The Creators Part 26

The daughter--no--I think he said the niece--of his landlord."

"Uneducated?" said Miss Bickersteth.

"Absolutely."

"Common?"

He hesitated and Jane prompted. "No, Nicky."

"Don't tamper," said Miss Bickersteth, "with my witness. Uncommon?"

"Not in the least."

"Any aitches?"

"I decline," said Nicky, "to answer any more questions."

"Never mind. You've told us quite enough. I'm disgusted with Mr.

Tanqueray."

"But why?" said Jane imperturbably.

"Why? When one thinks of the women, the perfectly adorable women he might have married--if he'd only waited. And he goes and does this."

"He knows his own business best," said Jane.

"A man's marriage is not his business."

"What is it, then?"

Miss Bickersteth was at a loss for once, and Laura helped her. "It's his pleasure, isn't it?"

"He'd no right to take his pleasure this way."

Jane raised her head.

"He had. A perfect right."

"To throw himself away? My dear--on a little servant-girl without an aitch in her?"

"On anybody he pleases."

"Can you imagine George Tanqueray," said Nina, "throwing himself away on anybody?"

"_I_ can--easily," said Nicholson.

"Whatever he throws away," said Nina, "it won't be himself."

"My dear Nina, look at him," said Miss Bickersteth. "He's done for himself--socially, at any rate."

"Not he. It's men like George Tanqueray who can afford to do these things. Do you suppose anybody who cares for him will care a rap whom he marries?"

"I care," said Nicky. "I care immensely."

"You needn't. Marriage is not--it really is not--the fearfully important thing you think it."

Nicholson looked at his boots, his perfect boots.

"It's _the_ most important act of a man's life," he said. "An ordinary man's--a curate's--a grocer's. And for Tanqueray--for any one who creates----"

"For any one who creates," said Nina, "nothing's important outside his blessed creation."

"And this lady, I imagine," said Miss Bickersteth, "will be very much outside it."

Nicky raised his dark eyes and gazed upon them. "Good heavens! But a man wants a woman to inspire him."

"George doesn't," said Jane. "You may trust him to inspire himself."

"You may," said Nina. "In six months it won't matter whether George is married or not. At least, not to George."

She rose, turning on Nicky as if something in his ineffectual presence maddened her. "Do you suppose," she said, "that woman counts? No woman counts with men like George Tanqueray."

"She can hold you back," said Nicky.

"You think so? You haven't got a hundred horse-power genius pulling you along. When he's off, fifty women hanging on to him couldn't hold him back."

She smiled. "You don't know him. The first time that wife of his gets in his way he'll shove her out of it. If she does it again he'll knock her down and trample her under his feet."

Her smile, more than ever ironic, lashed Nicky's shocked recoil.

"Creators are a brutal crew, Mr. Nicholson. We're all the same. You needn't be sorry for us."

She looked, over Nicky's head as it were, at Jane and Laura. It was as if with a sweep of her stormy wing she gathered them, George Tanqueray and Jane and Laura, into the s.p.a.ces where they ran the superb course of the creators.

The movement struck Arnott Nicholson aside into his place among the mult.i.tudes of the uncreative. Who was he to judge George Tanqueray? If _she_ arraigned him she had a right to. She was of his race, his kind.

She could see through Nicky as if he had been an innocent pane of gla.s.s.

And at the moment Nicky's soul with its chivalry and delicacy enraged her. Caroline Bickersteth enraged her, everybody enraged her except Jane and little Laura.

She stood beside Jane, who had risen and was about to say good-bye.

Caro would have kept them with her distressed, emphatic "_Must_ you go?"

She was expecting, she said, Mr. Brodrick.

Jane was not interested in Mr. Brodrick. She could not stay and did not, and, going, she took Nina with her.

Laura would have followed, but Miss Bickersteth held her with a hand upon her arm. Nicholson left them, though Laura's eyes almost implored him not to go.

"My dear," said Miss Bickersteth. "Tell me. Have you any idea how much she cares for him?"