring you something nice to eat every two hours."

"And how much work do you suppose I should get through?"

"Work? You wouldn't do _any_ work for a year at least--if I had my way."

"It's a beautiful dream," said she. She closed her eyes, but whether to shut the dream out or to keep it in he could not say.

"I don't want," she said presently, "to lie on a couch in a garden with roses at my head and violets at my feet, as if I were dead. You don't know how tre--_mend_--ously alive I am."

"I know," he said, "how tremendously alive you'd be if I had my way--if you were happy."

She was still sitting up, nursing her knees, and staring straight in front of her at nothing.

"You don't know what it's like," she said; "the unbearable pathos of Papa."

"It's your pathos that's unbearable."

"Oh don't! Don't be nice to me. I shall hate you if you're nice to me."

She paused, staring. "I was unkind to him yesterday. I see how pathetic he is, and yet I'm unkind. I snap like a little devil. You don't know what a devil, what a detestable little devil I can be."

She turned to him, sparing herself no pain in her confession.

"I was cruel to him. It's horrible, like being cruel to a child." The horror of it was in her stare.

"It's your nerves," he said; "it's because you're always frightened." He seemed to meditate before he spoke again. "How are you going on?"

"You see how."

"I do indeed. It's unbearable to think of your having to endure these things. And I have to stand by and see you at the end of your tether, hurt and frightened, and to know that I can do nothing for you. If I could have my way you would never be hurt or frightened any more."

As he spoke something gave way in her. It felt like a sudden weakening and collapse of her will, drawing her heart with it.

"But," he went on, "as I can't have my way, the next best thing is--to stand by you."

She struggled as against physical faintness, struggled successfully.

"Since I can't take you out of it," he said, "I shall come and live in Camden Town too."

"You couldn't live in Camden Town."

"I can live anywhere I choose. I shouldn't _see_ Camden Town."

"You couldn't," she insisted. "And if you could I wouldn't let you."

"Why not?"

"Be_cause_--it wouldn't do."

He smiled.

"It would be all right. I should get a room near you and look after your father."

"It wouldn't do," she said again. "I couldn't let you."

"I can do anything I choose. Your little hands can't stop me."

She looked at him gravely. "Why do you choose it?"

"Because I can choose nothing else."

"Ah, why are you so good to me?"

"Be_cause_"--he mocked her absurd intonation.

"Don't tell me. It's because you _are_ good. You can't help it."

"No; I can't help it."

"But--" she objected, "I'm so horrid. I don't believe in G.o.d and I say d.a.m.n when I'm angry."

"I heard you."