Part 180

"How can any idea be mine," said Gertrude, "if I always agree with Mr. Brodrick? As a matter of fact it was the Doctor's."

"Yes. It was very like him."

"He spoke to Mr. Brodrick yesterday. And I am glad he did."

"Why are you glad?"

"Because it was taken out of my hands. I don't want you to think that I interfere, that I put myself forward, that I suggested this arrangement about the children. If it's to be, you must understand distinctly that I and my ideas and my wishes have nothing to do with it. If I offered myself it was because I was compelled. Mr. Brodrick was at his wits' end."

("Poor dear, I drove him there," said Jane.)

"It's put me in a very difficult position. I have to appear to be taking everything on myself, to be thrusting myself in everywhere, whereas the truth is I can only keep on" (she closed her eyes, as one dizzied with the perilous path she trod) "by ignoring myself, putting myself altogether on one side."

"Do you hate it?" Jane said softly.

"No. It's the only way. But sometimes one is foolish--one looks for a little recognition and reward----"

Jane put her hands on the other woman's shoulders and gazed into her face.

"We do recognize you," she said, "even if we don't reward you. How can we, when you've done so much?"

"My reward would be--not to be misunderstood."

"Do I misunderstand you? Does he?"

"Mr. Brodrick? Never."

"I, then?"

"You? I think you thought I wanted to come between you and the children."

"I never thought you wanted to come between me and anything."

Her hands that held her dropped.

"But you're right, Gertrude. I'm a brute and you're an angel."

She turned from her and left her there.

LIV

She knew that she had dealt a wound, and she was sorry for it. It was awful to see Gertrude going about the house in her flagrant secrecy. It was unbearable to Jane, Gertrude's soft-flaming, dedicated face, and that little evasive, sacred look of hers, as if she had her hand for ever on her heart, hiding her wound. It was a look that reminded Jane, and was somehow, she felt, intended to remind her, that Gertrude was pure spirit as well as pure womanhood in her too discernible emotion. Was it not spiritual to serve as she served, to spend as she spent herself, so angelically, bearing the dreadful weight of Brodrick's marriage--the consequences, so to speak, of that corporeal tie--on her winged shoulders?

She could see that Hugh looked at it in that light (as well he might) when one evening he spoke remorsefully of the amount they put on her.

A month had passed since he had given the care of his children into Gertrude's hands. She was up-stairs now superintending their disposal for the night. He and Jane were alone in a half-hour before dinner, waiting for John and Henry and the Protheros to come and dine. The house was very still. Brodrick could not have believed that it was possible, the perfection of the peace that had descended on them. He appealed to Jane. She couldn't deny that it was peace.

Jane didn't deny it. She had nothing whatever to say against an arrangement that had turned out so entirely for the children's good. She kept her secret to herself. Her secret was that she would have given all the peace and all the perfection for one scream of Hughy's and the child's arms round her neck.

"You wouldn't know," Brodrick said, "that there was a child in the house."

Jane agreed. Ah, yes, if that was peace, they had it.

Well, wasn't it? After that infernal row he made? You couldn't say anything when the poor little chap was ill and couldn't help it, but you couldn't have let him cultivate screaming as a habit. It was wonderful the effect that woman had on him. He couldn't think how she did it. It was as if her mere presence in a room----