Vera Part 16

'What is it, little Love?' asked Wemyss.

'Kiss me,' she said; and he laughed and kissed her, but hastily, because he wanted her to go on admiring the view.

She still, however, held up her face. 'Kiss my eyes,' she whispered, keeping them shut. 'They're tired----'

He laughed again, but with a slight impatience, and kissed her eyes; and then, suddenly struck by her little blind face so close to his, the strong light from the big window showing all its delicate curves and delicious softnesses, his Lucy's face, his own little wife's, he kissed her really, as she loved him to kiss her, becoming absorbed only in his love.

'Oh, I love you, love you----' murmured Lucy, clinging to him, making secret vows of sensibleness, of wholesomeness, of a determined, unfailing future simplicity.

'Aren't we happy,' he said, pausing in his kisses to gaze down at what was now his face, for was it not much more his than hers? Of course it was his. She never saw it, except when she specially went to look, but he saw it all the time; she only had duties in regard to it, but he was on the higher plane of only having joys. She washed it, but he kissed it. And he kissed it when he liked and as much as ever he liked. 'Isn't it wonderful being married,' he said, gazing down at this delightful thing that was his very own for ever.

'Oh--wonderful!' murmured Lucy, opening her eyes and gazing into his.

Her face broke into a charming smile. 'You have the dearest eyes,' she said, putting up her finger and gently tracing his eyebrows with it.

Wemyss's eyes, full at that moment of love and pride, were certainly dear eyes, but a noise at the other end of the room made Lucy jump so in his arms, gave her apparently such a fright, that when he turned his head to see who it was daring to interrupt them, daring to startle his little girl like that, and beheld the parlourmaid, his eyes weren't dear at all but very angry.

The parlourmaid had come in with the coffee; and seeing the two interlaced figures against the light of the big window had pulled up short, uncertain what to do. This pulling up had jerked a spoon off its saucer onto the floor with a loud rattle because of the floor not having a carpet on it and being of polished oak, and it was this noise that made Lucy jump so excessively that her jump actually made Wemyss jump too.

In the parlourmaid's untrained phraseology there had been a good deal of billing and cooing during luncheon, and even in the hall before luncheon there were examples of it, but what she found going on in the library was enough to make anybody stop dead and upset things,--it was such, she said afterwards in the kitchen, that if she didn't know for a fact that they were really married she wouldn't have believed it. Married people in the parlourmaid's experience didn't behave like that. What affection there was was exhibited before, and not after, marriage. And she went on to describe the way in which Wemyss--thus briefly and irreverently did they talk of their master in the kitchen--had flown at her for having come into the library. 'After telling me to,' she said. 'After saying, "We'll 'ave coffee in the library."' And they all agreed, as they had often before agreed, that if it weren't that he was in London half the time they wouldn't stay in the place five minutes.

Meanwhile Wemyss and Lucy were sitting side by side in two enormous chairs facing the unlit library fire drinking their coffee. The fire was only lit in the evenings, explained Wemyss, after the 1st of April; the weather ought to be warm enough by then to do without fires in the daytime, and if it wasn't it was its own look-out.

'Why did you jump so?' he asked. 'You gave me such a start. I couldn't think what was the matter.'

'I don't know,' said Lucy, faintly flushing. 'Perhaps'--she smiled at him over the arm of the enormous chair in which she almost totally disappeared--'because the maid caught us.'

'Caught us?'

'Being so particularly affectionate.'

'I like that,' said Wemyss. 'Fancy feeling guilty because you're being affectionate to your own husband.'

'Oh, well,' laughed Lucy, 'don't forget I haven't had him long.'

'You're such a complicated little thing. I shall have to take you seriously in hand and teach you to be natural. I can't have you having all sorts of finicking ideas about not doing this and not doing the other before servants. Servants don't matter. I never consider them.'

'I wish you had considered the poor parlourmaid,' said Lucy, seeing that he was in an unoffended frame of mind. 'Why did you give her such a dreadful scolding?'

'Why? Because she made you jump so. You couldn't have jumped more if you had thought it was a ghost. I won't have your flesh being made to creep.'

'But it crept much worse when I heard the things you said to her.'

'Nonsense. These people have to be kept in order. What did the woman mean by coming in like that?'

'Why, you told her to bring us coffee.'

'But I didn't tell her to make an infernal noise by dropping spoons all over the place.'

'That was because she got just as great a fright when she saw us as I did when I heard her.'

'I don't care what she got. Her business is not to drop things. That's what I pay her for. But look here--don't you go thinking such a lot of tangled-up things and arguing. Do, for goodness sake, try and be simple.'

'I feel _very_ simple,' said Lucy, smiling and putting out her hand to him, for his face was clouding. 'Do you know, Everard, I believe what's the matter with me is that I'm _too_ simple.'

Wemyss roared, and forgot how near he was getting to being hurt. 'You simple! You're the most complicated----'

'No I'm not. I've got the untutored mind and uncontrolled emotions of a savage. That's really why I jumped.'

'Lord,' laughed Wemyss, 'listen to her how she talks. Anybody might think she was clever, saying such big long words, if they didn't know she was just her Everard's own little wife. Come here, my little savage--come and sit on your husband's knee and tell him all about it.'

He held out his arms, and Lucy got up and went into them and he rocked her and said, 'There, there--was it a little untutored savage then----'

But she didn't tell him all about it, first because by now she knew that to tell him all about anything was asking for trouble, and second because he didn't really want to know. Everard, she was beginning to realise with much surprise, preferred not to know. He was not merely incurious as to other people's ideas and opinions, he definitely preferred to be unconscious of them.

This was a great contrast to the restless curiosity and interest of her father and his friends, to their insatiable hunger for discussion, for argument; and it much surprised Lucy. Discussion was the very salt of life for them,--a tireless exploration of each other's ideas, a clashing of them together, and out of that clashing the creation of fresh ones.

To Everard, Lucy was beginning to perceive, discussion merely meant contradiction, and he disliked contradiction, he disliked even difference of opinion. 'There's only one way of looking at a thing, and that's the right way,' as he said, 'so what's the good of such a lot of talk?'

The right way was his way; and though he seemed by his direct, unswerving methods to succeed in living mentally in a great calm, and though after the fevers of her father's set this was to her immensely restful, was it really a good thing? Didn't it cut one off from growth?

Didn't it shut one in an isolation? Wasn't it, frankly, rather like death? Besides, she had doubts as to whether it were true that there was only one way of looking at a thing, and couldn't quite believe that his way was invariably the right way. But what did it matter after all, thought Lucy, snuggled up on his knee with one arm round his neck, compared to the great, glorious fact of their love? That at least was indisputable and splendid. As to the rest, truth would go on being truth whether Everard saw it or not; and if she were not going to be able to talk over things with him she could anyhow kiss him, and how sweet that was, thought Lucy. They understood each other perfectly when they kissed. What, indeed, when such sweet means of communion existed, was the good of a lot of talk?

'I believe you're asleep' said Wemyss, looking down at the face on his breast.

'Sound,' said Lucy, smiling, her eyes shut.

'My baby.'

'My Everard.'

XVIII

But this only lasted as long as his pipe lasted. When that was finished he put her off his knee, and said he was now ready to gratify her impatience and show her everything; they would go over the house first, and then the garden and outbuildings.

No woman was ever less impatient than Lucy. However, she pulled her hat straight and tried to seem all readiness and expectancy. She wished the wind wouldn't howl so. What an extraordinary dreary place the library was. Well, any place would be dreary at half-past two o'clock on such an afternoon, without a fire and with the rain beating against the window, and that dreadful terrace just outside.

Wemyss stooped to knock out the ashes of his pipe on the bars of the empty grate, and Lucy carefully kept her head turned away from the window and the terrace towards the other end of the room. The other end was filled with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, and the books, in neat rows and uniform editions, were packed so tightly in the shelves that no one but an unusually determined reader would have the energy to wrench one out. Reading was evidently not encouraged, for not only were the books shut in behind gla.s.s doors, but the doors were kept locked and the key hung on Wemyss's watch-chain. Lucy discovered this when Wemyss, putting his pipe in his pocket, took her by the arm and walked her down the room to admire the shelves. One of the volumes caught her eye, and she tried to open the gla.s.s door to take it out and look at it. 'Why,'

she said surprised, 'it's locked.'

'Of course,' said Wemyss.

'Why but then n.o.body can get at them.'

'Precisely.'