Part 188

Brodrick left them together, just to show how imperturbable he was.

"George," she said, "it was horrible. Poor Nicky stood there where you are, waiting for me to say things. And I couldn't, I couldn't, and he saw it. He saw it and turned white----"

"He is white," said Tanqueray.

"He turned whiter. And he burst out into a dreadful perspiration. And then--oh, don't laugh--it was so awful--he took my hand and wrung it, and walked out of the room, very dignified and stiff."

"My dear child, he only thought you were speechless with emotion."

But Jane was putting on her hat and coat which lay beside her.

"Let's get out somewhere," she said, "anywhere away from this intolerable scene. Let's tear over the Heath."

She tore and he followed. Gertrude saw them go.

She turned midway between Putney and Wimbledon. "Oh, how my heart aches for that poor lamb."

"It needn't. The poor lamb's heart doesn't ache for itself."

"It does. I stabbed it."

"Not you!"

"But, George--they were dedicated to me. Could my cup of agony be fuller?"

"I admit it's full."

"And how about Nicky's?"

"Look here, Jinny. If you or I or Prothero had written those poems we should be drinking cups of agony. But there is no cup of agony for Nicky. He believes that those poems are immortal, and that none of us can rob them of their immortality."

"But if he's slaughtered--and he will be--if they fall on him and tear him limb from limb, poor innocent lamb!"

"He isn't innocent, your lamb. He deserves it. So he won't get it. It's only poets like Prothero who are torn limb from limb."

"I don't know. There are people who'd stick a knife into him as soon as look at him."

"If there are he'll be happy. He'll believe that there's a plot against him to write him down. He'll believe that he's Keats. He'll believe anything. You needn't be sorry for him. If only you or I had Nicky's hope of immortality--if we only had the joy he has even now, in the horrible act of creation. Why, he's never tired. He can go on for ever without turning a hair, whereas look at our hair after a morning's work. Think what it must be to feel that you never can be uninspired, never to have a doubt or a shadowy misgiving. Neither you nor I nor Prothero will ever know a hundredth part of the rapture Nicky knows. We get it for five minutes, an hour, perhaps, and all the rest is simply hard, heavy, heartbreaking, grinding labour."

Their wild pace slackened.

"It's a dog's life, yours and mine, Jinny. Upon my soul, for mere sensation, if I could choose I'd rather be Nicky."

He paused.

"And then--when you think of his supreme illusion----"

"Has he another?"

"You know he has. If all of us could believe that when the woman we love refuses us she only does it because of her career----"

"If he did believe that----"

"Believe it? He believes now that she didn't even refuse him. He thinks he renounced her--for the sake of her career. It's quite possible he thinks she loves him; and really, considering her absurd behaviour----"