Of the two women advancing towards Ishmael, the tall dark one, by far the elder, wore under a black silk jacket a gown of soft red, the terra-cotta then beginning to be in vogue amidst the artistic elect, but it was smartly cut, whereas the peacock blue garment of her companion showed a depressing sloppiness, which was not helped out by the drooping rows of many-coloured beads which were slung round her throat or the peacock feathers that trailed from her shovel hat of gauged silk. This girl, Ishmael saw vaguely, had a pale chubby face like a child, but the long, dark countenance of the other, lit by a smile of recognition, was suddenly familiar to him. Only—Judy had become a woman, a thin, rather sad-looking woman, with a melancholy that was not the old effect of tragedy for which her monkey-look and the bistre shadows beneath her eyes had been responsible without any deeper cause. The monkey-look was there still, but Judy was almost beautiful in spite, or perhaps more truly because, of it. Ishmael felt her lean, strong hand, ungloved, come into his.
"I knew it was you!" exclaimed Judy in the husky voice he remembered.
"You've changed, but only along the lines one would have expected. Mr.
Killigrew can't come—not for a day or two. He told me to tell you he'd
try to get down by the end of the week. May I introduce you to Miss
Georgie Barlow?"
Another hand was thrust into his, with a sudden gauche movement that was not without a girlish charm. Ishmael found himself looking at the pale chubby face, and the only thing he noticed in it was the mouth. Georgie Barlow stayed in his mind as "the girl with the mouth," as she frequently did to those who met her even once. She had a wonderful mouth, and was wont to declare it to be her only feature. It was not very red, but very tenderly curved, the lips short, flat in modelling and almost as wide at the ends as the centre, which just saved them from being a cupid's bow. The corners were deeply indented, tucked in like those of a child. Not only the lips but the planes of the chin and cheeks immediately around them were good, very tender in colour and curves, with the faint blur of fine golden down to soften them still more.
Such was Georgie Barlow—a short, rounded little creature, with a bare neck that was not long but delicate, and surrounded by three "creases of Venus" like that of a baby. Her rather small but frank blue eyes held a boyish look that was intensified by the fact that her hair was cut short after the new fashion in a certain set and brushed almost to her fair eyebrows in a straight fringe in front, while on the nape of her neck it curved in little drake's tails of soft brown. The blue beads riding up her neck ruffled the tails like tiny feathers.
Both she in her "artistic" way and Judy in her quiet smartness were very different from the women Ishmael had been seeing of late years—the dowdy county ladies or Vassie in her splendid flamboyance. He felt oddly shy with them; the ageing of Judy, so marked and somehow so unexpected—she had seemed such a child only ten years ago—made him feel she was as much of a stranger as her little companion, and there was also about her some new quality he could not but feel, a something aloof, a little hard, for all her gentleness of manner. He had never envisaged her as growing into this self-possessed woman, whose most noticeable quality, had it not been for her aloofness, would have been a certain worldliness. He felt his dreams of the old time rudely upset. Killigrew's erratic defection, the altered feeling of Judy, which made him uncertain even whether to call her by her Christian name as of old or not, the presence of this oddly-attired girl with the mouth, were all so different from what he had been expecting. He told himself that when Killigrew did arrive he also would probably be a different creature from of old, not knowing that exactly what made Killigrew such a wearing person to keep up with was that he never changed, only became more himself.
Judith was not very illuminating on the subject when he questioned her, merely answering him with an affirmative when he asked her whether she had seen a good deal of Killigrew since the old days, and he was forced to keep company with his curiosity till Killigrew should appear out of the blue a few days hence.
Meanwhile, he drove the two ladies to Mrs. Penticost's, Judy saying that as they had luggage she thought it would be simpler to go straight there instead of stopping for supper at the Manor. The next day, however, both were to meet Boase there for tea.
Meanwhile Ishmael had to relinquish them to the care of Mrs. Penticost and go back to the Manor, feeling discontented and unable to settle to anything, while at the same time he was not at all sure he was glad that Killigrew had ever taken it into his head to come down and send his harem, as Ishmael annoyedly termed it to himself, before him. Not so Mrs. Penticost. She still called Judith her lamb, and after folding her to her portly breast was not likely to feel any tremors when she held her off to gaze at her.
"You'm gone through somethen' since I saw 'ee, my dear," she announced candidly. "There's lines under your pretty eyes that dedn' belong to be there. I shouldn' wonder if it wasn't the men as had putt en there. Menfolk are like children—they'm a pack of worry, but the women can't get along happy wethout en."
"Well, at least I haven't any children, Mother Penticost," said Judy, laughing.