The Creators Part 65

She knew where she was with him. In their long, subdued confidences he had given her the sense that she had become the dominant interest, the most important fact in his social life. And that, again, not because of her genius, but, he almost definitely intimated, because of some mystic moral quality in her. He did not intimate that he found her charming.

Jane had still serious doubts as to her charm, and Brodrick's monstrous sincerity would have left her to perish of her doubt. She would not have had him different. It was because of _his_ moral quality, his sincerity, that she had liked him from the first.

Most certainly she liked him. If she had not liked him she would not have come out so often to Roehampton and Wimbledon and Putney. She could not help but like him when he so liked her, and liked her, not for the things that she had done for literature, not for the things she had done for him, but for her own sake. That was what she had wanted, to be liked for her own sake, to be allowed to be a woman.

Unlike Tanqueray, Brodrick not only allowed her, he positively encouraged her to be a woman. Evidently, in Brodrick's opinion she was just like any other woman. He could see no difference between her and, well, Gertrude Collett. Gertrude, Jane was sure, stood to Brodrick for all that was most essentially and admirably feminine. Why he required so much of Jane's presence when he could have Gertrude Collett's was more than Jane could understand. She was still inclined to her conjecture that he was using her to draw Miss Collett, playing her off against Miss Collett, stinging Miss Collett to the desired frenzy by hanging that admirable woman upon tenter-hooks. That was why Jane felt so safe with him; because, she argued, he couldn't do it if he had not felt safe with her. He was not in love with her. He was not even, like Tanqueray, in love with her genius.

If she had had the slightest doubt about his att.i.tude, his behaviour on the day of her arrival had made it stand out sharp and clear. She had dined at Moor Grange, and Caro Bickersteth had been there. Caro had insisted on dragging Jane's genius from its temporary oblivion, and Brodrick had turned silent and sulky, positively sulky then.

And in that mood he had remained for the two weeks that she had stayed at Roehampton. He had betrayed none of the concern so evidently felt for her by Eddy and Winny and Gertrude Collett and Mrs. Heron and the doctor. They had all contended with each other in taking care of her, in waiting on her hand and foot. But Brodrick, after bringing her there; after, as she said, dumping her down, suddenly and heavily, on his family, Brodrick had refused to compete; he had hung back; he had withdrawn himself from the scene, maintaining his singular sulkiness and silence.

She forgave him, for of course he was disturbed about Gertrude Collett.

If he wanted to marry Gertrude, why on earth couldn't he marry her and have done with it? Jane thought.

In order to think better she had closed her eyes. When she opened them again she found Brodrick seated in an opposite chair, quietly regarding her. She was alone with him. The others had all gone.

"I wasn't asleep," said Jane.

"I didn't suppose you were," said Brodrick; "if you were reading Prothero."

Brodrick's conscience was beginning to hurt him rather badly. There were moments when he connected Jane's illness with Prothero's departure. He, therefore, by sending Prothero away, was responsible for her illness.

"If you want to read," he said, "I'll go."

"I don't want to read. I want to talk."

"About Prothero?"

"No, not about Mr. Prothero. About that serial----"

"What serial?"

"My serial. Your serial," said she.

Brodrick said he wasn't going to talk shop on Sunday. He wanted to forget that there were such things as serials.

"I wish _I_ could forget," said she.

She checked the impulse that was urging her to say, "You really ought to marry Gertrude."

"I wish you could," he retorted, with some bitterness.

"How can I?" she replied placably, "when it was the foundation of our delightful friendship?"

Brodrick said it had nothing whatever to do with their friendship.

"Well," said Jane, "if it wasn't that it was Hambleby."

At that Brodrick frowned so formidably that Jane could have cried out, "For goodness' sake go and marry her and leave off venting your bad temper upon me."

"It had to be something," said she. "Why shouldn't it be Hambleby? By the way, George Tanqueray was perfectly right. I was in love with him. I mean, of course, with Hambleby."

"You seem," said Brodrick, "to be in love with him still, as far as I can make out."

"That's why," said Jane, "I can't help feeling that there's something wrong with him. George says you never really know the people you're in love with."

There was a gleam of interest now in Brodrick's face. He was evidently, Jane thought, applying Tanqueray's aphorism to Gertrude.

"It doesn't make any difference," he said.

"I should have thought," said she, "it would have made _some_."

"It doesn't. If anything, you know them rather better."

"Oh," said she, "it makes _that_ difference, does it?"

Again she thought of Gertrude. "I wonder," she said pensively, "if you really know."

"At any rate I know as much as Tanqueray."

"Do I bore you with Tanqueray?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"You don't deny his genius?"

"I don't deny anybody's genius," said Brodrick furiously.

Jane looked at him.

"I don't think it's nice of you," said she, "to talk that way to me when I've been so ill."

"You've no right to be ill," said Brodrick, with undiminished rancour.

"I have," said Jane. "A perfect right. I can be as ill as ever I please."

She looked at him again and caught him smiling surrept.i.tiously under his heavy gloom.

"I mean," he said, "you needn't be. You wouldn't be if you didn't work so hard."

She crumpled her eyelids like one who fails to see.

"If I didn't what?"

"Work so hard."

He really wanted to know whether it was that or Prothero. First it had been Tanqueray, and she had got over Tanqueray. Now he could only suppose that it was Prothero. He would have to wait until she had got over Prothero.

"I like that," said she, "when it's your serial I'm working on."