She looked indeed as though she might demand and take all she could get—a girl greedy of life and the good things in it, or the things that to her seemed good. She swooped down beside the little creature on the bed and flung an arm round her. The younger girl's personality seemed to be drowned in the bright effulgence of the elder as her slight form in the swelling folds of blue taffeta skirt that overflowed her.
"What about Mr. Tonkin?" ventured Phoebe; "he'd have you fast enough. And he's almost as good as a clergyman, though of course not as good as an officer…."
"Old Tonkin, indeed!" cried Vassie indignantly. "I wouldn't touch him if he was the only man alive. Why, mother's actually jealous of the way he tries to come patting and pawing me…. She can have him—if she can get him. Horrid, pale, fat old man!" She shook the thought of him from off her, and ran on: "And when I'm a la—I mean when I'm married, I'll see what I can do for you, Phoebe. You're too soft ever to do any good for yourself. As like as not you'd take any clumsy lout that offered, simply because you wouldn't know how to say 'No.'"
Phoebe said nothing, but a bright colour ran up over her pale skin and her soft mouth set in a little obstinate line. The whole expression of her face altered when she set her lips so that they covered the two front teeth that at once made her face irregular and gave it individuality. She lost her exquisite softness and became a little stupid, for it made the lower part of her face too brief—what Vassie called "buttoned up." Phoebe was not actually pretty, but she was very alluring to men, or would be, simply because everything about her was feminine—not womanly, but feminine. Her mouse-brown hair, straight and soft and fine, refused to fall into the heavy polished curtains that were the mode, and which made of Vassie's two waves of rich brass, bright and hard-edged as metal. Phoebe's eyes were brown, not of the opaque variety, but with the actually velvet look of a bee's body. The girls at school had told her her eyes looked good to stroke. Her nose was an indeterminate snub, her chin delightfully round but retreating, falling away from a mouth like a baby's—so fine in texture, so petal soft, so utterly helpless-looking, with its glint of two small square teeth. Only when she looked obstinate and closed her mouth the charm went out of her face as though wiped off like a tangible thing. She looked almost sullen now, but Vassie, heedless of her, jumped up and, pirouetting round to show herself off once more and to give herself that feeling of mental poise for which physical well-being is needful, made for the door. A swish, a flutter, a bang, and she was gone.
Left alone, Phoebe sat a moment longer, then rolled over on the bed with a kitten-like motion and, stretching her arms above her head, lay taut for a second, then relaxed suddenly. Head tucked in the pillow, she apparently was lost in thought, for her brown eyes, slightly narrowed, stared vacantly at the frilling of the pillow-slip. Then she gave a soft little sound that had it not been so pretty would have been a giggle, wriggled round, and slipped off the bed. She ran to the mirror and began to take down her tumbled hair. As she raised her arms her round breast swelled like a bird's when it lifts its head; her bright eyes and pursed mouth, full of hairpins, were bird-like too. She was perpetually, to the seeing eye, suggesting comparison with the animal creation; she was bird-like, mouse-like, kitten-like, anything and everything that was soft and small and obviously easy to hurt and crush physically. That was her allure, her most noticeable quality—that she presented unconsciously, but unmistakably, the suggestion that it would be easy to hurt her, easy and sweet.
She made trial of her hair in the fashion the new Princess had started—drawn back à la chinoise, with a long rolled curl, known for some reason as a "repentir," brought forward to lie over one shoulder. Then she went to the washstand and took more care than usual over the cleansing of her hands. That done, she deliberated whether or not to put on her grey chip hat with the pink plume that on her arrival she had flung on the bed, where it still lay. She tried herself with it and without, then debated as to whether it looked better to give the impression of being one of the family by appearing bonnetless, or whether, on the other hand, it would not be more interesting to Ishmael if he got the impression of a visitor … of someone who was not always about the house, who was to be seen outside. She finally decided on the latter. Then she sat down to wait, though the time was bound to be more than an hour, since Vassie and John-James had only now started in to Penzance in the smart new market-cart to meet the eagerly awaited arrival, Ishmael Ruan.
Downstairs Annie too had her deliberations, her changes of mind, her sudden impulses of affection and of resentment, as her ill-regulated brain had always had them. She had not changed much in the years that had brought them past Ishmael's eighteenth birthday. All of worn tissues and faded tints had been hers long before, and except for an increased jerkiness she seemed the same. In attire she had altered, and her black silk dress, with its scallops and trembling fringes, suited ill enough with her badly-arranged hair and work-worn hands.
She sat in the little parlour, which she had been made to take into use by Vassie, who had successfully made it hideous with antimacassars and vases of artificial flowers. As Annie sat rigidly upright upon a slippery horsehair-covered chair, her eyes wandered vaguely here and there and fell on the album in which Vassie had collected all the photographs taken of the family from time to time. Photographs printed on paper were only just beginning to supersede the older daguerreotypes, and a gleam of interest came into Annie's pale blue eyes, for the album was still a new toy to her. She remembered that Vassie had only lately finished sticking in the last photographs, and, picking it up, she began turning the pages.
There was Archelaus … she caught her breath. Her lovely Archelaus as he had appeared before going off to that terrible Crimea, which Annie always thought was so called because it was such a wicked place. The print was not very clear, as it was only a copy made from the original daguerreotype, but what it lacked in definition Annie's memory could supply. Archelaus was standing with one elbow leaning upon a rustic pillar; he wore his uniform and looked like a king. He had splendid side-whiskers, though their yellow hue did not show in the photograph. Her beautiful Archelaus … now toiling and moiling in those terrible deserts, those sandy places, of Australia, which was the underside of the world, where black heathen went about mother-naked. By now he had doubtless dug much gold—many, many sovereigns of it—out of the sand, and perhaps some day very soon he would walk in with his pockets full of it; and then who would cut a dash in the country-side, from Land's End up to Truro and beyond it? Her Archelaus. Even in her dreams Annie did not picture Archelaus pouring out his gold upon her or as being anything but of a splendid masculine surliness.
She turned a page and came on John-James—reluctant, bashful, glowering at the camera … he was the most dutiful of her children, and she passed on carelessly and came to Tom. Sleek and shiny in black broadcloth, with the foxy sharpness of his features somehow suggesting the red of his colouring even in the photograph…. He was sitting in a low plush chair with Vassie standing, after the ungallant fashion of the pictures of the period, behind him, one hand on his shoulder. She looked a swelling twenty, though she had only been seventeen when it was taken. Another turn of the page and Annie saw herself—an unkind vision, at her most set, hard of hair and jaw, with deep eye-sockets. She admired it for the black gown and the lace handkerchief she was holding; but she was interested in it, too, as the true egoist always is in self-portraiture, however unflattering.