Samson enquired how Deb proposed to reach home. “This is the worst end of Elgin Avenue,” he hinted darkly, and looked with suspicion at Cliffe Kennedy, who passed his hand across his eyes as though brushing away a hideous memory, and said abruptly: “I’ve never spoken to you of my little sister—have I?”
Deb knew that he was an only child. But she also knew by now his marvellous talent for fitting every subject that came up with local interest of personal experience. What she did not know was exactly how real was the momentary belief which inflated his account of the lovely and cherished little sister—Beth, her name—whom Cliffe had once been requisitioned to fetch from an evening party. There had been a woman—he had not gone. “Someone else will see the Babe home.”... Beth, tired of delay, having refused all other escort—“I’m waiting for my brother, thanks,” with childlike pride—had at last started off by herself....
“It was months before we gave up the search. And it killed my mother—spiritually,” Cliffe amended, recollecting that Deb had frequently lunched with Mrs Kennedy. “Her hair went snow-white during those months——” mournful eyes fixed on Samson’s aghast, attentive face. His gaze wandered to Deb’s, read there a gentle reminder of the dear old lady’s almost unpowdered dark brown coronal; and without the slightest perceptible break in the narrative, sank his voice to the supplementary explanation: “Yes—she dyed it for my sake. I simply couldn’t bear it. My fault—damnable ego-ridden slothful beast!—and the perpetual sight of that piled-up silveriness never let me forget for a moment what she had suffered—what we all suffered ... she guessed it was driving me to madness—Other women condemned what she did—called it preposterous vanity ... at her age. God! one of the divinest impulses of pure love——”
By now, Cliffe was so swathed about in self-spun illusion of tender maternal sacrifice and a lost little sister, that Samson may have been pardoned for horrified credulity:
“And you never heard anything—no news—no clue——?”
“I spend regularly four nights a week in brothels,” Cliffe replied with exquisite simplicity—and Samson checked a stern protest at use of a word which, after all, Deb could not possibly understand.
“But I’m making you melancholy with all this. A chance word reminded me—I’ll see you home to-night, Deb; but I hope you’re not relying on me to pay your bus-fares; you still seem to cling to the outworn tradition that gentlemen, beautiful glossy eligible gentlemen who live in Kensington Palace Gardens, always pay the fare of the young lady they’re walking-out with—or rather riding-out with. I’ve noticed a semi-diffident, semi-expectant look that you always direct towards me when the conductor comes round, and you pull out your modest little purse—and I’m hypnotically compelled to the low rapid pained yet masterful and at the same time unobtrusive utterance: ‘No—please—allow me—I insist.’... And I can’t afford it, Deb. I’ll see you home to-night, but you must pay your own fares.”
Samson favoured the speaker with a look so expressive of the “beautiful glossy eligible gentleman who lived in Kensington Palace Gardens” that Deb’s eyes, encountering Kennedy’s, were an elves’ dance of green and grey merriment.
“I will accompany Miss Marcus home, if she allows me.”
“Are you pledged to see Nell home as well? Antonia and Nell and I all live in different directions, you know.”