Part 176

"Or," Jane amended, "why not make the marriage of geniuses a criminal act, like suicide? You can always acquit them afterwards on the ground of temporary insanity."

"How would you deal," said Brodrick suddenly, "with mixed marriages?"

"Mixed----?" Caro feigned bewilderment.

"When a norm--an ordinary--person marries a genius? It's a racial difference."

("Distinctly," Caro murmured.)

"And wouldn't it be hard to say which side the lunacy was on?"

Laura would have suspected him of a bitter personal intention had it not been so clear that Jinny's genius was no longer in question, that her flame was quenched.

It was Caro who asked (in the drawing-room, afterwards) if they might see the children.

Gertrude went up-stairs to fetch them. Eddy Heron watched her softly retreating figure, and smiled and spoke.

"I say, Gee-Gee's going strong, isn't she?"

Everybody affected not to hear him, and the youth went on smiling to his unappreciated self.

Gertrude appeared again presently, bringing the children. On the very threshold little Hugh struggled in her arms and tried to hurl himself on his mother. His object attained, he turned his back on everybody and hung his head over Jane's shoulder.

But little John Henry was admirably behaved. He wandered from guest to guest, shaking hands, in his solemn urbanity, with each. He looked already absurdly unastonished and important. He was not so much his father's son as the son of all the Brodricks. As for little Hugh, it was easy enough, Prothero said, to see whose son he was. And Winny Heron cried out in an ecstasy that he was going to be a genius, she was sure of it.

"Heaven forbid," said Brodrick. Everybody heard him.

"Oh, Uncle Hughy, if he was like Jin-Jin!" Allurement and tender reproach mingled in Winny's tone.

She turned to Jane with eyes that adored and loved and defended her. "I wish you'd have dozens of babies--darlings--like yourself."

"And I wish," said Eddy, "she'd have dozens of books like her last one."

Eddy was standing, very straight and tall, on his uncle's hearth. His chin, which was nothing if not determined, was thrust upwards and outwards over his irreproachable high collar. Everybody looked at Eddy as he spoke.

"What I want to know is why she doesn't have them? What have you all been doing to her? What have you been doing to her, Uncle Hughy?"

He looked round on all of them with the challenge of his young eyes.

"It's all very well, you know, but I agree with Miss Bickersteth. If you're a genius you've no business to marry--I mean nobody's any business to marry you."

"Mine," said Caro suavely, "was a purely abstract proposition."

But the terrible youth went on. "Mine isn't. Uncle Hugh's done a good thing for himself, I know. But it would have been a jolly sight better thing for literature if he'd married Gee-Gee, or somebody like that."

For there was nothing that young Eddy did not permit himself to say.

Little Hugh had begun to cry bitterly, as if he had understood that there had been some reflection on his mother. And from crying he went on to screaming, and Gertrude carried him, struggling violently, from the room.

The screams continued in the nursery overhead. Jane sat for a moment in agony, listening, and then rushed up-stairs.

Gertrude appeared, serene and apologetic.

"Can't anything be done," Brodrick said irritably, "to stop that screaming?"