The Immortal Moment Part 21

The awkward thing was telling Jane about it. Jane had been his dead wife's friend before he married her, and she had known her better then than she knew Kitty. Yet he remembered, acutely, how he had gone to her eight years ago, and told her that he was going to marry Amy, and how she had kissed him and said nothing, and how, when he asked her if she had any objection, she had said "No, none. But isn't it a little sudden?"

He wondered how Jane would look when he told her he was going to marry Kitty. That was bound to strike her as very sudden indeed.

It was wonderful to him that this thing should have happened to him. He was aware that it was a new thing. Nothing in his previous experience had prepared him for it. He had been very young eight years ago, and a gayer, lighter-hearted chivalry had gone to his courts.h.i.+p of poor Amy.

Poor Amy, though he would not own it, had been a rather ineffectual woman, with a prodigious opinion of her small self and a fretting pa.s.sion for dominion. She had had a crowd of friends and relations whom she had allowed to come between them. Poor Amy had never understood him.

There were heights and depths in him to which she had made no appeal.

But Kitty--she had brought something out of him that had been hidden and unknown to him before. Something that answered to the fear with which she had drawn back from him and to the tremendous and tragic pa.s.sion with which she had given herself to him at the last. Poor little Amy had never held him so. She had never loved him like that in all her poor little life. And so his very tenderness for Kitty had terror in it, lest he should fail her, lest he should in any way justify her prescience of disaster.

Somebody was coming along the Cliff-path, somebody with a telegram for Mrs. Tailleur. She rose, moving away from Lucy as she opened it.

"There is no answer," she said. And she came to him again and sat beside him, very still, with hands spread over the telegram that lay open in her lap.

"Has anything happened?"

She shook her head. He took the hand that she held out to him by way of rea.s.surance and possession.

"Then why do you look like that?"

She smiled.

"Kitty--that was an unconvincing smile."

"Was it? I'm sorry to say there's a tiresome man coming to see me."

"Say you can't see him. Send him a wire."

"I must. He's coming on business. I don't _want_ to see him."

"Can't I see him for you, if you feel like that?"

"No, dear. He must see me."

"When is he due?"

"At seven-thirty."

"Oh--only in the evening. How long do you think he'll stay?"

Kitty hardened her face. "Not a minute longer than I can help."

"An hour? Two hours?"

"I shall have to give him dinner. He's--he's that sort of man."

"Two hours, probably. I think I'll take Janey for a stroll while he's here. You see, I've got to tell her, and I shall tell her then."

She put her hands on his shoulders. "And what will--Janey--say?"

"She'll say she's glad I'm going to be happy."

He became thoughtful. "And there are the children," he said. "I've got to tell them, too."

She was silent. She did not ask him as he had half expected, "What will _they_ say?"

"I think," he said, "I'd better send for them and let them stay here a bit. Could you stand another week of Southbourne? You said you hated it."

"Yes. I hated it. I shouldn't have stayed if it hadn't been for you."

"Do you mind staying a little longer now?"

"I don't mind staying anywhere where you are."

"Well--just a little longer."

She saw the workings of his mind. The people here had been saying awful things about her. If he took her away they would continue to say them.

He couldn't stop them. He couldn't for instance, go up to Colonel Hankin before leaving, and tell him that he lied, and that Mrs. Tailleur, though appearances might be against her, was as innocent a lady as Mrs.

Hankin. He couldn't even announce his engagement to her by way of accounting for their simultaneous departure. They were not accountable to these people. But, if they stayed on as if nothing had happened, he could demonstrate to everybody's satisfaction that he had no other intention with regard to Mrs. Tailleur than to make her his wife and a mother to his children. That was why he was sending for them. Evidently the idea he had--poor lamb--was that he could shelter her innocence with theirs.

And so she told him that she adored Southbourne now and didn't care how long they stopped there.

Lucy's idea had really gone more or less on those lines, though they remained rather more obscure to him than they were to Kitty.

His scheme was so far successful that there were people in the Cliff Hotel who knew about his engagement before Jane did.

It was clear to the management, at any rate, that some consecrating seal had been set to the very interesting relations of Mrs. Tailleur and Mr.

Lucy. The manager was more inclined than ever to take a favourable view of Mrs. Tailleur. To begin with, Mrs. Tailleur had ordered a private sitting-room. Then Mr. Lucy presented himself at the bureau with Mrs.

Tailleur and inquired whether he could have a room for his two little girls and their nurse. The manager's wife looked dubious. The best rooms, she said, were taken. And Mrs. Tailleur said, looking at Mr.

Lucy, "How about poor Bunny's room? The one leading out of mine?"

A fine flush appeared on Mr. Lucy's face as he said he would have that room.

He then announced that he would wire for the little girls to come at once, and that they would arrive at four o'clock to-morrow. It was further arranged that they were to have their meals in Mrs. Tailleur's private sitting-room. And please, there was to be lots of jam for tea, Mrs. Tailleur said. The manager's wife looked humble before her lord as she booked that order.

That was at twelve o'clock of the tenth day.

Seven hours later Mrs. Tailleur was alone in her private sitting-room, preparing with some agitation for the appointment that she had.

CHAPTER XIII

Her tense, flushed mind recorded automatically, and with acute vividness, every detail of the room; the pattern of the gray French wall-paper, with the watered stripe, and of the hot, velvet upholstery, buff on a crimson ground; the architecture of the stained walnut sideboard and overmantel, with their ridiculous pediments and little shelves and bevelled mirrors; the tapestry curtains, the palms in s.h.i.+ning turquoise blue pots, and the engraved picture of Grace Darling over the sideboard.

It was absolutely necessary that she should have this place to see him in, without Robert seeing him. Beyond that immediate purpose she discerned its use as a play-room for Robert's children.