The Immortal Moment Part 3

CHAPTER III

It could not be denied that Kitty had a charm. Miss Keating was not denying it, even now, when she was saying to herself that Kitty had a way of attracting very disagreeable attention.

At first she had supposed that this was an effect of Kitty's charm, disagreeable to Kitty. Then, even in the beginning, she had seen that there was something deliberate and perpetual in Kitty's challenge of the public eye. The public eye, so far from pursuing Kitty, was itself pursued, tracked down and captured. 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.

And Kitty had her good points, too. There was n.o.body 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. Miss Keating owed everything she had to Kitty, her health (she was const.i.tutionally anaemic), her magnificent salary, the luxurious gaiety in which they lived and moved (moved, perhaps, rather more than lived).

The very combs in her hair were Kitty's. So were the gowns she wore on occasions of splendour and display. It struck her as odd that they were all public, these occasions, things they paid to go to.

It had dawned on her by this time, coldly, disagreeably, that Kitty Tailleur was n.o.body, n.o.body, that is to say, in particular. A person of no account in the places where they had stayed. In their three months'

wanderings they had never been invited to any private house. Miss Keating could not account for that air of ill-defined celebrity that hung round Kitty like a scent, and marked her trail.

Not that any social slur seemed to attach to Kitty. The acquaintances she had made in her brief and curious fashion were all, or nearly all, socially immaculate. 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.

The garden was dark now, but a little light fell on the veranda from the open windows of the lounge. Lucy looked at Mrs. Tailleur's empty chair.

He was about to sit in it when he saw that he was alone with Mrs.

Tailleur's companion. He rose again for flight. Miss Keating rose also with the same intention.

Lucy protested. "Please don't let me disturb you. I am not going to sit here."

"But I am driving you in."

"Not at all. I only thought you might object to my smoking."

"But I don't object."

"You don't, really?"

"If I stay," said she, "will that prove it?"

"Please do," said Lucy.

Miss Keating pushed her chair as far as possible from his. She seated herself with a fugitive, sidelong movement; as much as to say she left him to the sanctuary he sought. He would please to observe the perfection of her withdrawal. The table with the match-stand on it stood between them.

Lucy approached the match-stand tentatively. Miss Keating, averted and effaced, was yet aware of him.

"I'm afraid there are no matches," said she. "Mrs. Tailleur has used them all." So effaced and so averted was Miss Keating that there was nothing left of her but a sweet, attenuated, disembodied voice. It was as if spirit spoke to spirit with the consecrated doors between.

Lucy smiled. He paused at Mrs. Tailleur's chair.

"Is your friend coming back again?" he asked.

"I don't think so."

It might have been an effect of her remoteness, but Miss Keating's tone conveyed to him ever so slight a repudiation of Mrs. Tailleur.

He seated himself; and as he did so he searched his coat pockets. There were no matches there. He knew he would find some in the lounge. Perhaps he might find Mrs. Tailleur also. He would get up and look.

Miss Keating (still disembodied) rose and withdrew herself completely, and Lucy thought better of his intention. He lay back and closed his eyes.

A light tap on the table roused him. It was Miss Keating laying down a match-box. He saw her hand poised yet in the delicacy of its imperceptible approach.

He stared, stupefied with embarra.s.sment. He stuttered with it.

"Really--I--I--I wish you hadn't." He did not take up the match-box all at once, lest he should seem prompt in accepting this rather extraordinary service.

Mrs. Tailleur's companion slid back into her seat and sat there smiling to herself and to the incommunicative night.

"I hope," she said presently, "you are not refraining from smoking because of me."

She was very sweet and soft and gentle. But she had not struck him as gentle or soft or sweet when he had seen her with Mrs. Tailleur, and he was not prepared to take that view of her now.

"Thank you," he said. He could not think of anything else to say. He lit his cigarette, and smoked in an innocent abstraction.

A clock indoors struck ten. Miss Keating accounted for her continuance.

"It is the only quiet place in the hotel," said she.

He a.s.sented, wondering if this were meant for a conversational opening.

"And the night air is so very sweet and pure."

"I'm afraid you find this smoke of mine anything but----"

"If you are so serious about it," said she, "I shall be afraid either to stay out or to go in."

If there were any opening there he missed it. He had turned at the sound of a skirt trailing, and he saw that Mrs. Tailleur had come back into the lounge. He was thoughtful for a moment. Then he got up quietly and went in.

He did not speak to her or look at her. He sat very still in a corner of the room where he could see her reflection in a big mirror. It did not occur to him that Mrs. Tailleur could see his, too.

Outside in the veranda, Miss Keating sat shuddering in the night air.

CHAPTER IV

Lucy's mind was like his body. Superficial people called it narrow, because the sheer length of it diverted their attention from its breadth. Visionary, yet eager for the sound impact of the visible, it was never more alert than when it, so to speak, sat still, absorbed in its impressions. It was the sport of young and rapid impulses, which it seemed to obey sluggishly, while, all the time, it moved with immense, slow strides to incredibly far conclusions. Having reached a conclusion it was apt to stay there. The very length of its stride made turning awkward for it.

He had reached a conclusion now, on his third night in Southbourne. He must do something, he did not yet know what, for the protection of Mrs.

Tailleur.

Her face was an appeal to the chivalry that sat quiet in Lucy's heart, nursing young dreams of opportunity.

Lucy's chivalry had been formed by three weeks of courtship and three years of wedded incompatibility. The incompatibility had hardly dawned on him when his wife died. Three years were too short a s.p.a.ce for Lucy's mind to turn in; and so he always thought of her tenderly as dear little Amy. She had given him two daughters and paid for the younger with her life.