The Immortal Moment Part 15

"And my little sister was looking for you everywhere. She wanted you to dine with us. We thought you would, perhaps, as you were free."

"That was very good of you."

"We couldn't find you anywhere in the hotel. Then I came out here."

"What made you come?"

"I came to look for you."

"To look for me?"

"Yes. You don't mind, do you?"

"How did you know I should be here?"

"I didn't. It was the last place I tried. Do you know it's past nine o'clock? You must come in now."

"I--can't."

"Oh yes," he said, "you can. You're coming back with me."

He talked as he would to a frightened child, to one of his own children.

"I'm afraid to go back."

"Why?"

"Because of Bunny. She told me people were saying dreadful things about me. That's why she left. She couldn't bear it."

Lucy ground his teeth. "_She_ couldn't bear it? That shows what she was, doesn't it? But you--you don't mind what people say?"

"No," she said, "I don't mind."

"Well----"

"Yes!" she cried pa.s.sionately. "I do mind. I've always minded. It's just the one thing I can't get over."

"It's the one thing," said Lucy, "we have to learn to get over. When you've lived to be as old as I am, you'll see how very little it matters what people say of us. Especially when we know what other people think."

"Other people?"

"Friends," he said, "the people who really care."

"Ah, if we only could know what they think. That's the most horrible thing of all--what they think."

"Is that why you don't want to go back?"

Lucy's voice was unsteady and very low.

"Yes," she whispered.

There was a brief silence.

"But if you go back with _me_," he said, "it will be all right, won't it?"

The look in her eyes almost reached him through the darkness, it was so intense.

"No," she said out loud, "it won't. It will be all wrong."

"I don't agree with you. Anyhow, I'm going to take you back. Come."

"No," she said, "not yet. Mayn't we stay here a little longer?"

"No, we mayn't. You've got your death of cold as it is."

"I'm not cold, now. I'm warm. Feel my hands."

She held them out to him. He did not touch them. But he put his arm round her and raised her to her feet. And they went back together along the narrow Cliff-path. It was dangerous in the perishing light. He took her hands in his now, and led her sidelong. When her feet slipped in the slimy chalk, he held her up with his arm.

At the little gate she turned to him.

"I was kind to Bunny," she said, "I was really."

"I am sure," he said gently, "you are kind to everybody."

"That's something, isn't it?"

"I'm not sure that it isn't everything."

They went up the side of the garden, along the shrubbery, by a path that led to the main entrance of the hotel. A great ring of white light lay on the wet ground before the porch, thrown from the electric lamps within.

Mrs. Tailleur stepped back into the darkness by the shrubbery. "Look here," she said, "I'm going in by myself. You are going round another way. You have not seen me. You don't know where I am. You don't know anything about me."

"I know," said Lucy, "you are coming in with me."

She drew farther back. "I'm not thinking of myself," she said, "I'm thinking of you."

She was no longer like a child. Her voice had suddenly grown older.

"Are you?" he said. "Then you'll do what I ask you." He held her with his arm and drew her, resisting and unresisting, close to him.

"Ah," she cried, "what are you going to do with me?"

"I am going," he said, "to take you to my sister."

And he went with her, up the steps and into the lighted vestibule, past the hall-porter and the clerk in his bureau and the manager's wife in hers, straight into the lounge, before the Colonel and his wife, and he led her to Jane where she sat in her place beside the hearth.

"It isn't half such a bad night as it looks," said he in a clear voice.

"Is it, Mrs. Tailleur?"