The Immortal Moment Part 7

"No; I really don't think I do."

"Then," said Mrs. Tailleur, "you are all the more remarkable."

"Don't you think," she added, "we had better go back?"

They went back. As they mounted the steps to the garden door they saw Miss Keating approaching it from the inside. She moved along the low wall that overlooked the path by which they had just come. There was no crunching of pebbles under her feet. She trod, inaudibly, the soft edge of the lawn.

Lucy held the door open for Miss Keating when Mrs. Tailleur had pa.s.sed through; but Miss Keating had turned suddenly. She made the pebbles on the walk scream with the vehemence of her retreat.

"Dear me," said Lucy, "it must be rather painful to be as shy as that."

"Mustn't it?" said Mrs. Tailleur.

CHAPTER VI

The next day it rained, fitfully at first, at the will of a cold wind that dragged clouds out of heaven. A gleam of sunshine in the afternoon, then wild rain driven slantwise by the gusts; and now, at five o'clock, no wind at all, but a straight, soaking downpour.

The guests at the Cliff Hotel were all indoors. Colonel Hankin and his wife were reading in a corner of the lounge. Mr. Soutar, the clergyman, was dozing over a newspaper by an imaginary fire. The other men drifted continually from the bar to the billiard-room and back again.

Mrs. Tailleur and Lucy were sitting in the veranda, with rugs round them, watching the rain, and watched by Colonel and Mrs. Hankin.

Jane had gone into the drawing-room to write letters. There was n.o.body there but the old lady who sat in the bay of the window, everlastingly knitting, and Miss Keating isolated on a sofa near the door.

Everybody in the hotel was happy and occupied, except Miss Keating. Her eyes followed the labour of Miss Lucy's pen, watching for the stroke that should end it. She had made up her mind that she must speak to her.

Miss Keating was subject to a pa.s.sion which circ.u.mstances were perpetually frustrating. She desired to be interesting, profoundly, personally interesting to people. She disliked publicity partly because it reduced her to mournful insignificance and silence. The few moments in her life which counted were those private ones when she found attention surrendered wholly to her service. She hungered for the unworn, unwearied sympathy of strangers. Her fancy had followed and fastened on the Lucys, perceiving this exquisitely virgin quality in them. And now she was suffering from an oppression of the nerves that urged her to a supreme outpouring.

Miss Lucy seemed absorbed in her correspondence. She felt that Miss Keating's eyes were upon her, and as she wrote she planned a dexterous retreat. It would, she knew, be difficult, owing to Miss Keating's complete occupation of the sofa by the door.

She had made that lady's acquaintance in the morning, having found her sitting sad and solitary in the lounge. She had then felt that it would be unkind not to say something to her, and she had spent the greater part of the morning saying it. Miss Keating had tracked the thin thread of conversation carefully, as if in search of an unapparent opportunity.

Jane, aware of the watchfulness of her method, had taken fright and left her. She had had an awful feeling that Miss Keating was about to bestow a confidence on her; somebody else's confidence, which Miss Keating had broken badly, she suspected.

Jane had finished her letters. She was addressing the envelopes. Now she was stamping them. Now she was crossing the room. Miss Keating lowered her eyes as the moment came which was to bring her into communion with the Lucys.

Jane had made her way very quietly to the door, and thought to pa.s.s through it un.o.bserved, when Miss Keating seemed to leap up from her sofa as from an ambush.

"Miss Lucy," she said, and Jane turned at the penetrating sibilants of her name.

Miss Keating thrust toward her a face of tragic and imminent appeal. A nervous vibration pa.s.sed through her and communicated itself to Jane.

"What is it?" Jane paused in the doorway.

"May I speak to you a moment?"

"Certainly."

But Miss Keating did not speak. She stood there, clasping and unclasping her hands. It struck Jane that she was trying to conceal an eagerness of which she was more than half ashamed.

"What is it?" she said again.

Miss Keating sighed. "Will you sit down? Here--I think." She glanced significantly at the old lady who was betraying unmistakable interest in the scene. There was no place where they could sit beyond her range of vision. But the sofa was on the far side of it, and Miss Keating's back protested against observation.

She bent forward, her thin arms stretched out to Jane, her hands locked, as if she still held tight the confidence she offered.

"Miss Lucy," she said, "you were so kind to me this morning, so kind and helpful."

"I didn't know it."

"No, you didn't know it." Miss Keating looked down, and she smiled as if at some pleasant secret of her own. "I think when we are really helping each other we don't know it. You couldn't realise what it meant to me, your just coming up and speaking to me that way."

"I'm very glad," said Jane; and thought she meant it.

Miss Keating smiled again. "I wonder," she said, "if I might ask you to help me again?"

"If I can."

"You look as if you could. I'm in a great difficulty, and I would like you--if you would--to give me your advice."

"That," said Jane, "is a very dangerous thing to give."

"It wouldn't be in this case. If I might only tell you. There's no one in the hotel whom I can speak to."

"Surely," said Jane, "there is Mrs. Tailleur, your friend."

"My friend? Yes, she is my friend; that's why I can't say anything to her. She _is_ the difficulty."

"Indeed," said Jane coldly. Nothing in Miss Keating appealed to the spirit of adventurous sympathy.

"I have received so much kindness from her. She _is_ kind."

"Evidently," said Jane.

"That makes my position so very delicate--so very disagreeable."

"I should think it would."

Miss Keating felt the antipathy in Miss Lucy's tone. "You _do_ think it strange of me to come to you when I don't know you?"

"No, no; people are always coming to me. Perhaps because they don't know me."

"Ah, you see, you make them come."

"Indeed I don't. I try to stop them."