Chapter 17

It was not the thing she had confessed to him, fear of his little unseen children, it was terror, unconfessed, uncomprehended, as it were foreknowledge of the very soul of destiny clothed for her in their tender flesh and blood.

Up till now she had been careless of her destiny. She had been so joyous, so defiant in her sinning. By that charm of hers, younger than youth, indestructibly childlike, she had carried it through with the audacity of chartered innocence. She had propitiated, ignored, eluded the more feminine amenities of fate. Of course, she had had her bad moments. She had been sorry, sometimes, and she had been sick; but on the whole her powers had been splendidly recuperative. She had shown none of those naked tender spots that provoke destiny to strike. And with it all she had preserved, perhaps too scrupulously, the rules laid down for such as she. She had kept her own place. She had never attempted to invade the sanctuaries set apart for other women.

It was Robert who had tempted her to that transgression. He had opened the door of the sanctuary for her and shut it behind her and put his back against it. He had made her believe that if she stayed in there, with him, it would be all right. She might have known what would happen. It was for such a moment, of infatuation made perfect, that destiny was waiting.

Kitty had no very luminous idea of its intentions. But she bore in her blood forebodings, older and obscurer than the flashes of the brain; and her heart had swift immortal instincts, forerunners of the mortal hours. The powers of pain, infallibly wise, implacably just, would choose their moment well, striking at her through the hands of the children she had never borne.

If Robert found out what she was before he married her, he would have to give her up because of them. She knew better than he did the hold she had over him. She had tried to keep him in ignorance of her power, so great was her terror of what it might do to him, and to her through him. Yet, with all her sad science, she remained uncertain of his ultimate behaviour. That was the charm and the danger of him. For fear of some undiscovered, uncalculated quality in him she had held herself back; she had been careful how she touched him, how she looked at him, lest her hands or her eyes should betray her; lest in his heart he should call her by her name, and fling her from him because of them. Whereas, but for them, she judged that whatever she was he would not give her up. She was not quite sure (you couldn't say _what_ a man like Robert would or wouldn't do), but she felt that if she could have had him to herself, if there had been only he and she, facing the world, then, for sheer chivalry, he simply couldn't have left her. Even now, once he was married to her it would be all right; he couldn't give her up or leave her; the worst he could do would be to separate her from them.

There was really no reason then why she should be frightened. He was going to marry her very soon. She knew that, by her science, though he had not said so. She would be all right. She would be very careful. It wasn't as if she didn't want to be nice and to do all the proper things.

And so Kitty cast off care.

Only, as she waited in the room prepared for the children, she looked at herself in the glass, once, to make sure that there was nothing in her face that could betray her. No; Nature had spared her as yet and her youth was good to her. Her face looked back at her, triumphantly reticent, innocent of memory, holding her charm, a secret beyond the secrets of corruption, as her perfect body held the mystery and the prophecy of her power. Besides, her face was different now from what it had been. Wilfrid had intimated to her that it was different. It was the face that Robert loved; it had the look that told him that she loved him, a look it never wore for any other man. Even now as she thought of him it lightened and grew rosy. She saw it herself and wondered and took hope. "That's how I look when I'm happy, is it? I'm always happy when I'm with him, so," she reasoned, "he will always see me like that; and it will be all right."

Anyhow, there would be no unhappiness about his pretty lady when he came back with them.

She smiled softly as she went about the room, putting the touches of perfection to the festival. There were roses everywhere; on the table, on the mantelpiece; the room was sweet with the smell of them; there was a rose on each child's plate. The tremulous movements of her hands betrayed the immensity and the desperation of her passion to please. The very waiter was touched by her, and smiled secretly in sympathy as he saw her laying her pretty lures. When he had gone she arranged the table all over again and did it better. Then she stood looking at it, hovering round it, thinking. She would sit here, and the children there, Janet between her and Robert, Barbara between her and Jane.

"Poor little things," she said, "poor little things." She yearned to them even in her fear of them, and when she thought of them sitting there her lips moved in unspoken, pitiful endearments.

The light from the south-west streamed into the little room and made it golden. Everything in it shimmered and shone. The window, flung wide open to the veranda, framed the green lawn and the shining, shimmering sea. A wind, small and soft, stirred the thin curtains to and fro, fanning the warm air. The sunlight and heat oppressed her. She shut her eyes and put her hands over them to cool them with darkness. It was a trick she had when she was troubled.

She sat by the window and waited in the strange, throbbing darkness of hot eyes closed in daylight, a darkness smitten by the sun and shot with a fiery fume.

They were coming now. She heard feet on the gravel outside, round the corner; she heard Robert's voice and Janey's; and then little shuffling footsteps at the door, and two voices shrill and sweet.

Robert came in first and the children with him. They stood all three on the threshold, looking at her. Robert was smiling, but the little girls (they were very little) were grave. His eyes drew her and she came toward them as she was used to come to the things of her desire, swift and shy, with a trailing, troubling movement; the way that he had seen her come, swayed by the rhythm of impulse.

The children stood stock still as she stooped to them. Her fear of them made her supremely gentle. Little Barbara put up her round rose face with its soft mouth thrust forward in a premature kiss. Janet gave her a tiny hand and gazed at her with brooding, irresponsive eyes. Her little mouth never moved as Kitty's mouth touched it.

But little Barbara held out her spade and bucket for Kitty to see. "Look, look," said little Barbara, "Daddy gave them me to build castles in the sand." Barbara spoke so fast that she panted, and laughed in a divine superfluity of joy.

Robert stood looking down from his tremendous height at Barbara, tenderly as one who contemplates a thing at once heartrending and absurd. Then his eyes turned to Kitty, smiling quietly as if they said, "Didn't I tell you to wait until you'd seen them?" Kitty's heart contracted with a sharp, abominable pang.

Then Janey took the little girls to the room upstairs where their nurse was. Barbara looked back at Kitty as she went, but Kitty's eyes followed Janet.

"Robert," she said, "will she always look at me like that? Shall I never know what she is thinking?"

"None of us know what Janet's thinking."

He paused.

"I told you we had to be very careful of her."

"Is she delicate?"

"No. Physically, she's far stronger than Barbara. She's what you call morally delicate."

She flushed. "What do you mean, Robert?"

"Well--not able to bear things. For instance, we'd a small child staying with us once. It turned out that she wasn't a nice child at all. We didn't know it, though. But Janet had a perfect horror of her. It's as if she had a sort of intuition. She was so unhappy about it that we had to send the child away."

His forehead was drawn into a frown of worry and perplexity.

"I don't see how she's to grow up. It makes me feel so awfully responsible. The world isn't an entirely pretty place, you know, and it seems such a cruel shame to bring a child like that into it. Doesn't it?"

"Yes."

"Somehow I think you'll understand her, Kitty."

"Yes, Robert, I understand."

She came to him. She laid her hand on the sleeve of his coat, and stood by him. Her eyes were shining through some dew that was not tears.

"What is it, Kitty?"

"Will you marry me soon?" she said. "Very soon?" she whispered. "I--I can't wait." She hid her face against his arm.

He thought it was the motherhood in her that was moved, that pleaded, impatient for its hour.

"Why should we wait? Do you suppose I want to?"

"Hush!" she said. "They're coming."

They came a little solemnly, as beseemed a festival. Janet, in her long white pinafore, looked more than ever the spiritual thing she was. Her long brown hair hung down her cheeks, straight and smooth as a parted veil, sharpening her small face, that flickered as a flame flickers in troubled air. Beside her little Barbara bloomed and glowed, with cheeks full-blown, and cropped head flowering into curls that stood on end in brown tufts, and tawny feathers, and little crests of gold. They took their places, pensively, at the table.

They had beautiful manners, Robert's children; little exquisite, gentle ways of approaching and of handling things. They held themselves very erect, with a secure, diminutive distinction. Kitty's heart sank deeper as she looked at them. Even Barbara, who was so very young, carried her small perfections intact through all the spontaneities of her behaviour.

All through tea-time little Barbara, pursued by her dream, talked incessantly of castles in the sand. And when she was tired of talking she began to sing.

"Darling," said Jane, "we don't sing at tea-time."

"_I_ do," said little Barbara, and laughed.

Jane laughed too, hysterically.

Then the spirit of little Barbara entered into Jane, and made her ungovernably gay. It passed into Kitty, and ran riot in her blood and nerves. Whenever Barbara laughed Kitty laughed, and when Kitty laughed Robert laughed too. Even Janet gave a little shriek now and then. The children thought it was all because they had had strawberries and cream for tea, and were going down to the sea to build castles in the sand.

All afternoon, till dinner-time, Kitty laboured on the sands, building castles as if she had never done anything else in her life. The Hankins watched her from their seat on the rocks in the angle of the Cliff.

"We were mistaken. She must be all right. How pretty she is, too, poor thing," said Mrs. Hankin to her husband.

"How pretty she is, how absolutely lovable and good," said Robert to himself as he watched her, while Barbara, a tired little labourer, lay stretched in her lap. She was sitting on a rock under the Cliff, with the great brow of it for a canopy. Her eyes were lowered, and hidden by their deep lids. She was smiling at the child who leaned back in her arms, crushing a soft cheek against her breast.

He threw himself down beside her. He had just finished a prodigious fortress, with earthworks and trenches extending to the sea.

"Kitty, Kitty," he said, "you're only a child yourself, like Janey. She's perfectly happy building castles in the sand--so are you. You're a perfect baby."

"We're all babies, Robert, building castles in the sand. And you're the biggest baby of the lot."

"I don't care. I've built the biggest castle."

"Look at Janet," said Kitty. "She'll be grown up before any of us."

The child sat on a rock with Jane. But, from the distance that she kept, she looked at her father and Kitty from time to time. All afternoon Janet had clung to Jane. But when bed-time came Robert took her aside and whispered something to her. Going home she walked by Kitty, and put her hand in hers.

"Daddy said I'm to be very kind to you."

"Did he? That's very kind of daddy."

"Daddy's always kind to people. Especially when they've not been very happy. Really and truly I'm going to be kind. But you won't mind if I don't love you _very_ soon, will you?"

"Of course I won't. Only don't leave it too late, darling."

"Well, I don't know," said Janet thoughtfully; "we've lots of time."

"Have we?"

"Heaps and heaps. You see, I love Auntie Janey, and it might hurt her feelings."

"I see."

"But I'm going to give you something," said Janet presently.

"I don't want you to give me anything that belongs to Auntie Janey."

"No," said Janet; "I shall give you something of my own."

"Oh! And you can't tell me what it's going to be?"

"I must think about it." The little girl became lost in thought. "Barbara likes kissing people. I don't."

"So I see. It won't be kisses, then?"

"No; it won't be kisses. It will," she reiterated, "be something of my own."

She dropped Kitty's hand.

"You won't mind if I go to Auntie Janey now?"

Kitty told Janey about it afterward, as they sat alone in the lounge before dinner.

"You mustn't mind, Kitty dear," said Jane. "It only means that she's a faithful little soul. She'll be just as faithful to you some day."

"Some day."

"Don't sigh like that, Kitty."

"She's like Robert, isn't she?"

"Very like Robert."

She brooded.

"Janey," she said, "let me have him to myself this evening."

All evening she had him to herself, out on the Cliff, in the place where nobody came but they.

"Well," he said, "what do you think of them?"

"I think they're adorable."

"Funny little beggars, aren't they? How did you get on with Janet?"

She told him.

"That's Janet's little way. To give you something of her own." He smiled in tender satisfaction, repeating the child's phrase.

"It's all right, Kitty. She's only holding herself in. You're in for a big thing."

She surveyed it.

"I know, Robert. I know."

"You're tired? Have the children been too much for you?"

She shook her head.

"You're not to make yourself a slave to them, you know."

She looked at him.

"Was I all right, Robert?"

"You were perfect."

"You said I was only a child myself."

"So you are. That's why I like you."

She shook her head again.

"It's all very well," she said, "but that isn't what you want, dear--another child."

"How do you know what I want?"

"You want somebody much nicer than I am."

He was silent, looking at her as he had looked at Barbara, enjoying her absurdity, letting her play, like the child she was, with her preposterous idea.

"Oh, Robert, you do _really_ think I'm nice?" She came nearer to him, crying out like a child in pain. He put his arm round her, and comforted her as best he could.

"You child, do you suppose I'd marry you if I didn't think you nice?"

"You might. You mightn't care."

"As it happens, I do care, very much. Anyhow, I wouldn't ask you to be a mother to my children if I didn't think you nice. That's the test."

"Yes, Robert," she repeated, "that's the test."

They rose and went back to the hotel. From the lawn they could see the open window of the children's room. They looked up.

"Would you like to see them, Kitty?"

"Yes."

He took her up to them. They were asleep. Little Barbara lay curled up in the big bed, right in the middle of it where her dreams had tossed her. Janet, in the cot beside her, lay very straight and still.

Robert signed to Kitty to come near, and they stood together and looked first at the children and then into each other's faces. Kitty was very quiet.

"Do you like them?" he whispered.

Her lips quivered, but she made no sign.

He stooped over each bed, smoothing the long hair from Janet's forehead, folding back the blanket that weighed on Barbara's little body. When he turned, Kitty had gone. She had slipped into her own room.

She waited till she heard Robert go away. The children were alone in there. The nurse, she knew, was in Jane's room across the passage. Jane was probably telling her that her master was to be married very soon.

She looked out. The door of Jane's room was shut; so was the door of the children's room through which Robert had gone out. The other, the door of communication, she had left ajar. She went softly back through it and stood again by the children's beds. Janet was still sound asleep. Her fine limbs were still stretched straight and quiet under the blanket. Her hair was as Robert's hand had left it.

Kitty was afraid of disturbing Janet's sleep. She was afraid of Janet.

She stooped over little Barbara, and turned back the bedclothes from the bed. She laid herself down, half her length, upon it by Barbara's side, and folded her in arms that scarcely touched her at first, so light they lay on her. Then some perverse and passionate impulse seized her to wake the child. She did it gently, tenderly, holding back her passion, troubling the depths of sleep with fine, feather-like touches, with kisses soft as sleep.

The child stirred under the caressing arms. She lay in her divine beauty, half asleep, half awake, opening her eyes, and shutting them on the secret of her dream. Then Kitty's troubling hand turned her from her flight down the ways of sleep. She lay on her back, her eyes glimmered in the lifting of their lids; they opened under Kitty's eyes that watched them, luminous, large and clear. Her mouth curled under Kitty's mouth, in drowsy kisses plucked from the annihilated dream. She drew up her rosy knees and held out her arms to Kitty's arms and smiled, half awake and half asleep.

Kitty rose, lifting the child with her from the bed. She held her close, pressing the tender body close to her own body with quivering hands, stroking the adorable little face with her own face, closing her eyes under the touch of it as she closed them when Robert's face touched hers. She was aware that she had brought some passionate, earthly quality of her love for Robert into her love for Robert's child.

She said to herself, "I'm terrible; there's something wrong with me. This isn't the way to love a child."

She laid the little thing down again, freed her neck from the drowsy, detaining arms, and covered the small body up out of her sight. Barbara, thus abandoned, cried, and the cry cut through her heart.

She went into her own room, and threw herself on her bed and writhed there, torn by many pangs. The pang of the heart and the pang of the half-born spirit, struggling with the body that held it back from birth; and through it all the pang of the motherhood she had thwarted and disowned. Out of the very soil of corruption it pierced, sharp and pure, infinitely painful. It was almost indiscernible from the fierce exultation of her heart that had found fulfilment, and from the passion of her body that yet waited for its own.

She undressed herself, and crept into her bed and lay there, tortured, visited by many memories. She gazed with terrified, pitiful eyes into a darkness that was peopled for her with all the faces she had known in the short seasons of her sinning; men, and the women who had been her friends and her companions; and the strangers who had passed her by, or who had lingered and looked on. The faces of Robert and his children hung somewhere on the outskirts of her vision, but she could not fix them or hold them; they were trampled out, obliterated by that phantasmal procession of her shames. Some faces, more terrible than all, detached themselves and crowded round her, the faces of those who had pursued her, and of those whom her own light feet pursued; from the first who had found her and left her, to the last whom she herself had held captive and let go. They stood about her bed; they stretched out their hands and touched her; their faces peered into hers; faces that she had forgotten. She thrust them from her into the darkness and they came again. Each bore the same likeness to his fellow; each had the same looks, the same gestures that defied her to forget. She fell asleep; and the dreams, the treacherous, perpetually remembering, delivered her into their hands.

She waked at dawn, with memory quickened by her dreams. She heard voices now, all the voices that had accused her. Her mother's voice spoke first, and it was very sad. It said, "I am sending you away, Kitty, because of the children." Then her father's voice, very stern, "No, I will not have you back. You must stay where you are for your little sisters' sake." And her mother's voice again--afterward--sad and stern, too, this time, "As you made your bed, Kitty, you must lie. We can't take you back."

And there was a third voice. It said very softly, "You can't have it both ways." It cried out aloud in a fury, "I've always known it. You can't hide it. You're full of it." And yet another voice, deep and hard, "You can't _not_ tell him. It's a shame Kitty; it's an awful shame."

She could not sleep again for listening to them.