The Creators Part 43

"You see," Brodrick said, "how she spoils me, how I lie on roses."

"You'd better come," said Miss Collett, "while the scones are still hot."

"While," said Jane, "the roses are still fresh."

He held the door open for her, and on the threshold she turned to Miss Collett who followed her.

"Are you sure," said she, "that he's the horrid Sybarite you think him?"

"I am," said Brodrick, "whatever Miss Collett thinks me. If it pleases her to think I'm a Sybarite I've got to _be_ a Sybarite."

"I see. And when the rose-leaves are crumpled you bring them to Miss Collett, and she irons them out, and makes them all smooth again, so that you don't know they're the same rose-leaves?"

"The rose-leaves never are crumpled."

"Except by some sudden, unconsidered movement of your own?"

"My movements," said Brodrick, "are never sudden and unconsidered."

"What? Never?"

Miss Collett looked a little surprised at this light-handed treatment of the editor.

And Jane observed Brodrick with a new interest as they sat there in the garden and Miss Collett poured out tea. "Mr. Brodrick," she said to herself, "is going to marry Miss Collett, though he doesn't know it."

By the end of the afternoon it seemed to her an inevitable consummation, the marriage of Mr. Brodrick and Miss Collett. She could almost see it working, the predestined attraction of the eternally compatible, the incomparably fit. And when Brodrick left off taking any notice of Miss Collett, and finally lured Jane away into the library on the flimsiest pretence, she wondered what game he was up to. Perhaps in his innocence he was blind to Miss Collett's adoration. He was not sure of Miss Collett. He was trying to draw her.

Jane, intensely interested, advanced from theory to theory of Brodrick and Miss Collett while Brodrick removed himself to the writing-table, and turned on her a mysterious back.

"I want to show you something," he said.

She went to him. In the bared centre of the writing-table he had placed a great pile of ma.n.u.script. He drew out his chair for her, so that she could sit down and look well at the wonder.

Her heart leaped to the handwriting and to George Tanqueray's name on the t.i.tle-page.

"You've seen it?" he said.

"No. Mr. Tanqueray never shows his work."

From some lair in the back of the desk he swept forward a prodigious array of galley proofs. Tanqueray's novel was in the first number of the "Monthly Review."

"Oh!" she cried, looking up at him.

"I've pleased you?" he said.

"You have pleased me very much."

She rose and turned away, overcome as by some desired and unexpected joy. He followed her, making a cushioned place for her in the chair by the hearth, and seated himself opposite her.

"I was very glad to do it," he said simply.

"It will do you more good than Hambleby," she said.

"You know I did not think so," said he. And there was a pause between them.

"Mr. Brodrick," she said presently, "do you really want a serial from me?"

"Do I want it!"

"As much as you think you do?"

"I always," said he, "want things as much as I think I do."

She smiled, wondering whether he thought he wanted Miss Collett as much as he obviously did.

"What?" he said. "Are you going to let me have the next?"

"I had thought of it. If you really do----"

"Have you had any other offers?"

"Yes; several. But----"

"You must remember mine is only a new venture. And you may do better----"

It was odd, but a curious uncertainty, a modesty had come upon him since she last met him. He had been then so absurd, so arrogant about his magazine.

"I don't want to do better."

"Of course, if it's only a question of terms----"

It was incredible, Brodrick's depreciating himself to a mere question of terms. She flushed at this dreadful thought.

"It isn't," she said. "Oh! I didn't mean _that_."

"You never mean that. Which is why I must think of it for you. I can at least offer you higher terms."

"But," she persisted, "I should hate to take them. I _want_ you to have the thing. That's to say I want _you_ to have it. You must not go paying me more for that."

"I see," he said, "you want to make up."

She looked at him. He was smiling complacently, in the fulness of his understanding of her.

"My dear Miss Holland," he went on, "there must be no making up. Nothing of that sort between you and me."

"There isn't," she said. "What is there to make up for? For your not getting me?"

He smiled again as if that idea amused him.