Love and Lucy
nineteenth, not to dine, Lucy said, "Oh, what a bore!" and seeing the
mild shock inflicted on the eyeglass by her remark, explained that it
was Lancelot's day for going to school, and that she was always
depressed at such times. The eyeglass dropped, and its master
stretched out his fine long legs, with a great display of black
speckled sock. "My dear, absurd as it may seem, they are coming to see
Me. I know your little way. You shan't be disturbed, if I may be
indulged so far as to contrive that the house hold us both. I had
thought that it would be only civil to bring them in to you for a
minute or two, when they've done. But that is for you to decide."
She was immediately penitent. "Oh, do, of course. I daresay they will
be useful. I'm very foolish to miss him so much." The eyeglass
ruefully stared at the fire.
"Urquhart consents," said James, "and Lingen will have his money.
More snuff-boxes, you'll find. But he's had to work for it. Insured
his life--and a letter from Sir Giles, which must have cost him
something." Sir Giles Lingen was the uncle of Francis, a childless
veteran. He turned his disk upon her for a moment. "You like
Urquhart?"
"Yes," Lucy said, "I do. I like him--because he likes Lancelot."
"Ah," said James, who thought her weak where the boy was concerned. He
added, "Urquhart gets on with children. He's a child himself."
"Why do you call him that?" she asked, with a tinge of offence in her
voice. James could raise the fine hairs at the back of her neck by a
mere inflection.
He accepted battle. "Because he only thinks of one thing at a time.
Because to get what he wants he'll sacrifice every mortal thing--very
often the thing itself which he's after."
But Lucy had heard all that before, and wasn't impressed. "All men are
like that," she said. "I could give you a much better reason."
James and his eyeglass both smiled. "Your exquisite reason?"
"He is like a child," said Lucy, "because he doesn't know that
anybody is looking at him, and wouldn't care if anybody was."
James clasped his shin. "Not bad," he said, "not at all bad. But the
test of that is the length to which you can carry it. Would he wear a
pot hat with a frock-coat?--that's the crux."
It really was, to James, as she knew very well. She perused the
glowing fire with its blue salt flames. Perhaps to most men. Probably
also to Mr. Urquhart. But she felt that she would be lowering a
generous ideal if she probed any further: so James was left to his
triumph.
* * * * *
The fatal week wore on apace; one of the few remaining days was wholly
occupied with preparations for the last. A final jaunt together was
charged with a poignancy of unavailing regrets which made it a harder
trial than the supreme moment. Never, never, had she thought this
bright and intense living thing which she had made, so beautiful and
so dear. Nor did it make a straw's worth of difference to the passion
with which she was burdened that she felt precisely the same thing
every time he left her. As for Lancelot, he took her obvious trouble
like the gentleman he was. He regretted it, made no attempt to
conceal that, but was full of little comfortable suggestions which
made her want to cry. "You'll have no more sapping upstairs directly
after dinner, I suppose!" was one of them; another was, "No more
draughty adventures by the Round Pond." Lucy thought that she would
have stood like Jane Shore by the Round Pond, in a blizzard, for
another week of him. But she adored him for his intention, and was
also braced by it. Her sister Mabel, who had three boys, did not
conceal her satisfaction at the approaching release--but Mabel spent
Christmas at Peltry; and the hunting was a serious matter.
The worst of her troubles was over when they were at Victoria.
Lancelot immediately became one of a herd. And so did she: one of a
herd of hens at the pond's edge. Business was business. Lancelot
remained kind to her, but he was inflexible. This was no place for
tears. He even deprecated the last hug, the lingering of the last
kiss. He leaned nonchalantly at the window, he kept his eye on her;
she dared not have a tear. The train moved; he lifted one hand. "So
long," he said, and turned to his high affairs. She was almost aghast
to realise how very small, how very pale, how atomy he looked--to
confront a howling world! And so to listen to the comfortable words
of Mrs. Furnivall-Briggs. "My dear, they've no use for us. The utmost
we can do is to see that they have good food. And warm socks. I am
untiring about warm socks. That is what I am always girding my
committee about. I tell the Vicar, 'My dear sir, I will give you their
souls, if you leave me their soles.' Do you see? He is so much amused.
But he is a very human person. Except at the altar. _There_ he's every
inch the priest. Well, good-bye. I thought Lancelot looked delightful.
He's taller than my Geoff. But I must fly. I have a meeting of workers
at four-fifteen. Bless me, I had no idea it was four o'clock. The
parish-room, Alphonse." A Spartan mother.
Lucy paid two calls, on people who were out, and indulged herself with
shopping in Sloane Street. Lancelot had recently remarked on her
gloves. "You have jolly thin hands," he had said. "It's having good
gloves, I expect." The memory of such delightful sayings encouraged
her to be extravagant. She thought that perhaps he would find her
ankles worth a moment--if she took pains with them. Anyhow, he was
worth dressing for. James never noticed anything--or if he did, his
ambiguity was two-edged. "Extraordinary hat," he might say, and drop
his eyeglass, which always gave an air of finality to comments of the
sort. But her shopping done, for Lancelot's sake, life stretched
before her a grey waste. She went back to tea, to a novel, to a weekly
paper full of photographs of other people's houses, dogs, children and
motor-cars. It was dark, she was bored as well as child-sick,
dissatisfied with herself as well as heart-hungry. She must get
herself something to do, she said. Who was the Vicar of Onslow Square?
She didn't know. Somehow, religion, to her, had always seemed such a
very private affair. Not a soul must be near her when she said her
prayers--except Lancelot, of course. When he was at home she always
said them while he said his. Last night--ah, she had not been able to
say anything last night. All her faculties had been bent to watching
him at it. Was it bravery in him--or insensibility? She remembered Mr.
Urquhart had talked about it. "All boys are born stoics," he said,
"and all girls Epicureans. That's the instinct. They change places
when they grow up." Was James an Epicurean?
It was six o'clock. They would be at their meeting in James's room.
Surely they wouldn't want tea? Apparently Crewdson thought that they
might, otherwise--well, she would leave it to Crewdson. James never
seemed to care for anything done by anybody except Crewdson. Sometimes
he seemed to resent it. "Have we no servants then?" the eyeglass
seemed to inquire. She wondered if James knew for how much his
eyeglass was answerable. How could one like to be kissed, with that
glaring disk coming nearer and nearer? And if it dropped just at the
moment--well, it seemed simply to change all one's feelings. Oh, to
have her arms round Lancelot's salient young body, and hear him
murmur, "Oh, I say!" as she kissed his neck!...
At this moment, being very near to tears, the light was switched off.
She seemed to be drowning in dark. That was a favourite trick of
Lancelot's, who had no business, as a matter of fact, in his father's
room. It gave her a moment of tender joy, and for another she played
with the thought of him, tiptoeing towards her. Suddenly, all in the
dark, she felt a man's arms about her, and a man's lips upon hers. To
wild alarm succeeded warm gratitude. Lucy sobbed ever so lightly; her
head fell back before the ardent advance; her eyes closed. With
parted lips she drank deep of a new consolation: her heart drummed a
tune to which, as it seemed, her wings throbbed the answer. The kiss
was a long one--perhaps a full thirty seconds--but she was released
all too soon. He left her as he had come, on silent feet. The light
was turned up; everything looked as it had been, but everything was
not. She was not. She found herself an Ariadne, in a drawing-room,
still lax from Theseus' arms. Yes, but Theseus was next door, and
would come back to her.
To say that she was touched is to say little. She was more elated than
touched, and more interested than either. How utterly romantic, how
perfectly sweet, how thoughtful, how ardent of James! James, of all
people in the world! Her husband, of course: but who knew better than
she what that office had implied--and who less than she what it must
have hidden? Really, was it true? Could it be true?
For some time she sat luxurious where she had been left, gloating (the
word is fairly used) over this new treasure. But then she jumped up
and looked at herself in the glass, curiously, quizzingly, and even
perhaps shamefaced. Next she laughed, richly and from a full heart.
"My dear girl, it's not hard to see what has happened to you. You've
been--" Not even in her thoughts did she care to end the sentence. But
those shining dark eyes, that air of floating, of winged feet--"Ha, my
dear, upon my word! At thirty-one, my child. Really, it becomes you
uncommonly."
She found herself now walking swiftly up and down the room, clasping
and unclasping her hands. To think that James--the last man in the
world--had kept this up his coat-sleeve for years--and at last--! And
how like the dear thing to turn the light out! To save his own face,
of course, for he must have known, even _he_ must have known, that
_she_ wouldn't have cared. She would have liked the light--to see his
eyes! There had been no eyeglass this time, anyhow. But that was it.
That was a man's romance. In _Cupid and Psyche_, it had been Psyche
who had wanted to know, to see. Women were like that. Such realists.
And, as Psyche was, they were always sorry for it afterwards. Well,
bless him, he should love her in the dark, or how he pleased.
She stopped again--again in front of the glass. What had he seen--what
new thing had he seen to make him--want to kiss her like that?
Was she pretty? She supposed that she really was. She fingered the
crinkled whiteness at her neck; touched herself here and there; turned
her head sideways, and patted her hair, lifting her chin. Now, was
there anything she could put on--something she could put in--for
dinner? Her thoughts were now turned to serious matters--this and that
possibility flashed across her mind. They were serious matters,
because James had made them so by his most extraordinary, most
romantic, most beautiful action. Then she stretched out her hands, the
palms upward, and sighed out her heart. "Oh, what a load is lightened.
Oh, days to come!"
Voices in the conservatory suddenly made her heart beat violently. He
was coming! She heard James say--oh, the rogue!--"Yes, it's rather
nice. We put it up directly we came. Lucy's idea. Mind the little step
at the door, though." Urquhart, Francis Lingen were in the
room--Francis' topknot stood up like a bottle-brush. Then came the
hero of the evening, James, the unknown Eros. She beamed into the
shining disk. Sweet old spyglass, she would never abuse it again. All
the same, he had pocketed it for the occasion the last time he had
been in the room!
Urquhart refused tea. "Tea at seven o'clock at night!" All her eyes
were for James, who had sought her in love and given her heart again.
The eyeglass expressed its horror of tea at seven o'clock. "God
forbid," said James, dear, ridiculous creature.