Part 32 (1/2)

”Well, I don't suppose I shall have a chance. I don't suppose he'll look at me. I don't think country b.u.mpkins are educated up to my peculiar style of beauty.” And Georgie stroked her ridiculous little nose with an affectation of content.

”Thank heaven you aren't a beauty, or there'd be no holding you at all!”

”That's just where you mistake. If I were really pretty, instead of having a _pet.i.t minois chiffone_ I should be able to sit placidly and leave it all to my profile. As it is I have to exert myself to charm, and everyone knows charm is far more fatal to man than mere looks. I am rather fascinating, aren't I, in spite of my pudding face? What was Blanche like, Judy? Didn't you see her the other day in town?”

”Yes, I met her at a Private View,” admitted Judy. ”She had sort of gone to pieces, if you know what I mean. I don't suppose it was a sudden process really, but it came on me suddenly.”

”What did she look like?”

”As large as life and twice as unnatural. She had lost her 'eye' for making up, as they say everyone does, and the rouge stood out on the white powder so that you could see it a mile off. She gushed at me, and I felt she wasn't meaning a single word she said. She had her husband with her and introduced him. She even patronised me for not having one.

I didn't say I'd sooner not than have one like hers, because she wouldn't have believed me, and it would have been rude. But he was a little wisp of a man--a seedy little clerk. She knew she couldn't carry off the idea of having made a good match from a worldly point of view, so she murmured something to me about how beautiful true love was when it was the 'real thing,' and how she had never known what the meaning of life was till she met 'Teddie.' Do stop me; I'm being an awful cat! But that woman aroused all the cat in me; she's such an awful liar, and a liar is the worst of sinners, because he--or perhaps more generally she--is so absolutely disintegrating to the whole social fabric.”

”I suppose she must have been very fascinating once upon a time.”

”She was, though, oddly enough, men either hated her or were deeply in love with her, and as time went on the sort that were in love with her grew more and more fearful. But it was young girls she attracted most. I used to think her the most wonderful thing in the world, and I used to be enraged if I introduced her to anyone and they hated her at sight. If one's eye for making up gets out as one grows older, one's eye for life gets a more and more deadly clearness--unless you're like Blanche, when I suppose you grow more and more incapable of seeing the truth.”

”You think an awful lot about truth, don't you, Judy?”

”Yes, I do, though I suppose if you knew all about me you'd think it very inconsistent. Of course I don't mean just 'telling the truth,' as children say, but the actual wors.h.i.+p of truth in our relations with each other and ourselves. But it's not a counsel of worldly wisdom, so don't pay any attention to me.”

”But I want to. I admire you ever so,” said Georgie girlishly. ”I know that I'm an awful little beast in all sorts of ways, but I would love to be like you if I could.”

”Heaven forbid!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Judy.

”Well, as much as would suit my style,” laughed Georgie. ”But tell me, Judy, what sort of thing d'you call being badly untruthful--the sort that matters? I'll tell you the sort of thing I do, and I can't help myself. I hate myself, but I can't stop. You know just before I got engaged to Val?”

”Yes?”

”Well, we were at that house on the river, and Val came down for the day, and mother knew we were going to get engaged, I suppose; anyway, she didn't make the usual fuss about being alone, and we went out in the punt and took lunch to a backwater. I didn't even really think he cared for me that kind of way; I was only wondering. I'd been was.h.i.+ng my hair when he arrived, and it wasn't quite dry. This was before I cut it off, you know. And so--I thought I'd take it down and finish drying it....”

”Go on. I've done that myself,” murmured Judith dryly.

”Well, I was sitting a little in front of him on the bank and a little bit of my hair blew in his face. I manoeuvred so that it should. Beast that I am! And later, when I was doing it up again, he handed me the pins and said, 'Ripping stuff it is, Georgie!' It was the first day he called me Georgie, and you can't think how often he did it. Why do men always call hair 'stuff,' I wonder? Well--oh, where was I? Oh, I know.

And then he added, 'It was blowing across my face just now.' And I said, 'Oh, was it? I hope it didn't tickle. Why on earth didn't you tell me?'

And he said, 'I loved it' in a funny sort of fat voice. As though I hadn't known, and hadn't planned for just that.... I think that's the sort of thing that makes me hate myself, and yet I can't help it.”

Judith lay silent. She was too used to playing every move in her power with full knowledge of the effect to blame this child for tampering with forces which she was blandly innocent of understanding.

”I don't think that 'mattered,' as you call it,” she said at length.

”After all, you're honest with yourself, that's the chief thing. I admit if you go on being dishonest with others in time it has a deadly tendency to react on yourself and blur your vision, as it did with Blanche, but then she was crooked anyway. I shouldn't worry about myself if I were you, Georgie!”

”Well, it deceived Val, I suppose,” remarked Georgie.

”Not about anything vital. He loved you already, and you were to find you loved him. Besides ... with men ... it's not quite the same thing....”

Georgie stared at her in round-eyed silence for a moment, struck by a weary something that was no more old than young, that was eternal, in Judith's voice. Suddenly the elder girl seemed so much woman as she lay there--the everlasting feminine, the secret store of the knowledge of the ages.... Georgie, for all she was newly engaged, felt somehow like a little girl. Judith's long half-closed eyes met hers, but with no frank giving in their depths at the moment. She was withdrawn and Georgie felt it.

”Well, I must get up,” said Judith suddenly. ”Clear out and see if you can hurry Mrs. Penticost over breakfast.”