Love and Lucy
Mr. Urquhart talked at once of Lancelot. "Well, he's off with all the
rest of them. They love it, you know. It's movement--it's towards the
unknown, the not impossible--the 'anything might turn up at any
minute.' Now, we don't feel so sure about the minutes, do we?"
Oh, don't we though? She laughed and tilted her chin. "We feel,
anyhow, for _their_ minutes, bless them," she said, and Urquhart
looked at her with narrowed eyes.
"'He for God only, she for God in him,'" he said. He added, "I like
that boy of yours. I think he understands me"--and pleased her.
There were a few minutes' desultory talk, in the course of which Lucy
gravitated towards James, and finally put her hand in his arm. You
should have seen the effect of this simple caress upon the eyeglass.
Like a wounded snake it lifted its head to ask, "Who has struck me?"
It wavered and wagged. But Lucy was glass-proof now.
Urquhart said that he was going away shortly, at least he supposed he
should. A man he knew wanted to try a new motor. They were to rush
down to Biarritz, and possibly over the frontier to Pampluna. But
nothing was arranged. Here he looked scrutinising and half quizzical
at her. "Are you adventurously inclined? Will you try my monster? It's
a dragon."
She was very adventurously inclined--as James might know! but not with
a Mr. Urquhart necessarily: therefore she hesitated. "Oh, I don't
really know--" Urquhart laughed. "Be bold--be bold--be not too bold.
Well, there it is. I start for the Newmarket road at eleven
to-morrow--but I'll fetch you for twopence. Ask _him_." He jerked his
head forward towards James, on whose arm her hand rested. Lucy looked
up at her romantic lord--a look which might have made a man proud. But
James may have been proud enough already. At any rate, he didn't see
her look, but was genial to Urquhart--over whom he considered that he
had triumphed in the library.
"Sooner her than me," he said. "I know that she likes it and so advise
her to go. But I should die a thousand deaths."
"She won't," said Urquhart; and then to Lucy, "Well, ma'am?"
Her eyes assented before she did. "Very well, I'll come. I dare say it
will be delightful."
"Oh, it will," he said.
Still he rambled on--plain, grumbling, easy, familiar talk, while Lucy
fumed and fidgeted to be alone with her joy and pride. "Your handsome
sister has asked me to hunt in Essex. Don't like hunting, but I do
like her--and there's a great deal waiting to be done at Martley. I
don't know. We'll talk about it to-morrow." Then he asked her, "Would
she come and look at Martley?" It seemed she had half promised.
She said, "Oh, yes, of course." Nothing of that kind seemed very
important. But James here looked down at her, which made it different.
"We might go at Whitsuntide," he said.
She looked deeply up--deeply into him, so to speak. "Very well, we
will. If you'll come."
"Oh, he'll come," Urquhart said; and James, "I should like it." So
that was settled. Heavens, how she wished these people would go. She
could see that Francis Lingen wanted to be asked to stay to dine, but
she didn't mean to have that. So when Urquhart held out his hand with
a blunt "Good night to you," she let hers hover about Francis as if
his was waiting for it--which it wasn't, but had to be. "Oh, good
night," said the embarrassed exquisite, and forgot to be tender.
James picked up the evening paper and was flickering his eye over the
leading articles, like a searchlight. Lucy, for her part, hovered
quick-footed in his neighbourhood. This was her hour of triumph, and
she played with it. She peeped at the paper over his shoulder till he
said, "Please," and moved it. Her fingers itched to touch his hair,
but very prudently refrained. She was too restless to settle to
anything, and too happy to wish it. If she had been a singing-bird she
would have trilled to the piano; but she had not a note of music. The
dressing-gong gave her direction. There was plenty to be done. "The
gong! I'm going to make myself smart, James. Quite smart. Are you
coming up?"
James had the paper open in the middle. "Eh? Oh, there's lots of
time--run away. I'm rather busy."
"You're not a bit busy. But I'll go." And she went with hardly a
perceptible hang-back at the door. Upstairs she rejected her usual
choice with a curled lip. "No, no, too stuffy." "Oh, Smithers, I
couldn't. It makes me look a hundred." No doubt she was absurd; but
she had been starved. Such a thing as this had not happened to her
since her days of betrothal, and then but seldom. When she had
satisfied herself she had a panic. Suppose he said, "Comic Opera!"
He said nothing at all. He was in a thoughtful mood, and talked mostly
of Urquhart's proposal for Whitsuntide. "I believe it's rather
remarkable. Quite a place to be seen. Jimmy does things well, you
know. He's really a rich man."
"As rich as you?" Lucy asked, not at all interested in Urquhart just
now.
The eyeglass was pained. "My dear soul! You don't know what you're
saying!" She quizzed him with a saucy look. "I didn't say anything,
dear. I asked something."
If eyeglasses shiver, so did James's. "Well, well--you quibble. I dare
say Urquhart has fifteen thousand a year, and even you will know that
I haven't half as much."
She quenched her eyes, and looked meek. "No, dear, I know. All right,
he's quite rich. Now what does he do with it?"
"Do with it?" James tilted his head and scratched his neck vigorously,
but not elegantly. "Very often nothing at all. There will be years
when he won't spend a hundred above his running expenses. Then he'll
get a kind of maggot in the brain, and squander every sixpence he can
lay hands on. Or he may see reason good, and drop ten thousand in a
lap like Lingen's. Why does he do it? God knows, Who made him. He's
made like that."
Lucy said it was very interesting, but only because she thought James
would be pleased.
Then she remembered, with a pang of doubt, that she was to be driven
by this wild man to-morrow. But James--would he--? He had never been
really jealous, and just now she didn't suppose he could possibly be
so; but you can't tell with men. So she said, "James dear," very
softly, and he looked over the table at her. "If you don't think
it--sensible, I could easily telephone."
"Eh? What about?--to whom?--how? I don't follow you."
"I mean to Mr. Urquhart, about his motor to-morrow. I don't care about
it in the least. In fact--"
"Oh," said James, "the motor? Ah, I had forgotten. Oh, I think you
might go. Urquhart's been very reasonable about this business of
Lingen's. I had a little trouble, of course--it's a lot of money, even
for him. Oh, yes, I should go if I were you. Why, he might want _me_
to go, you know--which would bore me to extinction. But I know you
like that sort of thing." He nodded at her. "Yes, I should go."
She pouted, and showed storm in her eyes--all for his benefit. But he
declined benefit. A strange, dear, bleak soul.
"Very well. If it saves you anything, I'll do it," she said. James was
gratified; as he was also by the peeling of walnuts and service of
them in a sherry glass, which she briskly performed, as if she liked
it. Further than that she was too shy to go; but in the drawing-room,
before it might be too late, she was unable to forbear her new
tenderness.
She stood behind him; her hand fell upon his shoulder, and rested
there, like a leaf. He could not but be conscious of it--he was very
conscious of it, and accepted it, as a tribute. Such a tribute was
gratifying. Lucy was a charming woman. She did pretty things in a
pretty way, as a man's wife should, but too seldom did. How many men's
wives--after fourteen years of it--would stand as she was standing
now? No--the luck held. He had a tradition of Success--success without
visible effort. The luck held! Like a steady wind, filling a sail.
Discipline, however; gentle but firm! He went on reading, but said,
most kindly, "Well, Luce, well--" adding, on an afterthought, "How can
I serve you?"
Her eyes were luminous, dilating her gentle mood, downcast towards his
smooth black hair. She sighed, "Serve me? Oh, you serve me well. I'm
happy just now--that's all."
"Not fretting after the boy?"
"No, no. Not now. Bless him, all the same."
"To be sure." Whereon, at a closer touch of her hand, he looked
comically up. Her head moved, ever so slightly, towards him. He
dropped his eyeglass with a smart click and kissed her cheek. She
shivered, and started back. A blank dismay fell upon her; her heart
seemed to stop. Good Heavens! Not so, not at all so, had James kissed
her in the dark.
There wasn't a doubt about that--not the shade of a doubt. Here had
been a brush on the cheek; here the cold point of his nose had pecked
a little above. She had felt that distinctly, more distinctly than the
touch of his lips. Whereas that other, that full-charged message of
hope and promise--oh, that had been put upon her mouth, soft and
close, and long. She recalled how her head had fallen back and back,
how her laden heart had sighed, how she had been touched, comforted,
contented. Good God, how strange men were! How entirely outside her
philosophy!
She strayed about her drawing-room, touching things here and there,
while he complacently fingered his _Punch_, flacking over the
leaves with brisk slaps of the hand. At this moment he was as
comfortably-minded a householder as any in London, engaged solely in
digestion, at peace at home and abroad, so unconscious of the
fretting, straining, passionate lost soul in the room with him,
hovering, flicking about it like a white moth, as to be supremely
ridiculous--to any one but Lucy. It is difficult to hit off her state
of mind in a word, or in two. She was fretted; yes, but she was
provoked too. She was provoked, but she was incredulous. It could not
continue; it was too much. Men were not made so. And yet--and
yet--James was a possible Eros, an Eros (bless him!) with an eyeglass:
and Eros loved in the dark.
She comforted herself with this thought, which seemed to her a bright
solution of the puzzle, and saw James rise and stretch his length
without mutiny. She received the taps on the cheek of his rolled
_Punch_, allowed, nay, procured, another chilly peck, with no pouting
lips, no reproachful eyes. Then came a jar, and her puzzlement
renewed. "Shall you be late?" "Oh, my dear soul, how can I possibly
say? I brought papers home with me--and you know what that means! It's
an interesting case. We have Merridew for us. I am settling the
brief." Alas, for her. The infatuate even stayed to detail points of
the cause. Much, it appeared, depended upon the Chancellor of the
diocese: a very shaky witness. He had a passion for qualification, and
might tie himself into as many knots as an eel on a night-line. Oh,
might he indeed? And this, this was in the scales against her pride
and joy! She was left--alone on Naxos now--while James went sharply
to his papers.
There I must leave her, till the hour when she could bear the room no
more. She had fought with beasts there, and had prevailed. Yet
unreason (as she had made herself call it) lifted a bruised head at
the last. Papers! Papers, after such a kiss! Oh, the folly of the
wise! Caught up she knew not whence, harboured in the mind she knew
not how, the bitter words of an old Scots song tasted salt upon her
lips:
There dwelt a man into the West,
And O gin he was cruel;
For on his bridal night at e'en
He up and grat for gruel.
They brought him in a gude sheepshead,
A bason and a towel.
"Gar take thae whimwhams far frae me,
I winna want my gruel!"
Standing in the hall while these words were ringing in her head, she
stayed after they were done, a rueful figure of indecision. Instinct