Belinda and her mother arrived at Nahant late in the afternoon of next
day. Sophy had tea waiting for them. When she had greeted Mrs. Horton,
and that lady moved aside to make way for her step-daughter, Sophy
flinched a little just as one does when sunlight is flashed suddenly in
one's eyes from a mirror. There was really a glare of beauty from
Belinda. Her skin and eyes seemed to give out light rather than to
reflect it.
She was dressed in silky, red-brown linen. Under the wide, turnover
collar of her white blouse was a loosely-knotted tie of purple. A purple
toque pressed her autumn-tinted hair against her jet-black eyebrows. Her
skin was like nacre, her lips like petunia petals.
Looking at her, Sophy felt sure that if souls could have colour,
Belinda's soul was a brilliant purple, like stained glass--like the tie
that rose and fell with her splendid young breast as a moth sways with a
flower.
Belinda gave her hand to Sophy in silence. Her eyes were as busy with
Sophy as Sophy's with her. Belinda had peculiar eyes. They could be as
dense and impenetrable under her thick, white lids, as glossy red-brown
nuts shining from between the white lining of their hulls. Again, they
could throw out garnet sparkles and become limpid as wine. They had
their dense, horse-chestnut gloss as they regarded Sophy.
"What an extraordinary-looking girl!" Sophy thought.
Belinda was thinking:
"Yes ... she's beautiful ... but I bet she's an icicle when Morry's
blazing...."
Why she thought this, she could not have said. But she felt sure of it.
And it comforted her. She was so convinced of her "right" to Morris that
she regarded Sophy, not exactly as a wilful thief, but as a receiver of
stolen goods. Morris had stolen himself from her (Belinda), in a manner
of speaking, and Sophy had accepted this gift which he had no right to
make. Belinda was fair-minded. It was not Sophy's fault, because though
she had received stolen goods she had received them unwittingly. Morris
was the culprit. Belinda had long solaced herself with the thought of
how delightful would be the task of meting him his just punishment. Now
she looked at Sophy and wondered. She was wondering how this strain of
coldness that she felt in her rival affected Morry. And she clenched
herself against Sophy's beauty; for she did not belittle it, though she
thought it cold. But she had no real fear of it. Was she not eighteen
and this woman thirty-two--or nearly thirty-two? Belinda felt youth to
her hand like a bright sword. For two years she had been muttering as
she fell asleep, and as she waked: "Morry shall divorce her and marry
me." That kiss had sealed her his, and made him hers. She was unusual in
that she was lawless in method, but worked to law-abiding ends.
She had not the least idea of throwing her cap over the windmill for
Morry. She meant to keep house with him in the windmill and pay all
proper taxes on the grist it ground for them. It would be hard to find a
more determined character than Belinda. She had the sort of will that
decides to accomplish an object without bothering in the least about
ways and means. She had, as it were, the religion of the Will. She would
be inspired, she felt sure, in just the right way at just the right
moment. She had the faith that not only counts on removing mountains
into the sea, but depends on the sea's extinguishing them if they chance
to be volcanoes and their peaks left unsubmerged.
She thought of her own passionate love for Morris as a sea into which
many mountains might be cast and overwhelmed. There would come the
destined moment--the tidal wave would rush gloriously inland. All would
be swept clear--a bare, clean space whereon she would build their palace
of delights.
Belinda was one of the women-children who are born knowing things. She
came of Lilith rather than of Eve. She had no low curiosities, because
from the beginning she seemed to have been aware of everything. A wise
Brahman looking on her would have seen the latest incarnation of some
fearless Courtesan, destined in this particular existence to aspire to
the domestication of her lawlessness. For some past deed of mercy on her
part, the Lords of Karma had decreed that in this life respectability
should be the modest guiding-star of her wayward feet. For though
Belinda would always be in spirit her lover's mistress, she had no
faintest idea of being other than his wife in the eyes of the world.
So she looked at Sophy, and wondered how much she really loved Morry.
She was sorry for her, in a way, but this emotion of indulgent
compassion did not render her a whit less implacable.
And Sophy, observing her closely, tried to analyse the strange effect
that the girl had upon her. She felt a powerful force emanating from
the whole scintillant young figure--yet she felt as strongly that, for
her at least, Belinda had not "charm."
But then Belinda did not have charm for other women. She was
essentially, from her cradle, the type of "man's woman" in one of its
completest forms. Not the Griselda type, but the type that led Antony to
set sail after the fleet of Egypt.