Читать книгу The Immortal Moment - Sinclair May - Страница 8

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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 space 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.

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 disaster, striving to be discreet and comfortable and competent.

He had a passionate pity for all creatures troubled and unfortunate. And Mrs. Tailleur's face called aloud to him for pity. For Lucy Mrs. Tailleur's face wore, like a veil, the shadow of the incredible past and of the future; it was reminiscent and prophetic of terrible and tragic things. Across the great spaces of the public rooms his gaze answered her call. Then Mrs. Tailleur's face would become dumb. Like all hurt things, she was manifestly shy of observation and pursuit.

Pursuit and observation, perpetual, implacable, were what she had to bear. The women had driven her from the drawing-room; the men made the smoke-room impossible. A cold, wet mist came with the evenings. It lay over the sea and drenched the lawns of the hotel garden. Mrs. Tailleur had no refuge but the lounge.

To-night the wine-faced man and his companion had tracked her there. Mrs. Tailleur had removed herself from the corner where they had hemmed her in. 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.

"Yes, but she's so good looking."

"Am I not?"

"You're all right, Jenny; but you never looked like that. There's something about her——"

"Is that what makes those men horrid to her?"

"Yes, I suppose so. The brutes!" He paused irritably. "It mustn't happen again."

"What's the poor lady to do?" said Jane.

"She can't do anything. We must."

"We?"

"I must. You must. Go out to her, Janey, and be nice to her."

"No, you go and say I sent you."

He strode out on to the veranda. Mrs. Tailleur sat with her hands in her lap, motionless, and, to his senses, unaware.

"Mrs. Tailleur."

She started and looked up at him.

"My sister asked me to tell you that there's a seat for you in there, if you don't mind sitting with us."

"But won't you mind me?"

"Not—not," said Lucy (he positively stammered), "not if you don't mind us."

Mrs. Tailleur looked at him again, wide eyed, with the strange and pitiful candour of distrust. Then she smiled incomprehensibly.

Her eyelids dropped as she slid past him to the seat beside Jane. He noticed that she had the sudden, furtive ways of the wild thing aware of the hunter.

"May I really?" said Mrs. Tailleur.

"Oh, please," said Jane.

As she spoke the man at the writing-table looked up and stared. Not at Mrs. Tailleur this time, but at Jane. He stared with a wonder so spontaneous, so supreme, that it purged him of offence.

He stared again (with less innocence) at Lucy as the young man gave way, reverently, to the sweep of Mrs. Tailleur's gown. Lucy's face intimated to him that he had made a bad mistake. The wretch admitted, by a violent flush, that it was possible. Then his eyes turned again to Mrs. Tailleur. It was as much as to say he had only been relying on the incorruptible evidence of his senses.

Mrs. Tailleur sat down and breathed hard.

"How sweet of you!" Her voice rang with the labour of her breast.

Lucy smiled as he caught the word. He would have condemned the stress of it, but that Mrs. Tailleur's voice pleaded forgiveness for any word she chose to utter. "Even," he said to himself, "if you could forget her face."

He couldn't forget it. As he sat there trying to read, it came between him and his book. It tormented him to find its meaning. Kitty's face was a thing both delicate and crude. When she was gay it showed a blurred edge, a fineness in peril. When she was sad it wore the fixed look of artificial maturity. It was like a young bud opened by inquisitive fingers and forced to be a flower. Some day, the day before it withered, the bruised veins would glow again, and a hectic spot betray, like a bruise, the violation of its bloom. At the moment, repose gave back its beauty to Kitty's face. Lucy noticed that the large black pupils of her eyes were ringed with a dark blue iris, spotted with black. There was no colour about her at all except that blue, and the delicate red of her mouth. In her black gown she was a revelation of pure form. Colour would have obscured her, made her ineffectual.

He sat silent, hardly daring to look at her. So keen was his sense of her that he could almost have heard the beating of her breast against her gown. Once she sighed, and Lucy stirred. Once she stirred slightly, and Lucy, unconsciously responsive, sighed. Then Kitty's glance lit on him. He turned a page of his book ostentatiously, and Kitty's glance slunk home again. She closed her eyes and opened them to find Lucy's eyes looking at her over the top of his book. Poor Lucy was so perturbed at being detected in that particular atrocity that he rose, drew his chair to the hearth, and arranged himself in an attitude that made these things impossible.

He was presently aware of Jane launching herself on a gentle tide of conversation, and of Mrs. Tailleur trembling pathetically on the brink of it.

"Do you like Southbourne?" he heard Jane saying.

Then suddenly Mrs. Tailleur plunged in.

"No," said she; "I hate it. I hate any place I have to be alone in, if it's only for five minutes."

Lucy felt that it was Jane who drew back now, in sheer distress. He tried to think of something to say, and gave it up, stultified by his compassion.

The silence was broken by Jane.

"Robert," said she, "have you written to the children?"

Mrs. Tailleur's face became suddenly sombre and intent.

"No; I haven't. I clean forgot it."

He went off to write his letter. When he came back Mrs. Tailleur had risen and was saying good night to Jane.

He followed her to the portière and drew it back for her to pass. As she turned to thank him she glanced up at the hand that held the portière. It trembled violently. Her eyes, a moment ago dark under her bent forehead, darted a sudden light sidelong.

She paused, interrogative, expectant. Lucy bowed.

As Mrs. Tailleur passed out she looked back over her shoulder, smiling again her incomprehensible smile.

The portière dropped behind her.