Part 51 (1/2)

Nina's face drew back as if Laura had struck her. Its haggard, smitten look spoke as if Nina had spoken. ”What do you want to know him for?” it said.

”He hasn't got to be seen,” said Nina herself savagely. She was overwrought. ”He's got to be heard. You've heard him.”

”It's because I've heard him that I want to see him.”

Nina paused in her ferocious stride and glanced at the little thing. The small face of her friend had sunk from its ecstasy to its sullen suffering, its despondency, its doubt.

Nina was stung by compa.s.sion.

”Do you want to see him very much?” she said.

”I wouldn't ask you if I didn't.”

”All right. You shall. I'll make him come.”

XXIII

Within a fortnight of that reading Prothero received a letter from George Tanqueray. It briefly told him that the lady whom he had refused to meet had prevailed upon her publishers to bring out his poems in the autumn, at their own and not Prothero's expense.

How the miracle had been worked he couldn't conceive, and Tanqueray was careful to leave him unenlightened. It had been simply a stock instance of Jinny's way. Jinny, whose affairs were in Tanqueray's hands, had been meditating an infidelity to Messrs. Molyneux, by whom Tanqueray vehemently a.s.sured her she had been, and always would be, ”had.” They had ”had” her this time by the sacrificial ardour with which they soared to her suggestion that Mr. Prothero should be published. Miss Holland must, they urged, be aware that Mr. Prothero had been rejected by every other firm in London. They were sure that she realized the high danger of their enterprise and that she appreciated the purity of their enthusiasm. The poems were, as she knew, so extraordinary that Mr.

Prothero had not one chance in a thousand even with the small public that read poetry. Still, they were giving Mr. Prothero his fractional opportunity, because of their enthusiasm and their desire to serve Miss Holland. They understood that Miss Holland was thinking of leaving them.

They would not urge her to remain, but they hoped that, for her own sake, she would reconsider it.

Jane had reconsidered it and had remained.

”You understand clearly, Jinny,” Tanqueray had said, ”that you're paying for Prothero's poems?”

To that Jinny had replied, ”It's what I wanted to do, and there wasn't any other way.”

Owen Prothero could no longer say that n.o.body knew his name. His innocence was unaware of the secret processes by which names are made and unmade; but he had gathered from Nina that her friends had created for him a rumour and reputation which he persistently refused to incarnate by his presence among them. He said he wanted to preserve his innocence. Tanqueray's retirement was not more superb or more indignant; Tanqueray had been fortuitously and infrequently ”met”; but n.o.body met Prothero anywhere. Even Jane Holland, the authentic fount of rumour, had not met him.

It was hard on Jane that she who was, as she piteously pleaded, the prey of all the destroyers, should not be allowed a sight of this incomparable creator. But she respected the divine terror that kept Nina's unlicked Celt outside women's drawing-rooms.

She understood, however, that he was to be seen and seen more often than not, at Tanqueray's rooms in Torrington Square. Tanqueray's wife did not count. She was not the sort of woman Prothero could be afraid of, and she was guiltless of having any drawing-room. Jane remembered that it was a long time since she had seen Tanqueray's wife.

One afternoon, about five o'clock, she called in Torrington Square. She approached the house in some anxiety, afraid of seeing the unhappy little face of Tanqueray's wife looking out of the ground-floor window.

But Rose was not at the window. The curtains were drawn across, obviously for the purpose of concealing Rose. A brougham waited before the door.

Jane, as she entered, had a sense of secrecy and disturbance in the house. There was secrecy and disturbance, too, in the manner of the little shabby maid who told her that the doctor was in there with Mrs.

Tanqueray.

She was going away when Tanqueray came out of the sitting-room where the doctor was.

”Don't go, Jinny,” he said.

She searched his face.