X DERRICK As I have said before, many women who possess children are not mothers. Derrick's was one of these. She was a feline woman, with red hair, a good figure, and an amount of restless energy that was almost uncomfortable. Home meant to her a place to have her meals inscarcely that, for she preferred her friends' houses for lunch and a restaurant for dinner, while her breakfast she habitually took in bed. Her energy was treadmill energy that led nowhere, a restless, feverish desire to be always amusing herself, never mind how or when or where. Theatres, dinners, dances, races, anything would serve as an excuse for dressing, for going out, for rushing here, there, and everywhere, in and out of taxis, just catching a train. She was a fin de siècle, electric woman, all glare and brilliancy,—no repose about her. Her graceful thinness, her small hands, her quick movements, held no suggestion of a possible stillness; she gave you the impression of perpetual motion, that if she ran down she would run out and the life in her would cease. When there was "nothing on," when there was no form of amusement progressing in which she could partake, she went to bed with a history of violent neuralgia, and solaced herself with chloral until the next excitement. Such a woman as this has no leisure in her life for the prattle of little voices, no time for the garrulousness of loving children looking for sympathy to Mummy's smiling face. It is a mystery to me how Derrick's mother ever found time to have children at all; but that was in the past, and when I knew her and Derrick there were two of them : I was told there had been more. I believed it; because not all babies can bear the cold of a motherless world, and Nita Crisp's children were motherless. Derrick was seven when I had my first introduction to him, and Phyllis eight. It was during a lunch-party at the Crisps' house, and some one, some misguided person who did not know Nita, asked that the children might be sent for. I, who had visited there for twelve months, did not even know of their existence, but joined my voice with that of the lady who had suggested seeing them. Nita yielded, though not with her usual grace. They came down-their very entrance into the room told the whole story: two little ones, holding each other's hand; |