Part 38 (2/2)

”Such a foolish thing to do at your age ... you might have known!” she kept on repeating. He said little, but in his own mind ran the refrain: ”She doesn't understand. She's still too young....” He wondered whether women ever really did know when talking was a mere foolishness, however sensible the thing said. And again, over and over to himself, as an accompaniment even to his pain, ran: ”How well worth it ...!” For he had recaptured for a magic couple of hours something he had thought left behind him, had burned with it ardently and secretly. He too had been a body of fire.

The phrase stayed, p.r.i.c.king at him, through the drifting veils of sleep that alternately deepened and thinned about him all night long.

CHAPTER IV

THE NEW JUDITH

For a long time Ishmael paid the price of that night raid upon his physical resources, and when he was beginning to take up work again, as usual, Nicky was off to Canada--off with the latest thing in outfits, letters of introduction, high hopes, and such excitement at thought of the new world at his feet that only at the last moment did the sorrow that because of the uncertainty of life all leave takings hold, strike him. Then--for he was a very affectionate boy--he felt tears of which he was deeply ashamed burning in his eyes; he ignored them, made his farewells briefer, and was gone.

A few days later Judith came down to pay her promised visit. Both Ishmael and Georgie drove over to meet her train, and both failed for the first startled moment to recognise her. Ishmael had an incongruous flash, during which that occasion years earlier when he had seen her and Georgie walking down that same platform towards him was the more vivid actuality.

Judith's epicene thinness had become gaunt, but it was not that so much as the colouring of her face and the fact that she was wearing pince-nez that made her an absolutely different being. This was the third time in her life that Judy was coming down to the West. Once it had been as a very young girl, full of dreams and questionings; once it had been as a woman who had already learned something of proportion; now it was as this elderly and alien person whom her friends could not connect with the Judith they had known. Not till they saw the beam of her eyes, as profound but somehow less sad than the eyes of the girl had been, did they feel it was the same Judy. The exaggerated colour on her face, the white powder and overdone rouge, embarra.s.sed them both. Judy saw it and laughed, and when they were in the waggonnette and driving along the road she said: ”You're thinking how horribly I'm made up! I can't help it. I began it and I found I couldn't leave off, and that's the truth.

And of course my eye for effect has got out. But I don't think I'm generally as bad as this. It comes of having done myself up in the train.”

”But, Judy--why?” asked Georgie. She was very shocked, for in those days only actresses and women no better than they should be made up their faces.

”Because I began it so as to keep looking young as long as I could, and now I no longer care about keeping young-looking I can't drop it. That's the worst of lots of habits which one starts for some one reason. The reason for it dies and the habit doesn't. I know I overdo it, but it's no good my telling myself so. And it doesn't matter much, after all.”

”No,” agreed Georgie, brightening; ”after all, one loves ones friends just as much if they have mottled skins or a red nose in a cold wind or a s.h.i.+ny forehead, so why shouldn't one love them just as much when they have too much pink and white on? It looks much nicer than too little.”

They both laughed and felt more like the Georgie and Judy of old days--more so than they were to again. As the days went on Georgie, whom marriage had taken completely away from the old artistic set, found herself feeling that after all she was a married woman and Judy was still only Miss Parminter.... Judy, scenting this, told her flippantly that a miss was as good as a mother, and Georgie laughed, but warned her to remember the children were in the room.... Judy was inclined to be hurt by the needless reminder, and, as she considered it foolish to be hurt and still more foolish to show it, she went out.

She found Ishmael reading in the rock garden that had been made by the stream, which ran along the dip below the house where once had been rough moorland. Now there were slopes of smooth, vividly green gra.s.s and grey boulders, among which they ran up like green pools; great cl.u.s.ters of brilliant rock flowers grew in bright patches over their smooth flanks. Judy sat down beside Ishmael, who closed his book.

”So you wear those?” she asked, pointing to his gla.s.ses, which he had taken off and was slipping into their case.

”Yes, I went to the oculist at Plymouth when I went up to see Nicky off.

He said I had splendid sight, but wanted them for close work. I didn't know you had to wear them.”

”I've known for years and years that I ought. I ought to have as a girl.

I went once to an oculist, who told me if I wore them till I was forty I could then throw them away. I thought it was so like a man. I preferred to do without till forty and wear them the rest of my life.”

”But haven't you injured your eyes?”

”Probably.”

”It isn't all as simple as oculists think,” said Ishmael, with that intuition which is generally called feminine and which had been all his life his only spark of genius. Judy looked and smiled her old smile, which charmed as much as ever even on her too-red lips.

”No,” she agreed. ”I remember once, after going to that oculist, I tried to wear gla.s.ses one night when I was going out with Joe. That decided me.”

”What happened?”

”I was staying in lodgings at the time, in London. It was the first year I knew how I felt for him. You know about that--that I did? Yes? I was sure you did. Well, he came to take me out to dinner. The lodgings were rather horrible, though even they couldn't spoil things for me. And I was dressing in my room when he came. The sitting-room joined on to it by folding doors. I called out to him I was still dressing, but as a matter of fact I was trying to screw myself up to put the beastly things on. I remember when I went in to him I kept the shady brim of my hat rather down over my face. The sitting-room was in darkness except for what light came in from the hall gas. He said, 'Are you ready? Been beautifying?' I said, 'No, exactly the reverse. I've got my gla.s.ses on.

You know I told you I had to wear them sometimes.'” Judy broke off, then went on, looking away from Ishmael.

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