Part 79

"Is it a garden-party?" Jane inquired.

"No," said Brodrick, "it's my family."

She came on with him over the lawn. And the group rose to its feet; it broke up with little movements and murmurs, in a restrained, dignified expectancy. Jane had the sense of being led towards some unaccountable triumph and acclamation.

They closed round her, these unknown Brodricks, inaudibly stirred, with some unspoken, incomprehensible emotion in the men's gaze and in the women's touch. The big boy and girl shared it as they came forward in their shyness, with affectionate faces and clumsy, abortive encounters of the hand.

It was the whole Brodrick family moved to its depths, feeling as one. It could only be so moved by the spectacle of integrity and honour and incorruptible loyalty to It.

Still moved, it was surrounding Jane when a maid arrived with the tea-table, and the white cloth waved a signal to Miss Collett across the lawn. There was then a perceptible pause in the ovation as Brodrick's secretary appeared.

Even across the lawn Jane could discern trouble in Miss Collett's face. But Miss Collett's face was plastic in readjustments, and by the time she was fairly on the scene it had recaptured the habit of its smile. The smile, in greeting, covered and carried off the betraying reluctance of her hand. It implied that, if Miss Holland was to be set up in a high place and worshipped, Miss Collett was anxious to observe the appropriate ritual. Having observed it, she took, with her quiet, inconspicuous assurance, the place that was her own. She gave but one sign of her trouble when Dr. Brodrick was heard congratulating their guest on the great serial which, said he, by "saving" the magazine, had "saved" his brother. Then Gertrude quivered slightly, and the blood flushed in her set face and passed as fierce heat passes through iron.

While they were talking Jane had opportunity to watch and wonder at the firm, consolidated society that was Brodrick's family. These faces proclaimed by their resemblance the material link. Mr. John Brodrick was a more thick-set, an older, graver-lined, and grizzled Hugh, a Hugh who had lost his sombre fixity of gaze. Dr. Henry Brodrick was a tall, attenuated John, with a slightly, ever so slightly receding chin. Mrs. Heron was Hugh again made feminine and slender. She had Hugh's features, refined and diminished. She had Hugh's eyes, filled with some tragic sorrow of her own. Her hair was white, every thread of it, though she could not have been more than forty-five.

These likenesses were not so apparent at first sight in Mrs. Levine, the golden, full-blown flower of the Brodricks. They had mixed so thoroughly and subtly that they merged in her smoothness and her roundness. And still the facial substance showed in the firm opacity of her skin, the racial soul asserted itself in her poised complacence and decision.

"You don't know," she was saying, "how we're all sitting at your feet."

"We are indeed," said Mr. John Brodrick.

"Very much so," said the Doctor.

"Even little Cissy," said Hugh.

For little Cissy was bringing all her stalkless flowers to Jane; smiling at her as if she alone possessed the secret of this play. Brodrick watched, well-pleased, the silent traffic of their tendernesses.

The others were talking about Hambleby now. They had all read him. They had all enjoyed him. They all wanted more of him.

"If we could only have had Hambleby, Miss Holland," said Levine. "It wasn't my fault that we didn't get him."

Jane remembered that this was the brother-in-law whom Brodrick had wanted to keep out. He had the air of being persistently, permanently in.

"Of course it wasn't your fault," said she.

Levine then thought it necessary to say things about Jane's celebrity till Brodrick cut him short.

"Miss Holland," he said, "doesn't like her celebrity. You needn't talk about it."

John and Henry looked graver than ever, and Sophy made sweet eyes at Jane. Sophy's eyes--when they looked at you--were very sweet. It was through her eyes only that she apologized for her husband, whose own eyes were manifestly incapable of apologizing for anything. The Brodricks seemed to tolerate their brother-in-law; and he seemed, more sublimely, to tolerate their tolerance.

Great efforts were now made to divert Levine from the magazine. Mr. John Brodrick headed him off with motors and their makers; the Doctor kept his half-resentful spirit moving briskly round the Wimbledon golf-links; and Hugh, with considerable dexterity, landed him securely on the fiscal question, where he might be relied upon to stay.

But it was the Baby who saw what was to be done if his parent was to be delivered from his own offensiveness.

"Oh, look!" cried Winny. "Look at Baby. Making such a ducky angel of himself."

The Baby, having sat down abruptly on the grass, was making a ducky angel of himself by wriggling along it, obliquely, as he sat.

At the sight of him all the Brodricks instantaneously lost their seriousness and sanity. He was captured and established as the centre of the group. And, in the great act of adoration of the Baby, Levine was once more united to his wife's family.

His wife's family, like his wife, could forgive anything to Louis Levine because of the babies. It reserved its disapproval for Mrs. John Brodrick who had never had any; who had never done anything that was expected of her. Mrs. John looked as if she had cried a great deal because of the things she had not done. She had small hazel eyes with inflamed lids, and a small high nose that was always rather red. She was well born, and she carried her low-browed, bird-like head among the Brodricks with a solitary grace, and the motions of a dignified, distinguished bird.

And now, in mute penitence and wistful worship, she prostrated herself before their divinity, the Baby.