"Are you trying to stop me?"
"Yes; I think I am."
"Don"t stop me, please."
"But surely it would be better to consult your own people."
Miss Keating paused. Miss Lucy had suggested the obvious course, which she had avoided for reasons which were not obvious even to herself.
"My own people?" she murmured pensively. "They are not here."
It was not her fault if Miss Lucy jumped to the conclusion that they were dead.
"I wonder," she said, "if you see my difficulty?"
"I see it plainly enough. Mrs. Tailleur has been very kind to you, and you want to leave her. Why?"
"I"m not sure that I ought to stay."
"You must be the best judge of your obligations."
"There are," said Miss Keating, "other things; I don"t know that I"m a good judge of _them_. You see, I was brought up very carefully."
"Were you?"
"Yes. I"m not sure that it"s wise to be as careful as all that--to keep young girls in ignorance of things they--things they must, sooner or later----" she paused staring as if at an abyss.
"What things?" asked Jane bluntly.
"I don"t know what things. I don"t _know_ anything. I"m afraid. I"m so innocent, Miss Lucy, that I"m like a child in the dark. I think I want some one to hold my hand and tell me there"s nothing there."
"Perhaps there isn"t."
"Yes, but it"s so dark that I can"t see whether there is or isn"t. I"m just like a little child. Except that it imagines things and I don"t."
"Don"t you? Are you sure you don"t let your imagination run away with you sometimes?"
"Not," said Miss Keating, "not on this subject. Even when I"m brought into contact"--her shoulder-blades obeyed the suggestion of her brain, and shuddered. "I don"t know whether it"s good or bad to refuse to face things. I can"t help it. All that side of life is so intensely disagreeable to me."
"It"s not agreeable to me," said Jane. "And what _has_ it got to do with Mrs. Tailleur?"
Miss Keating smiled queerly. "I don"t know. I wish I did."
"If you mean you think she isn"t nice, I can tell you I"m sure you"re mistaken."
"It"s not what _I_ think. It"s what other people think."
"What people?"
"The people here."
Little Jane lifted her head superbly.
"_We_ think the people here have behaved abominably to Mrs. Tailleur."
She lifted her voice too. She didn"t care who heard her. She rose, making herself look as tall as possible.
"And if you"re her friend," said she, "you ought to think so too."
She walked out of the room, still superbly. Miss Keating was left to a painful meditation on misplaced confidence.
CHAPTER VII
She had had no intention of betraying Kitty. Kitty, she imagined, had sufficiently betrayed herself. And if she hadn"t, as long as Kitty chose to behave like a dubious person, she could hardly be surprised if persons by no means dubious refused to be compromised. She, Miss Keating, was in no way responsible for Kitty Tailleur. Neither was she responsible for what other people thought of her. That was all, in effect, that she had intimated to Miss Lucy.
She did not say what she herself precisely thought, nor when she had first felt that uncomfortable sensation of exposure, that little shiver of cold and shame that seized her when in Kitty Tailleur"s society. She had no means of measuring the lengths to which Kitty had gone and might yet go. She was simply possessed, driven and lashed by her vision of Kitty as she had seen her yesterday; Kitty standing at the end of the garden, on the watch for Mr. Lucy; Kitty returning, triumphant, with the young man at her heels.
She had seen Kitty with other men before, but there was something in this particular combination that she could not bear to think of. All the same, she had lain awake half the night thinking of it. She had Kitty Tailleur and Mr. Lucy on her nerves.
She had desired a pretext for approaching Miss Lucy, and poor Kitty was a pretext made to her hand. Nothing could be more appealing than the spectacle of helpless innocence struggling with a problem as terrible as Kitty. Miss Keating knew all the time that as far as she was concerned there was no problem. If she disliked being with Kitty she had nothing to do but to pack up and go. Kitty had said in the beginning that if she didn"t like her she must go.
That course was obvious but unattractive. And the most obvious and most unattractive thing about it was that it would not have brought her any further with the Lucys. It would, in fact, have removed her altogether from their view.
But she had done for herself now with the Lucys. She should have kept her nerves to herself, rasped, as they were to a treacherous tenuity.
And as the state of her nerves was owing to Kitty, she held Kitty responsible for the crisis. She writhed as she thought of it. She writhed as she thought of Mr. Lucy. She writhed as she thought of Kitty; and writhing, she rubbed her own venom into her hurt.
Of course she would have to leave Kitty now.
But, if she did, the alternatives were grim. She would have either to go back to her own people, or to look after somebody"s children, or an invalid. Her own people were not interested in Miss Keating. Children and invalids demanded imperatively that she should be interested in them. And Miss Keating, unfortunately, was not interested in anybody but herself.
So interested was she that she had forgotten the old lady who sat knitting in the window, who, distracted by Miss Lucy"s outburst, had let her ball roll on to the floor. It rolled away across the room to Miss Keating"s feet, and there was a great tangle in the wool. Miss Keating picked up the ball and brought it to the old lady, winding and disentangling it as she went.
"Thank you; my wool is a nuisance to everybody," said the old lady. And she began to talk about her knitting. All the year round she knitted comforters for the deep-sea fishermen, gray and red and blue. When she was tired of one colour she went to another. It would be red"s turn next.
Miss Keating felt as if she were being drawn to the old lady by that thin thread of wool. And the old lady kept looking at her all the time.
"Your face is familiar to me," she said. (Oddly enough, the old lady"s face was familiar to Miss Keating.) "I have met you somewhere; I cannot think where."
"I wonder," said Miss Keating, "if it was at Wenden, my father"s parish?"
The old lady"s look was sharper. "Your father is the vicar of Wenden?"
"Yes."
"I thought so."