Part 119

Brodrick's brother-in-law lived with an extreme simplicity in one of those square white houses in St. John's Wood, houses secluded behind high, mysterious walls, where you entered, as by secret, through a narrow door.

The party had streamed through this door, over the flagged path and through the house, into the small, dark, green garden at the back, a garden that seemed to guard, like the house, its secret and its mystery. There, on this yearly festival, you were certain to find all the Brodricks, packed rather tight among a crowd of Levines and their collaterals from Fitzjohn's Avenue, a crowd of very dark, very large-eyed, very curly-haired persons, persons attired with sobriety, almost with austerity, by way of protest against the notorious excesses of their race.

And with them there was always, on this occasion, a troop of little boys and girls, dark, solemn-eyed little boys and girls, with incredibly curly hair, and strange, unchildlike noses.

Moving restlessly among them, or grouped apart, you came upon friends of the Brodricks and Levines, and here and there a few journalists, conspicuously tired young men who toiled nocturnally on the "Morning Telegraph."

This year it was understood that the party would be brilliant. The young men turned up in large numbers and endeavoured to look for the occasion a little less tired than they were. All the great writers on the "Monthly Review" had been invited and many of them came.

Caro Bickersteth was there; she came early, and Sophy Levine, in a discreet aside, implored her to give her a hand with the authors. Authors, Sophy intimated, were too much for her, and there would be a lot of them. There was Miss Lempriere and Miss Gunning, and Jane Holland, of course----

"Of course," said Caro, twinkling.

"And Mr. Tanqueray."

At that name Caro raised her eyebrows and remarked that Sophy was a lucky lady to get Him, for He never went anywhere. Then Caro became abstracted, wondering why George Tanqueray was coming, and to this particular show.

"Will his wife be here?" she inquired.

"Dear me," said Sophy, "I never asked her. You don't somehow think of him as married."

"I doubt," said Caro; "if he thinks so of himself. There never was a man who looked it less."

Most singularly unattached he looked, as he stood there, beside Nina Lempriere and Laura Gunning, drawn to them, but taking hardly more notice of them than of any Brodrick or Levine. He was watching Jinny as she moved about in the party. She had arrived somewhat conspicuously, attended by Brodrick, by Winny Heron and by Eddy, with the two elder little Levines clinging to her gown.

Jane was aware that Nina and Laura were observing her; she was aware of a shade of anxiety in their concentration. Then she knew that Tanqueray was there, too, that he was watching her, that his eyes never left her.

He did not seek her out after their first greeting. He preferred to stand aside and watch her. He had arrived later and he was staying late. Jane felt that it would become her not to stay. But Brodrick would not let her go. He took possession of her. He paraded her as his possession under Tanqueray's eyes; eyes that were fixed always upon Jane, vigilantly, anxiously, as if he saw her caught in the toils.

An hour passed. The party dwindled and dissolved around them. The strangers were gone. The hordes of Levines had scattered to their houses in Fitzjohn's Avenue. The little Levines had been gathered away by their nurses from the scene. Only Brodrick and his family remained, and Jane with them, and Tanqueray who kept on looking at the two while he talked vaguely to Levine.

Brodrick's family was not less interested or less observant. It had accepted without surprise what it now recognized as inevitable. It could no longer hope that Hugh would cease from his insane pursuit of Jane Holland, after making the thing thus public, flourishing his intentions in the face of his family. With a dexterity in manuvre, an audacity, an obstinacy that was all his own, Hugh had resisted every attempt to separate him from Miss Holland. He only let go his hold when Sophy Levine, approaching with an admirable air of innocence in guile, announced that Baby was being put to bed. She suggested that Jane might like to see him in his--well, in his perfection. It was impossible, Sophy maintained, for anybody not to desire above all things to see him.

Up-stairs in the nursery, Winny and Mrs. Heron were worshipping Baby as he lay on the nurse's lap, in his perfection, naked from his bath. Sophy could not wait till he was given up to her. She seized him, in the impatience of maternal passion. She bent over him, hiding her face with his soft body.

Presently her eyes, Sophy's beautiful, loving eyes, looked up at Jane over the child's shoulder, and their gaze had guile as well as love in it. Jane stood before it motionless, impassive, impenetrable.

Winny fell on her knees in a rapture.

"Oh, Miss Holland!" she cried. "Don't you love him?"

Jane admitted that she rather liked him.

"She's a wretch," said Sophy. "Baby duckums, she says she rather likes you."

Baby chuckled as if he appreciated the absurdity of Jane's moderation.

"Oh, don't you want," said Winny, "don't you want to kiss his little feet? Wouldn't you love to have him for your very own?"

"No, Winny, I shouldn't know what to do with him."

"Wouldn't you?" said Mrs. Heron.

"Feel," said Winny, "how soft he is. He's got teeny, teeny hairs, like down, golden down, just there, on his little back."