Chapter XII

The tower room was unlike anything else in the shabby old farm-house. It was hundreds of years old, but Kitty had overrun it with modernity.

A staircase separated it from the rest of the house, the four narrow, deep-set windows looked out over the unkempt garden. Twilight was falling, and the scent of brier-roses invaded the still air, and filled the room with fragrance. It was the first time Anthony had been in the tower. Kitty took him to the foot of the little staircase and told him to go up and wait there while she dressed for dinner.

“It may amuse you,” she said, “poking about among my things.”

The rain had stopped falling. A gray mist surrounded the tower, out of which the dark shapes of the trees leaned like thick shadows. Roses climbed up above the window-sills, and swallows darted to and fro beneath them. Their nests were all about the tower.

Anthony leaned out of the window and heard the stirring of wings and the subdued movement of the leaves that parted to receive them. He thought that Kitty was like a swallow, swift and fugitive, a restless, reckless daughter of the air; and his heart moved in him with delight to think that he might make a nest to hold her, a place of security and peace for her to rest in between her circling flights.

The inside of the tower room was curiously unlike its setting; it was full of odd colors and extravagant luxury.

It contained beautiful things, but it did not express beauty; it expressed excitement and love of physical comfort. There was a long, very soft divan covered with cushions; the colors of the cushions clashed against one another, orange and green and gold, with here and there a bizarre note of black.

Between two of the windows hung a vivid piece of Sicilian embroidery with a design of grapes and pomegranates. By the door there was a Chinese screen of very dim gold, on which a flight of storks crossed a scarlet sunset, fading into gray.

The room was too small for the treasures it held; old French porcelain, lacquer boxes, and Italian bronzes jostled one another. Nothing seemed to connect with anything else or with any idea behind itself.

A low book-case ran along the wall beneath the Sicilian altar-cloth. Anthony read the titles of the books carefully in the fading light. They were chiefly French novels of an unmistakable type. Kitty had been a great deal in France with her father; perhaps the books belonged to him. They were more like the books a man would have chosen, a man who had no moral sense, and particularly liked to have the lack of it stimulated.

Anthony did not know much about French novels, but a glance or two at them was enough to show him that they belonged to that light, evasive expression of evil that is hard to define, very expensive, and extremely disintegrating.

Anthony left the book-case and began to walk up and down. He had a curious, restless feeling, which he had not had for many weeks. It was as if he could not get out when he knew he could. It was a feeling that made him try doors and get as near as he could to windows, and it always ended in his walking to and fro as if his life depended on performing a series of vain movements.

It is a trick that prisoners learn in long confinements, and perhaps of all their habits it is the hardest to shake off.

Anthony walked up and down the little crowded room till Kitty came. By the time he heard her step he had almost forgotten where he was.

The room was nearly dark, and as Kitty opened the door she turned on the light and stood under it.

She was dressed in yellow gauze. One of the cleverest French dressmakers had designed the costume for her. It did not look as if it were a dress, but as if Kitty were a flower, an extraordinary, graceful, human flower from which the foliage had receded.

Her neck and shoulders rose bare out of the golden chiffon; the folds of it were fastened together with an amber ornament at her waist; the clinging, narrow skirt was slit up at the sides to show her slender feet and ankles; a green scarf escaped and hung behind her. A long chain of amber and green jade hung round her neck, catching and holding all the light in the room.

Kitty paused for a moment, and then moved quickly, like the passage of a sunbeam, into Anthony’s arms.

Anthony no longer felt imprisoned. It seemed to him as if he had conquered space, and held all that he wanted of it forever.

But as quickly as he embraced her, Kitty gently released herself. Her eyes ran swiftly over him, alive with laughter.

“We must have dinner first,” she said. “How do you like my room and my dress and me? You’ll have to tell me after dinner. Poor old Anthony!” Her voice had a curious quality of control in it, as if Anthony had ceased to be himself and had become merely an instrument of her will. He was dimly aware of the fact, but he did not resent it. He only wanted to express Kitty’s will.

Anthony could not talk much at dinner. He ate and drank without seeing or tasting what was set before him. He was only aware of Kitty opposite him, Kitty laughing, Kitty recounting little tales of her life abroad, incidents in hotels, on railway stations. Wherever Kitty had been, incidents had followed.

Kitty always talked easily without the consciousness of any effect but her own amusement. She had little vivid turns of speech that stuck in Anthony’s mind, but her talking went by favor. At times she was stonily silent, and withdrew herself from any approach to expression.

To-night Anthony could not respond to her; he could not take his eyes away from her face or follow a word of what she said.

He knew her voice was music, and by the sound of it he knew that she was pleased. He was shut off from any other form of consciousness.

Peckham waited upon them silently, but her every gesture was a reproach. She put the plates down with severity, she poured out their wine as if she wished to mingle it with gall, she carried things in and out of the room with unveiled hostility; every movement of her starched apron was a remonstrance.

She wept in the pantry and she prayed in the hall; she even glanced imploringly straight at the impassive loveliness of Kitty.

But Peckham’s efforts and her pains counted for nothing. Anthony did not know that she was there, and Kitty, perceiving all she felt, took her own way.

After dinner they went back to the tower room. Anthony drew Kitty to him with a long sigh of relief.

“I thought you were never coming,” he said; “I thought I should never see you really like this again.”

“Poor old Tony!” Kitty murmured softly. “You do care for me awfully, don’t you?”

“Hopelessly,” said Anthony, smiling at her, “hopelessly. I can never show you. Kitty, you won’t keep me waiting, will you? I’ve waited all my life for you, and I don’t feel as if I could stand much more of it.”

Kitty’s eyes opened to receive him without barriers. She gave him a long, full look.

“No, of course not,” she said gently. “I shouldn’t be such a beast. You’ve had a terrible time; I’d like to make you awfully happy, Tony.”

“When?” he whispered. “Kitty darling, when will you marry me?”

Kitty jerked herself suddenly out of his arms.

“Marry you?” she said angrily. “I’m never going to marry you. What are you talking about, Tony?”

He stared at her in blank surprise.

“You silly old boy!” she said more gently, “you don’t seem to be very clever at taking things in. Sit down and be sensible; don’t stand looking at me like that. I haven’t done you any harm.”

Anthony sat down obediently. His eyes were still perplexed, but he put his mind on all that he remembered Kitty had told him about Dick. That was presumably the obstacle. Well, he would get over Dick. He was not going to have Kitty held back from life by a ghost.

Kitty slipped on to a footstool in front of the small wood fire. She looked thoughtfully at the amber beads at the point of her small satin slippers. They were where they should be; at first Peckham had put them too far forward.

She hoped Anthony wasn’t going to be foolish. He had a heavy line of jaw, and it was set exactly as it had been in the motor when he said he was going to drive; but Kitty had had no objection to his driving, so that it had not mattered. It was quite useless his talking about marriage. She did object to marriage.

“Kitty,” Anthony said slowly, “I think I understand what you feel. It’s about Dick, isn’t it?”

Kitty looked startled, but in a moment she had recovered herself.

“I told you,” she said a little uncertainly, “that I was never going to marry any one else but Dick.”

“I know,” said Anthony; “but that was before I cared for you. I think that must have made a difference, Kitty, for, after all, you’ve let me care.”

Kitty said nothing.

“You felt as if Dick were a part of your actual life, didn’t you?” Anthony persisted.

Kitty answered without raising her eyes.

“Not part of it,” she said; “all of it. And not only my life: he was part of me; he is still. That’s one reason why I can’t. But it isn’t any use talking about it, Anthony. Why don’t you stop talking?”

“We must talk about it first,” said Anthony. “We’ve got to get the whole thing straight. You are quite sure he is dead?”

Kitty flushed, but she answered without faltering.

“Yes; I waited to be sure. John Adams, from our old lodge, was his servant. They were posted missing at the same time; so there was always the chance.

“One day John turned up. He’d been maimed, so they sent him back. Dick died in one of their hospitals with a wound through his head. He kept calling my name till he died. He never said anything else. When John told me, I felt as if some one were laughing at me. We’d never been married. We might have been quite easily. That would have been something to hold on to; but there wasn’t anything.”

“No,” said Anthony; “sometimes there doesn’t seem anything to hold on to.”

Kitty looked up at him. His eyes were fixed on her with an intense watchful tenderness; he did not look lost as he had looked at dinner. All his faculties were alive for her; and because he was using them for her, he was in possession of himself. For a moment it occurred to Kitty that she might not be able to shake this possession.

“It is no use your turning into a doctor or anything,” she said shortly. “I can’t be doctored. I’m what you call a hopeless case.”

“There isn’t, strictly speaking, any such case,” said Anthony, smiling, “and you’ve got to listen to me a few minutes.

“You’re twenty-three, you’re a woman, and you’re not only Kitty. You’re not only Dick’s; you belong to life. Dick didn’t only belong to you. If he had, he wouldn’t have gone straight out to die; he would have waited till he had to go. But he didn’t; he went at once; he belonged to the service of life. You ought to give yourself honestly to the work of the world. You ought to be a wife and you ought to have a home and children. If you were one of the women who didn’t take hold of men, it would be different. You’d be a worker then—some women are—or you’d be a mother, perhaps, just a natural mother with or without children, doing what she can for helpless lives. But you’re not a mother woman or a worker, and you must not go on being nothing but a wasteful, mischievous will-o’-the-wisp. If you are, you’ll be the part of Dick that contradicted him and refuses to serve life.”

“He got a good deal out of serving life, didn’t he?” said Kitty, bitterly. “And you think I’m going to be fooled, too? I’m just what you call me—pure mischievous waste. I won’t be a wife; I don’t want any poor, beastly, miserable little children born to get their hearts broken like the rest of us. I’ll be what I am. You can’t say I didn’t warn you. I may be a will-o’-the-wisp, but I play fair, Anthony. That’s more than whoever made me did with me.”

“Do you—do you play quite fair, Kitty?” Anthony asked gently. “Is it fair to make a man feel for you as I do, so that he can’t see or think or feel anything but a blind need of you—the need of having you in his eyes, in his home, so that he can serve and worship you all the days of his life? Is it quite fair to turn round and say, ‘Yes, I warned you’? I don’t think you did warn me of that, Kitty. You can play a light game with a light man; but you didn’t think I was a light man, did you?”

Kitty was silent for a moment; she turned her eyes away from him.

“No,” she said at last; “I didn’t. I liked you. I didn’t mean to like you. I didn’t mean to care really at all; I never have before. If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t perhaps. You’d just have despised me and had a good time; that was all I ought to have let you do. And I did think you would—”

“Would what?” asked Anthony, perplexed.

“Would despise me,” said Kitty under her breath.

“Well, I don’t,” said Anthony. “I think you’re reckless and haven’t been taken care of properly; but I propose to change all that. The only thing that matters is that you care. If you care, that makes it all right. You mightn’t care enough to marry me yet; then I’ll have to be patient till you do. But I’ll make you care for me, Kitty; you’ve only got to trust me a little.”

“Oh, don’t, Tony! Don’t!” said Kitty, shivering. “This is getting horrible. Why won’t you understand? It isn’t only Dick; I’m not _fit_ to marry! I’m not fit to marry any man!”

She moved swiftly away from him to the other side of the room.

Anthony sat perfectly still where she had left him. He did not take in what she had said. The words got into his mind, but they refused to correspond with anything that was there. They stood separately like blocks of wood; there was no cohesion in them and no form.

She was not fit to marry any man. Kitty had made this plain statement, but it did not seem plain to Anthony.

She was Kitty, and he loved her, and she loved him. This confused the other statement.

Anthony did what he had so often practised when he felt his self-control leaving him in prison: he retired into absolute silence.

His mind moved against his will. He had got to think of Kitty; that was why he kept still. When his will was rested enough, it would attack his mind; till then he saw only pictures: pictures of Kitty in the red tam-o’-shanter laughing at the rain which blew against her face; Kitty in one of her moments of slow, childlike gravity; Kitty standing without help or guidance against an unjust, enigmatic world.

It was a long time before the pictures changed, and his mind struck upon the facility of Kitty—the deadly facility with which she handled men.

She was not defenseless then; it was Anthony who had been defenseless in her hands. He had been so careful to protect her and spare her even from his ardent thoughts, and he had never had a base or cruel thought of her. He had only wanted to wait till she was sure of herself so that he should not startle her by the strength of his love. Well, she was sure of herself and she was sure of him.

But was this Kitty, the Kitty he had meant to win? What had she to do with this facile, scheming, easily triumphant Kitty? This Kitty was not helpless; there was no need to shield her from anything. She had not tried to save herself. She had gone not blindly or weakly or from the sharp constraint of passion, but with deliberate steps, with perfect mastery, into the world of women who are not fit to marry.

Anthony had no longings for any such world. He had accepted long ago an ordered universe. He hated concealments and he despised light loves. He was not prepared to readjust his relationship with Kitty. His mind pointed out to him relentlessly what Kitty had always meant.

He understood the tower room, with its expensive luxuries, the violent colors; the enervating comfort. They troubled the senses; everything Kitty did troubled the senses. She had not wanted to go deeper than this. She would not have gone deeper if the senses were the measure of the soul; but something larger had broken through and shaken them both.

Anthony put the thought of this larger thing aside. It concerned him, perhaps; but he could not see that it concerned Kitty.

He was not going to stand any more from Kitty; he was going to get out.

He became suddenly pitiless with pain. The door of the round tower was in front of him. He need not look back. He could escape and get clean away. He could leave without compunction this creature who had set a snare for him, to trip him up out of the freedom of his new life, this creature, Kitty!

All this while she had not made a sound. He did not know how long he had been silent. Perhaps she had slipped out of the room without his noticing, but he did not think so; he felt she was in the room.

Perhaps she sat in some beautiful, seductive attitude, waiting to catch and hold his unwary eyes; but his eyes were not unwary now.

He turned his head and looked at Kitty.

She was crouched up in a small chair by her desk.

She had not even moved her dress to sit down. She looked like a school-boy who has told a lie and does not know how to confess it. She did not look at all seductive.

When Anthony turned to her she met his eyes with her miserable eyes without flinching; but her misery was not for herself. She spoke quickly.

“Poor old Tony! Hadn’t you better go? I’m frightfully sorry to have let you down like this. I didn’t dream you thought—such an impossible thing of me. You see, every one knows. I haven’t hidden anything; even Peckham, I think, knows. But I did hide a little from Peckham; it would have made her feel so—so awfully upset. So I just hoped she wouldn’t guess. I really didn’t think I need tell Peckham. D’you know, Tony, if I were you, I’d go? I would honestly. And don’t bother to think about me, because, you see, what you thought me—wasn’t there at all; it was just a girl who didn’t exist. But lots of frightfully nice girls do. I wish it hadn’t happened.” She paused and drew a long, difficult breath. “I wish it hadn’t happened,” she repeated dully.

Anthony stirred uneasily in his chair. She looked so different from the brilliant Kitty who had turned on the light and stood before him like a golden flame. She looked tired and without any charm. She did not even hold up her head. She was perfectly right, of course; he had loved some one who didn’t exist, a reckless, but innocent, girl whom he could have made a home for and protected from all the evil of the world.

He could get over a woman who didn’t exist. He could not protect this Kitty; she was herself part of the world’s evil. Still, this Kitty had said she cared for him and she looked upset. He told himself sharply that it served her right to care; and of course she was upset, because he had escaped her; he wasn’t one of her many captives.

Anthony took human justice into his heart and felt it very cold.

He had known what pain was, and the complete knowledge of pain unfits the heart for executing justice.

He got up and went over to where Kitty sat hunched up on the Sheraton chair.

“I wouldn’t be such a beast as to leave you,” he said, kneeling down beside her. “I’m sorry I made that mistake. Let me stay on somehow, Kitty.”

Kitty began to speak; then she moved nervously away from him to the window.

“Oh, you’d much better go!” she said between her teeth.

Anthony followed her.

“Do you want me to go?” he asked, fixing her with his eyes.

“How can I want you to go?” she said impatiently. “It’s all too—stupid. I’ve been such a fool. I wish I hadn’t, Tony, and now it’s too late. If you’ve been a fool too often, you can’t stop. I’ve got into the way of it; I can’t get out. But what’s the use—of your getting into the way of it, too?”

“Perhaps I sha’n’t,” said Anthony. “Perhaps together we can manage something? We might even manage to get out.”

He was aware that he was suggesting something he did not know the strength of; but Kitty knew the strength of it. She looked at him with weary, doubtful eyes.

There was not a sound anywhere in the house. The rain dripped slowly from the eaves; the air hung in a thick mist about the old gray tower; the night shut them in upon themselves.

“Well,” said Kitty at last, “I suppose I’ll try and be your friend; I do rather want one. I’ll talk to you to-morrow. You’d better go now. It’s not exactly what I’d planned as an end to our evening; still, it ought to please Peckham. Good-by, Tony. Be careful of the stairs as you go down.”

He looked at her for a moment. She stood smiling at him with a queer, crooked little smile. It made him wonder why, after all, he was leaving her. He hadn’t any sense that he was doing right; he had only a queer instinct that he wanted to think things over and not to let her down. She had been let down so often. She had let herself down so often.

He turned and left her without looking back.

Kitty waited till she heard the door of the tower close at the foot of the stairs. Then she lay down on the divan and closed her eyes. Her face was white and drawn as if with very sharp physical pain. She kept quite still and made no sound; but after an hour had passed she got up and began walking to and fro, as Anthony had done while he was waiting for her; but no one came to bring any light to Kitty.

Once she went to the open window and looked out into the night.

“I can’t bear it,” she whispered between her teeth; and then, “I shall have to bear it.”

Toward morning she went slowly to her own room and undressed. The pain had gone now. She turned her face toward the dawn and slept.