'Why doesn't she leave off?' Lucy tried to call out to him, straining her voice to its utmost, for the maid was very good at the gong and was now extracting the dreadfullest din out of it.
'Eh?' shouted Wemyss.
In the dining-room, whither they were preceded by the parlourmaid, who at last had left off standing still and had opened the door for them, as Lucy could hear the gong continuing to be beaten though muffled now by doors and distance, she again said, 'Why doesn't she leave off?'
Wemyss took out his watch.
'She will in another fifty seconds,' he said.
Lucy's mouth and eyebrows became all inquiry.
'It is beaten for exactly two and a half minutes before every meal,' he explained.
'Oh?' said Lucy. 'Even when we're visibly collected?'
'She doesn't know that.'
'But she saw us.'
'But she doesn't know it officially.'
'Oh,' said Lucy.
'I had to make that rule,' said Wemyss, arranging his knives and forks more accurately beside his plate, 'because they would leave off beating it almost as soon as they'd begun, and then Vera was late and her excuse was that she hadn't heard. For a time after that I used to have it beaten all up the stairs right to the door of her sitting-room. Isn't it a fine gong? Listen——' And he raised his hand.
'Veryfine,' said Lucy, who was thoroughly convinced there wasn't a finer, more robust gong in existence.
'There. Time's up,' he said, as three great strokes were followed by a blessed silence.
He pulled out his watch again. 'Let's see. Yes—to the tick. You wouldn't believe the trouble I had to get them to keep time.'
'It's wonderful,' said Lucy.
The dining-room was a narrow room full of a table. It had a window facing west and a window facing north, and in spite of the uninterrupted expanses of plate glass was a bleak, dark room. But then the weather was bleak and dark, and one saw such a lot of it out of the two big windows as one sat at the long table and watched the rolling clouds blowing straight towards one from the north-west; for Lucy's place was facing the north window, on Wemyss's left hand. Wemyss sat at the end of the table facing the west window. The table was so long that if Lucy had sat in the usual seat of wives, opposite her husband, communication would have been difficult,—indeed, as she remarked, she would have disappeared below the dip of the horizon.
'I like a long table,' said Wemyss to this. 'It looks so hospitable.'
'Yes,' said Lucy a little doubtfully, but willing to admit that its length at least showed a readiness for hospitality. 'I suppose it does. Or it would if there were people all round it.'
'People? You don't mean to say you want people already?'
'Good heavens no,' said Lucy hastily.' Of course I don't. Why, of course, Everard, I didn't mean that,' she added, laying her hand on his and smiling at him so as to dispel the gathering cloud on his face; and once more she flung all thoughts of the parlourmaid to the winds. 'You know I don't want a soul in the world but you.'
'Well, that's what I thought,' said Wemyss, mollified. 'I know all I want is you.'
(Was this same parlourmaid here in Vera's time? Lucy asked herself very privately and unconsciously and beneath the concerned attentiveness she was concentrating on Wemyss.)
'What lovely kingcups!' she said aloud.
'Oh yes, there they are—I hadn't noticed them. Yes, aren't they? They're my birthday flowers.' And he repeated his formula: 'It's my birthday and Spring's.'
But Lucy, of course, didn't know the proper ritual, it being her first experience of one of Wemyss's birthdays, besides having wished him his many happy returns hours ago when he first opened his eyes and found hers gazing at him with love; so all she did was to make the natural but unfortunate remark that surely Spring began on the 21st of March,—or was it the 25th? No, that was Christmas Day—no, she didn't mean that——
'You're always saying things and then saying you didn't mean them,' interrupted Wemyss, vexed, for he thought that Lucy of all people should have recognised the allegorical nature of his formula. If it had been Vera, now,—but even Vera had managed to understand that much. 'I wish you would begin with what you do mean, it would be so much simpler. What, pray,doyou mean now?'
'I can't think,' said Lucy timidly, for she had offended him again, and this time she couldn't even remotely imagine how.
He got over it, however. There was a particularly well-made soufflé, and this helped. Also Lucy kept on looking at him very tenderly, and it was the first time she had sat at his table in his beloved home, realising the dreams of months that she should sit just there with him, his little bobbed-haired Love, and gradually therefore he recovered and smiled at her again.
But what power she had to hurt him, thought Wemyss; it was so great because his love for her was so great. She should be very careful how she wielded it. Her Everard was made very sensitive by his love.
He gazed at her solemnly, thinking this, while the plates were being changed.
'What is it, Everard?' Lucy asked anxiously.
'I'm only thinking that I love you,' he said, laying his hand on hers.
She flushed with pleasure, and her face grew instantly happy. 'My Everard,' she murmured, gazing back at him, forgetful in her pleasure of the parlourmaid. How dear he was. How silly she was to be so much distressed when he was offended. At the core he was so sound and simple. At the core he was utterly her own dear lover. The rest was mere incident, merest indifferent detail.
'We'll have coffee in the library,' he said to the parlourmaid, getting up when he had finished his lunch and walking to the door. 'Come along, little Love,' he called over his shoulder.
The library....
'Can't we—don't we—have coffee in the hall?' asked Lucy, getting up slowly.
'No,' said Wemyss, who had paused before an enlarged photograph that hung on the wall between the two windows, enlarged to life size.
He examined it a moment, and then drew his finger obliquely across the glass from top to bottom. It then became evident that the picture needed dusting.
'Look,' he said to the parlourmaid, pointing.
The parlourmaid looked.
'I notice you don't say anything,' he said to her after a silence in which she continued to look, and Lucy, taken aback again, stood uncertain by the chair she had got up from. 'I don't wonder. There's nothing you can possibly say to excuse such carelessness.'
'Lizzie——' began the parlourmaid.
'Don't put it on to Lizzie.'
The parlourmaid ceased putting it on to Lizzie and was dumb.
'Come along, little Love,' said Wemyss, turning to Lucy and holding out his hand. 'It makes one pretty sick, doesn't it, to see that not even one's own father gets dusted.'
'Is that your father?' asked Lucy, hurrying to his side and offering no opinion about dusting.
It could have been no one else's. It was Wemyss grown very enormous, Wemyss grown very old, Wemyss displeased. The photograph had been so arranged that wherever you moved to in the room Wemyss's father watched you doing it. He had been watching Lucy from between those two windows all through her first lunch, and must, flashed through Lucy's brain, have watched Vera like that all through her last one.
'How long has he been there?' she asked, looking up into Wemyss's father's displeased eyes which looked straight back into hers.
'Been there?' repeated Wemyss, drawing her away for he wanted his coffee. 'How can I remember? Ever since I've lived here, I should think. He died five years ago. He was a wonderful old man, nearly ninety. He used to stay here a lot.'
Opposite this picture hung another, next to the door that led into the hall,—also a photograph enlarged to life-size. Lucy had noticed neither of these pictures when she came in, because the light from the windows was in her eyes. Now, turning to go out through the door led by Wemyss, she was faced by this one.
It was Vera. She knew at once; and if she hadn't she would have known the next minute, because he told her.
'Vera,' he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, as it were introducing them.
'Vera,' repeated Lucy under her breath; and she and Vera—for this photograph too followed one about with its eye—stared at each other.
It must have been taken about twelve years earlier, judging from the clothes. She was standing, and in a day dress that yet had a train to it trailing on the carpet, and loose, floppy sleeves and a high collar. She looked very tall, and had long thin fingers. Her dark hair was drawn up from her ears and piled on the top of her head. Her face was thin and seemed to be chiefly eyes,—very big dark eyes that stared out of the absurd picture in a kind of astonishment, and her mouth had a little twist in it as though she were trying not to laugh.
Lucy looked at her without moving. So this was Vera. Of course. She had known, though she had never constructed any image of her in her mind, had carefully avoided doing it, that she would be like that. Only older; the sort of Vera she must have been at forty when she died,—not attractive like that, not a young woman. To Lucy at twenty-two, forty seemed very old; at least, if you were a woman. In regard to men, since she had fallen in love with some one of forty-five who was certainly the youngest thing she had ever come across, she had rearranged her ideas of age, but she still thought forty very old for a woman. Vera had been thin and tall and dark in her idea of her, just as this Vera was thin and tall and dark; but thin bonily, tall stoopingly, and her dark hair was turning grey. In her idea of her, too, she was absent-minded and not very intelligent; indeed, she was rather troublesomely unintelligent, doing obstinate, foolish things, and at last doing that fatal, obstinate, foolish thing which so dreadfully ended her. This Vera was certainly intelligent. You couldn't have eyes like that and be a fool. And the expression of her mouth,—what had she been trying not to laugh at that day? Did she know she was going to be enlarged and hang for years in the bleak dining-room facing her father-in-law, each of them eyeing the other from their walls, while three times a day the originals sat down beneath their own pictures at the long table and ate? Perhaps she laughed, thought Lucy, because else she might have cried; only that would have been silly, and she couldn't have been silly,—not with those eyes, not with those straight, fine eyebrows. But would she, herself, presently be photographed too and enlarged and hung there? There was room next to Vera, room for just one more before the sideboard began. How very odd it would be if she were hung up next to Vera, and every day three times as she went out of the room was faced by Everard's wives. And how quaint to watch one's clothes as the years went by leaving off being pretty and growing more absurd. Really for such purposes one ought to be just wrapped round in a shroud. Fashion didn't touch shrouds; they always stayed the same. Besides, how suitable, thought Lucy, gazing into her dead predecessor's eyes; one would only be taking time by the forelock....
'Come along.' said Wemyss, drawing her away, 'I want my coffee. Don't you think it's a good idea,' he went on, as he led her down the hall to the library door, 'to have life-sized photographs instead of those idiotic portraits that are never the least like people?'
'Oh, averygood idea,' said Lucy mechanically, bracing herself for the library. There was only one room in the house she dreaded going into more than the library, and that was the sitting-room on the top floor,—her sitting-room and Vera's.
'Next week we'll go to a photographer's in London and have my little girl done,' said Wemyss, pushing open the library door, 'and then I'll have her exactly as God made her, without some artist idiot or other coming butting-in with his idea of her. God's idea of her is good enough for me. They won't have to enlarge much,' he laughed, 'to getyoulife-size, you midge. Vera was five foot ten. Now isn't this a fine room? Look—there's the river. Isn't it jolly being so close to it? Come round here—don't knock against my writing-table, now. Look—there's only the towpath between the river and the garden. Lord, what a beastly day. It might just as easily have been a beautiful spring day and us having our coffee out on the terrace. Don't you think this is a beautiful look-out,—so typically English with the beautiful green lawn and the bit of lush grass along the towpath, and the river. There's no river like it in the world, is there, little Love. Say you think it's the most beautiful river in the world'—he hugged her close—'say you think it's a hundred times better than that beastly French one we got so sick of with all those châteaux.'
'Oh, ahundredtimes better,' said Lucy.
They were standing at the window, with his arm round her shoulder. There was just room for them between it and the writing-table. Outside was the flagged terrace, and then a very green lawn with worms and blackbirds on it and a flagged path down the middle leading to a little iron gate. There was no willow hedge along the river end of the square garden, so as not to interrupt the view,—only the iron railings and wire-netting. Terra-cotta vases, which later on would be a blaze of geraniums, Wemyss explained, stood at intervals on each side of the path. The river, swollen and brown, slid past Wemyss's frontage very quickly that day, for there had been much rain. The clouds scudding across the sky before the wind were not in such a hurry but that every now and then they let loose a violent gust of rain, soaking the flags of the terrace again just as the wind had begun to dry them up. How could he stand there, she thought, holding her tight so that she couldn't get away, making her look out at the very place on those flags not two yards off....
But the next minute she thought how right he really was, how absolutely the only way this was to do the thing. Perfect simplicity was the one way to meet this situation successfully; and she herself was so far from simplicity that here she was shrinking, not able to bear to look, wanting only to hide her face,—oh, he was wonderful, and she was the most ridiculous of fools.
She pressed very close to him, and put up her face to his, shutting her eyes, for so she shut out the desolating garden with its foreground of murderous flags.
'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 feelverysimple,' 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'mtoosimple.'
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.'
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 glass 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 glass door to take it out and look at it. 'Why,' she said surprised, 'it's locked.'
'Of course,' said Wemyss.
'Why but then nobody can get at them.'
'Precisely.'
'But——'
'People are so untrustworthy about books. I took pains to arrange mine myself, and they're all in first-class-bindings and I don't want them taken out and left lying anywhere by Tom, Dick, and Harry. If any one wants to read they can come and ask me. Then I know exactly what is taken, and can see that it is put back.' And he held up the key on his watch-chain.
'But doesn't that rather discourage people?' asked Lucy, who was accustomed to the most careless familiarity in intercourse with books, to books loose everywhere, books overflowing out of their shelves, books in every room, instantly accessible books, friendly books, books used to being read aloud, with their hospitable pages falling open at a touch.
'All the better,' said Wemyss. 'Idon't want anybody to read my books.'
Lucy laughed, though she was dismayed inside. 'Oh Everard—' she said, 'not even me?'
'You? You're different. You're my own little girl. Whenever you want to, all you've got to do is to come and say, "Everard, your Lucy wants to read," and I'll unlock the bookcase.'
'But—I shall be afraid I may be disturbing you.'
'People who love each other can't ever disturb each other.'
'That's true,' said Lucy.
'And they shouldn't ever be afraid of it.'
'I suppose they shouldn't,' said Lucy.
'So be simple, and when you want a thing just say so.' Lucy said she would, and promised with many kisses to be simple, but she couldn't help privately thinking it a difficult way of getting at a book.
'Macaulay, Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, British Poets, English Men of Letters,Encyclopædia Britannica—I think there's about everything,' said Wemyss, going over the gilt names on the backs of the volumes with much satisfaction as he stood holding her in front of them. 'Whiteley's did it for me. I said I had room for so and so many of such and such sizes of the best modern writers in good bindings. I think they did it very well, don't you little Love?'
'Verywell,' said Lucy, eyeing the shelves doubtfully.
She was of those who don't like the feel of prize books in their hands, and all Wemyss's books might have been presented as prizes to deserving schoolboys. They were handsome; their edges—she couldn't see them, but she was sure—were marbled. They wouldn't open easily, and one's thumbs would have to do a lot of tiring holding while one's eyes tried to peep at the words tucked away towards the central crease. These were books with which one took no liberties. She couldn't imagine idly turning their pages in some lazy position out on the grass. Besides, their pages wouldn't be idly turned; they would be, she was sure, obstinate with expensiveness, stiff with the leather and gold of their covers.
Lucy stared at them, thinking all this so as not to think other things. What she wanted to shut out was the wind sobbing up and down that terrace behind her, and the consciousness of the fierce intermittent squalls of rain beating on its flags, and the certainty that upstairs.... Had Everardnoimagination, she thought, with a sudden flare of rebellion, that he should expect her to use and to like using the very sitting-room where Vera——
With a quick shiver she grabbed at her thoughts and caught them just in time.
'Do you like Macaulay?' she asked, lingering in front of the bookcase, for he was beginning to move her off towards the door.
'I haven't read him,' said Wemyss, still moving her.
'Which of all these do you like best?' she asked, holding back.
'Oh, I don't know,' said Wemyss, pausing a moment, pleased by her evident interest in his books. 'I haven't much time for reading, you must remember. I'm a busy man. By the time I've finished my day's work, I'm not inclined for much more than the evening paper and a game of bridge.'
'But what will you do with me, who don't play bridge?'
'Lord, you don't suppose I shall want to play bridge now that I've got you?' he said. 'All I shall want is just to sit and look at you.'
She turned red with swift pleasure, and laughed, and hugged the arm that was thrust through hers leading her to the door. How much she adored him; when he said dear, absurd, simple things like that, how much she adored him!
'Come upstairs now and take off your hat,' said Wemyss. 'I want to see what my bobbed hair looks like in my home. Besides, aren't you dying to see our bedroom?'
'Dying,' said Lucy, going up the oak staircase with a stout, determined heart.
The bedroom was over the library, and was the same size and with the same kind of window. Where the bookcase stood in the room below, stood the bed: a double, or even a treble, bed, so very big was it, facing the window past which Vera—it was no use, she couldn't get away from Vera—having slept her appointed number of nights, fell and was finished. But she wasn't finished. If only she had slipped away out of memory, out of imagination, thought Lucy ... but she hadn't, she hadn't—and this was her room, and that intelligent-eyed thin thing had slept in it for years and years, and for years and years the looking-glass had reflected her while she had dressed and undressed, dressed and undressed before it—regularly, day after day, year after year—oh, what a trouble—and her thin long hands had piled up her hair—Lucy could see her sitting there piling it on the top of her small head—sitting at the dressing-table in the window past which she was at last to drop like a stone—horribly—ignominiously—all anyhow—and everything in the room had been hers, every single thing in it had been Vera's, including Ev——
Lucy made a violent lunge after her thoughts and strangled them.
Meanwhile Wemyss had shut the door and was standing looking at her without moving.
'Well?' he said.
She turned to him nervously, her eyes still wide with the ridiculous things she had been thinking.
'Well?' he said again.
She supposed he meant her to praise the room, so she hastily began, saying what a good view there must be on a fine day, and how very comfortable it was, such a nice big looking-glass—she loved a big looking-glass—and such a nice sofa—she loved a nice sofa—and what a very big bed—and what a lovely carpet——
'Well?' was all Wemyss said when her words came to an end.
'What is it, Everard?'
'I'm waiting,' he said.
'Waiting?'
'For my kiss.'
She ran to him.
'Yes,' he said, when she had kissed him, looking down at her solemnly, 'Idon't forget these things.Idon't forget that this is the first time my own wife and I have stood together in our very own bedroom.'
'But Everard I didn't forget—I only——'
She cast about for something to say, her arms still round his neck, for the last thing she could have told him was what she had been thinking—oh, how he would have scolded her for being morbid, and oh, how right he would have been!—and she ended by saying as lamely and as unfortunately as she had said it in the château of Amboise—'I only didn't remember.'
Luckily this time his attention had already wandered away from her. 'Isn't it a jolly room?' he said. 'Who's got far and away the best bedroom in Strorley? And who's got a sitting-room all for herself, just as jolly? And who spoils his little woman?'
Before she could answer, he loosened her hands from his neck and said, 'Come and look at yourself in the glass. Come and see how small you are compared to the other things in the room.' And with his arms round her shoulders he led her to the dressing-table.
'The other things?' laughed Lucy; but like a flame the thought was leaping in her brain, 'Now what shall I do if when I look into this I don't see myself but Vera? It'saccustomedto Vera....'
'Why, she's shutting her eyes. Open them, little Love,' said Wemyss, standing with her before the glass and seeing in it that though he held her in front of it she wasn't looking at the picture of wedded love he and she made, but had got her eyes tight shut.
With his free hand he took off her hat and threw it on to the sofa; then he laid his head on hers and said, 'Now look.'
Lucy obeyed; and when she saw the sweet picture in the glass the face of the girl looking at her broke into its funny, charming smile, for Everard at that moment was at his dearest, Everard boyishly loving her, with his good-looking, unlined face so close to hers and his proud eyes gazing at her. He and she seemed to set each other off; they were becoming to each other.
Smiling at him in the glass, a smile tremulous with tenderness, she put up her hand and stroked his face. 'Do you know who you've married?' she asked, addressing the man in the glass.
'Yes,' said Wemyss, addressing the girl in the glass.
'No you don't,' she said. 'But I'll tell you. You've married the completest of fools.'
'Now what has the little thing got into its head this time?' he said, kissing her hair, and watching himself doing it.
'Everard, you must help me,' she murmured, holding his face tenderly against hers. 'Please, my beloved, help me, teach me——'
'That, Mrs. Wemyss, is a very proper attitude in a wife,' he said. And the four people laughed at each other, the two Lucys a little quiveringly.
'Now come and I'll introduce you to your sitting-room,' he said, disengaging himself. 'We'll have tea up there. The view is really magnificent.'
The wind made more noise than ever at the top of the house, and when Wemyss tried to open the door to Vera's sitting-room it blew back on him.
'Well I'm damned,' he said, giving it a great shove.
'Why?' asked Lucy nervously.
'Come in, come in,' he said impatiently, pressing the door open and pulling her through.
There was a great flapping of blinds and rattling of blind cords, a whirl of sheets of notepaper, an extra wild shriek of the wind, and then Wemyss, hanging on to the door, shut it and the room quieted down.
'That slattern Lizzie!' he exclaimed, striding across to the fireplace and putting his finger on the bell-button and keeping it there.
'What has she done?' asked Lucy, standing where he had left her just inside the door.
'Done? Can't you see?'
'You mean'—she could hardly get herself to mention the fatal thing—'you mean—the window?'
'On a day like this!'
He continued to press the bell. It was a very loud bell, for it rang upstairs as well as down in order to be sure of catching Lizzie's ear in whatever part of the house she might be endeavouring to evade it, and Lucy, as she listened to its strident, persistent summons of a Lizzie who didn't appear, felt more and more on edge, felt at last that to listen and wait any longer was unbearable.
'Won't you wear it out?' she asked, after some moments of nothing happening and Wemyss still ringing.
He didn't answer. He didn't look at her. His finger remained steadily on the button. His face was extraordinarily like the old man's in the enlarged photograph downstairs. Lucy wished for only two things at that moment, one was that Lizzie shouldn't come, and the other was that if she did she herself might be allowed to go and be somewhere else.
'Hadn't—hadn't the window better be shut?' she suggested timidly presently, while he still went on ringing and saying nothing—'else when Lizzie opens the door won't all the things blow about again?'
He didn't answer, and went on ringing.
Of all the objects in the world that she could think of, Lucy most dreaded and shrank from that window; nevertheless she began to feel that as Everard was engaged with the bell and apparently wouldn't leave it, it behoved her to put into practice her resolution not to be a fool but to be direct and wholesome, and go and shut it herself. There it was, the fatal window, huge as the one in the bedroom below and the one in the library below that, yawning wide open above its murderous low sill, with the rain flying in on every fresh gust of wind and wetting the floor and the cushions of the sofa and even, as she could see, those sheets of notepaper off the writing-table that had flown in her face when she came in and were now lying scattered at her feet. Surely the right thing to do was to shut the window before Lizzie opened the door and caused a second convulsion? Everard couldn't, because he was ringing the bell. She could and she would; yes, she would do the right thing, and at the same time be both simple and courageous.
'I'll shut it,' she said, taking a step forward.
She was arrested by Wemyss's voice. 'Confound it!' he cried. 'Can't you leave it alone?'
She stopped dead. He had never spoken to her like that before. She had never heard that voice before. It seemed to hit her straight on the heart.
'Don't interfere,' he said, very loud.
She was frozen where she stood.
'Tiresome woman,' he said, still ringing.
She looked at him. He was looking at her.
'Who?' she breathed.
'You.'
Her heart seemed to stop beating. She gave a little gasp, and turned her head to right and left like something trapped, something searching for escape. Everard—where was her Everard? Why didn't he come and take care of her? Come and take her away—out of that room—out of that room——
There were sounds of steps hurrying along the passage, and then there was a great scream of the wind and a great whirl of the notepaper and a great blowing up on end off her forehead of her short hair, and Lizzie was there panting on the threshold.
'I'm sorry, sir,' she panted, her hand on her chest, 'I was changing my dress——'
'Shut the door, can't you?' cried Wemyss, about whose ears, too, notepaper was flying. 'Hold on to it— don't let it go, damn you!'
'Oh—oh——' gasped Lucy, stretching out her hands as though to keep something off, 'I think I—I think I'll go downstairs——'
And before Wemyss realised what she was doing, she had turned and slipped through the door Lizzie was struggling with and was gone.
'Lucy!' he shouted, 'Lucy! Come back at once!' But the wind was too much for Lizzie, and the door dragged itself out of her hands and crashed to.
As though the devil were after her Lucy ran along the passage. Down the stairs she flew, down past the bedroom landing, down past the gong landing, down into the hall and across it to the front door, and tried to pull it open, and found it was bolted, and tugged and tugged at the bolts, tugged frantically, getting them undone at last, and rushing out on to the steps.
There an immense gust of rain caught her full in the face. Splash—bang—she was sobered. The rain splashed on her as though a bucket were being emptied at her, and the door had banged behind her shutting her out. Suddenly horrified at herself she turned quickly, as frantic to get in again as she had been to get out. What was she doing? Where was she running to? She must get in, get in—before Everard could come after her, before he could find her standing there like a drenched dog outside his front door. The wind whipped her wet hair across her eyes. Where was the handle? She couldn't find it. Her hair wouldn't keep out of her eyes; her thin serge skirt blew up like a balloon and got in the way of her trembling fingers searching along the door. She must get in—before he came—what had possessed her? Everard—he couldn't have meant—he didn't mean—what would he think—whatwouldhe think—oh, where was that handle?
Then she heard heavy footsteps on the other side of the door, and Wemyss's voice, still very loud, saying to somebody he had got with him, 'Haven't I given strict orders that this door is to be kept bolted?'—and then the sound of bolts being shot.
'Everard! Everard!' Lucy cried, beating on the door with both hands, 'I'm here—out here—let me in—Everard! Everard!'
But he evidently heard nothing, for his footsteps went away again.
Snatching her hair out of her eyes, she looked about for the bell and reached up to it and pulled it violently. What she had done was terrible. She must get in at once, face the parlourmaid's astonishment, run to Everard. She couldn't imagine his thoughts. Where did he suppose she was? He must be searching the house for her. He would be dreadfully upset. Why didn't the parlourmaid come? Was she changing her dress too? No—she had waited at lunch all ready in her black afternoon clothes. Then why didn't she come?
Lucy pulled the bell again and again, at last keeping it down, using up its electricity as squanderously as Wemyss had used it upstairs. She was wet to the skin by this time, and you wouldn't have recognised her pretty hair, all dark now and sticking together in lank strands.
Everard—why, of course—Everard had only spoken like that out of fear—fear and love. The window—of course he would be terrified lest she too, trying to shut that fatal window, that great heavy fatal window, should slip.... Oh, of course, of course—how could she have misunderstood—in moments of danger, of dreadful anxiety for one's heart's beloved, one did speak sharply, one did rap out commands. It was because he loved her somuch.... Oh, how lunatic of her to have misunderstood!
At last she heard some one coming, and she let go of the bell and braced herself to meet the astonished gaze of the parlourmaid with as much dignity as was possible in one who only too well knew she must be looking like a drowning cat, but the footsteps grew heavy as they got nearer, and it was Wemyss who, after pulling back the bolts, opened the door.
'Oh Everard!' Lucy exclaimed, running in, pursued to the last by the pelting rain, 'I'm so glad it's you—oh I'm so sorry I——'
Her voice died away; she had seen his face.
He stooped to bolt the lower bolt.
'Don't be angry, darling Everard,' she whispered, laying her arm on his stooping shoulder.
Having finished with the bolt Wemyss straightened himself, and then, putting up his hand to the arm still round his shoulder, he removed it. 'You'll make my coat wet,' he said; and walked away to the library door and went in and shut it.
For a moment she stood where he had left her, collecting her scattered senses; then she went after him. Wet or not wet, soaked and dripping as she was, ridiculous scarecrow with her clinging clothes, her lank hair, she must go after him, must instantly get the horror of misunderstanding straight, tell him how she had meant only to help over that window, tell him how she had thought he was saying dreadful things to her when he was really only afraid for her safety, tell him how silly she had been, silly, silly, not to have followed his thoughts quicker, tell him he must forgive her, be patient with her, help her, because she loved him so much and she knew—oh, she knew—how much he loved her....
Across the hall ran Lucy, the whole of her one welter of anxious penitence and longing and love, and when she got to the door and turned the handle it was locked.
He had locked her out.
Her hand slid slowly off the knob. She stood quite still. Howcouldhe.... And she knew now that he had bolted the front door knowing she was out in the rain. Howcouldhe? Her body was motionless as she stood staring at the locked door, but her brain was a rushing confusion of questions. Why? Why? This couldn't be Everard. Who was this man—pitiless, cruel? Not Everard. Not her lover. Where was he, her lover and husband? Why didn't he come and take care of her, and not let her be frightened by this strange man....
She heard a chair being moved inside the room, and then she heard the creak of leather as Wemyss sat down in it, and then there was the rustle of a newspaper being opened. He was actually settling down to read a newspaper while she, his wife, his love—wasn't he always telling her she was his little Love?—was breaking her heart outside the locked door. Why, but Everard—she and Everard; they understood each other; they had laughed, played together, talked nonsense, been friends....
For an instant she had an impulse to cry out and beat on the door, not to care who heard, not to care that the whole house should come and gather round her naked misery; but she was stopped by a sudden new wisdom. It shuddered down on her heart, a wisdom she had never known or needed before, and held her quiet. At all costs there mustn't be two of them doing these things, at all costs these things mustn't be doubled, mustn't have echoes. If Everard was like this he must be like it alone. She must wait. She must sit quiet till he had finished. Else—but oh, hecouldn'tbe like it, itcouldn'tbe true that he didn't love her. Yet if he did love her, how could he ... how could he....
She leaned her forehead against the door and began softly to cry. Then, afraid that she might after all burst out into loud, disgraceful sobbing, she turned and went upstairs.
But where could she go? Where in the whole house was any refuge, any comfort? The only person who could have told her anything, who could have explained, whoknew, was Vera. Yes—she would have understood. Yes, yes—Vera. She would go to Vera's room, get as close to her mind as she could,—search, find something, some clue....
It seemed now to Lucy, as she hurried upstairs, that the room in the house she had most shrunk from was the one place where she might hope to find comfort. Oh, she wasn't frightened any more. Everything was trying to frighten her, but she wasn't going to be frightened. For some reason or other things were all trying together to-day to see if they could crush her, beat out her spirit. But they weren't going to....
She jerked her wet hair out of her eyes as she climbed the stairs. It kept on getting into them and making her stumble. Vera would help her. Vera never was beaten. Vera had had fifteen years of not being beaten before she—before she had that accident. And there must have been heaps of days just like this one, with the wind screaming and Vera up in her room and Everard down in his—locked in, perhaps—and yet Vera had managed, and her spirit wasn't beaten out. For years and years, panted Lucy—her very thoughts came in gasps—Vera lived up here winter after winter, years, years, years, and would have been here now if she hadn't—oh, if only Vera weren't dead! Ifonly, onlyVera weren't dead! But her mind lived on—her mind was in that room, in every littlest thing in it——
Lucy stumbled up the last few stairs completely out of breath, and opening the sitting-room door stood panting on the threshold much as Lizzie had done, her hand on her chest.
This time everything was in order. The window was shut, the scattered notepaper collected and tidily on the writing-table, the rain on the floor wiped up, and a fire had been lit and the wet cushions were drying in front of it. Also there was Lizzie, engaged in conscience-stricken activities, and when Lucy came in she was on her knees poking the fire. She was poking so vigorously that she didn't hear the door open, especially not with that rattling and banging of the window going on; and on getting up and seeing the figure standing there panting, with strands of lank hair in its eyes and its general air of neglect and weather, she gave a loud exclamation.
'Lumme!' exclaimed Lizzie, whose origin and bringing-up had been obscure.
She had helped carry in the luggage that morning, so she had seen her mistress before and knew what she was like in her dry state. She never could have believed, having seen her then all nicely fluffed out, that there was so little of her. Lizzie knew what long-haired dogs look like when they are being soaped, and she was also familiar with cats as they appear after drowning; yet they too surprised her, in spite of familiarity, each time she saw them in these circumstances by their want of real substance, of stuffing. Her mistress looked just like that,—no stuffing at all; and therefore Lizzie, the poker she was holding arrested in mid-air on its way into its corner, exclaimed Lumme.
Then, realising that this weather-beaten figure must certainly be catching its death of cold, she dropped the poker and hurrying across the room and talking in the stress of the moment like one girl to another, she felt Lucy's sleeve and said, 'Why, you're wet to the bones. Come to the fire and take them sopping clothes off this minute, or you'll be laid up as sure as sure——' and pulled her over to the fire; and having got her there, and she saying nothing at all and not resisting, Lizzie stripped off her clothes and shoes and stockings, repeating at frequent intervals as she did so, 'Dear, dear,' and repressing a strong desire to beg her not to take on, lest later, perhaps, her mistress mightn't like her to have noticed she had been crying. Then she snatched up a woollen coverlet that lay folded on the end of the sofa, rolled her tightly round in it, sat her in a chair right up close to the fender, and still talking like one girl to another said, 'Now sit there and don't move while I fetch dry things—I won't be above a minute—now you promise, don't you——' and hurrying to the door never remembered her manners at all till she was through it, whereupon she put in her head again and hastily said, 'Mum,' and disappeared.
She was away, however, more than a minute. Five minutes, ten minutes passed and Lizzie, feverishly unpacking Lucy's clothes in the bedroom below, and trying to find a complete set of them, and not knowing what belonged to which, didn't come back.
Lucy sat quite still, rolled up in Vera's coverlet. Obediently she didn't move, but stared straight into the fire, sitting so close up to it that the rest of the room was shut out. She couldn't see the window, or the dismal rain streaming down it. She saw nothing but the fire, blazing cheerfully. How kind Lizzie was. How comforting kindness was. It was a thing she understood, a normal, natural thing, and it made her feel normal and natural just to be with it. Lizzie had given her such a vigorous rub-down that her skin tingled. Her hair was on ends, for that too had had a vigorous rubbing from Lizzie, who had taken her apron to it feeling that this was an occasion on which one abandoned convention and went in for resource. And as Lucy sat there getting warmer and warmer, and more and more pervaded by the feeling of relief and well-being that even the most wretched feel if they take off all their clothes, her mind gradually calmed down, it left off asking agonised questions, and presently her heart began to do the talking.
She was so much accustomed to find life kind, that given a moment of quiet like this with somebody being good-natured and back she slipped to her usual state, which was one of affection and confidence. Lizzie hadn't been gone five minutes before Lucy had passed from sheer bewildered misery to making excuses for Everard; in ten minutes she was seeing good reasons for what he had done; in fifteen she was blaming herself for most of what had happened. She had been amazingly idiotic to run out of the room, and surely quite mad to run out of the house. It was wrong, of course, for him to bolt her out, but he was angry, and people did things when they were angry that horrified them afterwards. Surely people who easily got angry needed all the sympathy and understanding one could give them,—not to be met by despair and the loss of faith in them of the person they had hurt. That only turned passing, temporary bad things into a long unhappiness. She hadn't known he had a temper. She had only, so far, discovered his extraordinary capacity for being offended. Well, if he had a temper how could he help it? He was born that way, as certainly as if he had been born lame. Would she not have been filled with tenderness for his lameness if he had happened to be born like that? Would it ever have occurred to her to mind, to feel it as a grievance?
The warmer Lucy got the more eager she grew to justify Wemyss. In the middle of the reasons she was advancing for his justification, however, it suddenly struck her that they were a little smug. All that about people with tempers needing sympathy,—who was she, with her impulses and impatiences—with her, as she now saw, devastating impulses and impatiences—to take a line of what was very like pity. Pity! Smug, odious word; smug, odious thing. Wouldn't she hate it if she thought he pitied her for her failings? Let him be angry with her failings, but not pity her. She and her man, they needed no pity from each other; they had love. It was impossible that anything either of them did or was shouldreallytouch that.
Very warm now in Vera's blanket, her face flushed by the fire, Lucy asked herself what could really put out that great, glorious, central blaze. All that was needed was patience when he.... She gave herself a shake,—there she was again, thinking smugly. She wouldn't think at all. She would just take things as they came, and love, and love.
Then the vision of Everard, sitting solitary with his newspaper and by this time, too, probably thinking only of love, and anyhow not happy, caused one of those very impulses to lay hold of her which she had a moment before been telling herself she would never give way to again. She was aware one had gripped her, but this was a good impulse,—this wasn't a bad one like running out into the rain: she would go down and have another try at that door. She was warmed through now and quite reasonable, and she felt she couldn't another minute endure not being at peace with Everard. How silly they were. It was ridiculous. It was like two children fighting. Lizzie was so long bringing her clothes; she couldn't wait, she must sit on Everard's knee again, feel his arms round her, see his eyes looking kind. She would go down in her blanket. It wrapped her up from top to toe. Only her feet were bare; but they were quite warm, and anyhow feet didn't matter.
So Lucy padded softly downstairs, making hardly a sound, and certainly none that could be heard above the noise of the wind by Lizzie in the bedroom, frantically throwing clothes about.
She knocked at the library door.
Wemyss's voice said, 'Come in.'
So he had unlocked it. So he had hoped she would come.
He didn't, however, look round. He was sitting with his back to the door at the writing-table in the window, writing.
'I want my flowers in here,' he said, without turning his head.
So he had rung. So he thought it was the parlourmaid. So he hadn't unlocked the door because he hoped she would come.
But his flowers,—he wanted his birthday flowers in there because they were all that were left to him of his ruined birthday.
When she heard this order Lucy's heart rushed out to him. She shut the door softly and with her bare feet making no sound went up behind him.
He thought the parlourmaid had shut the door, and gone to carry out his order. Feeling an arm put round his shoulder he thought the parlourmaid hadn't gone to carry out his order, but had gone mad instead.
'Good God!' he exclaimed, jumping up.
At the sight of Lucy in her blanket, with her bare feet and her confused hair, his face changed. He stared at her without speaking.
'I've come to tell you—I've come to tell you——' she began.
Then she faltered, for his mouth was a mere hard line.
'Everard, darling,' she said entreatingly, lifting her face to his, 'let's be friends—please let's be friends—I'm so sorry—so sorry——'
His eyes ran over her. It was evident that all she had on was that blanket. A strange fury came into his face, and he turned his back on her and marched with a heavy tread to the door, a tread that made Lucy, for some reason she couldn't at first understand, think of Elgar. Why Elgar? part of her asked, puzzled, while the rest of her was blankly watching Wemyss. Of course: the march:Pomp and Circumstance.
At the door he turned and said, 'Since you thrust yourself into my room when I have shown you I don't desire your company you force me to leave it.'
Then he added, his voice sounding queer and through his teeth, 'You'd better go and put your clothes on. I assure you I'm proof against sexual allurements.'
Then he went out.
Lucy stood looking at the door. Sexual allurements? What did he mean? Did he think—did he mean——
She flushed suddenly, and gripping her blanket tight about her she too marched to the door, her eyes bright and fixed.
Considering the blanket, she walked upstairs with a good deal of dignity, and passed the bedroom door just as Lizzie, her arms full of a complete set of clothing, came out of it.
'Lumme!' once more exclaimed Lizzie, who seemed marked down for shocks; and dropped a hairbrush and a shoe.
Disregarding her, Lucy proceeded up the next flight with the same dignity, and having reached Vera's room crossed to the fire, where she stood in silence while Lizzie, who had hurried after her and was reproaching her for having gone downstairs like that, dressed her and brushed her hair.
She was quite silent. She didn't move. She was miles away from Lizzie, absorbed in quite a new set of astonished, painful thoughts. But at the end, when Lizzie asked her if there was anything more she could do, she looked at her a minute and then, having realised her, put out her hand and laid it on her arm.
'Thank youverymuch for everything,' she said earnestly.
'I'm terribly sorry about that window, mum,' said Lizzie, who was sure she had been the cause of trouble. 'I don't know what come over me to forget it.'
Lucy smiled faintly at her. 'Never mind,' she said; and she thought that if it hadn't been for that window she and Everard—well, it was no use thinking like that; perhaps there would have been something else.
Lizzie went. She was a recent acquisition, and was the only one of the servants who hadn't known the late Mrs. Wemyss, but she told herself that anyhow she preferred this one. She went; and Lucy stood where she had left her, staring at the floor, dropping back into her quite new set of astonished, painful thoughts.
Everard,—that was an outrage, that about sexual allurements; just simply an outrage. She flushed at the remembrance of it; her whole body seemed to flush hot. She felt as though never again would she be able to bear him making love to her. He had spoilt that. But that was a dreadful way to feel, that was destructive of the very heart of marriage. No, she mustn't let herself,—she must stamp that feeling out; she must forget what he had said. He couldn't really have meant it. He was still in a temper. She oughtn't to have gone down. But how could she know? All this was new to her, a new side of Everard. Perhaps, she thought, watching the reflection of the flames flickering on the shiny, slippery oak floor, only people with tempers should marry people with tempers. They would understand each other, say the same sorts of things, tossing them backwards and forwards like a fiery, hissing ball, know the exact time it would last, and be saved by their vivid emotions from the deadly hurt, the deadly loneliness of the one who couldn't get into a rage.
Loneliness.
She lifted her head and looked round the room.
No, she wasn't lonely. There was still——
Suddenly she went to the bookshelves, and began pulling out the books quickly, hungrily reading their names, turning over their pages in a kind of starving hurry to get to know, to get to understand, Vera....