Love and Lucy Part 9

"Yes, of course I do," Lucy said, "but I couldn't really--"

"But she is there, my dear ma'am. That's the point. I'll drop you there on my way back. I wish I could stop too, but that's not possible. She'll arrange it."

James thought it an excellent plan; but Lucy had qualms. Odd, that the visit of Eros should a second time be succeeded by a motor-jaunt! To go motoring, again, with a Mr. Urquhart--oh! But she owned that she was absurd. James did not conceal his sarcasms. "She either fears her fate too much..." he quoted at her. She pleaded with him.

"Darling," she said--and he was immensely complacent over that--"I suppose it's a sign of old age, but-- After all, why shouldn't I go by train--or in our own car, if it comes to that?"

"Firstly," said James through his eyegla.s.s, "because Urquhart asks you to go in his--a terror that destroyeth in the noonday compared to ours; and secondly because, if you don't want it, I should rather like to go to Brighton in mine."

"Oh," said she, "then you don't mind motoring in March!"

"Not in a closed car," said James--"and not to Brighton." This acted as an extinguisher of the warmer feelings. Let Mr. Urquhart do his worst then.

CHAPTER IX

SUNDRY ROMANTIC EPISODES

A little cloud of witness, a.s.sembled at will like seagulls out of the blue inane, would come about her in after years. That madly exhilarating rush to Westgate, for instance, on a keen March morning; and that sudden question of hers to Urquhart, "What made you think of asking me?" And his laconic answer, given without a turn of the head, "Because I knew you would like it. You did before, you know. And that was January." There was one. Another, connected with it, was her going alone up to the schoolhouse, and her flush of pleasure when Lancelot said, "Oh, I say, did He bring you down? Good--then we'll go immediately and see the car; perhaps it's a new one." She could afford to recall that--after a long interval. They had had a roaring day, "all over the place," as Lancelot said afterwards to a friend; and then there had been her parting with Urquhart in the dark at the open door of Queendon Court. "Aren't you going to stop?" "No, my dear."

She remembered being amused with that. "Aren't you even coming in?" "I am not. Good-bye. You enjoyed yourself?" "Oh, immensely." "That's what I like," he had said, and "pushed off," as his own phrase went. Atop of that, the return to James, and to nothingness. For nothing happened, except that he had been in a good temper throughout, which may easily have been because she had been in one herself--until the Easter holidays, when he had been very cross indeed. Poor James, to get him to begin to understand Lancelot's bluntness, intensity, and pa.s.sion for something or other, did seem hopeless.

They were at Wycross, on her urgent entreaty, and James was bored at Wycross, she sometimes thought, because she loved it so much.

Jealousy. A man's wife ought to devote herself. She should love nothing but her husband. He had spent his days at the golf course, not coming home to lunch. Urquhart was asked for a Sunday--on Lancelot's account--but couldn't come, or said so at least. Then, on the Sat.u.r.day, when he should have been there, James suddenly kissed her in the garden--and, of course, in the dark.

She hadn't known that he was in the house yet. He had contracted the habit of having tea at the club-house and talking on till dark. He did that, as she believed, because she always read to Lancelot in the evenings: she gave up the holidays entirely to him. Well, Lancelot that afternoon had been otherwise engaged--with friends of a neighbour. She had cried off on the score of "seeing something of Father," at which Lancelot had winked. But James was not in to tea, and at six--and no sign of him--she yielded to the liquid calling of a thrush in the thickening lilacs, and had gone out. There she stayed till it was dark, in a favourite place--a circular garden of her contriving, with a pond, and a golden privet hedge, so arranged as to throw yellow reflections in the water. Standing there, it grew perfectly dark--deeply and softly dark. The night had come down warm and wet, like manifold blue-black gauze. She heard his quick, light step. Her heart hammered, but she did not move. He came behind her, clasped and held her close. "Oh, you've come--I wondered. Oh, how sweet, how sweet--" And then "My love!" had been said, and she had been kissed. In a moment he was gone. She had stayed on motionless, enthralled by the beauty of the act--and when she had withdrawn herself at last, and had tiptoed to the house, she saw his lamp on the table, and himself reading the _Spectator_ before a wood fire!

Recalling all that, she remembered the happy little breath of laughter which had caught her. "If it wasn't so perfectly sweet and beautiful, it would be the most comic thing in the world!" she had said to herself.

A telegram from Jimmy Urquhart came that night just before dinner.

"Arriving to-morrow say ten-thirty for an hour or so, Urquhart." It was sent from St. James's Street. Lancelot had said, "Stout fellow,"

and James took it quite well. She herself remembered her feeling of annoyance, how clearly she foresaw an interrupted reverie and a hampered Sunday--and also how easily he had falsified her prevision.

There had been an animated morning of garden inspection, in the course of which she had shown him (with a softly fluttering heart and perhaps enhanced colour) the hedged oval of last night's romance; a pony race; a game of single cricket in the paddock--Lancelot badly beaten; lunch, and great debate with James about aeroplanes, wherein Lancelot showed himself a bitter and unscrupulous adversary of his parent. Finally, the trial of the new car: an engine of destruction such as Lancelot had never dreamed of. It was admittedly too high-powered for England; you were across the county in about a minute. And then he had departed in a kind of thunderstorm of his own making. Lancelot, preternaturally moved, said to his mother, "I say, Mamma, what a man--eh?" She, lightly, "Yes, isn't he wonderful?" and Lancelot, with a snort: "A man? Ten rather small men--easily." And James, poor James, saw nothing kissable in that!

It hadn't been till May of that year that Lucy began to think about Urquhart--or rather it was in May that she discovered herself to be thinking about him. Mabel a.s.sisted her there. Mabel was in Cadogan Square for the season, and the sisters saw much of each other. Now it happened that one day Mabel had seen Lucy with Urquhart walking down Bond Street, at noon or thereabouts, and had pa.s.sed by on the other side with no more than a wave of the hand. It was all much simpler than it looked, really, because Lucy had been to James's office, which was in Cork Street, and coming away had met Jimmy Urquhart in Burlington Gardens. He had strolled on with her, and was telling her that he had been waterplaning on Chichester Harbour and was getting rather bitten with the whole business of flight. "I'm too old, I know, but I'm still a.s.s enough to take risks. I think I shall get the ticket," he had said. What ticket? The pilot's ticket, or whatever they might call it. "I expect you are too old," she had said, and then-- "How old are you, by the way?" He told her. "We call it forty-two." "Exactly James's age; and exactly ten years older than me.

Yes, too old. I think I wouldn't."

He had laughed. "I'm certain I shall. It appeals to me." Then he had told her, "The first time I saw a man flying I a.s.sure you I could have shed tears." She remembered that this was out of his power. "Odd thing! What's gravitation to me, or I to gravitation? A commonplace whereby I walk the world. Never mind. There was that young man breaking a law of this planet. Well--that's a miracle. I tell you I might have wept. And then I said to myself, "My man, you'll do this or perish." Then she: "And have you done it?" and he: "I have not, but I'm going to." She had suddenly said, "No, please don't." His quick look at her she remembered, and the suffusion on his burnt face. "Oh, but I shall. Do you wish to know why? Because you don't mean it; because you wouldn't like me if I obeyed you." She said gravely, "You can't know that." "Yes, but I do. You like me--a.s.sume that--" Lucy said, "You may"; and he, "I do. You like me because I am such as I am.

If I obeyed you in this I should cease to be such as I am and become such as I am not and never have been. You might like me more--but you might not. No, that's too much of a risk. I can't afford it." She had said, "That's absurd," but she hadn't thought it so.

Mabel came to her for lunch and rallied her. "I saw you, my dear. But I wouldn't spoil sport. All right--you might do much worse. He's very much alive. Anyhow, he doesn't wear an--" Then Lucy was hurt. "Oh, Mabel, that's horrid. You know I hate you to talk like that." Mabel stood rebuked. "It was beastly of me. But you know I never could stand his eyegla.s.s. It is what they call anti-social in their novels.

Really, you might as well live in the Crystal Palace." Then she held out her hand, and Lucy took it after some hesitation. But Mabel was irrepressible. Almost immediately she had jumped into the fray again, with "You're both going to his place in Hampshire, aren't you?" Then Lucy had flushed; and Mabel had given her a queer look.

"That's all right," she presently said. "He asked us, you know, but we can't. I hear that Vera Nugent is to be hostess. I rather liked her, though of course you can never tell how such copious conversation will wear. I don't think she stopped talking for a single moment. Laurence thought he was going mad. It makes him broody, you know, like a hen.

He rubs his ears, and says his wattles are inflamed."

It was either that day, or another such day--it really doesn't matter which day it was--that Mabel drifted into the subject of what she called "the James romance." Did James--? Had James--? And where were we standing now? Lucy, whose feelings upon the subject were more complicated than they had been at first, was not very communicative; but she owned there had been repet.i.tions. Mabel, who was desperately quick to notice, judged that she was mildly bored. "I see," she said; "I see. But--that's all."

"All!" cried Lucy. "Yes, indeed."

Mabel said again, "I see." Lucy, who certainly didn't see, was silent; and then Mabel with appalling candour said, "I suppose you would have it out with him if you weren't afraid to."

Lucy was able to cope with that kind of thing. "Nothing would induce me to do it. I shouldn't be able to lift my head up if I did. It would not only be--well, horrible, but it would be very cruel as well. I should feel myself a brute." On Mabel's shrug she was stung into an attack of her own. "And whatever you may say, to me, I know that you couldn't bring yourself to such a point. No woman could do it, who respected herself." Mabel had the worst of it in the centre, but by a flanking movement recovered most of the ground. She became very vague.

She said, as if to herself, "After all, you know, you may be mistaken.

Perhaps the less you say the better."

Mistaken! And "the less you say"! Lucy's grey eyes took intense direction. "Please tell me what you mean, my dear. Do you think I'm out of my senses? Do you really think I've imagined it all?"

"No, no," said Mabel quickly, and visibly disturbed. "No, no, of course I don't. I really don't know what I meant. It's all too confusing for simple people like you and me. Let's talk about something else." Lucy, to whom the matter was distasteful, agreed; but the thought persisted. Mistaken ... and "the less you say...!"

CHAPTER X

AT A WORLD'S EDGE

It was after that queer look, after her too conscious blush that she began to envisage the state of her affairs. She was going to Martley Thicket for Whitsuntide; it was an old engagement, comparatively old, that is; she did want to go, and now she knew that she did. Well, how much did she want to go? Ought she to want it? What had happened?

Questions thronged her when once she had opened a window. What did it matter to her whether Urquhart qualified as an aviator or not? What had made her ask him not to do it? How had she allowed him to say "a.s.sume that you like me"? The short dialogue stared at her in red letters upon the dark. "a.s.sume that you like me--" "You may a.s.sume it." "I do." She read the packed little sentences over and over, and studied herself with care. No, honestly, nothing jarred. There was no harm; she didn't feel any tarnish upon her. And yet--she was looking forward to Martley Thicket with a livelier blood than she had felt since Easter when James had kissed her in the shrouded garden. A livelier blood? Hazarding the looking-gla.s.s, she thought that she could detect a livelier iris too. What had happened? Well, of course, the answer to that question was involved in another: how much was she to a.s.sume? How much did Urquhart like her? She hoped, against conviction, that she might have answered these questions before she met him again--which would probably be at Martley. Just now, stoutly bearing her disapproval, he was doubtless at Byfleet or elsewhere risking his neck. She answered a question possibly arising out of this by a shrewd smile. "Of course I don't disapprove. He knows that. I shiver; but I know he's perfectly right. He may be sure." The meeting at Martley would, at the very least, be extremely interesting. She left it there for the moment.

But having once begun to pay attention to such matters as these, she pursued her researches--in and out of season. It was a busy time of year, and James always laid great stress on what he called "the duties of her station." She must edge up crowded stairways behind him, stand at his side in hot and humming rooms where the head spun with the effort not to hear what other people were saying--so much more important, always, than what your partner was. James's height and eyegla.s.s seemed to give him an impartial air at these dreadful ceremonies. Behind his gla.s.s disk he could afford to be impertinent.

And he was certainly rude enough to be an Under-Secretary. Without that shining buckler of the soul he would have been simply n.o.body; with it, he was a demi-G.o.d. Here then, under the very shadow of his immortality, Lucy pursued her researches. What of the romantic, hidden, eponymous James? Where did he stand now in her regard?

Since Easter at Wycross, James had not been her veiled Eros, but the possibilities were all there. He was not a garden G.o.d, by any means, nor a genius of the Spring. January and Onslow Square had not frozen his currents; February and the Opera House had heightened his pa.s.sion.

At any moment he might resume his devotional habit--even here in Carlton House Terrace. And what then? Well--and this was odd--this ought to have produced a state of tension very trying to the nerves; and, well--it hadn't. That's all. At that very party in Carlton House Terrace, with a band braying under the stairs, and a fat lord shouting in her ear, her secret soul was trembling on a brink. She was finding out to her half-rueful dismay--it was only half--that she was prepared to be touched, prepared to be greatly impressed, but not prepared to be thrilled as she had been, if James should kiss her again. She was prepared, in fact, to present--as statesmen do when they write to their sovereign--her grateful, humble duty--and no more.

In vain the band brayed, in vain Lord J----, crimson by her ear, roared about the weather in the West of Ireland, Lucy's soul was peering over the edge of her old world into the stretches of a misty new one.

This was bad enough, and occupied her through busy nights and days; but there was more disturbing matter to come, stirred up to cloud her mind by Mabel's unwonted discretion. Mabel had been more than discreet. She had been frightened. Pushing out into a stream of new surmise, she had suddenly faltered and hooked at the quay. Lucy herself was at first merely curious. She had no doubts, certainly no fears. What had been the matter with Mabel, when she hinted that perhaps, after all, James had never done anything? What could Mabel know, or guess, or suspect? Lucy owned to herself, candidly, that James was incomprehensible. After thirteen years, or was it fourteen?--suddenly--with no warning symptoms, to plunge into such devotion as never before, when everything had been new, and he only engaged--! Men were like that when they were engaged. They aren't certain of one, and leave no chances. But James, even as an engaged man, had always been certain. He had taken her, and everything else, for granted. She remembered how her sisters, not only Mabel, but the critical Agnes (now Mrs. Riddell in the North), had discussed him and found him too c.o.c.ksure to be quite gallant. Kissed her? Of course he had kissed her. Good Heavens. Yes, but not as he had that night at the Opera. "You darling! You darling!" Now James had called her "my darling" as often as you please--but never until then "you darling."

There's a world of difference. Anybody can see it.

And then--after the beautiful, the thrilling, the deeply touching episode--the moment after it--there was the old, indifferent, slightly bored James with the screwed eye and the disk. Not a hint, not a ripple, not the remains of a flush. It was the most bewildering, the most baffling jig-saw of a business she had ever heard of. You would have said that he was two quite separate people; you might have said--Mabel would have said at once--that James had had nothing to do with it.

But she _had_ said so! The discovery stabbed Lucy in the eyes like a flash of lightning, left her blind and quivering, with a swim of red before her hurt vision. That was why Mabel had been frightened. And now Lucy herself was frightened.

Francis Lingen, absurd! Mr. Urquhart? Ah, that was quite another thing. She grew hot, she grew quite cold, and suddenly she began to sob. Oh, no, no, not that. A flood of tossing thoughts came rioting and racing in, flinging crests of foam, like white and beaten water.

She for a time was swept about, a weed in this fury of storm. She was lost, effortless, at death's threshold. But she awoke herself from the nightmare, walked herself about, and reason returned. It was nonsense, unwholesome nonsense. Why, that first time, he was in the library with James and Francis Lingen, his second visit to the house! Why, when she was at the Opera he had been at Peltry with the Mabels. And as for Wycross, he had wired from St. James's in the afternoon, and come on the next day. Absurd--and thank G.o.d for it. And poor Francis Lingen!

She could afford to laugh at that. Francis Lingen was as capable of kissing the d.u.c.h.ess of Westbury--at whose horrible party she had been the other night--as herself.

She felt very safe, and enormously relieved. So much so that she could afford herself the reflection that if hardihood had been all that was wanting, Jimmy Urquhart would have had plenty and to spare. Oh, yes, indeed. But--thank G.o.d again--he was a gentleman if ever there was one. n.o.body but a gentleman could afford to be so simple in dealing.

Having worked all this out, she felt that her feet at least were on solid ground. A spirit of adventure was renewed in her, and a rather unfortunate _contretemps_ provoked it. Before she knew where she was, she was up to the neck, as Urquhart would have said, in a turbid stream.

Francis Lingen, that elegant unfortunate, was certainly responsible, if you could call one so tentative and clinging responsible for anything. He had proposed the Flower Show, to which she had been, as an earnest gardener, early in the morning, by herself, with a note-book. She did not want to go with him at all; and moreover she had an appointment to meet James at a wedding affair in Queen's Gate.

However, being ridiculously amiable where the pale-haired hectic was concerned, go she did, and sat about at considerable length. He had only cared to look at the sweet-peas, his pa.s.sion of the hour, and urged a chair upon her that he might the better do what he really liked, look at her and talk about himself. So he did, and read her a poem, and made great play with his tenderness, his dependence upon her judgment and his crosses with the world. He pleaded for tea, which, ordered, did not come; then hunted for the motor, which finally she found for herself. She arrived late at Queen's Gate; the eyegla.s.s glared in horror. James, indeed, was very cross. What any chance victim of his neighbourhood may have endured is not to be known. So far as Lucy could see he did not open his mouth once while he was there. He refused all nourishment with an angry gleam, and seemed wholly bent upon making her self-conscious, uncomfortable and, finally, indignant. Upon this goodly foundation he reared his mountain of affront.