第69章

'I am now really happiest,' she declared, 'when the Commissioner takes me in to dinner, when the General Commanding leads me to the dance.'

She did her best to make it an honest conviction.I offered her a recent success not crowned by the Academy, and she put it down on the table.'By and by,' she said.'At present I am reading Pascal and Bossuet.' Well, she was reading Pascal and Bossuet.She grieved aloud that most of our activities in India were so indomitably youthful, owing to the accident that most of us were always so young.'There is no dignified distraction in this country,' she complained, 'for respectable ladies nearing forty.'

She seemed to like to make these declarations in the presence of Somers Chichele, who would look at her with a little queer smile--a bad translation, I imagine, of what he felt.

She gave herself so generously to her seniors that somebody said Mrs.Harbottle's girdle was hung with brass hats.It seems flippant to add that her complexion was as honest as the day, but the fact is that the year before Judy had felt compelled, like the rest of us, to repair just a little the ravages of the climate.If she had never done it one would not have looked twice at the absurdity when she said of the powder-puff in the dressing-room, 'I have raised that thing to the level of an immorality,' and sailed in to dance with an uncompromising expression and a face uncompromised.I have not spoken of her beauty; for one thing it was not always there, and there were people who would deny it altogether, or whose considered comment was, 'I wouldn't call her plain.' They, of course, were people in whom she declined to be interested, but even for those of us who could evoke some demonstration of her vivid self her face would not always light in correspondence.When it did there was none that I liked better to look at; and I envied Somers Chichele his way to make it the pale, shining thing that would hold him lifted, in return, for hours together, with I know not what mystic power of a moon upon the tide.And he? Oh, he was dark and delicate, by nature simple, sincere, delightfully intelligent.His common title to charm was the rather sweet seriousness that rested on his upper lip, and a certain winning gratification in his attention; but he had a subtler one in his eyes, which must be always seeking and smiling over what they found; those eyes of perpetual inquiry for the exquisite which ask so little help to create it.A personality to button up in a uniform, good heavens!

As I begin to think of them together I remember how the maternal note appeared in her talk about him.

'His youth is pathetic,' she told me, 'but there is nothing that he does not understand.'

'Don't apologize, Judy,' I said.We were so brusque on the frontier.Besides, the matter still suffered a jocular presentment.

Mrs.Harbottle and Mr.Chichele were still 'great friends'; we could still put them next each other at our dinner-parties without the feeling that it would be 'marked.' There was still nothing unusual in the fact that when Mrs.Harbottle was there Mr.Chichele might be taken for granted.We were so broad-minded also, on the frontier.

It grew more obvious, the maternal note.I began positively to dread it, almost as much, I imagine, as Somers did.She took her privileges all in Anna's name, she exercised her authority quite as Lady Chichele's proxy.She went to the very limit.'Anna Chichele,' she said actually in his presence, 'is a fortunate woman.

She has all kinds of cleverness, and she has her tall son.I have only one little talent, and I have no tall son.' Now it was not in nature that she could have had a son as tall as Somers, nor was that desire in her eyes.All civilization implies a good deal of farce, but this was a poor refuge, a cheap device; I was glad when it fell away from her sincerity, when the day came on which she looked into my fire and said simply, 'An attachment like ours has no terms.'

'I wonder,' I said.

'For what comes and goes,' she went on dreamily, 'how could there be a formula?'

'Look here, Judy,' I said, 'you know me very well.What if the flesh leaps with the spirit?'

She looked at me, very white.'Oh no,' she said, 'no.'

I waited, but there seemed nothing more that she could say; and in the silence the futile negative seemed to wander round the room repeating itself like an echo, 'Oh no, no.' I poked the fire presently to drown the sound of it.Judy sat still, with her feet crossed and her hands thrust into the pockets of her coat, staring into the coals.

'Can you live independently, satisfied with your interests and occupations?' she demanded at last.'Yes, I know you can.I can't.

I must exist more than half in other people.It is what they think and feel that matters to me, just as much as what I think and feel.

The best of life is in that communication.'

'It has always been a passion with you, Judy,' I replied.'I can imagine how much you must miss--'

'Whom?'

'Anna Chichele,' I said softly.

She got up and walked about the room, fixing here and there an intent regard upon things which she did not see.'Oh, I do,' she said at one point, with the effect of pulling herself together.She took another turn or two, and then finding herself near the door she went out.I felt as profoundly humiliated for her as if she had staggered.

The next night was one of those that stand out so vividly, for no reason that one can identify, in one's memory.We were dining with the Harbottles, a small party, for a tourist they had with them.

Judy and I and Somers and the traveller had drifted out into the veranda, where the scent of Japanese lilies came and went on the spring wind to trouble the souls of any taken unawares.There was a brightness beyond the foothills where the moon was coming, and Iremember how one tall clump swayed out against it, and seemed in passionate perfume to lay a burden on the breast.Judy moved away from it and sat clasping her knees on the edge of the veranda.

Somers, when his eyes were not upon her, looked always at the lily.