The Creators Part 126

There was a slight stir and hesitation, then a greeting, very formal and polite on both sides, and with Joey all the time leaping and panting and licking Tanqueray's hands. Joey's demonstration was ignored as much too emotional for the occasion.

A remark from Rose about the weather. Inquiries from Tanqueray as to the health of Mr. and Mrs. Eldred. Further inquiries as to the health of Rose.

Silence.

"May I turn the light up?" (From Tanqueray.)

"I'd rather you let it be?" (From Rose.)

He let it be.

"Rose" (very suddenly from Tanqueray), "do you remember Mr. Robinson?"

(No response.)

"Rose, why are you sitting in this room?"

"Because I like it."

"Why do you like it?"

(No response; only a furtive movement of Rose's hand towards her pocket-handkerchief. A sudden movement of Tanqueray's, restrained, so that he appeared to have knelt on the hearthrug to caress the little dog. A long and silent stroking of Joey's back. Demonstration of ineffable affection from Joey.)

"His hair never _has_ come on, has it? Do you know" (very gravely), "I'm afraid it never will."

(A faint quiver of Rose's mouth which might or might not have been a smile.)

"Rose, why did you marry me? Wouldn't any other hairless little dog have done as well?"

(A deep sigh from Rose.)

Tanqueray was now standing up and looking down at her in his way.

"Rose, do you remember how I came to you at Fleet, and brought you the moon in a band-box?"

She answered him with a sudden and convulsive sob.

He knelt beside her. He hesitated for a moment.

"Rose--I've brought you the band-box without the moon. Will you have it?"

She got up with a wild movement of escape. Something rolled from her lap and fell between them. She made a dash towards the object. But Tanqueray had picked it up. It was a pair of Tanqueray's gloves, neatly folded.

"What were you doing with those gloves?" he said.

"I was mendin' them," said she.

Half-an-hour later Rose and Tanqueray were walking up the East Heath Road towards their little house. Rose carried Tanqueray's gloves, and Tanqueray carried Minny, the cat, in a basket.

As they went they talked about Owen Prothero. And Tanqueray thanked G.o.d that, after all, there was something they _could_ talk about.

LXVII

Dr. Brodrick had declared for the seventh time that Prothero was impossible.

His disease was advancing. Both lungs were attacked now. There was, as he perfectly well knew, consolidation at the apex of the left lung; the upper lobe had retracted, leaving his heart partially uncovered, and he knew it; you could detect also a distinct systolic murmur; and n.o.body could be more aware than Prothero of the gravity of these signs. Up till now, he, Brodrick, had been making a record case of him. The man had a fine const.i.tution (he gave him credit for that); he had pluck; there was resistance, pugnacity in every nerve. He had one chance, a fighting chance. His life might be prolonged for years, if he would only rest.

And there he was, with all that terrible knowledge in him, sitting up in bed, driving that infernal pen of his as if his life depended on _that_.

Scribbling verses, he was, working himself into such a state of excitement that his temperature had risen. He displayed, Brodrick said, an increasing nervous instability. When Brodrick told him that (if he wanted to know) his inspiration was hollow, had been hollow for months, and that he would recognize that as one of the worst symptoms in his case, Prothero said that his critics had always told him that. The worst symptom in his case, _he_ declared, was that he couldn't laugh without coughing. When Brodrick said that it wasn't a laughing matter, he laughed till he spat blood and frightened himself. For he had (Brodrick had noticed it) a morbid horror of the sight of blood. You had to inject morphia after every haemorrhage, to subdue that awful agitation.

All this the Doctor recounted to Laura, alone with her in her forlorn little drawing-room down-stairs. He unveiled for her intelligence the whole pathology of the case. It brought him back to what he had started with, Prothero's impossibility.

"What does he do for it?" he repeated. "He knows the consequences as well as I do."

Laura said she didn't think that Owen ever had considered consequences.

"But he _must_ consider them. What's a set of verses compared with his health?"

Laura answered quietly, "Owen would say what was his health compared with a set of verses? If he knew they'd be the greatest poem of his life."

"His life? My dear child----"

The pause was terrible.

"I wish," he said, "we could get him out of this."

"He doesn't want to go. You said yourself it wasn't the great thing."

He admitted it. The great thing, he reiterated, was rest. It was his one chance. He explained carefully again how good a chance it was. He dwelt on the things Prothero might yet do if he gave himself a chance. And when he had done talking Laura remarked that it was all very well, but he was reckoning without Owen's genius.

"Genius?" He shrugged his shoulders. He smiled (as if they weren't always reckoning with it at Putney!). "What is it? For medicine it's simply and solely an abnormal activity of the brain. And it must stop."

He stood over her impressively, marking his words with clenched fist on open palm.

"He must choose between his genius and his life."

She winced. "I don't believe he _can_ choose," she murmured. "It _is_ his life."

He straightened himself to his enormous height, in dignified recoil from her contradiction.

"I have known many men of genius," he said.

"His genius is different," said she.