Chapter 13

Her tense, flushed mind recorded automatically, and with acute vividness, every detail of the room; the pattern of the gray French wall-paper, with the watered stripe, and of the hot, velvet upholstery, buff on a crimson ground; the architecture of the stained walnut sideboard and overmantel, with their ridiculous pediments and little shelves and bevelled mirrors; the tapestry curtains, the palms in shining turquoise blue pots, and the engraved picture of Grace Darling over the sideboard.

It was absolutely necessary that she should have this place to see him in, without Robert seeing him. Beyond that immediate purpose she discerned its use as a play-room for Robert's children.

To-morrow, at four o clock, she would be waiting there for them. They had settled that, she and Robert. She was to have everything ready, and the table laid for tea. To-morrow they would all be sitting there, round the table. To-morrow she would see Robert's children, and hold them in her arms.

Her heart gave a sudden leap, as if something had quickened in it. Her brain glowed. Her pulses throbbed with the race of the glad blood in her veins. Her whole being moved, trembling and yearning, toward an incredible joy. Till that moment she had hardly realised Robert's children. A strange unquietness, not yet recognised as fear, had kept her from asking him many questions about them. Even now, their forms were like the forms of children seen in the twilight of dreams, the dreams of women who have never had children; forms that hover and torture and pursue; that hide their faces, half seen; that will not come to the call, nor be held by the hand, nor gathered to the heart.

That she should really see them, and hear their voices, and hold them in her arms, to-morrow, seemed to her a thing impossible, beyond credibility or dream. Then she said to herself that it all depended on what happened between to-morrow and to-day.

It was not long past seven and she had still a good twenty minutes before her. She spent it in pacing up and down the room, and looking at the clock every time she turned and confronted it. At the half-hour she arranged herself on the sofa, with a book, in an attitude of carelessness as to the event. As a material appearance the attitude was perfect.

She rose as the servant announced "Mr. Wilfrid Marston." She stood as she had risen, waiting for her visitor to advance. Her eyes were fixed on her book which she laid down, deliberately marking the page, and yet she was aware of his little pause at the door as it closed behind him, and of his little smile that took her in. She had no need to look at him.

He was a man of middle size, who held himself so well that he appeared taller and slenderer than he was. You saw that he had been fair and florid and slender enough in his youth, and that all his good points had worn somewhat to hardness. His face was hard and of a fast-hardening, reddish-sallow colour, showing a light network of veins about the cheekbones. Hard, wiry wrinkles were about the outer corners of his eyes. He kept his small reddish-gold moustache close clipped, so that it made his mouth look extraordinarily straight and hard. People who didn't know him were apt to mistake him for a soldier. (He was in the War Office, rather high up.) He had several manners, his official manner to persons calling at the War Office; his social manner, inimitably devout to women whom he respected; and his natural manner, known only in its perfection to women whom he did not respect. And under both of these he conveyed a curious and disagreeable impression of stern sensuality, as if the animal in him had worn to hardness, too.

"Kitty, my dear girl!" His voice, unlike the rest of him, could be thick and soft and fluid. He put his arm round her, and she offered him her mouth, curled forward, obedient but unsmiling. Her hand, surrendered to his, lay limp in the hard clasp of it. He raised it as if weighing the powerless, subservient thing.

"Kitty," he said, "you're still getting thin. My last orders were, if you remember, that you were to put on another stone before I saw you again."

He bared her wrist, pressing it slightly, to show how its round curves were sunken.

"Do you call that putting on another stone?"

She drew back her arm.

"What have you been doing to yourself?" he said.

"Nothing. There hasn't been anything to do. It's not very amusing being left all by yourself for weeks and weeks, you know."

"All by yourself?"

"Yes. Bunny doesn't count."

"No, she certainly doesn't. Poor Kitten, you must have been very badly bored."

He looked round the room.

"Do they do you well at this place?"

"It isn't _very_ comfortable. I think you'd be better off at the Métropole."

"What possessed you to stay at the place if you're not comfortable?"

"Well, you see, I didn't expect you for another week."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"I mean it did well enough for Bunny and me."

"Where is that woman?"

"She's gone. She left yesterday."

"Why?"

"Well, you know, Wilfrid, Bunny was very respectable."

He laughed. "It's just as well she went, then, before I came, isn't it? I say, what have you done to your eyes? They used to be black, now they're blue. Bright blue."

There was a look in them he did not understand.

"I think," she said, "you would be much more comfortable at the Métropole."

"Oh no; I'll try this place for one night." She veiled her eyes.

"We can move on if I can't stand it. When are we going to dine?"

"At eight. It's twenty to, now. You'd like it up here, wouldn't you?"

"Rather. I say, where's my room?"

She flushed and turned from him with an unaccountable emotion.

"I--I don't know."

"Didn't you order one for me?"

"No; I don't think I did."

"I suppose I can get one, can't I?"

"I suppose so. But don't you think you'd better go over to the Métropole? You see, this is a very small hotel."

He looked at her sharply.

"I don't care how small it is."

He summoned a waiter and inquired irascibly for his room.

Kitty was relieved when the room was got for him, because he went to it instantly, and that gave her time. She said to herself that it would be all right if she could be alone for a minute or two and could think. She thought continuously through the act of dressing, and in the moment of waiting till he appeared again. He would be hungry, and his first thought would be for his dinner.

It was. But his second thought was for Kitty, who refused to eat.

"What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing. I've got a headache."

Again he looked sharply at her.

"A headache, have you? It'll be better if you eat something."

But Kitty shook her head.

"What's the good of my sending you to Matlock and those places if you come back in this state? You know, if you once get really thin, Kitty, you're done for."

"Am I?" Her mouth trembled, not grossly, but with a small, fine quiver of the upper lip. The man had trained her well. She knew better than to cry before him.

The slender sign of emotion touched him, since it was not disfiguring.

"How long have you been starving yourself?" he asked more gently.

"I've not been starving myself. I've got a headache."

He poured out some wine for her.

"You must either eat _or_ drink."

"I don't want any."

"Nonsense."

"I--I can't. I feel sick."

He raised his eyebrows.

"Need you mention it?"

"I wouldn't if you hadn't teased me so."

"I beg your pardon."

She began playing with some salted almonds.

"My _dear_ girl, I wouldn't eat those things if I were you."

"I'm not eating them." She pushed the dish from her. "I'm afraid," said she, "it isn't a very nice dinner."

He was looking at the _entrée_ with interest and a slight suspicion.

"What is this?"

"Curried chicken."

"Oh." He helped himself fastidiously to curried chicken, tasted it with delicate deliberation, and left it on his plate.

"You are wise," said he. "There is a certain crude, unsatisfying simplicity about this repast."

"Didn't I tell you?"

"You did."

"You see now why I said you'd better go to the Métropole?"

"I do indeed."

An admirable joint of mutton, cheese, coffee and a liqueur effaced the painful impression made by the _entrée_. By nine o'clock Marston declared himself inured to the hardships of the Cliff Hotel.

"How long can you stay?" she asked. The question had been burning in her for two hours.

"Well, over the week end, I think."

Her heart, that had fluttered like a bird, sank, as a bird sinks in terror with wings tight shut.

"Have you got to go up to town to-morrow?"

"I have, worse luck. How do the trains go from this godforsaken place?"

"About every two hours. What sort of train do you want? An early one?"

"Rather. Got to be at Whitehall by twelve."

"Will the nine-fifteen do?"

"Yes; that's all right."

The wings of her heart loosened. It rose light, as if air, not blood, flowed from its chambers.

The Lucys were never by any chance down before nine. Robert would not meet him.

He sat down in the chair opposite her, with his eyes fixed on her as she leaned back in the corner of the sofa. He settled himself in comfort, crossing his legs and thrusting out one foot, defined under a delicate silk sock, in an attitude that was almost contemptuous of Kitty's presence.

Kitty's face was innocent of any perception of these shades. He drew the long breath of ease and smiled at her again, a smile that intimated how thoroughly he approved of her personal appearance.

"Ye--es," he said, "you're different, but I think you're almost as pretty as you were."

"Am I?" she said. "What did you expect?"

"I didn't expect anything. I never do. It's my scheme for avoiding disappointment. Is your head better?"

"No; it's aching abominably."

"Sorry. But it's rather hard lines for me, isn't it? I wish you _could_ have chosen some other time to be ill in."

"What does it matter whether I'm ill or not, if I'm not pretty?"

He smiled again.

"I don't mean, child, that you're ever not pretty."

"Thank you. I know exactly how pretty I am."

"Do you? How pretty do you think you are now?"

"Not half as pretty as Dora Nicholson. You know exactly how pretty she is."

"I do. And I know exactly how pretty she'll be in five years' time. That's the worst of those thin women with little, delicate, pink faces. You know the precise minute when a girl like Dora'll go off. You know the pinkness will begin to run when she's once past thirty. You can see the crows' feet coming, and you know exactly how far they'll have got by the time she's thirty-five. You know that when she's forty there'll be two little lines like thumb-nail marks beside her ears, just here, and you know that when she's forty-five the dear little lobes will begin to shrivel up, and that when she's fifty the corners of her mouth will collapse."

"And then?"

"Then, if you're a wise man you don't know any more."

"Poor little Dora. You _are_ a brute, Wilfrid."

"I'm not a brute. I was going to say that the best of you, dear, is that I don't know how you'll look at fifty. I don't know how you'll look to-morrow--to-night. You're never the same for ten minutes together. When you get one of those abominable headaches you look perhaps as old as you are. You're twenty-seven, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Well, I dare say you'll look twenty-seven when you are fifty. There's something awfully nice about that sort of prettiness. It leaves things delightfully vague. I can't _see_ you fifty."

"Perhaps I never shall be."

"Perhaps not. That's just it. You leave it open to me to think so. I don't seriously contemplate your ever being forty. In fact your being thirty is one of those melancholy and disastrous events that need not actually occur. It's very tactful of you, Kitty."

"All the same, I'm not as pretty as Dora Nicholson."

"Dora Nicholson!"

"You can't say she isn't awfully pretty."

"I don't say it." His voice rose to an excited falsetto. "She _is_ awfully pretty--extravagantly, preposterously pretty. And she'll have to pay for it."

"Oh--we all have to pay for it."

"Sooner _or_ later."

"Poor Dora----"

"Poor Dora. Perhaps we have been rather brutal to her. She's good for another five years."

"Only five years? And what will she do then?"

"Oh, she'll be all right. She'll rouge a bit, and powder a bit, and dress like anything. You needn't be unhappy about Dora. I can tell you Dora isn't going to be unhappy about you. Unhappiness would be extremely unbecoming to her, and she knows it. It isn't particularly becoming to any woman. You would be less damaged by it than most perhaps."

"You've never seen me unhappy."

"I hope to God I never shall."

"You needn't be afraid, Wilfrid, you never will."

"I wish," she said presently, "I wish you liked Dora Nicholson."

"I do like her."

"I wish you liked her as much as me."

"That's very noble of you, Kitty. But may I ask, why?"

"Because it would make things simpler."

"Simpler? I should have said myself that that was just where complications might occur. Supposing I liked Dolly better than you, what then?"

"Oh, that would make it simpler still."

"It certainly would be simpler than the other situation you suggest."

"It would for both of us."

"But why this sudden yearning for simplicity? And why Dora Nicholson?"

"There isn't any why. Anybody else would do, provided you liked them better than me. It's only a question of time, you know. You're bound to tire of me sooner or later."

"Later, Kitty, later. Barring jealousy. If you're going in for that, I may as well tell you at once that I shall tire of it very soon."

"You think that's what's the matter with me?"

"Well, something's the matter with you. I suppose it's that. I should drop it, Kitty. It really isn't worth while. It only makes you thin, and--and I can't be bored with it, d'you see?"

"I don't want--to be bored--with it--either." She spoke very slowly. "If you wanted to leave me for Dora Nicholson, I should be a fool to try and keep you, shouldn't I?"

"Well--you're not a fool."

"You're not a fool either, Wilfrid."

"If I am I take some pains to conceal it."

"If a woman wanted to leave you for another man, would you try and keep her?"

He looked at her attentively. "It depends on the woman, and on some other things besides. For instance, if I were married to her, I might make a considerable effort, not to keep _her_, but--to keep up appearances."

"And if--you were not married to her?"

"There again it would depend on the woman. I might take it that she'd left me already."

"Yes, but if you knew she wasn't that sort--if you knew she'd always been straight with you?"

"Well, then perhaps I might take the trouble to find out whether there really was another man. Or I might have reason to suppose she was only trying it on. In which case I should say to her 'My dear Kitty, you're a very clever woman and it's a brilliant idea you've got. But it's been tried before and it won't work. You can't draw me that way.'"

"But, Wilfrid--if there _was_ another man?"

"Well, it's possible that I might not consider it worth while to dispute his claim. That would depend altogether on the woman."

"If you cared for her?"

"If I cared enough for her I might be able to convince her that it would at any rate be prudent, from a worldly point of view, to stick to me. But _that_ would depend, wouldn't it, on the amount of the other fellow's income?"

"And if all that didn't matter in the very least to her, if she didn't care a rap about anybody's income, if she cared for the other fellow more than she'd ever cared for you, if she didn't care for your caring, if she cared for nothing except _his_ caring, and nothing you could do could move her--what would you do then?"

He paused to light another cigarette before he answered her. "I should probably tell her, first of all, that for all I cared she might go to the devil, I mean to the other fellow, and stay there as long as he wanted her."

"Well"--she said placably.

"That's what I should say first. Afterward, when we were both a little calmer--if I cared for her, Kitty--I should ask her to think a moment before she did anything rash, to be quite sure that she would really be happier with the other fellow. And I should point out to her very clearly that, in any case, if she once went, it would not be open to her to come back."

"But you wouldn't try and keep her?"

"I couldn't keep her, my dear child, by trying."

"No--you couldn't keep her. Not for yourself. But, if you could keep her from the other man, would you?"

"I dare say I should do my best."

"Would you do your worst? No, Wilfrid, you've been very good to me--I don't believe you'd do your worst."

"What do you mean," he said sharply.

"You wouldn't tell him what she was, what she had been--if he didn't know it. Would you?"

He was silent.

"Would you?" she cried.

"No, Kitty, I wouldn't do that. I'm not a cad."

He pondered.

"But my dear girl, do you suppose for a moment that he doesn't know?"

"He doesn't know a thing."

"Then what in heaven's name are you talking about?"

"I'm trying to tell you. It isn't what you think. I--I'm going to be married."

Marston took his cigarette out of his mouth, and stared at it. There was no expression in his face beyond that concentrated, attentive stare.

"Good Lord. Why," he said, "couldn't you tell me that before I came down?"

"I was going to. I was going to write to you and ask you not to come."

"_Good_ God."

He said it softly, and with calm incredulity rather than amazement.

"Who is it, Kitty? Do I know him?"

"No."

"Do you know him yourself?"

She smiled. "Yes I know him."

"Well--but how long?"

"Ten days."

"You met him here? In this hotel?"

"Yes."

"That's why you were so anxious for me to go to the Métropole, was it?"

"Yes."

"Look here. I don't want to be unkind, but it doesn't do to blink facts. Are you quite sure he means to marry you?"

"Why shouldn't he?"

"Well, these marriages do happen, but--I don't want to be unkind again--but you know they are, to say the least of it, a little unusual."

"Yes."

"You've seen some of them?"

"Yes."

"And you know, you know as well as I do, the sort of man who--who----"

"Who marries the sort of woman I am? Yes, I know him, perfectly well. He's horrible."

"There are exceptions, but he's generally pretty bad. You think he's horrible. You'll be miserable when you find yourself tied to him for life. You see, however awful he was, you wouldn't be exactly in a position to get rid of him."

"Wilfrid," her voice was very low and tender, "he isn't like that. He's good----"

"Good, is he?" He laughed.

"Oh, don't laugh. He _is_ good."

"Well, I don't say he isn't--only----" he smiled.

"You forget," she said. "He doesn't know."

"Are you quite sure he doesn't know?"

"Quite--quite sure."

"And you are not going to enlighten him?"

She drew back before his penetrating gaze. "I can't. I couldn't bear him to know."

"How do you propose to prevent his knowing? Do you think you're clever enough to keep him in the dark for ever?"

"Why not? He hasn't seen things in the broad daylight, under his very nose. There were plenty of things to see."

"You mean he's stupid?"

"I mean I haven't been clever, if that's what you think. Once I did nearly tell him."

"Supposing somebody else tells him?"

"If they do it'll only be their word against mine. And he'd take my word against anybody's."

"Poor devil!"

He seemed to meditate, dispassionately, on the poor devil's case, and hers.

"You little fool. It isn't a question of people's words. How are you going to get rid of the facts?"

"He needn't know them."

"You forget. I'm one of them. How are you going to get rid of me?"

"Oh, Wilfrid--you're not going to tell him? You said you wouldn't."

"Of course I said I wouldn't--I'd even be glad to get rid of myself to oblige you, Kitty, but I can't. Here I am. How are you going to account for me?"

"I've thought of that. He needn't see you. It'll be all right, Wilfrid, if you'll go away."

"No doubt. But I haven't gone away."

He emphasised his point by rising and taking up a commanding position on the hearthrug.

Some one knocked at the door, and she started violently.

It was only a servant, bringing a note for her.

She read it and handed it to Marston, looking piteously at him as he stood his ground.

"Mr. Lucy can come up," she said. "We have finished all we had to say."

"I think there are one or two points," he replied, "still unsettled."

She turned to the servant.

"Will you tell Mr. Lucy I'm engaged for the present. I will see him later."

"No, my dear Mrs. Tailleur, not on my account. There's no reason why you shouldn't see Mr. Lucy now. No reason at all."

She stood tortured with indecision.

"Mrs. Tailleur will see Mr. Lucy now."

"I will see him in ten minutes."

"Very good, ma'am."

The servant withdrew.

Marston shrugged his shoulders.

"There you are. Here we both are. Here we are all three in the same hotel. An uncomfortably small hotel. How are you--or rather, how is he--going to get over that?"

"It would be all right if you'd only go. I've told him you were a man coming on business."

"My dear Kitty, that was quite unworthy of you."

"Well, what could I do? It's not as if I was in the habit of telling lies."

"I won't criticise it if it was a first attempt. But in telling a lie, my child, it's as well to select one that bears some resemblance to the truth. Do I look like a man who comes on business?"

"You will go before he comes, won't you?"

"No, I don't think I will."

"You have nothing," she said, "to gain by staying."

"I suppose you think you have everything to gain by my going?"

"Oh, Wilfrid, give me my chance."

"I'm giving you your chance, you little fool. I wouldn't produce that pocket-handkerchief if I were you. It's quite the most damaging thing about you."

She gave a hysterical laugh, and put the pocket-handkerchief away.

"You are utterly unfit," he commented, "to manage your own affairs."

They sat silent, while the clock ticked out the last minutes of her torture.

"You'd better make up your mind what you're going to do when he arrives," he said finally.

"I don't know," said Kitty, "what I'm going to do."

"I'll tell you, then. You are going to introduce me as you would any ordinary man of your acquaintance."

"By your own name?"

"By my own name, of course."

They waited. Lucy's stride was heard along the corridor. She looked up at her tormentor.

"Is my nose red, Wilfrid?"

"No," he said, smiling grimly, "my dear Mrs. Tailleur," he added as Lucy entered.