So Nina put on one of her male guises and went to visit him dressed in the clerical dog collar.
She appeared round about tea-time, knowing that if a clergyman presented himself at that hour, it was a given that he would be invited to share it by Terrance’s mother.
And so it was. Within two minutes of sending in a card, “Father Martin” was seated on the best horsehair sofa across from Mrs. Kendal and a rather bored-looking Terrance, nibbling on a watercress sandwich and drinking rather insipid tea. It was such a typical example of a stolid, middle-class sitting room that it could have been photographed and framed as a representative of its kind. The wallpaper was mauve, with great cabbage-roses climbing all over it. The woodwork was dark and shining with wax. The furniture was covered in mauve plush; there were small tables crowded with “curiosities” everywhere a table could be put, hand-embroidered firescreens, hand-embroidered cushions, hand-embroidered footstools—evidently Mrs. Kendal had a great deal of time on her hands and from the paucity of books in the room, did not care to pass it in reading. Mrs. Kendal was one of those blonde women who looked like roses in their youth, but faded rather quickly, like a printed chintz that has been washed too many times. She was thin—Nina rather suspected she lived on tea and toast and the occasional bowl of broth—her hair was now an indeterminate shade between silver and straw, her eyes were the pale blue of a sky with a thin haze of high cloud over it, and her voice was scarcely louder than a whisper.
Even her gown seemed a faded black, rather than the uncompromising color of full mourning. If there had been any less of her, she would have been a ghost herself.
Nina had long experience of reading mortals, and with the thoughts of those she absorbed, and it was easy to categorize this woman. Very pretty, by nature docile, she had been taught that was all she had to be in order to achieve the acme of all possible goals, a Good Marriage. She had been schooled and catechized within an inch of her life in the most rigid form of religion, and frightened by a nanny and teachers and clergymen into a petrified fear of ever “being naughty.” And because of this, she made a modest social success of herself. Her looks eclipsed her timidity, and her fear of practically everything was interpreted as shyness and an attractive modesty. She went where she was led, did what she was told, probably responded to her suitor’s proposal of marriage with “All right.” Once married, she was bullied by husband, parents, siblings, teachers, and son, and probably by her own servants.
She was as afraid of a social faux pas as she was of a sin, and to feel anything at all strongly, to break the surface serenity of the household, was the worst of all social faux pas. Every household book, every tome on proper wifely duties, preached this. This was at least partly where Terrance got his own cold-bloodedness; she had never had a passion in her life, or at least, she had never dared to allow herself to feel one. And life escaped her because she had never dared to grasp any of it; not youth, not joy, not love or romance. The only thing she had felt strongly enough about to try to hold it was her son, and she clung to him like a strangling vine, which made him all the more determined to shove her aside. This, of course, she refused to see. In her world of sentimental ballads and mottoes, the few tomes of what passed for fiction that she got from the lending library, this was how it was. Terrance was her “darling boy” who must, of course, be devoted to his invalid mother. He would never do anything to upset her. She had, after all, devoted her life to him, delicate as she was. She had no idea that every time she spoke those words, she increased his distaste for her company.
This was not helped by her pathetic conversation; the small gossip of the ladies of her charity-sewing group, timidly ventured opinions on the state of the world that she immediately discarded if Terrance frowned, complaints about all the “foreigners” in Blackpool, tales of woe about the servants.
As Nina listened to her nervous chatter, she thought to herself that there must be hundreds of women like her in Blackpool alone, and that they would be absurdly easy to exploit and devour. A little kindness, a bit of attention, and the right word at the right time would turn women like her into devoted slaves, who would passionately defend their chosen idol against anyone that criticized him or even failed to worship at his altar. It would have to be a man that attracted their devotion, of course. That sort of interest in another woman was “unhealthy” and highly suspicious, for no real woman could be so strong as to deserve the slavish devotion of others of her sex.
Like the orphanage, Nina filed that away in the back of her mind as another rich source of sustenance. The disadvantage would be that she would have to be a clergyman, of course.
But a few complaints about the indifference of Mrs. Kendal’s doctors made her revise that. A doctor . . . that had a number of advantages. A doctor with a new scheme for invalid women—something pleasant, rather than extreme, like vegetarianism, or cold water baths, or cereal flakes for every meal. Something involving a great deal of tea. And sweets. And perhaps opium-laced cordials . . .
But for right now, her attention was on Terrance. With patience and skill, she insinuated into Mrs. Kendal’s mind the idea that “the men” had important things to talk about, things that she was neither clever enough to understand, nor worldly enough to bear. Yet at the same time, Nina managed to insinuate that Father Martin did not feel these things, though her son might; Father Martin only feared that these matters were too weighty for a creature as delicate as she, and actually considered her to be the wisest and most gracious of women.
So, when it was clear that there would be no more afternoon visitors for tea, Mrs. Kendal pled her fragile health and left them alone. That was when Father Martin heaved a sigh, and leaned forward towards Terrance in a confidential manner, his expression turning earnest and grave.
“I would not for all the world have wanted your dear mother to hear this,” “he” said quietly, “But I must ask you something, man to man. What do you know of that dancing woman, the Russian? The one all the papers had stories about—the one in that shipwreck. You know of whom I am speaking, I know.”
“Nina Tchereslavsky,” Terrance said automatically, flushing. “Nothing much, I’ve seen her act at the music hall a few times. I read the stories in the papers. She’s accounted to be a handsome enough woman, I suppose, but certainly—really, Father Martin, she is a dancer in a music-hall who shows her limbs to anyone with tuppance, when it all comes down to it. Our paths are scarcely likely to cross, and if they did, I should hope she would know her place. Why?”
Father Martin heaved a great sigh. “Because, Mr. Kendal, the woman is a Jezebel, and I have reason to believe she is interested in you.”
Terrance’s eyes lit up, and his brow grew moist, but he probably thought he had schooled his features into indifference. He shrugged. “Me? I don’t believe I have been to the music-hall more than twice or thrice in my lifetime. Whatever do you mean?”
He did not ask what a less self-centered man would have asked, which was “How do you know that?” He did not ask what a cleverer man would have asked, which was “Why should someone like that be interested in a man who has never so much as sent his card backstage?” And he did not ask what practically anyone else would have asked, which was “What business is it of yours?” He did not ask these things because he was under the impression that the comings and goings and doings of Terrance Kendal were naturally the interest of all the world. He had a fine appreciation of himself, and took it for granted that everyone else should. If anything, he took this as the signal that the world was finally paying him the sort of attention that it should.