"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.
A little cloud of witness, assembled 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 passion 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 Saturday, 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 theSpectatorbefore 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 assisted 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 passed 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 hadstrolled 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 ass 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 assure 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 Ishall. 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—assume 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 eyeglass. 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'tyou?" 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 repetitions. 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...!"
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 "Assume that you like me"? The short dialogue stared at her in red letters upon the dark. "Assume that you like me—" "You may assume 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 waslooking 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-glass, 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 assume? 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 athis 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 eyeglass seemed to give him an impartial air at these dreadful ceremonies. Behind his glass 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 nobody; with it, he was a demi-god. 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 god, 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 passion. 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 HouseTerrace, 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 cocksure 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. Itwas 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 shehadsaid 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 theMabels. And as for Wycross, he had wired from St. James's in the afternoon, and come on the next day. Absurd—and thank God for it. And poor Francis Lingen! She could afford to laugh at that. Francis Lingen was as capable of kissing the Duchess 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 God again—he was a gentleman if ever there was one. Nobody 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 unfortunatecontretempsprovoked 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 passion 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 eyeglass 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.
He made himself a monument of matter-of-fact impassivity during the drive home. His arms were folded, he stared out of window; she thought once she heard him humming an air. But he didn't smoke, as he certainly would have done had relations been easy. He kept her at a distance, but not aggressively.
Lucy was by this time very much annoyed. Her apologies had been frozen at the front by his angry glare. She had no intention now of renewing them, nor did she care to justify herself, as she might have done, by pointing out that, while she was half-an-hour late, he was probably a quarter of an hour too early. This would have been a safe venture, for his fussiness over an appointment and tendency to be beforehand with it were quite well known to himself. She kept the best face she could upon the miserable affair, but was determined that she would force a crisis at home, come what might.
Arrived at Onslow Square, James strode into the library and shut the door behind him. When Crewdson was disposed of on his numerous affairs, Lucy followed her lord. He turned, he stared, and waited for her to speak.
Lucy said, "I think that you must be sorry thatyou have treated me so. I feel it very much, and must ask you how you justify it."
James did his best to an easy calm. "Apologies should be in the air. I should have looked for one myself an hour or so ago."
"You should have had it," she said, "if you had given me time. But you stared me out of countenance the moment I came in. Anger before you had even heard me is not a nice thing to face."
James turned pale. He used his most incisive tones. "I am ready to hear your explanation. Perhaps I had better say that I know it."
Lucy showed him angry eyes. "If you know it, there is no need for me to trouble you with it. You must also know that it isn't easy to get away from a great crowd in a minute."
But he seemed not to hear her. He had another whip in waiting, which nothing could have kept him from the use of. "I think that I must trouble you, rather. I think I should be relieved by hearing from you where the crowd was of which you were one—or two, indeed."
She discovered that he was white with rage, though she had never seen him so before. "What do you mean, James?" she said—andhe, "I know that you were at the Flower Show. You were there with Lingen."
"Yes," said Lucy, "I was indeed. And why shouldn't I be?"
"I have told you before this what my views are about that. I don't intend to repeat them, at present."
"I think you must be mad," said Lucy. "Do you mean to tell me that you object to Francis Lingen to that extent—to the extent of such a scene as this?"
He faced her from his height. "I do mean that."
"Then," she said, out of herself, "you are insulting me. I don't think you can intend to do that. And I should like to say also that you, of all the men in the world, are the last person to be jealous or suspicious of anybody where I am concerned."
She hadn't meant to say that; but when she saw that he took it as a commonplace of marital ethics, she determined to go further still.
He took it, in fact, just so. It seemed to him what any wife would say to any indignant husband. "I beg your pardon," he said, "you don't quite follow me. I agree with you that I shouldbe the last person; but I beg to point out to you that I should also be the first person. And I will go on to add, if you will excuse me, that I should be the only person."
"No person at all," said Lucy, "has the right or the reason to suspect me of anything, or to be jealous of any of my acquaintance. You didn't understand me: I suppose because you are too angry. What I meant you to remember was how much, how very much, you are bound to believe in me—now of all times in our life."
Here then was a Psyche with the lamp in her hand. Here was Lucy on the limit of a world unknown. Here she stood, at her feet the tufted grasses and field herbs, dusty, homely, friendly things, which she knew. Beyond her, beyond the cliff's edge were the dim leagues of a land and sea unknown. What lay out there beyond her in the mist? What mountain and forest land lay there, what quiet islands, what sounding mains?
But it was done now. James gazed blankly, but angrily, puzzled into her face.
"I haven't the faintest notion what you mean," he said. Evidently he had not.
She must go on, though she hated it. "You are very surprising. I can hardly think you areserious. Let me remind you of the opera—of theWalküre."
He gave his mind to it, explored the past, and so entirely failed to understand her that he looked rather foolish. "I remember that we were there." Then he had a flash of light—and shed it on her, God knows. "I remember also that Lingen was in the box."
"Oh, Lingen! Are you mad on—? Do you not remember that you were there before Lingen?"
"Yes, I do remember it." He stood, poor fool, revealed. Lucy's voice rang clear.
"Very well. If that is all that your memory brings you, I have nothing more to say."
She left him swiftly, and went upstairs in the possession of an astounding truth, but rapt with it in such a whirlwind of wonder that she could do no more than clutch it to her bosom as she flew. She sent out word that she was not coming down to dinner, and locked herself in with her truth, to make what she could of it.
Macartney was no fool in his own world, where a perfectly clear idea of what you want to do combined with a nonchalant manner of "Take it or leave it" had always carried him through the intricacies of business. If he was a fool in supposing that precisely the same armoury would defend him at home, there is this excuse for him, that Lucy had encouraged him to suppose it. When she dashed from the room at this recent moment he sat for some time with his eyes fixed upon his foolscap; but presently found himself reading the same sentence over and over again without understanding one word in it. He dropped the document, rose and picked himself out a cigar, with deliberation and attention disproportionate to the business. He cut, stabbed and lighted the cigar, and stood by the mantelpiece, smoking and gazing out of window.
He had overdone it. He had stretchedrégimetoo far. There had been a snap. Now, just where had he failed? Was it with Francis Lingen? Perhaps. He must admit, though, that some good had come out of the trouble. He felt reassured about Francis Lingen, because, as he judged, women don't get angry in cases of the kind unless the husband has nothing to be angry about. He felt very world-wise and shrewd as he propounded this. Women like their husbands to be jealous, especially if they are jealous with reason. Because, then, they say to themselves, "Well, anyhow, he loves me still. I have him to fall back upon, at all events." Capital! He gave a short guffaw, and resumed his cigar. But Lucy was angry: obviously because he had wasted good jealousy on a mere fancy. Damn it, he had overdone it. The next thing—if he didn't look out—would be that she would give him something to be jealous of. He must calm her—there would be no difficulty in that, no loss of prestige.
Prestige: that was the thing you wanted to maintain. Discipline be jiggered—that might do mischief—if you drove it too hard. The fact was, he was a little too sharp with Lucy. She was a dear, gentle creature, and no doubt one fellinto the habit of pushing a willing horse. He could see it all now perfectly. He had been put out when he arrived at the Marchants' too early—she was not there; and then that old fool Vane with his, "Saw your wife at the Chelsea thing, with Lingen. They looked very settled"; that had put the lid on. That was how it was; and he had been too sharp. Well, one must make mistakes—
He wondered what she had meant about the Opera. Why had she harped upon that string? "You were there before Francis Lingen," she had said—well, and then—she had been furious with him. He had said, "I know that I was," and she, "If that is all your memory brings you—" and off she went. He smoked hard—lifted his hand and dropped it smartly to his mantelpiece. No; that was a thing no man could fathom. A Lucyism—quite clear to herself, no doubt. Well, he'd leave that alone. The more one tried to bottom those waters, the less one fished up. But he would make peace with her after dinner.
He heard, "Mrs. Macartney is not dining this evening; she has a bad headache, and doesn't wish to be disturbed," received it with a curt nod, andaccepted it simply. Better to take women at their word. Her troubles would have simmered down by the morning, whereas if he were to go up now, one of two things: either she'd be angry enough to let him batter at the door to no purpose—and feel an ass for his pains; or she would let him in, and make a fuss—in which case he would feel still more of an ass. "Ask Mrs. Macartney if I can do anything," he had said to Smithers, and was answered, "I think Mrs. Macartney is asleep, sir." He hoped she was. That would do her a world of good.
Morning. In the breakfast-room he faced a Lucy self-possessed, with guarded eyes, and, if he could have seen it, with implied reproach stiffening every line of her. Her generosity gratified him, but should have touched him keenly. She came to him at once, and put up her face. "I'm sorry I was so cross, James." His immediate feeling, I say, was one of gratification. That was all right. She had come in. To that succeeded a wave of kindness. He dropped his glass, and took her strongly in his arms. "Dearest, I behaved very badly. I'm truly sorry." He kissed her, and for a moment she clung to him, but avoided his further kisses. Yet he had kissed heras a man should. She had nothing more to say, but he felt it her due that he should add something while yet he held her. "As for poor Francis—I know that I was absurd—I admit it frankly." He felt her shake and guessed her indignation. "You'll believe me, dear. You know I don't like owning myself a fool." Then she had looked up, still in his arms—"Why should you be so stupid? How can you possibly be? You, of all people!" There she was again.
But he intended to make peace once and for all. "My dearest, I can't be more abject, for the life of me. I have confessed that I was an abounding ass. Please to believe in me. Ask Francis Lingen to tea for a month of days—and not a word from me!"
She had laughed, rather scornfully, and tried to free herself. He kissed her again before he let her go. Almost immediately he resumed his habits—eyeglass,Morning Post, and scraps of comment. He made an effort and succeeded, he thought, in being himself. "Johnny Mallet gives another party at the Bachelors to-day. I believe I go. Has he asked you? He means to. He's a tufthunter—but he gets tufts.... I see that the Fathers in God are raving about the TitheBill. I shall have Jasper Mellen at me—and the Dean too. Do you remember—did you ever hear, I wonder, ofBox and Cox? They have a knack of coming to me on the same day. Once they met on the doorstep, and each of them turned and fled away. It must have been very comic...." Lucy busied herself with her letters and her coffee-cups. She wished that she did not feel so ruffled, but—a walk would do her good. She would go into the Park presently, and look at the tulips and lilacs. It was horrid to feel so stuffy on such a perfect day. How long to Whitsuntide? That was to be heavenly—if James didn't get inspired by the dark! Something would have to be prepared for that. In her eyes, sedate though they were, there lurked a gleam: the beacon-fire of a woman beleaguered. Certainly Jimmy Urquhart liked her. He had said that she liked him. Well, and so she did. Very much indeed.
James went, forgiven, to his Bishops and Deans, and to lunch with his Johnny Mallet and the tufted. Lucy, her household duties done, arrayed herself for the tulips of the Park.
The grey watches of the night with their ache and moments of panic, the fever and fret, the wearing down of rage and emptying of wonderand dismay, the broken snatches of dream-sleep, and the heavy slumber which exhaustion finally gave her—all this had brought downstairs, to be kissed, embraced and forgiven, a Lucy disillusioned and tired to death, but schooled to patience. Her conclusion of the whole matter now was that it was James who had indeed loved her in the dark, with an access of passion which he had never shown before and could drop apparently as fitfully as he won to it, and also with a fulness of satisfaction to himself which she did not pretend to understand. It was James and no other, simply because any other was unthinkable. Such things were not done. Jimmy Urquhart—and what other could she imagine it?—was out of the question. She had finally brushed him out as a girl flecks the mirror in a cotillon. It was James; but why he had been so moved, how moved, how so lightly satisfied, how his conduct at other times could be fitted in—really, it didn't matter two straws. It meant nothing but a moment's silliness, it led to nothing, it mended nothing—and it broke nothing. Her soul was her own, her heart was her own. It was amiable of him, she dared say, but had become rather a bore. She conceived of a time at hand when she might haveto be careful that he shouldn't. But just now she wouldn't make a fuss. Anything but that. He was within his rights, she supposed; and let it rest at that. So arrayed, she faced him, and, to let nothing be omitted on her part, she herself apologised for what had been his absurd fault, and so won as much from him as he could ever have given anybody. As for Francis Lingen—she had not once given him a thought.
Now, however, James away to his Bishops, she arrayed herself anew, and went out,fraîche et dispose, into the Park, intending that she should see Urquhart. And so she did. He was on horseback and dismounted the moment he saw her. He was glad to see her, she could tell, but did not insist upon his gladness. He admired her, she could see, but took his admiration as a matter of course. She wore champagne-colour. She had snakeskin shoes, a black hat. She was excited, and had colour; her eyes shone.
"Well," he said, "here you are then. That's a good thing. I began to give you up."
"How did you know—?" She stopped, and bit her lip.
"I didn't. But I'm very glad to see you. You look very well. Where are you going?"
She nodded her direction. "Tulips. Just over there. I always pilgrimise them."
"All right. Let us pilgrimise them. Tulips are like a drug. A little is exquisite, and you are led on. Excess brings no more enchantment, only nausea. You buy a million and plant your woodland, and the result is horror. A hundred would have been heavenly. That's what I find."
She had mockery in her look, gleams of it shot with happiness to be there. "Is that what you've done at Martley? I shan't praise you when I see it. I hate too-muchness."
"So do I, but always too late. I ought to learn from you, whose frugality is part of your charm. One can't imagine too much Lucy."
"Ah, don't be sure," she cautioned him. "Ask James."
"I shall. I'm quite equal to that. I'll ask him to-day. He's to be at an idiotic luncheon, to which I'm fool enough to be going. Marchionesses and all the rest of it."
"How can you go to such things when you might be—flying?"
"Earning your displeasure? Oh, I know, I know. I didn't know how to refuse Mallet. Heseemed to want me. I was flattered. As a matter of fact—Ihaveflown."
"Alone?"
"Good Lord, no. I had an expert there. He let me have the levers. I had an illusion. But I always do."
"Do tell me your illusion."
"I thought that I could sing."
"You did sing, I'm sure."
"I might have. One miracle the more. As for the machine—it wasn't a machine, it was a living spirit."
"A male spirit or a female spirit?"
"Female, I think. Anyhow I addressed it as such."
"What did you say to her?"
"I said, 'You darling.'"
That startled her, if you like! She looked frightened, then coloured deeply. Urquhart seemed full of his own thoughts.
"How's Lancelot?" he asked her.
That helped her. "Oh, he delights me. Another 'living spirit.' He never fails to ask after you."
"Stout chap."
"He harps on your story. The first you ever told us. This time he put in his postscript, 'How is Wives and Co?'"
He nodded. "Very good. I begat an immortal. That tale will never die. He'll tell it to his grandchildren."
They stood, or strolled at ease, by the railings, she within them, he holding his horse outside them. The tulips were adjudged, names taken, colours approved.
"You'll see mine," he said, "in ten days. Do you realise that?"
She was radiant. "I should think so. That has simply got to happen. Are you going to have other people there?"
"Vera," he said, "and her man, and I rather think Considine, her man's brother. Fat and friendly, with a beard, and knows a good deal about machines, one way and another. I want his advice about hydroplanes, among other things. You'll like him."
"Why shall I like him?"
"Because he's himself. He has no manners at all, only feelings. Nice feelings. That's much better than manners."
"Yes, I dare say they are." She thoughtabout it. "There's a difference between manner and manners."
"Oh, rather. The more manner you have the less manners."
"Yes, I meant that. But even manners don't imply feelings, do they?"
"I was going to say, Never. But that wouldn't be true. You have charming manners: your feelings' clothes and a jolly good fit."
"How kind you are." She was very pleased. "Now,you—what shall I say?"
"You might say that I have no manners, and not offend me. I have no use for them. But I have feelings, sometimes nice, sometimes horrid."
"I am sure that you couldn't be horrid."
"Don't be sure," he said gravely. "I had rather you weren't. I have done amiss in my day, much amiss; and I shall do it again."
She looked gently at him; her mouth showed the Luini compassion, long-drawn and long-suffering, because it understood. "Don't say that. I don't think you mean it."
He shook his head, but did not cease to watch her. "Oh, but I mean it. When I want a thing, I try to get it. When I see my way, I follow it.It seems like a law of Nature. And I suppose it is one. What else is instinct?"
"Yes," she said, "but I suppose we have feelings in us so that we may realise that other people have them too."
"Yes, yes—or that we may give them to those who haven't got any of their own."
They had become grave, and he, at least, moody. Lucy dared not push enquiry. She had the ardent desire to help and the instinct to make things comfortable on the surface, which all women have, and which makes nurses of them. But she discerned trouble ahead. Urquhart's startling frankness had alarmed her before, and she didn't trust herself to pass it off if it flashed once too often. Flashes like that lit up the soul, and not of the lamp-holder only.
They parted, with unwillingness on both sides, at Prince's Gate, and Lucy sped homewards with feet that flew as fast as her winged thoughts. That "You darling" was almost proof positive. And yet he had been at Peltry that night; and yet he couldn't have dared! Now even as she uttered that last objection she faltered; for when daring came into question, what might he not dare? Remained the first. He had been at Peltry, she knew, because she had been asked to meet him there and had refused on the opera's account. Besides, she had heard about his riding horses as if they were motors, and— Here she stood still; and found herself shaking. That letter—in that letter of Mabel's about his visit to Peltry, had there not been something of a call to London, and return late for dinner? And the opera began at half-past six. What was the date of his call to London? Could she find that letter? And should she hunt for it, or leave it vague? And then she thought of Martley. And then she blushed.
Urquhart was a man of explosive action and had great reserve of strength. He was moved by flashes of insight, and was capable of long-sustained flights of vehement effort; but his will-power was nourished entirely by those moments of intense prevision, which showed him a course, and all the stages of it. The mistakes he made, and they were many and grievous, were mostly due to overshooting his mark, sometimes to underrating it. In the headlong and not too scrupulous adventure he was now upon, both defects were leagued against him.
When he first saw Lucy at her dinner-party, he said to himself, "That's a sweet woman. I shall fall in love with her." To say as much was proof that he had already done so; but it was the sudden conviction of it which inspired him, filled him with effervescent nonsense and made him the best of company, for a dinner-party. Throughout it, at his wildest and most irresponsible, his fancy andimagination were at work upon her. He read her to the soul, or thought so.
Chance, and Lancelot, gave him the chart of the terrain. The switch at the drawing-room door gave him his plan. The opportunity came, and he dared to take it. He marked the effect upon her. It was exactly what he had foreseen. He saw her eyes humid upon Macartney, her hand at rest on his arm. Jesuitry palliated what threatened to seem monstrous, even to him. "God bless her, I drive her to her man. What's the harm in that?"
So he went on—once more, and yet again; and in the meantime by daylight and by more honest ways he gained her confidence and her liking. He saw no end to the affair so prosperously begun, and didn't trouble about one. All he cared about just now were two courtships—the vicarious in the dark, and the avowed of the daylight.
He intended to go on. He was full of it—in the midst of his other passions of the hour, such as this of the air. He was certain of his direction, as certain as he had ever been. But now his mistakes and miscalculations began. He had mistaken his Lucy, and his Macartney too.
What he didn't know about Macartney, Lucydid know; what he didn't know about Lucy was that she had found out James. James as Eros wouldn't do, chiefly because such conduct on James's part would have been incredible. Urquhart didn't know it would be incredible, nor did he know that she did.
One other thing he didn't know, which was that Lucy was half his own before she started for Martley. She, in fact, didn't know it either. She had been his from the moment when she had asked him to keep out of the air, and he had declined.
All this is necessary matter, because in the light of it his next deliberated move in his game was a bad mistake.
On the night before she was expected at Martley, being there himself, he wrote her a letter to this effect: