Part 141

"We!"

"Yes, we; you and I. Isn't it funny?"

"I don't think it's funny at all," said Owen. "It might be--a little funny, if I made it and not you."

"Darling--that would be funnier than anything."

Her laughter darted at him, sudden and sweet and shrill, and it cut him to the heart. His gravity was now portentous.

"The beauty of it is," she persisted, defying all his gravity, "that, if I can go on, you won't have to make it. And I shall go on, I feel it; I feel myself going. I've got a dream, Owen, such a beautiful dream. Some day, instead of sitting there breaking your heart over those horrid paragraphs, instead of rushing down to Fleet Street in the rain and the sleet and the fog, you shall ramp up and down here, darling, making poems, and it won't matter if you wear the carpet out, if you wear ten carpets. You shall make poems all day long, and you--shall--never--write--another--paragraph again. You do them very badly."

"You needn't remind me of that," said Owen in his gloom.

"But, surely, you don't want to do them well?"

"You know what I want."

"You talk as if you hadn't got it."

She crouched down beside him and laid her face against his knee.

"I don't think it's nice of you," she said, "not to be pleased when I'm pleased."

His eyes lightened. His hand slid down to her and caressed her hair.

"I am pleased," he said. "That's what I wanted, to see you going strong, doing nothing but the work you love. All the same----"

"Well?"

"Can't you understand that I don't want to see my wife working for me?"

She laughed again. "You're just like that silly old Tanks. He couldn't bear to see his wife working when she wanted to; so he wouldn't let her work, and the poor little soul got ill with not having what she wanted. You didn't want me to get ill, did you?"

"I wanted to take care of you--well or ill. I wanted to work for you all my life long."

"And you wanted me to be happy?"

"More than anything I wanted you to be happy."

"But you didn't, and you don't want me to be happy--in my own way?"

He rose and lifted her from the floor where she crouched, and held her so tight to him that he hurt her.

"My little one," he murmured, "can't you understand it? Can't you see it? You're so small--so small."

XLII

For six months Jane concentrated all her passion on her little son. The Brodricks, who had never been surprised at anything, owned that this was certainly not what they had expected. Jane seemed created to confound their judgments and overthrow their expectations. Neither Frances Heron nor Sophy Levine was ever possessed by the ecstasy and martyrdom of motherhood. They confessed as much. Frances looked at Sophy and said, "Whoever would have thought that Jinny----?" And Sophy looked at Frances and replied, "My dear, I didn't even think she could have had one. She's a marvel and a mystery."

The baby was a link binding Jane to her husband's family. She was a marvel and a mystery to them more than ever, but she was no longer an alien. The tie of the flesh was strong. She was Hugh's wife, who had gone near to death for him, and had returned in triumph. She was glorified in their eyes by all the powers of life.

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.