Part 150

It was the sensitive Nicky who first perceived and pointed out a change in Jane. She moved among them abstractedly, with mute, half alienated eyes. She seemed to have suffered some spiritual disintegration that was pain. She gave herself to them no longer whole, but piecemeal. At times she seemed to hold out empty, supplicating hands, palms outward, showing that she could give no more. There was, she seemed to say, no more left of her.

Only Tanqueray knew how much was left; knew of her secret, imperishable resources, things that were hidden profoundly even from herself; so hidden that, even if she gave him nothing, it was always possible to him to help himself. To him she could not change. His creed had always been the unchangeableness, the indestructibility of Jinny.

Still, he assented, smiling, when little Laura confided to him that to see Jane Brodrick in Brodrick's house, among Brodricks, was not seeing Jinny. There was too much Brodrick. It would have been better, said Laura, if she had married Nicky.

He agreed. There would never have been too much of Nicky. But Laura shook her head.

"It isn't a question of proportion," she said. "It isn't that there's too much Brodrick and too little Jinny. It's simply that Jinny isn't there."

Jane knew how she struck them. There was sadness for her, not in their reproaches, for they had none, but in their recognition of the things that were impossible. They had always known how it would be if she married, if she was surrounded by a family circle.

There was no denying that she was surrounded, and that the circle was drawing rather tight. And she was planted there in the middle of it, more than ever under observation. She always had been; she had known it; only in the beginning it had not been quite so bad. Allowances had been made for her in the days when she did her best, when she was seen by all of them valiantly struggling, deplorably handicapped; in the days when, as Brodrick said, she was pathetic.

For the Brodricks as a family were chivalrous. Even Frances and Sophy were chivalrous; and it had touched them, that dismal spectacle of Jane doing her sad best. But now she was in the position of one to whom all things have been conceded. She was in for all the consequences of concession. Everything had been done for her that could be done. She was more than ever on her honour, more than ever pledged to do her part. If she failed Brodrick now at any point she was without excuse. Every nerve in her vibrated to the touch of honour.

Around her things went with the rhythm of faultless mechanism. There was no murmur, no perceptible vibration at the heart of the machine. You could not put your finger on it and say that it was Gertrude. Yet you knew it. Time itself and the awful punctuality of things were in Gertrude's hand. You would have known it even if, every morning at the same hour, you had not come upon Gertrude standing on a chair winding up the clock that Jane invariably forgot to wind. You felt that by no possibility could Gertrude forget to wind up anything. She herself was wound up every morning. She might have been a clock. She was wound up by Brodrick; otherwise she was self-regulating, provided with a compensation balance, and so long as Brodrick wound her, incapable of going wrong. Jane envied her her secure and secret mechanism, her automatic rhythm, the delicate precision of her ways. Compared with them her own performance was dangerous, fantastic, a dance on a tight-rope. She marvelled at her own preternatural poise.

She was steady; they could never say she was not steady. And they could never say it was not difficult. She had so many balls to keep going. There was her novel; and there was Brodrick, and the baby, and Brodrick's family, and her own friends. She couldn't drop one of them.

And at first there came on her an incredible, effortless dexterity. She was a fine juggler on her tight-rope, keeping in play her golden balls that multiplied till you could have sworn that she must miss one. And she never missed. She kept her head; she held it high; she fixed her eyes on the tossing balls, and simply trusted her feet not to swerve by a hair's-breadth. And she never swerved.

But now she was beginning to feel the trembling of the perfect balance. It was as if, in that marvellous adjustment of relations, she had arrived at the pitch where perfection topples over. She moved with tense nerves on the edge of peril.

How tense they were she hardly realized till Tanqueray warned her.

It was on Friday, that one day of the week when Brodrick was kept late at the office of the "Morning Telegraph." And it was August, two months after the coming of Gertrude Collett. Tanqueray, calling to see Jane, as he frequently did on a Friday, about five o'clock in the afternoon, found her in her study, playing with the baby.

She had the effrontery to hold the baby up, with his little naked legs kicking in Tanqueray's face. At ten months old he was a really charming baby, and very like Brodrick.

"Do you like him?" she said.

He stepped back and considered her. She had put her little son down on the floor, where, by an absurd rising and falling motion of his rosy hips, he contrived to travel across the room towards the fireplace.

Tanqueray said that he liked the effect of him.

"The general effect? It is heartrending."

"I mean his effect on you, Jinny. He makes you look like some nice, furry animal in a wood."

At that she snatched the child from his goal, the sharp curb of the hearthstone, and set him on her shoulder. Her face was turned up to him, his hands were in her hair. Mother and child they laughed together.

And Tanqueray looked at her, thinking how never before had he seen her just like that; never before with her body, tall for sheer slenderness, curved backwards, with her face so turned, and her mouth, fawn-like, tilting upwards, the lips half-mocking, half-maternal.

It was Jinny, shaped by the powers of life.

"Now," he said, "he makes you look like a young Mænad; mad, Jinny, drunk with life, and dangerous to life. What are you going to do with him?"

At that moment Gertrude Collett appeared in the doorway.

She returned Tanqueray's greeting as if she hardly saw him. Her face was set towards Jane Brodrick and the child.

"I am going," said Jane, "to give him to any one who wants him. I am going to give him to Miss Collett. There--you may keep him as long as you like."

Gertrude advanced, impassive, scarcely smiling. But as she took the child from Jane, Tanqueray saw how the fine lines of her lips tightened, relaxed, and tightened again, as if her tenderness were pain.