CHAPTER XIV
Certain inevitable consequences followed after Ferlie had once put in a public appearance.
It was hardly to be supposed that, in a land where women were scarce and men plentiful, her sovereign-coloured hair was to be allowed to glow unseen by the male contingent, nor her rather absent-minded aloofness to pass unchallenged by the solid phalanx of self-contented wives.
She could not be described as a general favourite. Her thoughts were elsewhere; she was obliged to act a part which failed to interest her whenever she descended the hill to mix with her own kind.
The men, slow-witted as to any point of feminine psychology that did not exactly jump to the eyes, were not aware of any concealing veil, and summed her up as quite a little bit of All-Right and decidedly a "Beaut," but women are not so easily deceived in one another. They were quick to suspect that this Ishmaelitish woman, too obviously pretty to need the support of her own sex, and round whose chair the men showed signs of clustering (of course!) had not put all her cards on the table.
They attempted to dismiss her nervily distracted attitude, her laggardly recognition of individuals to whom she had once been introduced, and her complete detachment from all rules of official status, as affectation.
The words would not quite fit because her manner was, if anything, unnaturally natural, and she was inclined to think startling things out loud when over-excited. They began to discuss her rather a lot in her absence so that new-comers became rather prejudiced before meeting her and convinced that here was a to-be-discouraged specimen of their sex, seeking notoriety. And notoriety with women in a circle on the "Ladies'" side of the Club means "Men"; while "Men" may mean anything.
Ferlie was to blame, in that she made no effort to conciliate. She had not, it must be remembered, known initiation as a débutante into the ritual pertaining unto the Mammon of Precedence. All women were alike to her, from the Leading Lady to the Most Junior Bride whom everybody had voted, "of the Country, my dear." Not all men, because, very shortly, they showed signs of desiring, one by one, to make an individual impression. They began to discuss Themselves with her, preparatory to fathoming that complex of laughter and jarringly grave philosophy which was Herself. And here, her youth affected matters. Her past tragedy had separated her, for some while, from her fellows: her knowledge of character necessarily rested upon her own experience. She was, as Cyprian had warned her, over-pitiful to confidences she should have checked, and tendered tolerant sympathy where a hurt, deliberately inflicted, would have proved the only curative physic.
This, since, ultra-sensitive to pain herself, she could not believe in the thickness of some folk's skins. Her encouragement therefore, of some unbalanced youth, whose voiced cravings for the Good, the True and the Beautiful, were rooted in a most natural desire to hold a pretty girl's hand, lacked wisdom, to say the least of it.
Some time passed before Cyprian began to speculate on her habit of drifting into corners accompanied by this pair of Shooting Boots or that, while a restrained current of Christian hostility, founded on the useful direction to be angry and sin not, oozed insinuatingly from the Women's Fellowship. He knew them for Nice Women, and was sorry; likewise puzzled. In his opinion, Ferlie should have taken all hearts by storm. By which he betrayed nearly as deep a simplicity of soul as Ferlie herself.