Part 32

"I should have thought it showed he wasn't."

Miss Bickersteth's mouth was decided in its set, and vague in its outline and its colouring. Her smile now appeared as a mere quiver of her face.

"How have you managed to preserve your beautiful innocence? Do you always go about with your head among the stars?"

"My head----?" He felt it. It was going round and round.

"Yes. Is a poet not supposed ever to see anything under his exquisite nose?"

"I am not," said Nicky solemnly, "always a poet. And when a person tells me he isn't going to do a thing, I naturally think he isn't."

"And I naturally think he is. Whatever you think about George Tanqueray, he's sure to do the other thing."

"Come--if you can calculate on that."

"You can't calculate on anything. Least of all with George Tanqueray. Except that he'll never achieve anything that isn't a masterpiece. If it's a masterpiece of folly."

"Mind you," she added, "I don't say he will marry Jane Holland, and I don't say it would be a masterpiece of folly if he did."

"What do you say?"

"That if he ever cares for any woman enough to marry her, it will be Jane."

"I see," said Nicky, after some reflection. "You think he's that sort?"

"I think he's a genius. What more do you want?"

"Oh, I don't want anything more," said Nicky, plunging head-first into a desperate ambiguity. He emerged. "What I mean is, when we've got Him, and when we've got Her--creators----" He paused before the immensity of his vision of Them. "What business have we----"

"To go putting one and one together so as to make two?"

"Well--it doesn't seem quite reverent."

"You think them gods, then, your creators?"

"I think I--worship them."

"Ah, Mr. Nicholson, you're adorable. And I'm atrocious."

"I believe," said Nicky, "tea is in the garden."

"Let us go into the garden," said Miss Bickersteth.

And they went.

Tea was served in a green recess shut in from the lawn by high yew hedges. Nicky at his tea-table was more charming than ever, surrounded by old silver and fine linen, making tea delicately, and pouring it into fragile cups and offering it, doing everything with an almost feminine dexterity and grace.

After tea the group scattered and rearranged itself. In Nicky's perfect garden, a garden of smooth grass plots and clipped yew-trees, of lupins and larkspurs, of roses that would have been riotous but for the restraining spirit of the place; in a green alley between lawn and orchard, Mr. Hugh Brodrick found himself with Miss Holland, and alone. Very quietly, very persistently, with eyes intent, he had watched for and secured this moment.

"You don't know," he was saying, "how I've wanted to meet you, and how hard I've worked for it."

"Was it so hard?"

"Hard isn't the word for it. If you knew the things I've done----" He spoke in his low, even voice, saying eager and impulsive things without a sign of eagerness or impulse.