But Louie did not want words about herself. She wanted to hear all, all, about Kitty and Mr. Jeffries. The thing became more incredible moment by moment.
"I"m sorry about Mr. Merridew"s father," she said presently. "I suppose Miss Soames is very much upset?"
"Frightfully," said Kitty. "But Jeff"s looking after her. It was he who persuaded her to go out this afternoon. It"s better for her than moping indoors."
"Perhaps Mr. Merridew asked him to."
"Oh no. He only got the wire this morning. But it isn"t a surprise.
Jeff saw him last night----" She checked herself. She had no gibes about brown-paper parcels now.
"Well, you"ll be quite a courting quartet," said Louie presently, with a brightness she did not feel.
"Yes; jolly, isn"t it? But there, I"m simply _not_ going to talk about myself one moment longer. I feel a regular beast. But it"s only because I"m so happy. Now let"s talk about you. How long are you going to be here? What sort of people are they? Isn"t it fearfully expensive? Are you frightened?"
The suppressed inquisitive questions and Louie"s preoccupied parries lasted through tea. At a quarter to five Kitty rose. Again Louie found herself wondering whether Kitty would see her Mr. Jeffries that day.
Kitty bent over her.
"I should like to kiss you, dear, if you"d let me," she said timidly.
"You wouldn"t believe what a difference it makes. And I"d love to come again; I love little babies. Now I must run. I won"t say a word to Miriam Levey; you know what she is--but I simply must learn not to say those things. Good-bye, dear."
And she was off, waving her skimpy hand from the door.
Louie did not know why her heart should ache already, as at a premonition--for she had no cert.i.tude. Indeed, in all that portion of her relation to Mr. Jeffries she had no cert.i.tude; but she was only a little less certain on that account. Already she entirely rejected the figment in which Kitty so pathetically believed. Months before she had snapped her fingers at his impudent tale of a shadowy _fiancee_; now she wondered whether he had not been caught in his own trap and found himself compelled, by mere daily exigencies, to give that shadow substance--the substance of Kitty. Impossible--and yet the conceivable alternatives were equally impossible! Incredible that he should have chosen Kitty for his stalking-horse--yet whom else had there been to choose? If this really was a putting-upon the Business School, Mr.
Jeffries would see to it that his dupe was as known as his purpose was secret. That left him three candidates from whom to choose indifferently--Kitty, Miriam Levey, and herself.
In her indignation she was unconscious of the pink that crept like a danger signal into her cheeks.
That poor, unconscious, betrayed woman!
Good gracious! It was blackguardly and monstrous! Kitty of all women!
To have "predestined spinster" written large all over you was bad enough, without being played upon thus and then cast back into spinsterhood after all! And this new softness of Kitty"s, this timid opening of the heart, this new, awkward unselfishness, these pathetic little maxims of conduct! The man must be a cur. Deliberately to waken a heart that was sealed, asleep and not unhappy, and then to leave it to a pain it must keep for ever--good gracious!
Still ignorant of the tell-tale red in her own cheeks, she found Mr.
Jeffries vile.
But she must be just to Mr. Jeffries. Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps there was--nay, there must be--something she didn"t know. Why, even if Mr. Jeffries could be so cruel, Kitty herself could hardly be so blind. Struggle with new magnanimities as she would, jealousy was native to Kitty, and jealousy has sharp eyes. No, she, Louie herself, was building a fantastic fabric. It was mere common-sense that Kitty must be supposed to be capable of looking after herself.
But it was one thing to tell herself that she must suspend her judgment and another to do it. That theory of hers seemed to unroll itself brightly and convincingly before her again. She would discard it when she found one that better explained the known facts. Mr.
Jeffries was with Evie Soames at that moment. Louie"s thoughts flew to Evie Soames.
It was then that she became conscious that her cheeks were hot. It was then also that she told herself angrily that they were not, and found them grow hotter still. The hotter they grew the more she denied their heat. Why should they grow hot? And even granting that they were hot, wasn"t this imposture that was being practised on Kitty enough to make anybody"s cheek hot? That was it. That discovery made, she admitted the heat--for Kitty"s sake. That that great, taciturn, clever man should be infatuated by that pretty fool she resented--for Kitty"s sake. That his sleek head, bright as the coat of Buck"s horse, should stoop over that empty dark one she found ironically unfit--for Kitty"s sake. She told herself all this, forgetting that she had just set Kitty"s engagement down also as an absurdity. Her indignation would have been neither more nor less honest had Mr. Jeffries engaged himself (as according to her theory he might quite well have done) to Miriam Levey.
Or to herself.
She lay, the colour coming and going.
At last she roused herself and sat up. "Pretty thoughts for an expectant mother!" she muttered. "I"ll go downstairs and talk to Dot."
She dressed, and descended to the nurses" sitting-room in the bas.e.m.e.nt.
Miss Dot and her Registrar were there; they had just come in from a walk. They were telling of a nightingale they had heard sing near Queens Mere. "Oh, and we saw your friend again, the one who came to tea," said Miss Dot, turning to Louie.
Louie p.r.i.c.ked up her ears. "Oh? Alone?" she said quickly.
"Yes. Coming down Putney Hill."
"Yes, she said she was going to take a walk," Louie remarked.
But to herself she cried with conviction: "I knew it--I knew it--I knew it!"
For the rest of the evening she was lost in her own thoughts. Miss Cora Mayville worked a hand sewing machine; Miss Dot and her Registrar played bezique at a separate table; other nurses, in print ap.r.o.ns or cloaked and bonneted, came and went; but Louie sat and gazed into the fire. When spoken to she smiled mechanically and then resumed her gazing. There was no more continuity in her thoughts than there was in the shape of the flames that illumined her grey eyes. Roy appeared in them for a moment or two--she had seen Roy"s name in _The Gazette_ a week before--and then Roy was supplanted by Burnett Minor. Her old French governess at Trant popped up for no particular reason, and then she too gave place to Mr. Mackie. She heard Buck saying again, "That little girl"--and then came a wrangle between Dot and her Registrar.
In the adjoining kitchen she heard sounds of frying, and then somebody came in to lay the table for supper. The gas rose and whistled as the stove in the next room was turned off. The three night nurses came down. Louie had her gruel where she sat, and at half-past nine went upstairs again. She got into bed, and dreamed that night that she was dancing with Mr. Jeffries again at the breaking-up party. Her hand lay like a willow leaf in his. "_You_ understand," he was saying to her; "it"s no good hiding things from _you_; _you"ve_ got the key of it all. It had to be somebody, and you"d left. There was only Kitty for it. You see what an ignominious thing you escape. Don"t tell me how degrading it is; I know it; but I"d do it a thousand times for the woman I loved and meant to marry."
Louie knew, in her dream, who that was.
Then she awoke with a start. The street lamp outside, shining through the venetian blinds, made long bars of light on the walls and ceiling.
The hot-water bottle at her feet was cold. She heard the creaking of Dot"s bed in the little dressing-room adjoining, and the minute ticking of her watch on the table by her bed-head. But what had woke her had been the sound of her own reply, in her dream, to Mr.
Jeffries.
"You"ll shuffle Kitty off," she had replied, still dancing with him, "but _I_ should have found a way to keep you."
Then, with a deep sigh, she turned and went to sleep again.
III
Her boy was born towards the end of June. Her mother did not visit her; instead, she sent a letter the chief characteristic of which was fright that she had dared even so far to disobey her brother. Louie understood, and in her dictated reply made allowances. She wondered whether she should write to Roy also, but in the end did not. The child was born at three o"clock in the morning; he was hardly six hours old when Buck arrived. The old champion stood looking down on his little girl"s little boy. It was long before he spoke.
"I wasn"t let see you," he said, two big tears rolling down his cheeks.
"You shall teach him to box, daddy," said Louie, smiling up at him.
But Buck shook his head. "No, no," he said gently--"except just to take care of himself--when he"s fourteen, perhaps--if I"m here.
Swimming, not sparring. They"re a queer lot, them in the ring."
"You must go now, Mr. Causton," said Miss Dot.
The boy was thirty hours old when there arrived for him a great case of toys suitable for a child of four. Buck and Chaff had been round the toyshops together. Mrs. Buck, disobeying her husband for the only time in her life, came by stealth with a flannel binder that might have enwrapped a six-pounds" child; Jim (as Louie had decided to call him), weighed ten pounds, beef to the heel.
He throve at once, and continued to thrive.
The pair of them were the pride of that pagan Putney Nursing Home.
The first of the two incidents that may be allowed to close this portion of Louie"s story was a second visit by Kitty Windus to Louie.
She came at ten o"clock at night, and only with difficulty obtained admission. She was allowed ten minutes, on the condition that Louie was awake. Louie was awake. Kitty neither lifted her veil nor asked to see the child. There was no trace now of her little maxims of conduct; she spoke agitatedly, and out of a stinging, jealous pain.
"I"ve come to ask you something, Miss Causton, and you"ve got to tell me," she announced, without preface. "I"ve a right to know."