May Sinclair

“ The friends (they were all men) who came to her of their own intimate accord, belonged, some of them, to an aristocracy higher than that represented by Mr. Lucy or the Colonel. And they had been by no means impervious to Kitty's charm.
From the sounds that came from the billiard-room she gathered that Kitty's charm appealed also to her audience in there. Leaning her body forward so as to listen, Miss Keating became aware that Lucy had returned to the lounge, and was strolling about in it, as if he were looking for somebody. He strolled into the veranda. ”

“ Southbourne was exquisite in young June, at the dawn of its season. And the Cliff Hotel promised what they wanted, a gay seclusion, a refined publicity.
If you were grossly rich, you went to the big Hôtel Métropole, opposite. If you were a person of fastidious tastes and an attenuated income, you felt the superior charm of the Cliff Hotel. The little house, the joy of its proprietor, was hidden in the privacy of its own beautiful grounds, having its back to the high road and its face to the open sea. ”

“ Her throat trembled as if she were swallowing some bitter thing that had been on the tip of her tongue.
"If you think that," she said, and her voice crowed no longer, "wouldn't it be better for us not to be together?"
Kitty shook her meditative head. "Poor Bunny," said she, "why can't you be honest? [25] Why don't you say plump out that you're sick and tired of me? I should be. I couldn't stand another woman lugging me about as I lug you."
"It isn't that. Only—everywhere we go—there's always some horrible man." ”

“ 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." ”

“ Kitty had certain graces, reminiscent of the upper world; a heritage from presumably irreproachable parents, that marked her from the women of her class. She had, moreover, a way of her own, different from the charm of the unfallen, different, too, from the coarse lures of the underworld. Kitty was never rank, never insipid. She had a few light brains in her body, and knew how to use them, woman-like, for the heightening of her charm.
There were other good points about Kitty. Marston disliked parting with his money, and he had found Kitty, so far, inexpensive, as women went. ”

“ In the upper world, in a set that discussed its women freely, he had never used his knowledge of a woman to harm her. He had carried the same scruple into that other world where Kitty lived, where he himself was most at home, where an amused, contemptuous tolerance played the part of chivalry. The women there trusted him; they found him courteous in his very contempt. He had connived at their small deceits, the preposterous hypocrisies wherewith they protected themselves. He accepted urbanely their pitiful imitations of the lost innocence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She had desired a pretext for approaching Miss Lucy, and poor Kitty was a pretext made to her hand. Nothing could be more appealing than the spectacle of helpless innocence struggling with a problem as terrible as Kitty. Miss Keating knew all the time that as far as she was concerned there was no problem. If she disliked being with Kitty she had nothing to do but to pack up and go. Kitty had said in the beginning that if she didn't like her she must go. ”

“ He, for his part, took conclusions in his stride.
But Jane was always listening for a call from some foreign country of the soul. She was always entering surreptitiously into other people's feelings. They never caught her at it, never suspected her soft-footed, innocent intrusions.
She was wondering now whether they would have to make friends with any of the visitors. She hoped not, because that would spoil it, the adventure. People had a way of telling her their secrets, and Jane preferred not to be told. All she wanted was an inkling, a clue; the slenderer the better. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Miss Keating, in the dawn of their acquaintance, had prayed that Mrs. Tailleur might not elect to sit next anybody who was not nice. Latterly she had found herself hoping that their place might not be in view of anybody who was.
For three months they had been living [20] in hotels, in horrifying publicity. Miss Keating dreaded most the hour they had just passed through. There was something terrible to her in their entry, in their passage down the great, white, palm-shaded, exotic room, their threading of the ways between the tables, with all the men turning round to stare at Kitty Tailleur. ”

“ Five years of fatherhood finished his training in the school of chivalry. He had been profoundly moved by little Amy's sacrifice to the powers of life, and he was further touched by the heartrending spectacle of Jane. Jane doing all she knew for him; Jane, so engaging in her innocence, hiding her small, childlike charm under dark airs of assumed maternity; Jane, whose skirts fluttered wide to all the winds of dream; Jane with an apron on and two little girls tied to the strings of it; Jane, adorable in [41] disaster, striving to be discreet and comfortable and competent. ”

“ 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 [233] 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. ”

“ Her voice shook. "I wouldn't have harmed them for the world. I was sent to live with an old lady—so were you. I was shut up with her all day, till I got ill and couldn't sleep at night. I never saw a soul but one or two other old ladies. They were quite fond of me—I made them. I should have died of it if it hadn't been for that. Then—do listen, Bunny—something happened, and I broke loose, and got away. You never had a chance to get away, so you don't know what it feels like. ”

“ Kitty couldn't let it go. Publicity was what Kitty coveted.
She had then supposed that Kitty was used to it; that she was, in some mysterious way, a personage. There would be temptations, she had imagined, for any one who had a charm that lived thus in the public eye. [32]
And Kitty had her good points, too. There was nobody so easy to live with as Kitty in her private capacity, if she could be said to have one. She never wanted to be amused, or read to, or sat up with late at night, like the opulent invalids Miss Keating had been with hitherto. ”

“ Her opinion, more private even than that sitting-room, consecrated to intimate dispute, was that where women were concerned the manager was a perfect fool.
The window of the bureau looked out on to the vestibule and the big staircase. And full in sight of the window Mrs. Tailleur was sitting on a seat set under the stair. She had her hat on and carried a sunshade in her hand, for the day was fine and warm. She was waiting for somebody. And as she waited she amused herself by smiling at the little four-year-old son of the management who played in the vestibule, it being the slack season. ”

“ 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 faced her passion as it flamed up before him, faced it with his cold, meditative smile.
"That's just what makes it such a beastly shame."
"My not giving him up? How can I give him up?"
"I see your point. You think you're exchanging a temporary affection for a permanent one. You admit that I shall love you as long as you're nice to look at. Very well. You'll be nice to look at for some considerable time. I shall therefore love you for some considerable time. Robert Lucy will love you just as long as he believes in you. ”

“ She spoke in a small, crowing voice, the voice, Lucy said to himself, of a rather terrible person. She shivered.
"Poor lamb, does it feel a draught down its little back?"
The lady rose and put her fur tippet on the shivering shoulders. They shrank from her, and she drew it closer and fastened it with caressing and cajoling fingers. There was about her something impetuous and perverse, a wilful, ungovernable tenderness. Her hands had the swiftness of things moved by sweet, disastrous impulses.
The white person (she was quite terrible) undid the fastening and shook her shoulders free of the fur. ”

“ He wondered how Jane would look when he told her he was going to marry Kitty. That was bound to strike her as very sudden indeed.
It was wonderful to him that this thing should have happened to him. He was aware that it was a new thing. Nothing in his previous experience had prepared him for it. He had been very young eight years [150] ago, and a gayer, lighter-hearted chivalry had gone to his courtship of poor Amy. Poor Amy, though he would not own it, had been a rather ineffectual woman, with a prodigious opinion of her small self and a fretting passion for dominion. ”

“ Are you sure you don't let your imagination run away with you sometimes?"
"Not," said Miss Keating, "not on this subject. Even when I'm brought into contact"—her shoulder-blades obeyed the suggestion of her brain, and shuddered. "I don't know whether it's good or bad to refuse to face things. I can't help it. All that side of life is so intensely disagreeable to me." [73]
"It's not agreeable to me," said Jane. "And what has it got to do with Mrs. Tailleur?"
Miss Keating smiled queerly. "I don't know. I wish I did." ”

“ 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." ”

“ Something in her action inspired Kitty with an intolerable passion of wonder and of pity. She came to her and laid her hand on her hair, lightly and with a certain fear.
Miss Keating had once purred under Kitty's caresses. Now she jerked back suddenly and beat off the timid hand.
"I wish you wouldn't touch me."
"Why not?"
"Because it makes me loathe you."
Kitty sat down on the bed. She had wrapped her hand in her pocket-handkerchief as if it had been hurt.
"Poor Bunny," she said; "are you feeling as bad as all that? You must want dreadfully to marry that long man. But you needn't loathe me. ”

“ He could see that the path was pitted with small, sharp footprints. They turned and returned, obliterating each other.
At the end of the path, in the white chamber under the brow of the Cliff, he made out first a queer, irregular, trailing black mass, then the peak of a hood against the wall, and the long train of a woman's gown upon the floor, and then, between the loops of the hood, the edge of Mrs. Tailleur's white face, dim, but discernible. She sat [113] sideways, leaning against the wall, in the slack, childlike attitude of exhausted misery. ”

“ I'll give you any mortal thing I can afford."
"You think you can give me what Robert Lucy's giving me?"
"I can give you a home, Kitty, as long as you'll live in it. I can give you the advantages of marriage without its drawbacks. You won't be tied to me a minute longer than you like. Whereas you can't leave Lucy without a scandal." ”

“ Miss Keating turned to the looking-glass and put on her veil. Her back was toward Kitty. The two women's faces were in the glass, the young and the middle-aged, each searching for the other. Kitty's face was tearful and piteous; it pleaded with the other face in the glass, a face furtive with hate, that hung between two lifted arms behind a veil.
Miss Keating's hands struggled with her veil. [111]
"I mayn't tie it for you?" said Kitty.
"No, thank you."
There was a knock at the door, and Miss Keating started.
"It's the men for your boxes. Come into my room and say good bye." ”

“ She had found an unoccupied sofa near the writing-table. The pursuer was seized instantly with a desire to write letters. Mrs. Tailleur went out and shivered on the veranda. His eyes followed her. In passing she had turned her back on the screened hearth-place where Lucy and his sister sat alone.
"Did you see that?" said Lucy.
"I did indeed," said Jane.
"It's awful that a woman should be exposed to that sort of thing. What can her people be thinking of?"
"Her people?"
"Yes; to let her go about alone."
"I go about alone," said Jane pensively. ”