The winter night was dark when Miss Van Tuyn stood in the hall of Lady
Sellingworth’s house waiting for the footman to find a taxicab for her.
A big fire was burning on the hearth; the old-fashioned hooded chair
stood beside it; and presently, as no taxicab came, she went to the
chair and sat down in it. She felt very tired. Her whole body seemed to
have been weakened by what she had just been through. But her mind was
charged with intense vitality. The thoughts galloped through it, and
they were dark as the night. The cold air of winter stole in through
the doorway of the hall. She felt it and shivered as she lay back in the
great chair which, with its walls and roof, was like a hiding-place; and
for the first time in her life she longed to hide herself. She had never
before known acute fear--fear that was based on ascertained facts. But
she knew it now.
The young footman stood on the doorstep bareheaded, looking this way and
that into the blackness, and she sat waiting. In her independence she
had never before known what it was to feel abandoned to loneliness. She
had always enjoyed her freedom. Now she felt a great longing to cling to
someone, to be protected, to lean on somebody who was much stronger than
herself, and who would defend her against any attack. At that moment she
envied Lady Sellingworth safe above stairs in this silent and beautiful
house, which was like a stronghold. She even envied, or thought she did,
Lady Sellingworth for her years. In old age there was surely a security
that youth could never have. For the riot of life was over and the
greatest dangers were past.
She longed to stay with Adela that night. She thought of her as
security. But she dared not expect anything more from Adela. She had
already received a gift which she had surely not deserved, a gift which
few women, if indeed any other woman, would have given her.
She looked towards the open door and saw the footman’s flat back, and
narrow head covered with carefully plastered hair. He was calling now
with both hands to his mouth: “Taxi! Taxi!”
But there came no sound of wheels in the night, and she put her hands on
the sides of the chair and got up.
“Can’t you find a cab?”
“No, ma’am. I’ve very sorry, but there doesn’t seem to be one about.
Shall I go to the nearest cab rank?”
Miss Van Tuyn hesitated. Then she determined to fight her fear.
“It isn’t raining, is it?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then I’ll walk. It’s not far. I shall pick up a cab on the way
probably.”
The young man looked relieved and stood aside to let her go out. He
watched her as she walked down the square towards the block of flats
which towered up where the pavement turned at right angles. The light
from the hall shone out and made a patch of yellow about his feet. He
noticed presently that the girl he was watching turned her head and
looked back, almost as if she were hesitating. Then she walked on
resolutely, and he stepped in and shut the door.
“Wonder if she’s afraid of going like that all by herself!” he thought.
“I only wish she was my class. I wouldn’t mind seeing her home.”
Just before she was out of sight of Lady Sellingworth’s house Miss Van
Tuyn looked back again. The light was gone. She knew that the door was
shut and she shivered. She felt shut out. What was she going to do? She
was going back to Claridge’s of course. But--after that? She longed
to take counsel with someone, with someone who was strong and clear
brained, and who really cared for her. But who did care for her? Perhaps
for the first time in her life she was the victim of sentimentality, of
what she would have thought of certainly as sentimentality in another.
A sort of yearning for affection came to her. A wave of self-pity swept
over her. Her independence of spirit was in abeyance or dead. Arabian,
it seemed, had struck her down to the ground. She felt humiliated,
terrified, and strangely, horribly young, like a child almost who had
been cruelly treated. She thought of her dead father. If he had been
alive and near could she have gone to him? No; for years he had not
cared very much about her. He had been kind, had given her plenty of
money, but he had been immersed in pleasures and had always been in the
hands of some woman or other. He had not really loved her. No one, she
thought with desperation, had ever really loved her. She did not ask
herself whether that was her fault, whether she had ever given to anyone
what she wanted so terribly now, whether she had any right to expect
generosity of feeling when she herself was niggardly. She was stricken
in her vanity and, because of that, she had come down to the dust.
It was frightful to her to think, to be obliged to think, that Arabian
all this time had looked upon her as a prey, had marked her down as a
prey. She understood everything now, his fixed gaze at her in the Cafe
Royal when she had seen him for the first time, his coming to Garstin’s
studio, his subtle acting through the early days of their acquaintance.
She understood his careful self-repression, his reticence, his evident
reluctance to be painted, overcome no doubt by two desires--the desire
to become intimate with her, and the desire to possess eventually a
piece of work that would be worth a great deal of money. She understood
the determination not to allow his portrait to be exhibited. She
understood the look in his face when she had told him of her father’s
sudden death, the change in his demeanour to her since he had known
the fact, the desire to hurry things on, to sweep her off her feet. She
understood--ah, how she understood!--why he had not wished Adela to join
them in the restaurant! She remembered a hundred things about him now,
all mixed up together, in no coherent order, little things at which
she had wondered but which she wondered at no longer; his distaste
for Garstin’s portraits because they were of people belonging to the
underworld, his understanding of them, his calm contemplation of the
victims of vice, his lack of all pity for them, his shrewd verdict on
the judge which had so delighted Garstin. And how he had waited for her,
how he had known how to wait! It was frightful--that deliberation of
his! Garstin had been right about him. Garstin’s instinct for people had
not betrayed him. Although later Arabian’s craft had puzzled even him
he had summed up Arabian at a first glance. Garstin was diabolically
clever. If only he were less hard, less brutally cynical, she might
perhaps go to him now. For he had in his peculiar way warned her against
Arabian. She flushed in the dark as she thought of Garstin’s probable
comments on her situation if he knew of it! And yet Garstin had told her
that Arabian was in love with her. Was that possible? Her vanity faintly
stirred like something, albeit feebly, reviving. Arabian had marked her
down as a prey. She had no doubt about that. Her brain refused to doubt
it. But perhaps, mingled with his hideous cupidity of the accomplished
adventurer, the professional thief, there was something else, the lust,
or even the sensual love, of the primitive man. Perhaps--she realized
the possibility--he believed he had found in her the great opportunity
of his life, the unique chance of combining the satisfaction of his
predatory instincts with the satisfaction of his intimate personal
desires, those desires which he shared with the men who lived far from
the underworld.
If that were so--and suddenly she felt that it was so, that she had hit
upon the truth--then she was surely in great danger. For Arabian was not
the man to let an unique opportunity slip through his fingers without
putting up a tremendous fight.
She must find someone to help her against this man. Again she thought
of Garstin. But he had his own battle to fight, the battle about the
portrait. Then she thought of Craven. Obscurely long ago--it seemed at
least long ago--she had felt that she might some day need Craven in
her life. How strange that was! What mysterious instinct had warned her
then? But now Craven was hostile to her. How could she go to him? And
then there flashed upon her the thought:
“But I can’t go to anybody! I have promised Adela.”
That thought struck her like a blow, struck her so hard that she stood
still on the pavement. And she realized immediately that either she must
do without any help at all, or that, in spite of all that had happened,
she must ask Adela to help her. For she could never break her promise
to Adela. She knew that. She knew that she would rather go under than
betray Adela’s confidence. Adela had done a fine thing, something that
she, Beryl, had not believed it was in any woman to do. She could not
have done it, but on the other hand she could not be vile. It was not in
her to be vile.
She heard a step in the darkness and realized what she was doing.
Instantly she hurried on, almost running. She must gain shelter, must be
in the midst of light, must be between four walls, must speak to someone
who knew her, and who would not do her harm. Claridge’s--old Fanny! A
few minutes later she entered the hotel almost breathless.