The Creators Part 83

The baby himself had an irresistible attraction for them. From John's house in Augustus Road, from Henry's house in Roehampton Lane, from the house of the Levines in St. John's Wood, there was now an incessant converging upon Brodrick's house. The women took an unwearying and unwandering interest in Hugh's amazing son. (It was a girl they had expected.) First thing in the morning, or at noon, or in the early evening at his bed-time, John's wife, Mabel, came with her red-eyed, sad-hearted worship. Winny Heron hung about him and Jane for ever. Jane discovered in Sophy and in Frances an undercurrent of positive affection that set from her child to her.

John Brodrick regarded her with solemn but tender approval, and Henry (who might have owed her a grudge for upsetting his verdict), Henry loved her even more than he approved. She had performed her part beyond all hope; she linked the generations; she was wedded and made one with the solidarity of the Brodricks.

Jane with a baby was a mystery and a marvel to herself. She spent days in worshipping the small divinity of his person, and in the contemplation of his heartrending human attributes. She doubted if there were any delirium of the senses to compare with the touch of her hands upon his body, or of his fingers on her breast. She fretted herself to fever at his untimely weaning. She ached with longing for the work of his hands upon her, for the wonder of his eyes, opening at her for a moment, bright and small, over the white rim of her breast.

In his presence there perished in her all consciousness of time. Time was nothing to him. He laid his diminutive hands upon the hours and destroyed them for his play.

You would have said that time was no more to Jane than it was to the baby. For six months she watched with indifference the slaughter and ruin of the perfect hours. For six months she remained untormented by the desire to write. Brodrick looked upon her as a woman made perfect, wholly satisfied and appeased.

At the end of six months she was attacked by a mysterious restlessness and fatigue. Brodrick, at Henry's suggestion, took her to the seaside.

They were away six weeks.

She came back declaring herself strong.

But there was something about her that Henry did not like. She was if anything more restless; unnaturally (he said) abstracted when you spoke to her; hardly aware of you at times. John had noticed that, too, and had not liked it. They had all noticed it. They were afraid it must be worrying Hugh. She seemed, Sophy said, to be letting things go all round. Frances thought she was not nearly so much taken up with the baby. When she mentioned it to Henry he replied gravely that it was physical. It would pa.s.s.

And yet it did not pa.s.s.

The crisis came in May of nineteen-six, when the baby was seven months old. It all turned on the baby.

Every morning about nine o'clock, now that summer was come, you found him in the garden, in his perambulator, barefooted and bareheaded, taking the air before the sun had power. Every morning his nurse brought him to his mother to be made much of; at nine when he went out, and at eleven when he came in, full of sleep. In and out he went through the French window of Jane's study, which opened straight on to the garden.

He was wheeled processionally up and down, up and down the gravel walk outside it, or had his divine seat under the lime-tree on the lawn.

Always he was within sight of Jane's windows.

One Sunday morning (it was early, and he had not been out for five minutes, poor lamb) Jane called to the nurse to take him away out of her sight.

"Take him away," she said. "Take him down to the bottom of the garden, where I can't see him."

Brodrick heard her. He was standing on the gravel path, contemplating his son. It was his great merit that at these moments, and in the presence of other people, he betrayed no fatuous emotion. And now his face, fixed on the adorable infant, was dest.i.tute of all expression. At Jane's cry it flushed heavily.

The flush was the only sign he gave that he had heard her. Without a word he turned and followed, thoughtfully, the windings of the exiled perambulator. From her place at the writing-table where she sat tormented, Jane watched them go.

Ten minutes later Brodrick appeared at the window. He was about to enter.

"Oh, no, no!" she cried. "_Not_ you!"

He entered.

"Jinny," he said gently, "what's the matter with you?"

His voice made her weak and tender.

"I want to write a book," she said. "Such a pretty book."

"It's that, is it?"

He sighed and stood contemplating her in ponderous thought.

Jane took up some pens and played with them.

"I can't write if you look at me like that," she said.

"I won't look at you; but I'm going to talk to you."

He sat down. She saw with terror his hostility to the thing she was about to do.

"Talking's no good," she said. "It's got to be done."

"I don't see the necessity."

"It's not one of those things that can be seen."

"No. But look here----" He was very gentle and forbearing. "Need you do it quite so soon?"

"So soon? If I don't do it now, when _shall_ I do it?"

He did not answer her. He sat looking at her hands in their nervous, restless play.

Her grave eyes, under their flattening brows, gazed thoughtfully at him.

The corners of her mouth lifted a little with their wing-like, quivering motion. Two moods were in her; one had its home in her brooding, tragic eyes, one in her mysterious, mocking lips.

"It's no use, dear," she said. "You'll never turn me into that sort of woman."

"What sort of woman?"

"The sort of woman you like."

He waited in silence for what she would say next.

"It's not my fault, it's yours and Henry's. You shouldn't have made me go away and get strong. The thing always comes back to me when I get strong. It's _me_, you see."

"No, Jinny, the whole point is that you're not strong. You're not fit for anything creative."

At that she laughed.

"You're not, really. Why, how old is that child?"

"Six months. No--seven."

"Well, Henry said it would take you a whole year to get over it."

"_I_ thought I should never get over it. We were both wrong."

"My child, it's palpable. You're nervy to the last degree. I never saw you so horribly restless."

"Not more so than when I first knew Baby was coming."

"Well, quite as much."