The Creators. Sinclair May

      It was palpable, too, that Rose was not intellectual, that she was not even half-educated. But Tanqueray positively disliked the society of intellectual, cultivated women; they were all insipid after Jane. After Jane, he did not need intellectual companionship in his wife. He would still have Jane. And when he was tired of Jane there would, no doubt, be others; and when he was tired of all of them, there was himself.

      What he did need in his wife was the obstinate, dumb devotion of a creature that had no life apart from him; a creature so small that in clinging it would hang no weight on his heart. And he had found it in Rose.

      Why should he not marry her?

      She was now, he had learned, staying with her former mistress at Fleet, in Hampshire.

      The next morning he took a suitable train down to Fleet, and arrived, carrying the band-box, at the door of the house where Rose was. He sat a long time in the hall of the house with the band-box on his knees. He did not mind waiting. People went in and out of the hall and looked at him; and he did not care. He gloried in the society of the sacred band-box. He enjoyed the spectacle of his own eccentricity.

      At last he was shown into a little room where Rose came to him. She came from behind, from the garden, through the French window. She was at his side before he saw her. He felt her then, he felt her fear of him.

      He turned. "Rose," he said, "I've brought you the moon in a band-box."

      "Oh," said Rose, and her cry had a thick, sobbing vibration in it.

      He put his arm on her shoulder and drew her out of sight and kissed her, and she was not afraid of him any more.

      "Rose," he said, "have you thought it over?"

      "Yes, I have. Have you?"

      "I've thought of nothing else."

      "Sensible?"

      "Oh, Lord, yes."

      "You've thought of how I haven't a penny and never shall have?"

      "Yes."

      "And how I'm not clever, and how it isn't a bit as if I'd any head for studyin' and that?"

      "Yes, Rose."

      "Have you thought of how I'm not a lady? Not what you'd call a lady?"

      There was no answer to that, and so he kissed her.

      "And how you'd be if you was to marry some one who was a lady? Have you thought of that?"

      "I have."

      "Well then, it's this way. If you was a rich man I wouldn't marry you." She paused.

      "But you will, because I'm a poor one?"

      "Yes."

      "Thank God I'm poor."

      He drew her to him and she yielded, not wholly, but with a shrinking of her small body, and a soft, shy surrender of her lips.

      She was thinking, "If he married a lady he'd have to spend ten times on her what he need on me."

      All she said was, "There are things I can do for you that a lady couldn't."

      "Oh—don't—don't!" he cried. That was the one way she hurt him.

      "What are you going to do with me now?" said she.

      "I'm going to take you for a walk. We can't stay here."

      "Can you wait?"

      "I have waited."

      She ran away and stayed away for what seemed an interminable time. Then somebody opened the door and handed Rose in. Somebody kissed her where she stood in the doorway, and laughed softly, and shut the door upon Rose and Tanqueray.

      Rose stood there still. "Do you know me?" said she, and laughed.

      Somebody had transformed her, had made her slip her stiff white gown and dressed her in a muslin one with a belt that clipped her, showing her pretty waist. Somebody had taught her how to wear a scarf about her shoulders; and somebody had taken off that odious linen collar and bared the white column of her neck.

      "She made me put it on," said Rose. "She said if I didn't, I couldn't wear the hat."

      Somebody, Rose's mistress, had been in Rose's secret. She knew and understood his great poem of the Hat.

      Rose took it out of the band-box and put it on. Impossible to say whether he liked her better with it or without it. He thought without; for she had parted her hair in the middle and braided it at the back.

      "Do you like my hair?" said she.

      "Why didn't you do it like that before?"

      "I don't know. I wanted to. But I didn't."

      "Why not?"

      Rose hid her face. "I thought," said she, "you'd notice, and think—and think I was after you."

      No. He could never say that she had been after him, that she had laid a lure. No huntress she. But she had found him, the hunted, run down and sick in his dark den. And she had stooped there in the darkness, and tended and comforted him.

      They set out.

      "She said I was to tell you," said Rose, "to be sure and take me through the pine-woods to the pond."

      How well that lady knew the setting that would adorn his Rose; sunlight and shadow that made her glide fawn-like among the tall stems of the trees. Through the pine-woods he took her, his white wood-nymph, and through the low lands covered with bog myrtle, fragrant under her feet. Beyond the marsh they found a sunny hollow in the sand where the heath touched the pond. The brushwood sheltered them.

      Side by side they sat and took their fill of joy in gazing at each other, absolutely dumb.

      It was Tanqueray who broke that beautiful silence. He had obtained her. He had had his way and must have it to the end. He loved her; and the thing beyond all things that pleased him was to tease and torment the creatures that he loved.

      "Rose," he said, "do you think I'm good-looking?"

      "No. Not what you call good-looking."

      "How do you know what I call good-looking?"

      "Well—me. Don't you?"

      "You're a woman. Give me your idea of a really handsome man."

      "Well—do you know Mr. Robinson?"

      "No. I do not know Mr. Robinson."

      "Yes, you do. He keeps the shop in the High Street where you get your 'ankychiefs and collars. You bought a collar off of him the other day. He told me."

      "By Jove, so I did. Of course I know Mr. Robinson. What about him?"

      "Well—he's what I call a handsome man."

      "Oh." He paused. "Would you love me more if I were as handsome as Mr. Robinson?"

      "No. Not a bit more. I couldn't. I'd love you just the same if you were as ugly as poor Uncle. There, what more do you want?"

      "What, indeed? Rose, how much have you seen of Mr. Robinson?"

      "How much? Well—I see him every time I go into his shop. And every Sunday evening when I go to church. And sometimes he comes and has supper with us. 'E plays and 'e sings beautiful."

      "The devil he does! Well, did he ever take you anywhere?"

      "Once—he took me to Madame Tussaws; and once to the Colonial Exhibition; and once——"

      "You minx. That'll do. Has he ever given you anything?"

      "He gave me Joey."

      "I always knew there was something wrong about that dog."

      "And last Christmas he gave me a scented sashy from