Part 181

He thought that Jane was going to admit that as she had admitted everything, but as he looked at her he saw that her mouth had lifted at its winged corners, and her eyes were darting their ominous light.

"It's awful of me, I know," she said, "but her presence in a room--in the house, Hugh--makes me feel as if I could scream the roof off."

(He glanced uneasily at her.)

"She makes me want to do things."

"What things?" he inquired mildly.

"The things I mustn't--to break loose--to kick over the traces----"

"You don't surprise me." He smoothed his face to the expression proper to a person unsurprised, dealing imperturbably with what he had long ago foreseen.

"Sometimes I think that if Gertrude were not so good, I might be more so. You're all so good," she said. "You are so good, so very, very good."

"I observe," said Brodrick, "a few elementary rules, as you do yourself."

"But I don't want," she said, "to observe them any more. I want to put my foot through all the rules."

The front door bell rang as the chiming clock struck eight.

"That's John," he said, "and Henry."

"Did you ever put your foot through a rule? Did John? Did Henry? Fancy John setting out on an adventure with his hair brushed like that and his spectacles on----"

They were announced. She rose to greet them. They waited. The clock with its soft silver insistence struck the quarter. It was awful, she said, to have to live with a clock that struck the quarter; and Henry shook his head at her and said, "Nerves, Jinny, nerves."

John looked at his watch. "I thought," said John, "you dined at eight."

"So did I," said Brodrick. He turned to Jane. "Your friend Prothero does not observe the rule of punctuality."

"If they won't turn up in time," said Henry, "I should dine without them."

They did dine ultimately. Prothero turned up at a quarter to nine, entering with the joint. Laura was not with him. Laura couldn't, he said, "get off."

He was innocent and unconscious of offence. They were not to bring back the soup or fish. Roast mutton was enough for him. He expected he was a bit late. He had been detained by Tanqueray. Tanqueray had just come back.

Involuntarily Brodrick looked at Jane.

Prothero had to defend her from a reiterated charge of neurosis brought against her by Henry, who observed with disapproval her rejection of roast mutton.

Over coffee and cigarettes Prothero caught him up and whirled him in a fantastic flight around his favourite subject.

There were cases, he declared, where disease was a higher sort of health. "Take," he said, "a genius with a pronounced neurosis. His body may be a precious poor medium for all ordinary purposes. But he couldn't have a more delicate, more lyrical, more perfectly adjusted instrument for his purposes than the nervous system you call diseased."

When he had gone Henry shook off the discomfort of him with a gesture.

"I've no patience with him," he said.

"He wouldn't expect you to have any," said Jane. "But you've no idea of the patience he would have with you."

She herself was conscious of a growing exasperation.

"I've no use for him. A man who deliberately constructs his own scheme of the universe, in defiance," said Henry, "of the facts."