Part 175

Before long Jane had an opportunity of observing the fine height to which Gertrude could ascend. It was at a luncheon party that they gave, by way of celebrating Jane's return to the social life. The Herons were there, the young people, who had been asked without their mother, to celebrate Winny's long skirts; they and the Protheros and Caro Bickersteth. Jane was not sure that she wanted them to come. She was afraid of any disturbance in the tranquil depths of her renunciation.

Laura said afterwards that she hardly knew how they had sat through that luncheon. It was not that Jinny wasn't there and Brodrick was. The awful thing was that both were so lamentably altered. Brodrick was no longer the enthusiastic editor, gathering around him the brilliant circle of the talents; he was the absorbed, depressed and ponderous man of business. It was as if some spirit that had breathed on him, sustaining him, lightening his incipient heaviness, had been removed. Jinny sat opposite him, a pale Mater Dolorosa. Her face, even when she talked to you, had an intent, remote expression, as if through it all she were listening for her child's cry. She was silent for the most part, passive in Prothero's hands. She sat unnoticed and effaced; only from time to time the young girl, Winny Heron, sent her a look from soft eyes that adored her.

On the background of Jane's silence and effacement nothing stood out except Gertrude Collett.

Prothero, who had his hostess on his right hand, had inquired as to the ultimate fate of the "Monthly Review." Jane referred him to Miss Collett on his left. Miss Collett knew more about the Review than she did.

Gertrude flushed through all her faded fairness at Prothero's appeal.

"Don't you know," said she, "that it's in Mr. Brodrick's hands entirely now?"

Prothero did know. That was why he asked. He turned to Jane again. He was afraid, he said, that the Review, in Brodrick's hands, would be too good to live.

"Is it too good to live, Gertrude?" said she.

Gertrude looked at Brodrick as if she thought that he was.

"I don't think Mr. Brodrick will let it die," she said. "If he takes a thing up you can trust him to carry it through. He can fight for his own. He's a born fighter."

Down at her end of the table beside Brodrick, Laura listened.

"It has been a bit of a struggle, I imagine, up till now," said Prothero to Jane.

"Up till now" (it was Gertrude who answered) "his hands have been tied. But now it's absolutely his own thing. He has realized his dream."

If she had seen Prothero's eyes she would have been reminded that Brodrick's dream had been realized for him by his wife. She saw nothing but Brodrick. For Gertrude the "Monthly Review" was Brodrick.

She drew him for Prothero's benefit as the champion of the lost cause of literature. She framed the portrait as it were in a golden laurel wreath.

Eddy Heron cried, "Hear, hear!" and "Go it, Gertrude!" and Winny wanted to know if her uncle's ears weren't tingling. She was told that an editor's ears were past tingling. But he flushed slightly when Gertrude crowned herself and him. They were all listening to her now.

"I assure you," she was saying, "we are not afraid."

She was one with Brodrick, his interests and his dream.

She was congratulated (by Jane) on her championship of the champion, and Brodrick was heard murmuring something to the effect that nobody need be frightened; they were safe enough.

It struck Laura that Brodrick looked singularly unsatisfied for a man who has realized his dream.

"All the same," said Prothero, "it was rash of you to take those poems I sent you."

"Dear Owen," said Jane, "do you think they'll sink him?"

"As far as that goes," Brodrick said, "we're going to have a novel of George Tanqueray's. That'll show you what we can afford."

"Or what George can afford," said Jane. It was the first spark she had emitted. But it consumed the heavy subject.

"By the way," said Caro Bickersteth, "where is George Tanqueray?"

Laura said that he was somewhere in the country. He was always in the country now.

"Without his wife," said Caro, and nobody contradicted her. She went on.

"You great geniuses ought not to marry, any more than lunatics. The law ought to provide for it. Genius, in either party, if you can establish the fact, should annul the contract, like--like any other crucial disability."