Part 138

She gave a low sobbing cry of joy and fear, and stayed where she had entered; and he strode forward and took her in his arms. He held her for a long moment, bending to her, his lips pressed to hers, till she drew back her face suddenly and looked at him.

"Do you know? Has Nina told you?"

"I knew three weeks ago."

"Did she wire?"

"Nobody wired."

"Why have you come, then?"

"You sent for me."

"Oh no, no. It wasn't I. I couldn't. How could you think I would?"

"Why couldn't you?"

"It would have been," she said, "a dreadful thing to do."

"That dreadful thing is what you did. I heard you all night--the night of the thirtieth; you were crying to me. And in the morning I saw you."

"You saw me?"

"I saw you in a little room that I've never seen you in. You were going up and down in it, with your hands held out, like this, in front of you. You were looking for something. And I knew that I had to come."

"And you came," she said, "just for that?"

"I came--just for that."

An hour later he was alone for a moment with Nina. She had come in with her hat and jacket on.

"Do you mind," she said, "if I go out? I've got to go."

There was nothing to be said. He knew the nature of her necessity, and she knew that he knew. She stood confronting him and his knowledge with a face that never flinched. His eyes protested, with that eternal tenderness of his that had been her undoing. She steadied her voice under it.

"I want you to know, Owen, that I sent for you."

"It was like your goodness."

She shrugged her thin shoulders. "There was nothing else," she said, "that I could do."

That night, while Prothero and Laura sat together holding each other's hands, Nina walked up and down outside on the Embankment, in the rain. She had said that she was more like a man than a woman; and with her stride that gave her garments recklessly to the rain, with her impetuous poise, and hooded, hungry eyes, she had the look of some lean and vehement adolescent, driven there by his youth.

The next day, very early, she went down into Wales, a virgin to her mountains.

She had done all she could.

Laura was staying at the Brodricks. She was to stay, Jane insisted on it, until she was married. She would have to stay for ever then, Laura said. Her marriage seemed so far-off, so unlikely, so impossible.

For Prothero had offended the powers that governed his material destiny, the editors and proprietors of the "Morning Telegraph." A man who, without a moment's notice, could fling up his appointment, an appointment, mind you, that he had obtained, not by any merit of his own, but through the grace and favour of an editor's wife, an appointment that he held precariously, almost on sufferance, by mercy extended to him day by day and hour by hour, what could he hope for from sane, responsible men like Brodrick and Levine? Did he imagine that appointments hung on lamp-posts ready to his hand? Or that they only waited for his appearance, to fall instantly upon his head? And that, if they did fall on his head, he could take them on and off like his hat? And did he think that he could play the fool with a paper like the "Morning Telegraph"?

These questions Brodrick asked of Levine and Levine of Brodrick, before the unspeakably shocked, the unconditionally assenting faces of John and Henry.

All the Brodricks disapproved of Prothero and were annoyed with him for flinging up his appointment. Jane pleaded that he had flung it up because he was fond of Laura and wanted to marry her; and she was told that that was all the more reason why he should have stuck to it. They were annoyed with him for keeping Laura hanging on when he knew he couldn't marry her; and they were annoyed with him for wanting to marry her at all. They admitted that it was very sad for Laura; they liked Laura; they approved of Laura; she had done her duty by all the family she had, and had nearly died of it. And when Jane suggested that all Prothero wanted was to do the same, they replied that Prothero had no business to think of having a family--they supposed that was what it would end in--a man who couldn't keep himself, much less a delicate wife and half-a-dozen children. There would be half-a-dozen; there always were in cases like Prothero's. And at that Jane smiled and said they would be darlings if they were at all like Laura.