Too Old for Dolls: A Novel

by Anthony M. Ludovici

The British are known all over the world for their stamina, for the grit and tenacity with which they can play a losing game; nay, it is even reported that they have frequently turned a losing game into a victory by this very capacity for stubborn patience in adversity.

Cleopatra lacked none of the qualities which have made the British nation famous. She, too, could play a losing game with dignity, grace, and pride; even if, as in this case, it was the cruellest game that a girl can be called upon to play. Perhaps, too, she noticed the conflict that had started in Denis Malster's heart; or maybe she simply saw the unmistakable signs of his dawning passion. But, in any case, and as quickly as surely as she realised that he was becoming enslaved to her sister, his charms underwent a mysterious intensification in her eyes that only aggravated the difficulties of her position.

Certainly he had not made the first advances. Or, if he had, they had been too subtle to be observed. What woman, moreover, really believes that a man is ever guilty in the traffic of the sexes? She had, however, been compelled to notice her sister's manœuvres. They had been unmistakable, untiring, unpardonable.

At times she had even been constrained to admire the skill with which Guy Tyrrell, Stephen Fearwell, and the Incandescent Gerald himself had been employed by Leonetta in the business of tormenting Denis into a state of complete subjection. Every means was legitimate to Leonetta. If she could not pretend to read a man's hand, she would make a cat's cradle with him; if she could not take his arm, she would plead sudden fatigue in order that he might take her hand to pull her up hill; if she picked a wild rose, a thorn would be sure to remain buried in the skin of her finger, which at some propitious moment would require to be laboriously removed by one of the male members of the party.

A girl may struggle with fortitude against such a determined dispute for supremacy; she may deploy her whole strength and even contrive parallel manœuvres of her own; but even when she is not less beautiful than her rival, as was the case with Cleopatra, the more conscious of the two engaged in such a match is bound in the end to be less happy in her discoveries, less spontaneous in her inventions, and therefore less successful in her results. For natural spontaneity is quickly felt and appreciated by a group of fellow-beings, as is also the element of vexation and overanxiousness, which Cleopatra was beginning to reveal despite all her efforts at concealment.

The most unnerving, the most jading, however, of all her self-imposed performances at this moment, was the constraint to laugh and be merry, when others laughed and were merry over the frequently empty horse-play of her sister.

It was this particularly that was beginning to tell against her in the duel. And as fast as she felt herself losing ground, as surely as she felt her hold on Denis slackening, the old gnawing sensation at her heart, which had first been felt years before when Leonetta had ceased to be a child, would assert itself with hitherto unwonted painfulness, unprecedented insistence, until it began like a disease to come between her and her meals, and, worse than all, to engage her attention when she ought to have been sleeping.

Thus during these wonderful summer days, while all nature was proud with her magnificent display, while the sun poured down its splendour without stint upon the homely Kentish coast, Cleopatra, nodding and bowing in the breeze, like any other flower, fragrant and unhandseled like the other blooms about her, and voluptuous and seductive like a full-blown rose, was yet aware of a parasitic germ in her heart that was eating her life-blood away. To her, alone, in all that party, the warm arms of the sun brandished javelins, and the calm riches of the landscape concealed jibes. The meanest field labourer seemed happier than she, the commonest insect more wanton and more free.

You would have passed her by without noticing that she was in any way different from her sister, except perhaps that she was obviously more mature. In her spirited glance and smile you would have detected nothing of the tempest in her soul, nothing of the fear in her heart. Only a botanist of the human spirit could have observed that subtle difference in her look, that suggestion of anxiety in her parted lips, which told the tale of her incomparably courageous, determined, undaunted, but sadly unavailing fight.

It was the night, the long silence alone, that she was beginning to dread. And those who dread the night show the lines of fear on their faces during the day. They laugh, they join in the general sport, their gait is light, their clothes may be gay, but at the back of their eyes, the sympathetic can see the previous night's vigil; and it is the haunting fear of experiencing it again that gives their voices, their words, their very laughter that ring of overanxiousness, that stamp of heavily overtaxed bravery.