Chapter IX

Kitty had never had many advantages, but there had been a time when to be Kitty was in itself an advantage. Her mother died at her birth, and her father, though she was the only human being he really loved, was very little with her; he preferred his caprices to his affections. But Kitty did not miss either of her natural protectors very deeply. She had Peckham, and though Peckham was only an old nurse, she was a selfless fount of love; from a bump to a dead bird she was all attention, consolation, and reward.

Nothing that Kitty cared for escaped Peckham, and she stood solid and aggressive between Kitty and her occasional fears. Peckham was unable always to provide Kitty with what she wanted—the brass eagle off the lectern and the housekeeper’s blue beads were a case in point—but she strained every nerve to procure substitutes. In all her happy childhood Kitty never knew what it was to be deliberately thwarted.

And then there was Dick. One said one’s prayers to God, but everything else one said to Dick. Dick was the eldest son of the retired rector, an enchanting personage who did not preach sermons and who always went about with sweets in his pocket. He was the only pillar of the church who ever attracted Kitty.

Dick’s people lived across the river, at the foot of the garden. There was an island in the river, and Dick made a bridge from his garden to the island, and from the island to Kitty’s garden. Long before the bridge was built, when they were only babies, they were taken solemnly by the road to tea, to play with each other.

Whenever Kitty fell down, Dick, who was a year older, picked her up; and whatever Dick was given, he gave half of it to Kitty. Even his catapult he lent her. It was one of those strange affections which transcend relationship and never alter except to deepen as the years pass.

They took their first plunge into life together, hand in hand, and it never occurred to either of them to have a separate thought. They played together every day until Dick went to school, and they broke their hearts over the agonizing separations, between the golden flashes of the holidays. The gloom was slightly lifted for Kitty by Dick’s rabbits (they were carefully transferred to her across the bridge, hutch by hutch) and to Dick by her scrawled bulletins as to their increasing and pervasive families.

When he came back they still played together. Other boys had entered into Dick’s life to war with feminine influences, but they did not touch his feelings for Kitty.

Kitty had none of the distinctive markings of a girl; she might just as well have been another boy. Dick’s favorite pursuits were hers. There was no tree she feared to climb, she ran like a deer, and her high jumps cleared her own height. She was more unexpected than boys usually are, but she was just as truthful, just as loyal, just as plucky.

She did not stop being a comrade until Dick was eighteen, and then she became everything else. The comrade was still there, but submerged in something so tremendous and inspiring, so exciting and yet so intensely secure, that Dick found no words to explain even to Kitty what he felt for her.

But Kitty didn’t need Dick’s words. What happened first to Dick happened as a matter of course afterward to Kitty. When Peckham, unable to bear the responsibility of the situation, reported upon it to Mr. Costrelle, he listened to her with amused attention. Then he said:

“Have they been allowed to see as much as they liked of each other till now, no opposition at all, eh?”

Peckham in a flutter answered that they had.

“You see, sir,” she explained, “Miss Kitty being such a tomboy, and Master Dick’s mother an invalid and never out of the house, I was hard put to it to think of a reason why they shouldn’t be together.”

“Well, continue not to think of a reason,” replied Mr. Costrelle, calmly. “Allow them to be together as much as ever they choose. They’ll soon get over it. When young people are permitted to do exactly as they like, they seldom continue to like it for any length of time.”

Not long after this conversation Mr. Costrelle decided to take Kitty abroad. He was in the habit of frequent and prolonged visits to Paris and Monte Carlo. Kitty, accompanied by intermittent governesses, wouldn’t be a bother, and Mr. Costrelle wanted her to be taught to speak French and how to put her clothes on properly. He did not think these two subjects easily mastered in his own country.

“The only thing a girl need bother her head about,” Mr. Costrelle explained to Kitty, “is how to amuse a man and how to get a bit of her own back. Lots of old women will cram you up with nonsense; they’ll say a woman needs education, freedom, equal rights, and what not. Don’t you believe ’em. Men are what matter to women, and women are what matter to men.

“A clever girl hasn’t got equal rights; she’s got ’em _all_, and a girl isn’t clever if she’s read half the London Library and can’t make a man who looked at her once want to look at her again. Make ’em want and keep ’em wanting. You can’t begin too early, but don’t lose your head over it. That’s where women make such awful fools of themselves. They start caring about some fellow and running him down as if they were a Paris cabby after a foot-passenger. No man’ll stand it. Don’t you ever budge, however much you care for a fellow. Get him keen and then hold him. Good artificial fly, invisible line, firm hand at the end of it, feet well against the bank, and you’ll have your fish landed. D’you see my point?”

Kitty saw her parent’s point; she listened gravely out of the depths of her seventeen-year-old wisdom and innocence. She was never quite so old again.

“You won’t mind, will you,” she said consideringly, “if I marry Dick instead, and don’t play any particular kind of game? You see, I’d rather marry Dick.”

“Marry whom you like,” said her father, promptly, “provided he can support you. I can’t, as you know, and what your mother wanted to leave you three hundred a year for God only knows. You can’t even dress on it. She always was penny wise and pound foolish. But take my advice. If you want to keep your husband, learn to play your game. Any fool can get a husband; look at the sights who do. ’Pon my word, I saw a woman the other day with a cast in her eye and a harelip, with a wedding-ring on. Of course you’d think there was money back of it, but there wasn’t. Sheer will power. She’d been after him like a boa constrictor gets a rabbit. But that’s not enough to keep a man faithful for a fortnight. You must learn the ropes.”

“But Dick,” Kitty said reflectively—“couldn’t I keep Dick without playing a game? You see, there never have been any particular ropes with Dick.”

“I never met a man yet,” said Mr. Costrelle, emphatically, “who didn’t like a woman better because other men were after her. Besides, you’ve got yourself to think of. Life’s chancy. You want to have something to fall back on.

“I dare say a lot of people—all your mother’s relations and that stuffy set at Rochett—would say I ought to have had you educated to some profession. Well, what I’m teaching you will pay you better than _any_ profession. You never need be at a loss. If you’re happy with Dick, or whoever you pick out to be happy with, you can _stay_ happy; and if you’re not, by Jove! you can make ’em pay for it.”

“But I’m going to be happy, of course,” said Kitty, calmly. “I settled all that long ago, and I sha’n’t want anybody to pay for it.”

“Well, make damned sure you can _make_ them pay for it if you ever do want it,” urged Mr. Costrelle. “No use thinking you’ll have a shy at it later on, when your looks are going. You might as well race a horse that’s never learned to start. You take my word for it, girls and horses need training while they’re young.”

“All right,” said Kitty, thoughtfully; “I’ll train.”

It amused Mr. Costrelle extremely to watch Kitty training, and it didn’t do Kitty any particular harm then.

Her heart was safe, and she learned point by point, sometimes from a lightly dropped reflection of her father’s, and more often from the varied experiences that presented themselves, the mastery of her subject.

Mr. Costrelle knew men of all sorts and of all ages, and they all became sooner or later the declared admirers of Kitty. Peckham, perturbed and powerless, watched the strange procession. She could not interfere with Kitty’s freedom, but she never left her alone. She sat and knitted on benches at Monte Carlo, she reluctantly attended the most risqué of French plays, she was seasick on board yachts, and giddy in racing-motors; but Peckham was always there. Perhaps, owing to this adamant protection, Kitty flirted serenely on without disaster. She learned the ways of men, and little by little she learned the powers of women. Dick didn’t like it, but he fell deeper in love.

They argued and quarreled about Kitty’s adventures, but neither of them ever doubted the other. Their future was plain before them, and in the depths of their hearts they knew that there were no other men or any other women.

When Kitty was eighteen Mr. Costrelle insisted on her spending six weeks in London with an aunt. Kitty didn’t want to go. She didn’t like her aunt, with whom she had occasionally lunched in an awe-inspiring, dark London dining-room where she had been stared at reflectively and without kindness by three girl cousins.

The Mallards were a dull family; still, they had a large house and a wide acquaintance. They were modern enough to know what to go and see, though none of it adhered to them. No member of the family had ever said anything worth remembering or had done anything it was necessary to forget. London spoke of them as “the dull Mallards,” but it did speak of them.

Mr. Costrelle, who hardly ever urged any course of action upon Kitty, virtually insisted upon the Mallards.

“Yes, of course you’ll be bored,” he agreed; “but, my dear child, at your age what else can you expect? Young people must learn to be bored, and the sooner the better. I’ve been bored for fifty years, but I’ve learned how. I quite admit that your aunt’s a dowd and your cousins three young and very undistinguished frumps, but that’s precisely why they’re so valuable. If you have one good frump at your side, you have a margin; with three or four, any future is virtually open to you.

“You know all the men you need to know now, and none of the women you’ve met with me can be of the slightest use to you. It’s high time you should square a few frumps. Otherwise the men’ll do you harm. You’ll be considered fast.”

“But aren’t I fast?” Kitty inquired. “I thought knowing a lot of men was always fast.”

“So it is,” said her father, with a chuckle, “damned fast and damned convenient, but you’ll have to slow up over it. Sprinkle a few of these Mallard women across your track, and then you can do what you like. See?”

Kitty didn’t see, but she did what she liked.

It was, after all, quite an amusing time. Many of the men she knew turned up, and invitations were showered upon her, backed by flowers and chocolates. Her cousins didn’t like her even though she religiously shared all the chocolates and flowers with them, and her aunt stared rather hard at some of Kitty’s callers.

Kitty’s French clothes were a great success, but her French manners had to be toned down. Dick hated them, and the other men were sometimes a little tiresome. Kitty had long ago learned to deal with men who were tiresome. She did it with laughter and good humor and a little touch of decision, and she very seldom needed any other weapon.

A good many of the men she had met in Monte Carlo and met again in London were tiresome; and in the middle of the six weeks Dick wanted to marry her. He said quite suddenly he _must_ marry her. The Mallards sent Kitty back to her father with expedition and without cordiality.

Mr. Costrelle shrugged his shoulders and said it was a pity.

“You’ve had a very short run for your money,” he observed to Kitty, “but do as you like. Dick’s a good fellow. I suppose you can pig it on nine hundred a year, which, I understand, you’ll scrape up between you, and Dick’ll have money some day. I dare say domesticity is best taken young. You can make a fresh start later on if you want to, now you’ve got the swing of it.”

They were to be married in a month, and two weeks later Dick was crossing the channel with the First Expeditionary Force.

He hadn’t expected to be called up so soon. A telegram to Kitty miscarried, and in the end they hadn’t time for marriage, only for a strange half-hour, in which they said nothing at all except queer, fragmentary things out of the tops of their minds; but of course they expected the war to be over in three months.

There was no time for anything but jokes, little clumsy jokes about Berlin and the kaiser; and then there seemed nothing left but interminable terror.

A few weeks later the rector came to Alington Farm to tell Kitty that Dick was missing. Kitty was spraying the second crop of roses against blight. They were Gloire de Dijon roses, growing low over the porch, full of heavy scent.

The rector said to her: “My dear, will you come and see my wife? She’s almost your mother now, you know.”

He wished that Kitty had had a real mother. She faced him for a moment speechlessly; her eyes slipped past his words to his fears. He answered them quickly.

“I do not know that he is dead,” he said, showing her the telegram.

Kitty was afraid the rector was going to say something about God, but he didn’t. He looked all about him vaguely, down to the garden’s edge, and across the rickety bridge.

“We don’t know what it means,” he said dully; he kept his eyes turned away from Kitty.

She stood quite still, holding the telegram, as if she could not make up her mind to give it back to him. It did not seem to Kitty that Dick belonged to either his father or his mother. They were old; they had had him. He had been their child. They were lucky people whose relationship was complete; no one could stop Dick having been their son. They could afford to know that he was dead.

“No,” she said at last, “I won’t go and see his mother.”

She turned and went into the house. The rector did nothing to retain her, and he never told any one what Kitty had said.

Kitty went to her room and locked the door. She lay on the bed, face downward, till the dark came.

Her body felt dry and as if it were broken. She shed no tears. Peckham came to her door crying, but Kitty told her to go away.

“Please,” she said quietly, “go right away, Peckham.”

The next day her father came down from London. Kitty unlocked the door for him. She knew he wouldn’t say anything to bother her. He brought her a cup of tea, and when she had drunk it, he said to her:

“’Member my telling you life was chancy? Well! it is, you see, damned chancy. If I were you, I should just sit tight and make the best of it.”

“So I would if I were sure he was dead,” explained Kitty. “You see, if he’s there,—anywhere at all, I mean,—I want to be what he wants—that kind of woman; and if he isn’t, well, then, I don’t care what I am.”

“Well, give the thing time,” urged her father. “Wait a bit; you’re very young. You can only be innocent once, you know; you can always be the other thing.”

“Oh, I’m not thinking of all that,” said Kitty, impatiently. “Men don’t matter. I’m wondering what to be—myself, you see, if things don’t come right.”

“No, of course you’re not now,” agreed her father. “But you will, you know, my dear. Dreams are what we all start out with, and it’s pretty tough when they get broken. But it’s facts we end up on, and when we want the facts, we want them worse than we wanted the dreams.”

“You talk as if Dick hadn’t been a fact,” said Kitty, bitterly; and then she began to cry, because she herself had spoken as if Dick were no longer a fact.

Mr. Costrelle helped her to go to France. He couldn’t go himself because three relentless doctors refused to pass him for active service.

“If I were you,” he said to Kitty as he saw her off, “I should wait two years. The war won’t end any sooner. People say it will, but it won’t. You’ll have a hell of a time, but you can afford it at eighteen. So shall I, of course, and at my age it’s more serious. I shall simply be bored stiff with people all around me doing things for their country, the kind of people, I mean, who will take this war as if it were a new sort of lap-dog.

“I sha’n’t turn a hair myself. If my country doesn’t want me to fight, it can leave me alone. I’m not going to turn myself into a Red Cross pin-cushion to please anybody.

“When you want to come back, you’ll find me just as you left me—except for what they get out of me in the way of taxes.”

“I wonder what you’ll find me,” said Kitty.