The Immortal Moment Part 22

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 att.i.tude of carelessness as to the event. As a material appearance the att.i.tude 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 Metropole."

"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 Metropole."

"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 Metropole? 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."