Chapter Six.
Love Calls.
“Ah, Love! there is no better thing than this,
To have known love, how bitter a thing it is.”
On the Fort George side of the court next day I noticed a woman I had not seen before. She was handsome and rather extraordinary looking, and had a number of men talking to her; but the did not join the Fort George ladies, and for their part they took no notice of her at all. I wondered why, for they had struck me as being pleasant, friendly souls, kindly disposed to all the world.
She had rather a sallow skin, that made her brilliant hair and bright red mouth all the more amazing; and there was an odd, defiant air about her, yet something curiously wistful in the glances she sent across the court at me from her murky brown eyes. She laughed a great deal with the men talking to her, but I thought her laugh a little too merry. In a tailor-made fashion she was exceedingly well dressed—quite the best turned out woman I had seen so far, though Anna Cleeve certainly knew how to put on her clothes if she only had any to put on. I wondered why this pretty woman was unhappy, for even in my limited experience I had discovered that it is generally the woman who has missed happiness, who tries to fill in the little round hole in her heart with clothes—the smartest and prettiest she can find. Happy women usually have too much in their lives to bother about making a fine art of dressing. Of course, with girls it is different; they naturally love pretty clothes and they have a right to them.
I wished she would come round to our side of the court and let me see her properly, but she did not. Later I observed that the rest of the women only looked at her when she was not looking; at other times they looked through her and past her and over her. At last I became aware that she was taboo. Even the men who stood about her were not the nicest men, and I observed that no one went from our side to speak to her, except Major Kinsella, who, as soon as he arrived, shook hands and stood talking for some little time, at which her pleasure was obvious; afterwards the looks she cast at the other women were more defiant than ever. Consumed with curiosity I addressed a query to Judy sitting next to me.
“That person?” said she, looking another way. “She calls herself Rookwood, I believe.”
“What has she done?” I asked. It was so very evident that the poor wretch had done something.
“Oh, don’t ask me,” said Judy in a far-away voice. But Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, who sat on my other side, was not so reserved.
“Do you see that big fair man with her? That is Captain Rookwood. Handsome, isn’t he? She lives with him.”