'You broke my heart,' said she, demurely, 'but I'm going to forgive you.'
Mrs. Saumarez was not striving to be clever now. And, heavens (thought Billy), how much nicer she was like this! It wasn't the same woman: her thin cheeks flushed arbutus-like, and her rather metallic voice was grown low and gentle. Billy brought memories with him, you see; and for the moment, she was Kathleen Eppes again— Kathleen Eppes in the first flush of youth, eager, trustful, and joyous-hearted, as he had known her long ago. Since then, the poor woman had eaten of the bread of dependence and had found it salt enough; she had paid for it daily, enduring a thousand petty slights, a thousand petty insults, and smiling under them as only women can. But she had forgotten now that shrewd Kathleen Saumarez who must earn her livelihood as best she might. She smiled frankly—a purely unprofessional smile.
'I was sorry when I heard you were coming,' she said, irrelevantly, 'but I'm glad now.'
Mr. Woods—I grieve to relate—was still holding her hand in his.
There stirred in his pulses the thrill Kathleen Eppes had always wakened—a thrill of memory now, a mere wraith of emotion. He was thinking of a certain pink-cheeked girl with crinkly black-brown hair and eyes that he had likened to chrysoberyls—and he wondered whimsically what had become of her. This was not she. This was assuredly not Kathleen, for this woman had a large mouth—a humorous and kindly mouth it was true, but undeniably a large one—whereas, Kathleen's mouth had been quite perfect and rather diminutive than otherwise. Hadn't he rhymed of it often enough to know?
They stood gazing at one another for a long time; and in the back of Billy's brain lines of his old verses sang themselves to a sad little tune—the verses that reproved the idiocy of all other poets, who had very foolishly written their sonnets to other women: and yet, as the jingle pointed out,
Would they have been? Billy thought it improbable. The verses were very silly; and, recalling the big, blundering boy who had written them, Billy began to wonder—somewhat forlornly—whither he, too, had vanished. He and the girl he had gone mad for both seemed rather mythical—legendary as King Pepin.
'Yes,' said Mrs. Saumarez—and oh, she startled him; 'I fancy they're both quite dead by now. Billy,' she cried, earnestly, 'don't laugh at them!—don't laugh at those dear, foolish children! I—somehow, I couldn't bear that, Billy.'
'Kathleen,' said Mr. Woods, in admiration, 'you're a witch. I wasn't laughing, though, my dear. I was developing quite a twilight mood over them—a plaintive, old-lettery sort of mood, you know.'
She sighed a little. 'Yes—I know.' Then her eyelids flickered in a parody of Kathleen's glance that Billy noted with a queer tenderness.
'Come and talk to me, Billy,' she commanded. 'I'm an early bird this morning, and entitled to the very biggest and best-looking worm I can find. You're only a worm, you know—we're all worms. Mr. Jukesbury told me so last night, making an exception in my favour, for it appears I'm an angel. He was amorously inclined last night, the tipsy old fraud! It's shameless, Billy, the amount of money he gets out of Miss Hugonin—for the deserving poor. Do you know, I rather fancy he classes himself under that head? And I grant you he's poor enough—but deserving!' Mrs. Saumarez snapped her fingers eloquently.
'Eh? Shark, eh?' queried Mr. Woods, in some discomfort.
She nodded. 'He is as bad as Sarah Haggage,' she informed him, 'and everybody knows what a bloodsucker she is. The Haggage is a disease, Billy, that all rich women are exposed to—'more easily caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad.' Depend upon it, Billy, those two will have every penny they can get out of your uncle's money.'
'Peggy's so generous,' he pleaded. 'She wants to make everybody happy—bring about a general millenium, you know.'
'She pays dearly enough for her fancies,' said Mrs. Saumarez, in a hard voice. Then, after a little, she cried, suddenly: 'Oh, Billy, Billy, it shames me to think of how we lie to her, and toady to her, and lead her on from one mad scheme to another!—all for the sake of the money we can pilfer incidentally! We're all arrant hypocrites, you know; I'm no better than the others, Billy—not a bit better. But my husband left me so poor, and I had always been accustomed to the pretty things of life, and I couldn't—I couldn't give them up, Billy.
I love them too dearly. So I lie, and toady, and write drivelling talks about things I don't understand, for drivelling women to listen to, and I still have the creature comforts of life. I pawn my self-respect for them—that's all. Such a little price to pay, isn't it, Billy?'
She spoke in a sort of frenzy. I dare say that at the outset she wanted Mr. Woods to know the worst of her, knowing he could not fail to discover it in time. Billy brought memories with him, you see; and this shrewd, hard woman wanted, somehow, more than anything else in the world, that he should think well of her. So she babbled out the whole pitiful story, waiting in a kind of terror to see contempt and disgust awaken in his eyes.
But he merely said 'I see—I see,' very slowly, and his eyes were kindly. He couldn't be angry with her, somehow; that pink-cheeked, crinkly haired girl stood between them and shielded her. He was only very, very sorry.
'And Kennaston?' he asked, after a little.
Mrs. Saumarez flushed. 'Mr. Kennaston is a man of great genius,' she said, quickly. 'Of course, Miss Hugonin is glad to assist him in publishing his books—it's an honour to her that he permits it. They have to be published privately, you know, as the general public isn't capable of appreciating such dainty little masterpieces. Oh, don't make any mistake, Billy—Mr. Kennaston is a very wonderful and very admirable man.'
'H'm, yes; he struck me as being an unusually nice chap,' said Mr. Woods, untruthfully. 'I dare say they'll be very happy.'
'Who?' Mrs. Saumarez demanded.
'Why—er—I don't suppose they'll make any secret of it,' Billy stammered, in tardy repentance of his hasty speaking. 'Peggy told me last night she had accepted him.'
Mrs. Saumarez turned to rearrange a bowl of roses. She seemed to have some difficulty over it.
'Billy,' she spoke, inconsequently, and with averted head, 'an honest man is the noblest work of God—and the rarest.'
Billy groaned.
'Do you know,' said he, 'I've just been telling the roses in the gardens yonder the same thing about women? I'm a misogynist this morning. I've decided no woman is worthy of being loved.'
'That is quite true,' she assented, 'but, on the other hand, no man is worthy of loving.'
Billy smiled.
'I've likewise come to the conclusion,' said he, 'that a man's love is like his hat, in that any peg will do to hang it on; also, in that the proper and best place for it is on his own head. Oh, I assure you, I vented any number of cheap cynicisms on the helpless roses! And yet—will you believe it, Kathleen?—it doesn't seem to make me feel
