Chapter 10

Five minutes later Lucy was talking to Colonel and Mrs. Hankin, with genial unconcern. They never knew that he knew what they had been saying, or how their tongues had scourged Mrs. Tailleur out into the lash of the rain. They never knew that the young man who conversed with them so amiably was longing to take the Colonel by his pink throat and throttle him, nor that it was only a higher chivalry that held him from this disastrous deed. The Colonel merely felt himself in the presence of an incomparable innocence; but whether it was Lucy who was innocent, or Mrs. Tailleur, or the two of them together, he really could not say.

Upstairs, in Mrs. Tailleur's bedroom, Jane Lucy was talking to Mrs. Tailleur. They were sitting by the hearth while Kitty, clothed in warm garments, shook out her drenched hair before the fire. She had just told Jane how Miss Keating had left her, and she had become tearful again over the telling.

"Need you mind so much? Is she worth it?" said Jane, very much as Robert had said.

"I don't mind her leaving. I can get over that. But you don't know the awful things she said."

"No, I don't; but I dare say she didn't mean half of them."

"Didn't she though! I'll show you."

Kitty got up and opened the door into the other room. It was as Miss Keating had left it.

"Look there," she said, "what she's done."

Jane looked. "I'm not surprised. You did everything for her, so I suppose she expected you to pack and send her things after her."

"It isn't that. Don't you see? It's--it's the things I gave her. She flung them back in my face. She wouldn't take one of them. See, that's the white frock she was wearing, and the fur-lined coal (she'll be so cold without it), and look, that's the little chain I gave her on her birthday. She wouldn't even keep the chain."

"Well, I dare say she would feel rather bad about it after she's behaved in this way."

"It isn't that. It's because they were mine--because I wore them." Kitty began to sob.

"No, no, dear Mrs. Tailleur----"

"Yes, yes. She--she thought they'd c--c--contaminate her."

Kitty's sobs broke into the shrill laugh of hysteria. Jane led her to the couch and sat beside her. Kitty leaned forward, staring at the floor. Now and then she pressed her handkerchief to her mouth, stifling. Suddenly she looked up into Jane's face.

"Would _you_ mind wearing a frock I'd worn?"

"Of course I wouldn't."

Kitty's handkerchief dropped on to her lap, a soaked ball, an insufficient dam.

"Oh," she cried, "the beast!--the little, little beast!"

She looked again at Jane, but with a glance half cowed, half candid; like a child that has proved, indubitably, its predestined naughtiness.

"I didn't mean to use that word."

"I want to use it myself," said Jane. "It's not a bit too much."

"I didn't mean it."

She added softly, reminiscently. "She was such a little thing."

"Much too little for you to care about."

"That's why I cared. I know it was. She was just like a little, lonely child; and she clung to me at first."

"She certainly seems to have clung."

"That's why it's so awful to think that she couldn't bear it--couldn't bear to live with me."

"We wondered how you could bear to live with her."

"Did you?"

"Yes. Why did you have her?"

"You see, I had to have some one; and she was nice."

"I don't think she was nice at all."

"Oh yes," said Kitty, solemnly, "you could see _that_."

"I suppose you mean she was a lady?"

"Ye--es." Kitty was not by any means certain that that was what she did mean. It was so difficult to find words for what she meant.

"That," said Jane, "is the least you can be."

"Anyhow, she _was_."

"Well, if you take a charitable view of her. Her people are probably nicer than she is. Perhaps that's why she doesn't live with them."

"Her father," said Kitty, "is the vicar of Wenden. I suppose that's all right."

"Probably; but _we_ don't care what peoples' fathers are like, provided they're nice themselves."

"Do you think I'm nice?"

Jane laughed. "Yes, as it happens, I do."

"Ah, _you_--_you_----"

"We both do," said Jane boldly.

"You're the first nice woman I've known who hasn't been horrid to me. And he----" Kitty had been playing with a button of her dressing-gown. Her fingers now began tearing, passionately, convulsively, at the button. "He is the first nice man who--who hasn't been what men are."

"You don't mean that," said Jane calmly. She was holding Mrs. Tailleur's hand in hers and caressing it, soothing its pathetic violence.

"I do. I do. That's why I like you so."

"I'm glad you like us."

"I'd give anything to know what you really think of me."

"May I say what I think?"

"Yes."

"I think you're too good to be so unhappy."

"That's a new view of me. Most people think I'm too unhappy to be very good."

"You _are_ good; but if you'd been happier you'd have known that other people are what you call good, too."

"That's what I said to Bunny. _She_ was unhappy."

"Never mind her. If you'd been happier you'd have known, for instance, that my brother isn't an exception. There are a great many men like him. All the men I've known have been more or less like Robert."

"They would be, dear; all the men _you've_ known. But, you see, something happened. Nothing ever happened to you."

"No. Nothing very much has happened to me. Nothing very much ever will."

"You never wanted things to happen, did you?"

"I don't know. Perhaps I'm interested most in the things that happen to other people."

"You dear! If I'd been like you----"

"I wish," said Jane, "you'd known Robert sooner."

Mrs. Tailleur's lips parted, but no voice came through them.

"Then," said Jane, "whatever happened never would have happened, probably."

"I wonder. What do you suppose happened?"

"I don't know. I've no business to know."

"What do you think? Tell me--tell me!"

"I think you've been very badly handled."

"Yes. You may think so."

"When you were young--too young to understand it."

"Ah, I was never too young to understand. That's the difference between you and me."

"That makes it all the worse, then."

"All the worse! So that's what you think? How does it make you feel to me?"

"It makes me feel that I want to take you away, and warm you and wrap you round, so that nothing could ever touch you and hurt you any more."

"That's how it makes you feel?"

"That's how it makes us both feel."

"_He_ takes it that way, too?"

"Of course he does. Any nice man would."

"If _I_ were nice----"

"You _are_ nice."

"You don't know, my child; you don't know."

"Do you suppose Robert doesn't know?"

Mrs. Tailleur rose suddenly and turned away.

"I was nice once," she said, "and at times I can be now."