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Tales of the uneasy

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Title: Tales of the uneasy

Author: Violet Hunt

 
Release date: May 4, 2026 [eBook #78605]

Language: English

Original publication: London: William Heinemann, 1911

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78605

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF THE UNEASY ***

 Tales of the Uneasy

 By
 Violet Hunt
 Author of
 "White Rose of Weary Leaf," "The Wife of Altamont," etc.

 London
 William Heinemann
 1911

 [COPYRIGHT]

 _Copyright, London_, 1911, _by William Heinemann_

 [DEDICATION]

 TO
 R.B. BYLES

 CONTENTS

 THE TELEGRAM
 THE OPERATION
 THE MEMOIR
 THE PRAYER
 THE COACH
 THE BLUE BONNET
 THE WITNESS
 THE BAROMETER
 THE TIGER-SKIN

 THE TELEGRAM

Her mother was dead. Her life stood altered.

She would be no poorer, it was not that. She was an orphan, and all
her mother had had came to her. That meant seventy thousand pounds,
plate, linen and the freehold of a fine old house in Lower Seymour
Street, that they had moved into a year before the old lady died.

Things were no more altered socially than they were altered
pecuniarily, for the Damers' set naturally corresponded, as sets do,
with their postal district, and Miss Alice Damer could therefore
continue to command an entrance into the best circles. Only she
realized that she must henceforth enjoy all these good things to the
tune of a paid companion, having no poor and amenable relations handy
whom she could draft into the household economy, and afterwards snub
into a colourless, bare existence.

She was thirty-five, and her years did not weigh on her, except
mentally. The first faint physical signs of the debacle were, so far,
evident to herself alone, and then only in moods of unusual
depression. She was still young enough to need a companion. Her pretty
red-gold hair was as red as gold, as pretty as ever, her visits to her
dentist as few, her eyes as deep, and her step as elastic, although
she had given up dancing. She had made this sacrifice more from a
sense of fitness, as a concession to the needs of the young girls
coming up all round her, and who deserved their turn on the floor,
than of social necessity. As a matter of fact, she had never been
really fond of that over-energetic, disordering form of amusement. She
loved the world and going up and down in it immensely, and her way of
enjoying parties was to sit out if it was a dance, away from the music
if it was a concert, and in the back of the box if it was a play. She
was a flirt.

Not an outrageous, noisy, ill-bred flirt, but what is known as a quiet
flirt, with many strong and efficient strings to her bow. Did one of
them, being after all only catgut or mere man, snap occasionally--that
is to say, get married out of the circle of her charm--Alice, in her
quiet way, promptly renewed the string, and supplied herself with a
new admirer, as good at fetching and carrying as the old. In her mind
that was the chief use of admirers--to prevent one's _looking_
neglected--of course one never really was!

She was a woman of many "affairs"; she liked living, not exactly in
hot water, but in water at least warm, and was seldom seen talking to
women, though she was quite nice to them, as intrusive but
law-permitted aliens in the _pays du cœur_. None of her friends would
have dared to ask her to a ladies' lunch, or any over-womaned party; a
man had always to be "got for Alice," else she would have been hurt,
and quite unable to play her part properly. She was unused to,
unversed in her own sex.

On the other hand, she played fair and never took other women's men,
or encouraged their husbands to play the pretty game with her. People
said _that_ for her, that she never made women unhappy, only men. She
was never very sorry for a man's love-troubles, for she had a theory
that a hopeless passion or two did a man no harm and that the more he
proposed the merrier--for him. She never told any one how many offers
she had refused. Men often did propose to her, and she refused them
all, and boasted that she had never been engaged for even an hour, and
that no man had ever kissed her. The bloom was not off Alice, unless
so much mental coming and going in her courts had produced some such
subtle effect.

"Why should I marry?" she used to say to Everard Jenkyns (good old
Welsh family), when he importuned her to relax her rule in his favour,
and even go so far as making the vast experiment of marriage with him
as her partner. "There is no earthly hurry."

"No, but perhaps a heavenly one," he had inanely replied.

"I may never marry at all. Girls, economically, don't need to marry as
they used to, and at any rate I am independent so far as money goes."

"So the way is clear for you to marry for love."

"I don't think I shall ever fall in love."

"Then take a man you like--and you like me?" Everard was not at that
time sufficiently far gone in love to make him inattentive to, and
unappreciative of the use and value of "cheek," in discussing such
matters with his princess.

"Yes, I like you; but, as you know, I don't love you. And I'm so made
that I must be quite sure in my own mind that I am absolutely,
positively incapable of loving madly before I let myself go with any
one, even you. Don't you see, in the interests of morality, one must
be sure of oneself, or there might be catastrophe, with a strong
nature like mine?"

"No," said Everard patiently and earnestly. "There would, I am sure,
be no danger of that with you. Your husband might feel perfectly safe
in your hands."

"Thanks. Why do you say that?"

"Because the power to flirt never implies the power to love, I am
afraid."

"Well, Everard, you can't say that I flirt with you!" she exclaimed
noisily.

"Oh, no. Your knowing that I am desperately, dully serious about you
protects me a little, and you do pay me the doubtful compliment of
taking no trouble to attract me. You honestly never put your best foot
foremost with me, or pose like a heroine to your most humble valet."

"Yes," Alice agreed, laughing a little bitterly. "I promise you never
to encourage you in any way. I would let you see me with my hair in
curlers, if I wore them! Anything to convince you of the purity of my
intentions. I simply will not have you say that I lead you on or
encourage you."

"My God, Alice! I don't say it! I know well enough I am a d----d fool
and have nothing whatever to go on."

"A fool to love me?"

"A fool because I am a lonely man and don't like being a lonely man,
and

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