The Creators Part 45

Eddy's mother thought it would be nice if he and Winny went down the Heath road to meet Uncle Hughy and Miss Holland. Whereupon Eddy embraced his mother, being unable to agree with her.

"You really believe," said Mr. John Brodrick, who seemed anxious to be sure of his facts before he committed himself, "you really believe that if it had not been for this lady he'd have had to give it up?"

"Well," said Levine judicially, "she practically saved it. You see he _would_ start it with George Tanqueray. And who cares about George Tanqueray? That's what wrecked him. I told him at the time it was sheer lunacy, but he wouldn't listen to me. _Why_" (Levine spoke in a small excited voice with sudden high notes), "he hadn't subscriptions enough to float the thing for twenty-four hours. As soon as he gets Miss Holland they go up by leaps and bounds, and it's bin goin' steady ever since. How long it'll keep goin's another thing."

"I understood Hugh to say," said John, "that the arrangements involved some considerable sacrifice to the lady."

"Well, you see, he'd been a bit of an a.s.s. He'd made her a ridiculous offer, an offer _we_ simply couldn't afford, and we had to tell her so."

"And then," said Sophy, "you might as well mention that she gave it him for what you _could_ afford."

"She certainly let him have it very cheap." He ruminated. "Uncommonly cheap--considering what her figure is."

Eddy wanted to know what Miss Holland's figure had to do with his Uncle Hughy. Winny, round-eyed with wonder, inquired if it was beautiful, and was told that it was fairly beautiful, a tidy figure, a nice round figure, like her Aunt Sophy's.

"That," said John, "was _very_ decent of her."

"Very," said the gentle lady, Mrs. John.

"It was splendid," said Mrs. Heron.

The Doctor meditated. "I wonder _why_ she did it," said the Doctor.

His brother-in-law explained. "Oh, she thought she'd let him in for Tanqueray."

"Let him _in_?"

"Don't you see," said Mrs. Heron, "it was her idea of honour."

"A woman's idea of honour," said the Doctor.

"You needn't criticize it," said his sister Sophy.

"I don't," said the Doctor.

"I can tell you," said Levine, "what with her idea of honour and Hugh's idea of honour, the office had a pretty rough time of it till they got the business fixed."

"With Hugh's _ideas_," said John, "he's hardly likely to make this thing pay, is he? Especially if he's going to bar politics."

He said it importantly. By a manner, by wearing spectacles, and brushing his hair back in two semi-circles from his forehead, Mr. John Brodrick contrived to appear considerably more important than he was.

"Ah, he's made a mistake there," said the Doctor.

"That's what _I_ tell him." Levine was more excited than ever.

"I should think he might be allowed to do what he likes," said Sophy.

"After all, it's _his_ magazine."

Mr. Levine's face remained supernaturally polite while it guarded his opinion that it wasn't his brother-in-law's magazine at all. They had disagreed about Tanqueray. They had disagreed about everything connected with the magazine, from the make-up of the first number to the salary of the sub-editor. They had almost quarreled about what Levine called "Miss Holland's price." And now, when his wife said that it was Sunday--and if they were going to talk business all the afternoon--she was told that Hugh's magazine wasn't business. It was Hugh's game. (His dreadfully expensive, possibly ruinous game.)

"Then," she said, "you might let him play it. I'm sure he works hard enough on your horrid old 'Telegraph.'"

Sophy invariably stood up for her family against her husband. But she would have stood up for her husband against all the world.

"Thank you, my pet." She stooped to the little three-year-old girl who trotted to and fro, offering to each of these mysteriously, deplorably preoccupied persons a flower without a stalk.

It was at this moment that Brodrick arrived from the station with Miss Holland.

"Is it a garden-party?" Jane inquired.

"No," said Brodrick, "it's my family."

She came on with him over the lawn. And the group rose to its feet; it broke up with little movements and murmurs, in a restrained, dignified expectancy. Jane had the sense of being led towards some unaccountable triumph and acclamation.

They closed round her, these unknown Brodricks, inaudibly stirred, with some unspoken, incomprehensible emotion in the men's gaze and in the women's touch. The big boy and girl shared it as they came forward in their shyness, with affectionate faces and clumsy, abortive encounters of the hand.

It was the whole Brodrick family moved to its depths, feeling as one. It could only be so moved by the spectacle of integrity and honour and incorruptible loyalty to It.

Still moved, it was surrounding Jane when a maid arrived with the tea-table, and the white cloth waved a signal to Miss Collett across the lawn. There was then a perceptible pause in the ovation as Brodrick's secretary appeared.

Even across the lawn Jane could discern trouble in Miss Collett's face.

But Miss Collett's face was plastic in readjustments, and by the time she was fairly on the scene it had recaptured the habit of its smile.

The smile, in greeting, covered and carried off the betraying reluctance of her hand. It implied that, if Miss Holland was to be set up in a high place and worshipped, Miss Collett was anxious to observe the appropriate ritual. Having observed it, she took, with her quiet, inconspicuous a.s.surance, the place that was her own. She gave but one sign of her trouble when Dr. Brodrick was heard congratulating their guest on the great serial which, said he, by "saving" the magazine, had "saved" his brother. Then Gertrude quivered slightly, and the blood flushed in her set face and pa.s.sed as fierce heat pa.s.ses through iron.

While they were talking Jane had opportunity to watch and wonder at the firm, consolidated society that was Brodrick's family. These faces proclaimed by their resemblance the material link. Mr. John Brodrick was a more thick-set, an older, graver-lined, and grizzled Hugh, a Hugh who had lost his sombre fixity of gaze. Dr. Henry Brodrick was a tall, attenuated John, with a slightly, ever so slightly receding chin. Mrs.

Heron was Hugh again made feminine and slender. She had Hugh's features, refined and diminished. She had Hugh's eyes, filled with some tragic sorrow of her own. Her hair was white, every thread of it, though she could not have been more than forty-five.

These likenesses were not so apparent at first sight in Mrs. Levine, the golden, full-blown flower of the Brodricks. They had mixed so thoroughly and subtly that they merged in her smoothness and her roundness. And still the facial substance showed in the firm opacity of her skin, the racial soul a.s.serted itself in her poised complacence and decision.

"You don't know," she was saying, "how we're all sitting at your feet."

"We are indeed," said Mr. John Brodrick.

"Very much so," said the Doctor.

"Even little Cissy," said Hugh.

For little Cissy was bringing all her stalkless flowers to Jane; smiling at her as if she alone possessed the secret of this play. Brodrick watched, well-pleased, the silent traffic of their tendernesses.

The others were talking about Hambleby now. They had all read him. They had all enjoyed him. They all wanted more of him.

"If we could only have had Hambleby, Miss Holland," said Levine. "It wasn't my fault that we didn't get him."

Jane remembered that this was the brother-in-law whom Brodrick had wanted to keep out. He had the air of being persistently, permanently in.

"Of course it wasn't your fault," said she.

Levine then thought it necessary to say things about Jane's celebrity till Brodrick cut him short.