The Creators Part 123

So his brain worked, with a savage independence. He seemed to himself two men, a man with a brain that worked, following a lucid argument to an obscure conclusion, and a man who looked on and watched its working without attaching the least importance to it. It was as if _this_ man knew all the time what the other did not know. He had his own light, his own secret. He had never thought about it before (his secret), still less had he talked about it. Thinking about it was a kind of profanity; talking would have been inconceivable sacrilege. It was self-evident as the existence of G.o.d to the soul that loves him; a secret only in that it was profounder than appearances, in that it stood by the denial of appearances, so that, if appearances were against it, what of that?

He was thinking about it now, obscurely, without images, barely with words, as if it had been indeed a thing occult and metaphysical.

Thinking about it--that meant, of course, that he had for a moment doubted it? It was coming back to him now, clothed with the mortal pathos of its imperfection. She was dearer to him--unspeakably dearer, for his doubt.

The man with the brain approached slowly and unwillingly the conclusion that now emerged, monstrous and abominable, from the obscurity. If that be so, he said, she is deliberately deceiving me.

And he who watched, he with the illuminating, incommunicable secret, smiled as he watched, in scorn and pity. Scorn of the slow and ugly movements of the intellect, and pity for a creature so mean as to employ them.

In the silence that he kept he had not heard the deep breathing of the woman at his side. Now he was aware of it and her.

He was positively relieved when the servant announced Mrs. Levine.

There was a look on Sophy's face that Brodrick knew, a look of importance and of competence, a look it always had when Sophy was about to deal with a situation. Gertrude's silent disappearance marked her sense of a situation to be dealt with.

Brodrick rose heavily to greet his sister. There was a certain consolation in her presence, since it had relieved him of Gertrude's.

Sophy, by way of prelude, inquired about Brodrick and the children and the house, then paused to attack her theme.

"When's Jane coming back?" said she.

"I don't know," said Brodrick.

"She's been away two months."

"Seven weeks," said Brodrick.

"Isn't it about time she _did_ come back?"

"She's the best judge of that," said Brodrick.

Sophy's face was extraordinarily clear-eyed and candid as it turned on him.

"George Tanqueray's at Chagford."

"How do you know?" (He really wondered.)

"Miss Ranger let it out to Louis this morning."

"Let it out? Why on earth should she keep it in?"

"Oh well, I don't suppose _she_ sees anything in it."

"No more do I," said Brodrick.

"You never saw anything," said Sophy. "I don't say there's anything to see--all the same----"

She paused.

"Well?" He was all attention and politeness.

"All the same I should insist on her coming back."

He was silent, as though he were considering it.

"Or better still, go down and fetch her."

"I shall do nothing of the sort."

"Well, if you think it's wise to give her her head to that extent--a woman with Jane's temperament----"

"What do you know about her temperament?"

Sophy shifted her ground. "I know, and you know the effect he has on her, and the influence; and if you leave her to him--if you leave them to themselves, down there--for weeks like that--you'll have n.o.body but yourself to thank if----"

He cut her short.

"I have n.o.body but myself to thank. She shall please herself about coming back. It she didn't come--I couldn't blame her."

Sophy was speechless. Of all the att.i.tudes that any Brodrick could take she had not expected this.

"We have made things too hard for her----" he said.

"We?"

"You and I--all of us. We've not seen what was in her."

Sophy repressed her opinion that they very probably would see now. As there was no use arguing with him in his present mood (she could see _that_), she left him.

Brodrick heard her motor hooting down Roehampton Lane. She was going to dine at Henry's. Presently all the family would be in possession of the situation, of Jane's conduct and his att.i.tude. And there was Gertrude Collett. He understood now that she suspected.

Gertrude had come back into her place.

He picked up some papers and took them to the safe which stood in another corner of the room behind his writing-table. He wanted to get away from Gertrude, to be alone with his secret and concealed, without betraying his desire for solitude, for concealment. He knelt down by the safe and busied himself there quite a long time. He said to himself, "It couldn't happen. She was always honest with me. But if it did I couldn't wonder. The wonder is why she married me."

He rose to his feet, saying to himself again, "It couldn't happen."

With that slight readjusting movement the two men in him became one, so that when the reasoning man reached slowly his conclusion he formulated it thus: "It couldn't happen. If it did, it wouldn't happen this way.

He" (even to himself he could not say "they") "would have managed better, or worse." At last his intellect, the lazy, powerful beast, was roused and dealt masterfully with the situation.

He had to pa.s.s the fireplace to get back to his seat, which Gertrude guarded. As he pa.s.sed he caught sight of his own face in the gla.s.s over the chimney-piece, a face with inflamed eyes and a forehead frowning and overcast, and cheeks flushed with shame. Gertrude, looking up at him from the ma.n.u.script she brooded over, instinctively made way for him to pa.s.s.

It was she who spoke first. Her finger was on the pencil-marks again.

"Then that," said she, pointing, "that is not to stand?"

"Of course it isn't." He answered coldly. "It wasn't meant to. It's rubbed out."

He looked at her for the first time with dislike. He did not suspect her as the source of abominable suggestion. He was only thinking that if it hadn't been for her he wouldn't have seen any of these things.