Chapter 18

It was morning. She dragged herself up and tried to dress. But her hands shook and her head ached violently. She stretched herself half-dressed upon her bed and lay there helpless, surrendered to the bodily pain that delivered her mercifully from the anguish of her mind.

She saw no one, not even Jane Lucy.

Outside, in the passage, and in the inner room she heard the footsteps of the children and their little shrill voices; each sound accentuated the stabbing pulse of pain. It was impossible to darken the room, and the insufferable sunlight poured in unchecked through the thin yellow blinds and plagued her brain, till the nerves of vision throbbed, beat for beat, with the nerves of torment. At noon she had only one sensation of brilliant surging pain.

She dozed and her headache lifted. When she woke her body was weak as if it had had a fever, but her mind closed on reality with the impact of a force delayed.

There was a thing not yet quite real to her, a thing that seemed to belong to the region of bodily pain, to be born there as a bad dream might be born; a thing that had been there last night among other things, that, as she stared at it, became more prominent, more poignant than they. And yet, though its air was so beckoning and so familiar, it was not among the number of things accomplished and irrevocable. It was simply the thing she had to do.

It possessed her now; and under its dominion she was uplifted, carried along. Her mind moved toward it with a reckless rocking speed, the perilous certainty of the insane.

At five o'clock she rang the bell and asked the servant to bring her some tea. She swallowed a little with a jerk of her throat, and put the cup down, shuddering. It brought her a sickening memory of yesterday.

At five o'clock she got up and dressed herself and sent a message to Robert Lucy to see her downstairs in her sitting-room, alone. As she stood at her glass she said to herself, "How shocking I look. But he won't mind."

At six he was with her.

She drew her hand away from his as if his touch had hurt her. Her smile was the still, bloodless smile that comes with pain. She drew her chair back out of the sunlight, in the recess by the fireplace. He stood beside her then, looking at her with eyes that loved her the more for the sad hurt to her beauty. His manner recalled the shy, adolescent uncertainty of his first approaches.

"Don't you think," he said, "you ought to have stayed in bed?"

She shook her head and struggled to find her voice. It came convulsively.

"No. I'm better. I'm all right now."

"It was being out in that beastly hot sun yesterday--with those youngsters. You're not used to it."

She laughed. "No. I'm not used to it. Robert--you haven't told them, have you?"

"What?"

"About you--and me?"

"No. Not yet." He smiled. "I say, I shall have to tell them very soon, shan't I?"

"You needn't."

He made some inarticulate sound that questioned her.

"I've changed my mind. I can't marry you."

He had to bend his head to catch her low, indistinct murmur; but he caught it.

He drew back from her, and leaned against the chimneypiece and looked at her more intently than before.

"Do you mean," he said quietly, "because of _them_?"

"Yes."

He looked down.

"Poor Kitty," he said. "You think I'm asking too much of you?"

She did not answer.

"You're afraid?"

"I told you I was afraid."

"Yes. But I thought it was all right. I thought you liked them."

She was silent. Tears rose to her eyes and hung on their unsteady lashes.

"They like you."

She bowed her head and the tears fell.

"Is that what has upset you?"

"Yes."

"I see. You've been thinking it over and you find you can't stand it. I don't wonder. You've let those little monkeys tire you out. You've nearly got a sunstroke and you feel as if you'd rather die than go through another day like yesterday? Well, you shan't. There'll never be another day like yesterday."

"No. Never," she said; and her sobs choked her.

"Why should there be? They'll have a governess. You don't suppose I meant you to have them on your hands all the time?"

She went on crying softly. He sat on the arm of her chair and put his arm round her and dried her eyes.

"Don't be unhappy about it, Kitty. I understand. You're not marrying them, dear; you're marrying me."

She broke loose from him.

"I can't marry you," she cried. "I can't give you what you want."

"Do you mean that you can't care for me? Is that what you're trying to tell me all the time?"

He moved and she cowered back into her chair.

"I--I _can't_ tell you."

He had turned from her. He was leaning his arms along the mantelshelf; he had bowed his head on them.

They remained for some minutes so; she cowering back; he with his face hidden from her.

"Do you mind telling me," he said presently, "if there's anybody else that you----"

"That I care for? No, Robert, there's no one."

"Are you quite sure? Quite honest. Think."

"Do you mean Wilfrid Marston?"

"Yes."

"I certainly do not care for _him_."

He raised his head at that; but he did not look at her.

"Thank God!" he said.

"Do you think as badly of him as all that?"

"Don't ask me what I think of him."

"Would you think badly of me if I'd married him?"

"I--I couldn't have stood it, Kitty."

"I am not going to marry him."

"You haven't said yet that you don't care for me?"

"No. I haven't."

He turned and stooped over her, compelling her to look at him.

"Say it then," he said.

She drew back her face from his and put up her hands between them. He rose and stood before her and looked down at her. The blue of her eyes had narrowed, the pupils stared at him, black and feverish. Her mouth, which had been tight-shut, was open slightly. A thin flush blurred its edges. Her breath came through, short and sharp.

"You're ill," he said. "You must go back to bed."

"No," she said. "I've got to tell you something."

"If you do I shan't believe it."

"What won't you believe?"

"That you don't care for me. I can't believe it."

"You'd better, Robert."

"I don't. There's something wrong. You must tell me what it is."

"There's nothing wrong but that. I--I made a mistake."

"You only thought you liked me? Or is it worse than that?"

"It's worse, far worse."

"I see. You tried to like me, and you couldn't?"

She was silent.

"Poor child. I've been a selfish brute. I might have known you couldn't. You've hardly known me ten days. But if I wait, Kitty--if I give you time to think?"

"If you give me ten years it would do no good."

"I see," he said; "I see."

He gripped the edge of the mantelpiece with both his hands; his tense arms trembled from the shoulders to the wrists; his hold relaxed. He straightened himself and hid his shaking hands in his coat pockets. There were tears at the edges of his eyelids, the small, difficult tears that cut their way through the flesh that abhors them.

She saw them.

"Ah, Robert--do you care for me like that?"

"You know how I care for you."

He stopped as he swung away from her, remembering that he had failed in courtesy.

"Thank you," he said, simply, "for telling me the truth."

He reached the door, and she rose and came after him. He shook his head as a sign to her not to follow him. She saw that he was going from her because he was tortured and dumb with suffering and with shame.

Then she knew what she must do. She called to him, she entreated.

"Robert--don't go. Come back--come back. I can't bear it."

He came back at that cry.

"I haven't told you the truth. I lied."

"When?" he said sternly.

"Just now. When I told you that I didn't care for you."

"Well?"

"Sit down--here, on the sofa. I'll try and tell you."

He sat down beside her, but not near. She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, and her head propped on her clenched hands. She did not look at him as she spoke.

"I said I didn't care, because I thought that was the easiest way out of it. Easiest for you. So much easier than knowing the truth."

He smiled grimly.

"Well, you see how easy it's been."

"Yes." She paused. "The truth isn't going to be easy either."

"Let's have it, all the same, Kitty."

"You're going to have it." She paused again, breathing hard. "Have you never wondered why the people here avoided me? You know they thought things."

"As if it mattered what they thought."

"They were right. There _was_ something."

She heard him draw a deep breath. He, too, leaned forward now, in the same attitude as she, as if he were the participator of her confession, and the accomplice of her shame. His face was level with hers, but his eyes looked straight past her, untainted and clear.

"What if there was?" he said. "It makes no difference."

She turned her sad face to his.

"Don't you know, Robert? Don't you know?"

He frowned impatiently.

"No, I don't. I don't want to."

"You'd rather think I didn't care for you?"

His face set again in its tortured, dumb look.

"You shan't think that of me."

She leaned back again out of his sight, and he presented to her his shoulder, thrust forward, and his profile, immovable, dogged, and apparently unheeding.

"It's because I cared for you that I couldn't tell you the truth. I tried and couldn't. It was so difficult, and you _wouldn't_ understand. Then Wilfrid Marston said I must--I had to tell you."

He threw himself back and turned on her.

"What had Marston to do with it?"

Her voice and her eyes dropped.

"You see, he knew."

"I see."

He waited.

"I couldn't tell you."

His silence conveyed to her that he listened since she desired it, that he left it to her to tell him as much or as little as she would, and that thus he trusted her.

"I was afraid," she said.

"What? Afraid of _me_, Kitty?"

"I thought it would make you not care for me."

"I don't think anything you can tell me will make any difference."

"You said yourself it would. You said you wouldn't marry me if I wasn't nice."

He looked up impatient and surprised.

"But we've been through all that," he said.

"No, we haven't. When I said I wasn't nice I meant there were things I----"

"Well?"

"I--I wasn't married to Charley Tailleur."

He took it in silence; and through the silence she let it sink in.

"Where is the fellow?" he asked presently.

"He's dead. I told you _that_."

"I'd forgotten."

There was another silence.

"Did you care for him very much, Kitty?"

"I don't know. Yes. No, I don't know. It wasn't the same thing."

"Never mind. It's very good of you to tell me."

"I didn't mean to."

"What made you tell me?"

"Seeing the children. I thought I could go on deceiving you; but when I saw them I knew I couldn't."

"I see." His voice softened. "You told me because of them. I'm glad you told me." He paused on that.

"Well," he said, "we must make the best of it."

"That makes no difference?"

"No. Not now."

She sighed.

"How long ago was it?" he asked.

"Five years. Charley Tailleur was the first."

"What?"

"The first. There were others; ever so many others. I'm--that sort."

"I don't believe you."

"You've got to believe me. You can't marry me, and you've got to see why."

She also paused. Her silences were terrible to him.

"I thought you did see once. It didn't seem possible that you couldn't. Do you remember the first time I met you?"

He remembered.

"I thought you saw then. And afterward--don't you remember how you followed me out of the room--another night?"

"Yes."

"I thought you understood, and were too shy to say so. But you didn't. _Then_--do you remember how I waited for you at the end of the garden?--and how we sat out on the Cliff? I was trying then--the way I always try. I thought I'd make you--and you--you wouldn't see it. You only wanted to help me. You were so innocent and dear. That's what made me love you."

"Oh," he groaned. "Don't."

But she went on. "And do you remember how you found me--that night--out on the Cliff?"

She drew back her voice softly.

"I was sure then that you knew, and that when you asked me to come back with you----"

"Look here, Kitty, I've had enough of it."

"You haven't, for you're fond of me still. You are, aren't you?"

"Oh, my God! how do I know?"

"_I_ know. It's because you haven't taken it in. What do you think of this? You've known me ten days, and ten days before that I was with Wilfrid Marston."

He had taken it in at last. She had made it real to him, clothed it in flesh and blood.

"If you don't believe me," she said, "ask him. That's what he came to see me for. He wanted me to go back to him. In fact, I wasn't supposed to have left him."

He put his hand to his forehead as if he were trying to steady his mind to face the thing that stunned it.

"And you're telling me all this because----" he said dully.

"Because I want to make you loathe me, so that you can go away and be glad that you'll never see me again. And if it hurts you too much to think of me as I am, to think that you cared for me, just say to yourself that I cared for _you_, and that I couldn't have done it if I'd been quite bad."

She cried out, "It would have been better for me if I had been. I shouldn't _feel_ then. It wouldn't hurt me to see little children. I should have got over that long ago; and I shouldn't have cared for you or them. I shouldn't have been able to. We get like that. And then--I needn't have let you care for me. That was the worst thing I ever did. But I was so happy--so happy."

He could not look at her; he covered his face with his hands, and she knew that he cared still.

Then she came and knelt down beside him and whispered. He got up and broke away from her and she followed him.

"You can't marry me _now_," she said.

And he answered, "No."