The great effort she had just made seemed to have changed her. By making it she felt as if, unwittingly, she had built up an insurmountable barrier between herself and youth. She had not known, perhaps, what she was doing, but now, suddenly, she knew.
I grow too old a comrade, let us part. Pass thou away!
The words ran in her mind. How often she had thought of them! How often she had struggled with that wild heart which God had given her, which in a way she clung to desperately, and yet which, as she had long known, she ought to give up. She was too old a comrade for that wild heart, and now surely she was saying farewell to it—this time a final farewell. But she had felt, had really felt as if in her very entrails, for a moment the appeal of youth. And she could never forget that, and, having responded, she knew that she could never struggle against youth again.
Beryl had conquered her without knowing it.
CHAPTER VII
The winter night was dark when Miss Van Tuyn stood in the hall of Lady Sellingworth’s house waiting for the footman to find a taxicab for her. A big fire was burning on the hearth; the old-fashioned hooded chair stood beside it; and presently, as no taxicab came, she went to the chair and sat down in it. She felt very tired. Her whole body seemed to have been weakened by what she had just been through. But her mind was charged with intense vitality. The thoughts galloped through it, and they were dark as the night. The cold air of winter stole in through the doorway of the hall. She felt it and shivered as she lay back in the great chair which, with its walls and roof, was like a hiding-place; and for the first time in her life she longed to hide herself. She had never before known acute fear—fear that was based on ascertained facts. But she knew it now.
The young footman stood on the doorstep bareheaded, looking this way and that into the blackness, and she sat waiting. In her independence she had never before known what it was to feel abandoned to loneliness. She had always enjoyed her freedom. Now she felt a great longing to cling to someone, to be protected, to lean on somebody who was much stronger than herself, and who would defend her against any attack. At that moment she envied Lady Sellingworth safe above stairs in this silent and beautiful house, which was like a stronghold. She even envied, or thought she did, Lady Sellingworth for her years. In old age there was surely a security that youth could never have. For the riot of life was over and the greatest dangers were past.
She longed to stay with Adela that night. She thought of her as security. But she dared not expect anything more from Adela. She had already received a gift which she had surely not deserved, a gift which few women, if indeed any other woman, would have given her.
She looked towards the open door and saw the footman’s flat back, and narrow head covered with carefully plastered hair. He was calling now with both hands to his mouth: “Taxi! Taxi!”